Submission

When Camila turned off the movie and told me, “sometimes I watch gay porn when I’m alone,” I knew that line was going to split my life in two.

I arrived at the hotel convinced it would be just photos. When the door opened and his older brother appeared, I knew there’d be no turning back that night.

There was something in her eyes when she turned around that should have worried me. It wasn’t the anger of an irritated neighbor. It was a promise.

She arrived with a backpack on her shoulder and a red pacifier between her lips. She had just turned twenty-two and laughed as if she already knew everything that would happen next.

She had done nothing wrong, and he wanted to see her on her knees with a cloth in her hand. She would do it, because that was what she had chosen to be for him.

When I opened my eyes, my wrists were held above my head and I wasn’t wearing a thing. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was smiling.

She looked him up and down and said, “You walk like you’re asking permission to exist.” She was right. And that was exactly what she wanted from him.

I’d gone months without anyone touching me. That night I started the car with no destination, but my body already knew exactly where it was going.

I thought the fire drill would last minutes. Two hours later, in a basement classroom with no signal and no witnesses, I understood it was no drill.

She came out of the bathroom in a white blazer that barely covered anything, a red pacifier on her lips and that smile of hers. I knew that night would be different.

She came out of the bathroom wearing a white blazer with nothing underneath and a red pacifier between her lips. That night I knew Camila hadn’t come to please me: she’d come to have fun.

That night I prepared like never before. Camila was coming over with her backpack and her wicked smile, and I knew exactly what I was going to ask her for.

When she told me to kneel, I did. I understood I was no longer her patient, but something entirely different.

Every Friday, Marcos crossed our threshold knowing he wouldn’t be himself again until Sunday. The collar, the cage, and the dress were waiting for him.

I saw her on all fours over the dry grass, with the fluffy tail swaying between her cheeks, and I knew that Sunday afternoon was going to be unlike any other.

When Valeria put her hand on the back of my neck and pushed me down, I understood that night would cross a line with no way back.

They meant to humiliate them in front of their children. They didn’t count on Beatriz’s black belt, or on Silvia always carrying rope in her bag.

Three coworkers invited her to stay after ten. They didn’t know Camila had her own rules for nights like that.