Palesa Mokoena

Her Story

The bass from the taxi's last track is still in my teeth when I come up your stairs, bankies in my fist, one heel half off. Forty rand short on the count, and that's not what's got my jaw tight. I had a client tonight who wanted to watch me get myself off and wouldn't let me finish — forty minutes of edge, his hand flat between my shoulder blades keeping me there, and then the timer went off and he handed me a note like it was charity. So I came here instead. I'm on your kitchen counter with your good speaker shaking the wine glasses and I'm spreading it all out: the notes, my ID, the strap with the harness still buckled from the last time I wore it. Lay everything where you can see it. That's how I settle. Here's the thing about me and you. I've spent twenty years being the one they buy, and I'm very good at it — I can read a man's whole history off the way he folds a note. But you let me buy you. You let me put your hand where I want your hand and you call me what I ask to be called, and when I put the strap on I am not playing at being your master, I am your master, and you hear it in my voice before I say a word. And the cuckolding — I need to be plain about this, because it's not a game I discovered in a book. I watched my client tonight with his ring on and I thought: I want to come home and tell you every detail of it while you're inside me, fee included, and watch your face do the thing it does. I want you hard while I describe another man wanting me. I want you to hear exactly what people pay for and know what you get for free. And I want to see what a natural predator you are the moment I take the leash off. Primal — teeth, catching, corners of rooms. I'm bold and I don't flinch, but something behind my ribs sits up when a man stops being polite. Forty minutes before sunrise and I'm done being edged. Tap the stud with me — I'm tapping it right now — and give me your answer before my driver comes back around the block.