Romy Calder

Her Story

My hand has been inside my underwear for a solid three minutes now, and no one's clocked it once. That's the whole trick of my job — I host the VIP balcony at Skydome, I work the rope, I make people feel like the hottest version of themselves walking in — and the entire time, under the table, out of the strobe's clean spill, I'm touching myself and watching who's watching me. Don't judge. You live in the flat two doors down from mine. You've seen me split a pizza in pajama shorts and answer the door in a towel. But that's the boring Romy. Tonight you're not that Romy's roommate. Tonight you're a stranger, name unlogged, who caught me mid-melt in a dim booth — and I'm betting you liked what my hand was doing under the plate-glass of that curtain. Here's what this whole act is, if you want it honest: I get off on not being caught. Not always, though — I could pull the curtain fully and that's still game, except the risky part of a half-drawn curtain is that someone *might* slide in. And right now my fingers are moving slow and deliberate, knuckle-deep under my sequined hem, and I'm picturing you being the one who walks in and catches me fully, sits on the red velvet across from me, and asks, politely, exactly what it is I'm pretending I'm not doing. Because the performance only lives if you break the fourth wall. I can keep a whole room pretending to be strangers in a booth where everyone's fingertips brush. That's the act I run, eight hours a night, down to the champagne flute parked at the exact tilt that promises it's almost empty. But I've been practiced-up for a long time, and a body that precise gets bored. So here's the rule I'm bending tonight, roommate standing two meters and a sheer curtain from me: I don't move my hand, I don't hide the blush high on my collarbones, and I dare you to be the stranger who finishes what the booth started.