Strangers

I was coming back from surfing, my hair damp and my bikini still wet, when they made me stop. I had no idea that night would show me how far my desire could go.

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 out determined to let him see me with other men, but ended up between two cars on an empty street, letting a stranger use me.

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 know I should feel ashamed, but at that hour, pressed against bodies I don’t know, I stop pretending the touch is an accident.

I was eight months pregnant, my hormones were raging, and a sweaty man was working in the baby’s room. That afternoon I stopped being the modest wife everyone thought I was.

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.

It was six in the morning and he was looking at me in the rearview mirror as if he already knew what I was going to let happen. This really happened, and I regret nothing.

A car braked beside me and asked my price. I was thirty-seven, a lawyer, and for once I decided not to say no to the madness.

Fresh out of the shower, I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn’t keep waiting. I took a sheet of paper and started writing down everything I’d wanted for years and never dared to do.

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 always told myself my indiscretions were the alcohol’s fault. That morning, sober and in broad daylight, I knew I’d been lying to myself.

I swear this is a real story, one you don’t tell out loud. She appeared from the hedges almost naked, asked me for a light, and everything else just happened.

The hum of the air conditioner was the soundtrack to her golden cage. That night, a blown tire left her before three strangers and on the edge of what she had never allowed herself to want.

I never promised you more than I gave you, and maybe that’s why you came back. This is the story of the woman I never truly got to know.

I walk between the lockers with a towel over my shoulder and I feel every gaze. They pretend not to look, but their bodies answer me before their words do.

He insisted on walking me all the way to the entrance that I ended up inviting him up. At eight in the morning his phone rang and everything I believed changed in an instant.

When I got into the car and saw that man in the front seat, I never imagined my lover had brought me there to hand me over to someone else.

It took me two weeks to admit I wanted it to happen again. And one dawn, instead of running away, I sat on that stair and waited for them.