Strangers

I was alone, enjoying the last afternoon sun, when a young man emerged from the water and sat too close. His question wasn't really about a cigarette.

When I stepped through the curtain marked “only studs,” I had no idea I’d end up holding a cock while its owner got fucked in front of me.

I thought it would be just one afternoon and one stranger. I never imagined each one would teach me something different, or that the third would leave me voiceless for two days.

Four men, a thick envelope on the table, and me deciding who I’d call over first. My rule was always the same: I choose, I set the pace, and I leave whenever I feel like it.

I rolled down the window and spoke to her with my back still turned. When she turned, I knew that freckled blonde was going to change my whole weekend.

Her boyfriend smiled at us and said love wasn’t exclusive. That same afternoon Marisol came up to the hotel room with us.

I parked outside the house, my hands sweating. It was my first session with a naked client, and I still didn’t know I’d end up with two men on top of me.

I’d never been attracted to men, but that figure on the screen stirred something I couldn’t name. Then she offered to pay me.

Under my track pants I wore only fishnets and a lace thong. I wasn’t looking for just any doorway: I was looking for the place where they’d treat me like an object.

I only wanted to try five minutes of massage before going back to the hotel. I never imagined a stranger’s hand would change my vacation that afternoon.

He made me wake at an exact time without an alarm, with only his words inside my head. And I obeyed while my boyfriend snored beside me.

The dress hugged my body, the stockings brushed me with every step, and when that man held out his hand to dance, I knew I wouldn’t return home the same.

When Inés opened the door to the two men in uniform at exactly midnight, I knew the promise of a quiet night had been a delicious lie.

I was running late, sweaty, and packed against other bodies when she leaned in to whisper in my ear. I never noticed when I stopped thinking about my meeting.

We’d been talking for five months by chat. When she opened the hotel door barefaced, in a black shirt, I knew no screen would ever be enough.

I looked at myself in the mirror wearing my wig and translucent dress, and knew that night I would let a stranger do everything I’d imagined for weeks.

I saved his number as “S.1.” Two days to regret it, and not once did I want to: I wanted them to use me again, worse than the first time.

I ordered a whiskey to forget the day and got served a pair of green eyes with my drink. Forty minutes later, the barmaid’s fingers covered my eyes from behind.

I had spent years imagining it: getting dressed up, putting on my stockings, and giving myself to a man for the first time. That afternoon, in a hotel room, I stopped imagining it.

I was ready from four in the afternoon, soaked and aching, when that short man knocked on my door, never imagining I’d force out his nickname.