Strangers

When they put me in that cell, I never imagined two strangers would turn it into the scene where I learned what it meant to surrender to desire and pleasure.

The drawer was jammed by a handwritten notebook. Inside were the most intimate pages of a stranger and his eight-year lover.

When I knelt in the sand with the sun beating on my back, I never imagined someone was watching every move from the other side of the crag.

Every morning is the same: I open my eyes with my body on fire and the bed in disarray, knowing no pillow can soothe what I truly crave.

I ordered a piña colada at the beach bar, and the waiter brought it with a smile. By the second day, I knew his service went far beyond the bar.

The first client asked me for something that wasn’t in my contract. When I went back to the room, Salvador was breathing like he’d been awake for hours.

Her boyfriend played with his phone a meter away while she left the fitting-room curtain half open and, every time she undressed, checked that I was still there.

Daniel took the wrong alley at the worst possible moment. Weeks later, in front of the mirror, a stranger with his eyes began 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 four flights with two bags in my hands and the certainty that there was no turning back.

I shaved everything, wore stockings and garters in secret. I never imagined a company conference would end with me giving myself 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 spent weeks showing myself to her on camera. That night, with one whispered sentence, she asked me for something that changed forever 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 asked my friend to help me fulfill a fantasy I’d had for years: letting strangers watch me. I never expected how much I’d 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 from the screen, and I obeyed: opening the window, dropping my clothes, and letting those men watch me shamelessly.