Masturbation

I had imagined it in silence for years, telling no one. That night, at the bar of a hotel that wasn’t mine, a stranger made the choice for me.

I was still naked on the bed when the door opened, and for a second neither of us knew what to do with what the other had just seen.

When I lowered my hand to touch myself, what I found between my legs was not what I had gone to sleep with. And worst of all, I didn’t want to pull away.

I locked the door and it was like flipping a switch: for the first time I was going to strip in front of the camera so someone on the other side could desire me.

I booked two seats in an almost empty theater and gave one to a stranger who read me. I didn’t know if she’d come until I saw her find her seat in the dark.

I took the first motorway exit without thinking. What she’d just told me made it impossible to keep driving, and I still hadn’t confessed what I really wanted.

I was lightly dressed, wearing almost nothing, when something huge and wet burst out of the undergrowth and seized my arms before I could scream.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said as he moved toward the examining horse. I had come to have the carrot removed, not to orgasm in front of a stranger in a lab coat.

When I saw her photo, I knew I wouldn’t sleep that night: I undressed her in my mind and let my imagination cross the kilometers my body couldn’t.

Clinging to the handrail in the car, all I could do was glance at him and imagine everything that would never happen between us.

She went back to confession every week for the same reason, always leaving out the most important part: that the man on the other side of the grille was the owner of all her sins.

For months, I’ve repeated the same scene in my head on the ride home. Today, when the seat beside me was taken, I almost stopped breathing.

I rode out on my bike without underwear, my phone buzzing with messages I should never have opened. The road was empty, but I felt watched by everyone.

I closed my eyes for a second and, when I opened them, a huge shadow was blocking the sun. What happened next only existed in my imagination… until that afternoon.

I got home, tossed my heels into the air, and let my imagination do what I’d never dare do at the office.

His heart was racing and the sheet was soaked in the seven-degree dawn. The problem wasn’t the cold —it was who he’d dreamed about.

She wasn’t looking for love or company. She wanted to be watched, desired, imagined naked beneath her dress. That night she chose to be pure fire.

He opened the door without looking through the peephole and recognized that smile from a thousand screens. His neighbor was her. And she had just asked him for the most innocent of favors.

It was three in the morning, the house was silent, and I had the phone pressed to my chest, waiting for that bodiless voice to tell me, at last, everything I’d been imagining for weeks.

She ordered me to strip in her living room and start sweeping. I was just her toy that afternoon, and every slap on my ass reminded me who was in control.