My morning routine has become a ritual. I get out of bed and do my stretches, spreading my yoga mat out on the bedroom floor. I play the same podcast every morning on my screen, moving along with the woman as she takes me through the poses. It's pre-recorded; she's in her yoga studio somewhere in her tight shorts and exercise bra, and I watch the way her body bends. She's so supple, her toned muscles stretching deliciously as she reaches for her toes. I'm watching her and she smiles back at me, and it's like a daydream.
My mind drifts, wondering what she would be like. Ever since the hotel meeting, it's like I've stepped through a door into another room that's filled with new possibilities. The instructor kneels on the mat, sliding forward while she raises her perfect bottom into the air, and I think to myself that she must know what she looks like. She must know what's she's doing, that thousands of eyes would be on her as she kneels in supplication, her eyes closed, her blonde ponytail coiled in the nape of her elegant neck. I repeat the motion, kneeling down, stretching forward, raising my rear into the air.
Unlike the woman on the screen, though, I'm nude. I can feel the air between my legs as I move my body. I'm aching for contact, imagining that I'm offering myself up to her tongue. I can almost feel the delicate, warm pressure of contact. The woman moves into the next pose and I follow, watching as she smiles at me. Yes, I conclude, she knows exactly what she's doing, displaying her body to be admired by strangers.
I finish the session, but the ache is still there. It's been there for weeks now, but I've been too sore. I look down at my crotch and spread myself gently with my fingers. It's better this morning. For the first time, it doesn't feel tender down there. Maybe I'm finally healing. I get into the shower and begin to rinse myself off carefully.
His wife didn't warn me about this. She hadn't warned me about the booking either, in a parlor in the city. She just sent a message with a time and place and told me to pop some pain relief beforehand.
Now, I'm pierced, like she is. There's a shiny silver ring through my clit, another one below it in my perineum. Both my nipples too, and my belly button, all done at the same time. The woman who did it had given me a stern look, asking if I was sure I wanted to do it all together. But, I know that his wife had done that. She'd suffered at her husband's request to be ready for me in the hotel room. Now, here I was, pierced like her, too sore to touch myself, weeks since I'd last been able to enjoy a proper release.
I touch myself delicately, and there is no pain. I wiggle the ring that pierces me, experimentally. The warm water sloughs down my front, rivulets streaming off the rings through my nipples, and I'm staring again, like every time, like I'm still unable to believe what's been done to me. My mouth is dry and there's a little pinch when I swallow that makes me wince. I have a tongue piercing too, a little flat pink disc that is practically invisible so long as I don't stick my tongue out. I've taken to smiling with my mouth closed.
Closing my eyes, I trace up and down my slit with a single finger, relishing in the sensation as I brush over my ringed clit. I can feel something there, inside the yielding flesh: the rigidity of stainless steel within me. As I play with myself, I need to learn my body again, the ways it has been changed by the little metal rings in my flesh.
There's no pain, and I press a little firmer, slipping a finger inside myself at the same time, stroking my most sensitive spot. I laugh with the sheer relief of it, as my pleasure begins to build. She would have felt the same, I realise, and then a revelation strikes me: on the bed in the hotel room, had she been holding back all that time, waiting for me? With my eyes closed and my fingers working me gradually towards my long-awaited climax, I can see her again. I remember the ecstasy on her face as she revealed herself to me, touching herself as she exposed her body, cumming almost immediately as she stood in front of me.
Ah, shit.
I withdraw my fingers, even though my body is now burning with the need for release. My hands ball into fists, and I lean forward, resting my forehead on the cool tiles. I need to climax so badly, but I know it's cheating. I need to wait, because she did. I wonder if this is part of the process.
Shutting the water off, I wrap myself in a towel and find my phone. I hammer out a message and hit send.
I'm ready for the next stage. It had just better be soon.
---
He sent me an address and a time, nothing more. No dress code, which means that what I wear is irrelevant. I get out of my car on a deserted street on the edge of the city's main business district. It's old warehouses and loft spaces. Why am I here?
