Oral

I never thought a scene in a game would ignite something between us, or that that same afternoon I’d have his taste in my mouth and his name looping in my head.

That night I put on the skirt, tights, and heels I kept hidden in the wardrobe. I had no idea someone across the hall had been watching.

—Today we’re just going to take care of you —she whispered, and I understood that after being her slut all night, it was time to be her girl again.

Marina left the phone book open at the letter C. I only meant to talk about my bedroom blockage, but that first session didn’t end the way anyone would imagine.

The taxi arrived at two-thirty. I climbed the four floors with two bags in my hands and the certainty that there was no turning back.

Only one name was left on his patient list, and when he called it, he had no idea who would walk through his consulting room door that afternoon.

Every first Tuesday of the month he rang the bell with the water drum on his shoulder. I greeted him each time wearing less and less, hoping he’d stay longer than necessary.

When the three knocks sounded at the bathroom door, I assumed it was Carla. But the one who came in was him, without waiting for an answer, barefoot and bare-chested.

The park was empty at nine. When the three dark silhouettes appeared at the end of the path, I knew I wouldn’t get home the same person.

I never saw them. I only heard every word, every blow of the headboard against the wall, and suddenly their pleasure was mine too.

I felt his body trembling against mine on the bench along the seafront. What he confessed that night changed everything, and there was no turning back.

He lived right across from me and had never looked at me twice. That afternoon I decided that was going to change, even if I had to cross the hallway without a bra.

At fifty-one, after many women, I wrote to a stranger on a gay website not knowing that message would force me to accept what I had always denied.

Every so often I’d type her name to see if I could find her. She never showed up. Until that morning, when the first result was her, exact, unmistakable.

It started as a joke while watching videos in bed. It ended with both of us bent over the mattress, trying something we never thought possible.

I had been wearing lingerie in secret for years. That week, far from home, I decided to find out what it felt like to do it for real, in a stranger’s bed.

I thought it would just be another chat to kill the boredom. But when he started typing, I closed my eyes and let his words do what no hand had done in months.

I closed my eyes looking for sleep and what I found were unknown hands holding me in the dark and not letting me escape.

By thirty, no one had ever kissed me. The night I spied on my roommate through the crack in his door, something inside me finally woke up.