The Woman I Became After Nadia

For years I was a woman confident in herself. Steadfast in my convictions, impossible to bend, hard to the point of cruelty when business demanded it. I was capable of getting wherever I set my mind to, and almost always got there.

It had not always been that way. As a child I was the class ugly duckling, the redhead with glasses and freckles everyone picked as an easy target in school. I learned to look at the floor before I learned to look people in the eye. That was why, when I grew up and discovered I aroused as much desire as envy, it did not hurt. On the contrary: I liked being the one who could now look down on others.

My hair was a natural copper color people paid fortunes to imitate. I had honey-colored eyes, long curled lashes, a small but full mouth, and a body sculpted by hours in the gym and Pilates. I knew the effect I had when I walked into a room, and I used it without apology.

I was bisexual, passionate, deeply sexual. I never cared if people knew, because I felt above other people’s opinions. I had had many partners, men and women, and I knew how to enjoy myself and how to give pleasure. My only flaw was that I got bored quickly. Desire went out in me as soon as I conquered what I wanted.

But we all have an Achilles’ heel, and mine had a name: Nadia.

***

Nadia was gorgeous. So beautiful it hurt to look at her for too long. She was also insecure, jealous, manipulative, and aggressive. With any other woman I would have put distance between us within a week, but with her I lost all my personality, all that “power” I had built with so much effort. I became submissive to her desire in a way I did not even recognize in myself.

And she took advantage of it.

In the privacy of our home she abused and humiliated me. More than once I ended up in the emergency room making clumsy excuses for the nurses: that I had fallen, that I had walked into a door, that I was clumsy. I was even admitted to the hospital. And even so, I went back to her every time she asked me to.

The six years I spent by her side brought me to rock bottom. I ended up believing every one of her insults. She told me I was a nymphomaniac, that I would sleep with anyone just to have sex, that I was worse than prostitutes because I surely got paid too. That she was disgusted by what I was.

Then, like the good manipulator she was, she played the victim. She cried, blamed me for her own blows, swore it would never happen again. And I, who had learned to negotiate with sharks, forgave the only person who did not deserve my forgiveness.

Nadia left me for another woman. When a new victim to hunt came along, it took her less than a week to dump me. I should have celebrated. Instead, I was left broken, split in two: between the woman I had been before her and the woman she convinced me I had become.

***

One night, trying to piece myself back together with a few drinks, I met an Italian man in a bar in downtown Valencia. He was an important negotiator for a high-end car brand. I realized at once he had noticed me; he came over, we had a drink, and we ended up having dinner together.

He was not the most attractive man in the world, but he had something magnetic about him. The connection was immediate. I laughed for real, without pretending, for the first time in a long while. I could not remember a date that fun.

“Do you feel like going somewhere nice?” he said at the end, with that accent that dragged his r’s. “I know a hotel nearby.”

I said yes.

The room was five-star. He undressed first. Slim, with black hair and a thin mustache, long arms to match his legs. Nothing about his body was spectacular, but that magnetism of his still worked. I stood in front of him, slipped off my shoes, let my dress fall, and slowly took off my underwear, looking him in the eye.

I saw him catch his breath. I knew exactly what I had to offer: strong legs, toned thighs, a flat stomach, firm round breasts. He came toward me almost without thinking and kissed me hungrily on the mouth. He pushed me onto the bed and ran his tongue over every inch of my skin, went down between my legs and stayed there until he drew out my first moan.

Then he positioned himself over me, looked me in the eyes, and entered me. He started fucking me with a near-savage frenzy, thrusting with a violence that, far from frightening me, only turned me on more. I caught his intensity. I shoved him, threw him onto his back, and sat on top of him like I was riding a stallion, moving on his hips until he could not take it anymore and came with a muffled cry.

He was left exhausted, breathless. For me, it was the best sex in years. I could not remember a night like that.

***

I woke up alone in the bed. On the nightstand there was an envelope.

I smiled. I thought he must have had to leave early for work and was leaving me a note about the night we had spent, maybe his number, a reason to see each other again. I opened it with the foolish excitement of a teenager.

Inside there were ten thousand euros in bills and a small folded piece of paper. Three words written by hand.

“I hope this is enough.”

That was when I finally sank all the way down. In my head, every one of Nadia’s words rang out, one by one. That I was worse than prostitutes. That I surely charged. That she was disgusted by what I was. The Italian did not know it, but he had just signed the sentence she had handed down six years before.

I did not scream. I did not cry. I took the money, got dressed, and walked out of that hotel as a different person.

***

From that morning on I began a double life. By day I was a prestigious businesswoman, brilliant, calculating, and soulless. By night I was a woman on fire, looking for any kind of sex that would fill the emptiness in me, free or paid, it did not matter. I let myself be dragged along by the idea Nadia had planted in me, as if giving her the right was the only way to keep breathing.

Until fate decided to give something back to me.

One morning, in a meeting with a group of Italian businessmen, he appeared. The man from the ten thousand euros. He had changed companies: now he was the negotiator for an Italian tourism company, and it turned out I was responsible for that account in Spain. I had him sitting across the table from me, with his coffee and his smile of a man who cannot remember how many women he has humiliated.

But I remembered.

The meeting was tense. When it ended, I went up to him with a cappuccino in my hand and offered it to him with all the sweetness in the world. Under the cup was a folded piece of paper: the address of a hotel and a single sentence.

“Bring another ten thousand euros.”

I had realized something. His position was just as vulnerable as mine. A scandal would sink him just as it had me. And for once in a long time, I felt I had the upper hand again.

***

That same night I got ready carefully. I put in my contact lenses, drew a fake mole above my upper lip, booked the room under a made-up name. I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be the woman in charge.

I went in, stripped, and kept only a garter belt and fishnet stockings on. I lay down in the middle of the bed, legs crossed and arms open, waiting. I heard the card slide in the lock. The door opened.

And he came in. But he was not alone.

He was accompanied by one of his colleagues and two of my subordinates. Four men looking at me, naked, on that bed.

Panic closed my throat. I felt violated, humiliated in a way Nadia had never managed. As best I could, I jumped off the bed, grabbed my clothes in a flurry, and ran for the door just as I was, caring about nothing except getting out.

He stopped me with his arm, never stopping smiling.

“We have the ten thousand euros,” he said slowly. “If we need more, we have more.”

“Please, let me go,” I begged, my voice breaking. “I don’t care about the money. I just want to leave.”

They laughed. All four of them. And then, almost out of boredom, he moved his arm aside and let me pass.

***

I never went back to that company. I resigned the next day without explaining myself and disappeared from the city before anyone could ask me anything.

Sometimes I think about that confident woman I was before Nadia, and I struggle to recognize her. Other times I think that woman never really existed at all, that she was just armor over the redheaded girl who was taught too early that other people’s contempt could become the voice inside your own head.

It took me years to understand that the problem was never my body or my desire. The problem was believing those who told me I deserved it. Today, at last, I no longer believe that. And that is why I can tell it.