The address is the old tram sheds, from back when they had trams. These days, the buildings have found a new life as exhibition spaces and art studios. I walk in through the open doors and hunt for the room number he gave me. There is a performance space with three rows of fold-up chairs arranged neatly on the scrubbed concrete floor, facing a curtain dangling from a lighting rig suspended from the high wood-beamed ceiling. There is a conference room, with a big black screen and comfortable chairs. There is a break-out area with a sink and a kettle.
The room I want is the next one. I stand in front of the door, trying to hold my nerve.
He hasn't said anything to me about what's going to happen, and neither has his wife. I can tell them apart now when they message me, subtle differences in style: he's direct, concerned with the facts, while she's digging deeper, like she wants to know more about how I tick. Opening the door scares me, but I'm going to have to do it, and take whatever he has planned. But still I hesitate.
I've seen the other women on his photo site, the way that their journeys end. They go from selfies with awkward smiles as they post their first naked pictures, to the professional studio shots, perfectly lit, soft curves, the female form rendered into art. They all opened this door, or one like it in another city somewhere. They all stepped through.
I grip the handle tightly and push the door open. It's a studio space, but it looks like it used to be an office back in the day. There is a door at the back with a window in it that looks out into the performance space. A supervisor's office, maybe: a man in a starched shirt sitting at a desk going through the timetables, looking out at the sheds, keeping an eye on things. What would he have thought about me, what I'm about to have done to me in his office sixty years later?
The room is bare except for a table up against one wall and a lighting stand in the corner. There's a single chair, pushed in neatly, and a small box in the exact centre of the tabletop. The layout strikes me immediately: it's arranged like a still-life: chair and box, perfectly illuminated by the lighting. I go over to the box and open it.
Inside is a handwritten note and a tiny case. It's her handwriting, and one sentence: undress, then open the case and put them in. I look around the room again; there's nothing else here.
They want me naked, so I comply, stripping off and folding my clothes carefully. I put them on the chair and push it back under the table so that they're out of sight. It seems appropriate. I reach into the box and open the tiny case. It's a pair of coloured contact lenses, and it all makes sense. I'm to be displayed: this is my disguise, along with lighting, editing, hairpieces, adornments, makeup, or whatever else is to be done to me. I will be completely exposed but rendered anonymous, that was her promise.
I balance one lens on my fingertip. I've never done this before, but I've watched other people do it. I grit my teeth and open my eyes wide. The contact makes me squirm and I blink furiously, but every time I open my eyes, there's a black space there, and I understand. The contact make my eyes look brown, but they're completely opaque. I can't see out of one eye. I stare at the other lens, in its case. He intends to remove my sight, in the most intimate way possible. I won't be able to see him after all.
I put the other lens in. It's easier this time, and my world plunges into darkness. I stare, but it's like being in a perfectly black room. Moving my head, nothing changes: no light, no sense of movement. I take a little, unsteady breath.
The case is still in my hands, and I close it. I trace across the surface of the table until my fingertips find the box, and I put it in, closing the box. I can feel the straight, hard edges of the wood, the grain of the table's surface beneath it, and I become aware of other things.
First, the silence, apart from the steady susurration of my breath. Then, temperature on my bare skin, just a little too cold, just enough to make the hairs on my arms stand up. There is the air around my body as I move; the little metal rings; the smoothness of the polished concrete floor beneath my feet. Then, the silence again. I take a step backwards into the middle of the room. All I can do is wait.
Time drifts by, and I hear a sound, or I think I do. I turn my head to catch it, but there's nothing. I wait. Voices: two women laughing as they pass the door, getting louder and then receding into the distance. What would they have thought of me, standing blinded and stripped just on the other side of the door? I shiver, but it isn't from cold. What if they go into the performance space? They could be getting it ready, and look over to the door with its little window, and see me inside. I really should get out of the line of sight, hide myself from the possibility of discovery, but I don't. After weeks of denying myself, my entire body tingles.
