Strangers

Daniel took the wrong alley at the wrong moment. Weeks later, in front of the mirror, a stranger with his gaze was starting to appeal to him more than she should.

I opened the door expecting dinner and found a slight girl with red-painted nails and a smile that said much more than “good evening.”

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.

I shaved everything off and wore stockings and garters in secret. I never imagined a company convention would end with me surrendering to another man.

Tied to her sofa, in a princess dress and with my face made up, I heard someone knock at the door. And I understood that night I would stop being only hers.

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’d been showing myself to her on camera for weeks. That night, with a single whispered sentence, she asked me for something that forever changed what I thought I wanted.

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

When I opened the door to breathe the wet air, someone jumped the wall. He was naked, he wouldn’t give me his name, and my husband was still sleeping inside the house, knowing nothing.

I left them by the washing machine like just another garment, but the moment I brought them to my nose I knew that woman had planned everything from the start.

I asked my friend to come with me to do something I’d been imagining for years: letting strangers see me. I had no idea how much I would enjoy it.

In front of the screen, with a cloth between my teeth so I wouldn’t scream, I obeyed every order from a man whose face I never saw. And I’d do it again.

He asked me from the screen and I obeyed: open the window, let the clothes fall, and let those men watch me without shame.

In the drinks line she asked to smell my perfume. When she leaned in against my neck, I understood that night’s concert would end somewhere other than my home.

I never had privacy for anything. That afternoon, on an empty bench with my skirt pulled up, I understood I could finally do exactly what I wanted.

I never wanted to go on cam. Until one night I gave in to curiosity and a faceless user asked to be alone with me.

That afternoon I wanted something different, something to pull me out of boredom. I found a stranger willing to watch while I let myself be watched.

I’d been walking for half an hour when the heat between my legs stopped being an idea and became urgency. The concrete wall was cold; I was burning.

He doesn’t know that when he closes his chat window, I turn off the light and let my hands do what his hands could never do to me from so far away.

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.