Submission

She kept telling herself she was a decent woman, but that night, in the hotel room, she discovered how badly she wanted to obey every one of my orders.

The message arrived at dusk: show up at 1:45 p.m., black dress, no jewelry, no handbag. The rest, you will obey. It was the only currency I had left.

I stared at her from the bar until our eyes met. I didn’t know yet that that night she would call me “sir” and do everything I ordered.

When he crouched in front of me under the rain and asked me to show him my teeth, I knew that man in the black suit wasn't offering me a coin.

I hit play thinking it was a tender goodbye. Two minutes later I understood she knew everything I hid, and that night her voice was in charge of me.

Beside the open casket, while everyone pretended to grieve, Mariana could only think about the hands of those two men and what they would do to her that same night.

She spent her whole life being the strong one, the one who cared for everyone. That afternoon, a stranger told me to get in his car and, for the first time, I stopped deciding.

I hit send and something broke forever. With his collar around my neck, I knew that crossing the bar’s door meant no longer being who I had been.

It started with a red thong and a “put it on, love.” It ended with her smiling from the counter, deciding for both of us how the rest of my life would go.

I told him I wasn’t going out that night. Then he knocked on my door holding a pink dress and that smile that already knew he was going to win me over.

I locked my office door, opened the day’s video, and watched my wife biting her lip while he hugged her from behind in the kitchen.

No one in the courthouse would ever imagine she was waiting there naked and on her knees, holding her breath for him to walk through the door and remind her who she belonged to.

I thought I was going to beg her to keep my secret. I never imagined that when she came back into the living room, she’d be holding a crop and wearing high heels.

In the bathroom, a makeup bag was waiting for me with a note: “put everything on and turn it on.” From that moment on, I stopped deciding what happened to my own body.

I’d spent two years imagining this day. I had no idea a suited fifty-something, with his gaze locked on mine, would decide for me what my first time would be like.

I left home with my thong folded in my pocket and three phrases I didn’t choose written on my skin. Each class hour drove me closer to the edge, with no permission to finish.

This morning, while waiting for coffee, I saw myself again on my knees over the freshly polished floor, legs numb and eyes down, waiting for a single order from him.

I came in thinking I owned everything. Marisol, on her knees in yellow gloves, had already decided that tonight the owner would be her.

They dragged me into the exam room for not following the rules. They didn’t know that was exactly what I wanted: for someone to finally decide for me.