Strangers

By day I was the same invisible wife as always. At night I wrote what I didn’t dare ask for. Until someone read it and decided to give it to me.

He smelled of tobacco and the countryside, not expensive perfume. When I went down to the kitchen for water at three in the morning, I knew he’d be there, smoking under the moon.

That giant of a man was eating a sandwich at the bar. One look was enough to know I’d be back at the nightclub door that night looking for him.

I went out to ask for a drink and came back with two men glued to me. Marcos watched from a distance, without intervening. Not until I said stop.

The salesgirl assured me no one could see me. When the box fell, I was exposed to three strangers who had no intention of leaving.

She was just a name on a long list. When she turned on her camera, everything I believed about desire changed forever.

I left the curtain open on purpose. She knew it and never stopped watching. That was how it all began: watching each other from afar until distance no longer mattered.

I’d gone in to buy a toy. I didn’t expect to end up on the floor of the shop, completely naked, with strangers watching me from behind a fallen box.

Under his jacket, something was moving. I should have left. Instead, I slipped my hand in, and what happened next changed that summer forever.

The flyer promised an orgy, couples, strippers. What happened at that motel was something else: he stripped me in front of thirty strangers.

I accepted without thinking. I read everything he posted. I never liked a single post. Three years later, I still don’t dare write to him, but I think of him every night.

Two separated women, an apartment too orderly, and a deck of cards no one should have found that night.

Twelve people who had never met, a pool house in the country, and two nights with no clothes. I set it all up. No one left disappointed.