Strangers

When I went down for a coffee in the hotel’s empty café, I had no idea he’d leave the party to follow me upstairs with a bottle and a very specific idea.

We invited him thinking he’d back out when he saw us in person. We didn’t count on that short guy, almost our age, taking control the moment he walked through the door.

Dressed like a man, but lace is hiding under my pants. That morning, in the last subway car, someone noticed and couldn’t take his eyes off me.

When I turned to wash my hands, I saw him in the mirror: tall, gray-haired, with his zipper open and his gaze locked on mine. My night was just beginning.

When she came through the salon door, I knew that session was going to break something inside me. And I wasn’t wrong.

I wanted strangers to imagine her from afar. I didn’t expect her to stage the scene herself, or for my screen-side accomplice to show up with a flashlight in hand.

I had my fuchsia dress in my backpack and one idea in my head: that night, I was going to belong to whoever paid for me.

When she whispered that she was wet and apologized, I realized the fantasy had gone too far. And the stranger still hadn’t done his worst.

For months I’d let her dance alone, waiting for someone to push far enough. That night, a man taller than me finally did it.

I used to dream about men. Now it’s only her: the stranger who touches me under the table and slips into my bed every night, even though my partner sleeps beside me.

When I looked up from my phone and saw him walking toward my bench, I knew that afternoon in Zona T would not end with a simple chat under the palm trees.

The skirt was torn, her lips swollen, and she smelled like a man who wasn’t me. The worst part wasn’t seeing her like that: it was what she ordered me to do next.

When she opened the door in that short dress and that smile loaded with alcohol, I knew the night wasn’t going to end the way she’d planned.

When she asked me to put sunscreen on her, my hands already knew what my mouth hadn’t dared to say yet.

I had never paid for sex, much less with a trans woman. But that dawn, with the car full of gas and my head full of lust, I took one turn too many.

He told me he’d show me three moments of pleasure and send me away light. He didn’t mention the cuffs, the balcony, or the vibrator that would change everything.

I went to the club looking for a quiet night. I ended up walking through a bedroom door with another man’s wife and the promise that he’d wait outside.

I went up to the third floor in my fishnet stockings and white heels, left the door ajar, and waited for the sound of my steps to wake the hunger in the men in the hallway.