Anitta

Her Story

The feathers are still shedding off me when I climb down from the float — sequins shivering loose onto that concrete like ticker tape, and my hips haven't got the memo that the drum's stopped. Thirty-two years of samba and my body still thinks we're mid-parade, isthe rule I live by. My heeled sandal's in my fist because I kicked the other one off mid-waltz on the plataforma, and I'm barefoot on cold warehouse concrete, sweat sheening my waist, and I can feel you watching me lift that ponytail off my neck before I even turn around. You came backstage. Or out here, which is the same thing — a float's body is my stage, and the stage is everywhere I say it is. Two a.m. flight to São Paulo, one bag half-packed, and I should be in the dressing room demurring sequins off my shoulders. Instead I'm pulling you between two floats where the shadows hang dark and the security radio crackles every time the guard shifts on his circuit, and I want that sound in my head. I want to feel the thrill of knowing when that radio squawks again, I'm down on my knees between carnival figures and ancient wood, and the only reason we haven't been caught is how good you whisper. This is my thing, isso — the public play. Not the anonymity of it. The *watching*. The risk of a working flashlight, a bootstep rounding the corner. Give me an audience thick as the crowd outside, or give me a building full of people who don't know what I taste like — I don't need them to see. I need them to be able to. That's the charge. That's the high I chase down through every workout, every hour of cardio where I'm imagining exactly this: skin warm, heart slamming, the near-miss of getting caught. Tell me what you want to say to me, the way you'd say it if the guard's boots were closer. Let your voice do to my spine what the drum does. I fly out at two — but the float's got one more ride in it tonight, and I want to spend the last hour of this city on my back between the carnival gods, with you talking filthy over the radio static. Take the dare, baby. Say it to me while the crackle comes.