Domination

My heels were killing me when Andrés leaned over the counter and whispered that the conference room would be empty all night.

Forty-three degrees, four in the afternoon, and her on the balcony with the camisole stuck to her body, knowing full well I was going to climb five floors.

When the air returned to my lungs and he turned on the red camera, I knew that night of domination had only just begun and I could no longer go back.

I arrived at the hotel trembling, convinced it would only be photos. When the second brother walked in, I knew that night wouldn’t end as planned.

The private room was immaculate, and I was kneeling in the center, waiting. Eight men entered in silence. Then I understood what it meant to truly surrender.

They tied me up in the park in broad daylight and no one came to help. They had planned it well—much better than I had.

They didn’t give him water in a cup. They poured it over her foot, and he had to lick it from the leather straps if he wanted to survive.

When Camila turned off the movie and told me, “sometimes I watch gay porn when I’m alone,” I knew that line was going to split my life in two.

For two years I ignored my boss’s stares and his wife’s silent insults. That afternoon, when the last employee turned off the lights, I stopped ignoring everything.

I arrived at the hotel convinced it would be just photos. When the door opened and his older brother appeared, I knew there’d be no turning back that night.

Kwame parked the rig at noon and, before pulling out the next day, had marked three different bodies. Some sought him out; others simply gave in.

There was something in her eyes when she turned around that should have worried me. It wasn’t the anger of an irritated neighbor. It was a promise.

She arrived with a backpack on her shoulder and a red pacifier between her lips. She had just turned twenty-two and laughed as if she already knew everything that would happen next.

She had done nothing wrong, and he wanted to see her on her knees with a cloth in her hand. She would do it, because that was what she had chosen to be for him.

When I saw his name on the screen, my stomach clenched. Two weeks remembering his mouth and his hands, and there he was again, as if nothing had happened.

When I opened my eyes, my wrists were held above my head and I wasn’t wearing a thing. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was smiling.

She looked him up and down and said, “You walk like you’re asking permission to exist.” She was right. And that was exactly what she wanted from him.

I thought the fire drill would last minutes. Two hours later, in a basement classroom with no signal and no witnesses, I understood it was no drill.

She came out of the bathroom in a white blazer that barely covered anything, a red pacifier on her lips and that smile of hers. I knew that night would be different.

When she told me to kneel, I did. I understood I was no longer her patient, but something entirely different.