Exhibitionism

It started with a red thong and a “put it on, love.” It ended with her smiling from the counter, deciding for both of us how the rest of my life would go.

I left home with my thong folded in my pocket and three phrases I didn’t choose written on my skin. Each class hour drove me closer to the edge, with no permission to finish.

I got into the car wearing every piece he chose, and I knew that afternoon my only job would be to obey while people passed by, unsuspecting.

I never had the courage to expose myself. Until today. Tomorrow I’m going to class naked under my clothes, and writing it here already feels like your first order.

I summoned her at six with one condition: a short skirt and the lingerie I chose. I would decide the rest when she walked through the door.

I went up in a robe, barefoot and furious, ready to yell at him. He opened the door, looked me up and down, and I knew I was the one in trouble.

I was the serious guy in the suit and SUV. All it took was for a woman to challenge me with her eyes for the animal inside me to wake up, and that village fair set him loose for good.

I left that store trembling with desire, never imagining that by that same week I’d be on my knees, begging to be used with not a shred of tenderness.

My lover left me wanting more, but my husband knew exactly how to treat me: without romance, without mercy, like the submissive I am.

I sat in the center of the classroom pretending to be an unconscious patient. No one knew that, with every hand pinning me down, I was falling apart inside thinking of him.

I sat in that chair pretending to be in an emergency, but beneath the bra-less top my body only obeyed a voice not in the room: my master’s.

I drove to the abandoned factory with my pulse racing. I stripped among the broken glass and crossed the door, not knowing what waited for me on the floors above.

I went down to the kitchen in my pajamas, with nothing underneath, knowing he’d be awake. The tension had been building for days, and that night I decided I wasn’t holding back anymore.

I left the gym in the same clothes as always, with every eye on me. That night I understood I no longer wanted to hide how much it excited me to be desired.

I went back to school that afternoon under the excuse of studying in the library, but neither of us was going to open a single book. We were there for them.

We always thought no one could see us. That lie we told ourselves was the beginning of everything that came after, night after night.

I served that house since I was a boy and watched as that woman’s fire-red mane brought the valley’s most powerful men to their knees, one by one, by day of the week.

My friend promised me a wild costume night. I put on the sexiest outfit in the sex shop and headed out, not imagining what was waiting for me at that bar.

I’ve always hated public bathrooms, but that day I had no choice. What I never imagined was what I’d find when I ran back for the phone I’d left on top of the water tank.

I was sixty and my marriage was asleep when I noticed the boy next door spying on me through the hedges. I didn’t cover up. I played along.