Chapter 2
T here was something humiliating about climaxing to a man who didn’t exist.
My skin was still hot when I pushed the sheets off my thighs. My breath, uneven. I stared at the ceiling like it might shame me back to reality. Moonlight pooled across the wooden floor in my bedroom, soft and ghostly, and I felt like someone else entirely.
I had used my fingers. Slow at first, then rougher, the way I imagined he would be. Whoever he was. The man I’d invented and summoned in the dark. The man I wrote to like a woman who'd lost her mind.
Dangerous. Uncompromising. Strong enough to bruise.
He didn’t say “please.” He didn’t ask if I liked it. He just took—with those rough hands and that unreadable mouth. He dragged me against a wall, told me I was too mouthy for my own good, and made me pay for every article I’d ever written.
And I came—hard.
To that .
I should’ve felt sick.
Instead, I rolled over, pulled my tank top back down, and reached for the notebook on my nightstand.
There was always a list.
Topics. Outrage. Fodder for the flame.
In the morning, I’d write about the defense budget expansion and the new data on military recruitment in underfunded Southern schools. I’d touch on gendered propaganda in the wake of the latest drone strike. I’d make sure every word was sharpened to a knife-edge.
Because this was my job.
My purpose.
I didn’t just write opinion pieces. I shaped national conversations. My column, “State of Her Union,” had been reposted by every major liberal publication in the country. Young girls sent me emails from Ivy League dorms. Older women thanked me for making them feel less alone in their rage.
I was the voice of something bigger than myself—an institution of dissent.
It was in my blood.
My mother had marched on Washington in ‘93, pregnant with me and holding a cardboard sign that read My Body, My Baby, My Choice .
She raised me on stories of Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis the way some girls were raised on fairy tales.
My grandmother had run underground abortion networks in the Deep South during the seventies—helping women cross state lines, sleep in safehouses, wake up whole.
I’d grown up in kitchens that doubled as war rooms. Surrounded by women who wore protest pins like pearls and knew how to swing a frying pan and a ballot box in the same breath.
Sunday dinners were strategy sessions. Our family heirlooms were court transcripts, laminated protest photos, and a scar on my aunt’s cheek from a cop’s baton at the WTO riots in 1999.
So yes—I was proud.
I came from fire. From women who didn’t ask for permission. Who built their identities on resistance, and passed that legacy down to me not just in words, but in the bones of who I was.
And three nights ago, I wrote that letter.
Not to my editor. Not to the network.
To Alpha Mail.
I hadn’t been drunk.
I hadn’t been depressed.
I’d just … had enough.
Enough of the scrawny men with soft hands and softer egos. The podcast bros who wore tote bags with feminist slogans and flinched at the idea of dominance. The dates who were too respectful, too gentle, like they were afraid of breaking me.
I didn’t want to be coddled. I didn’t want to be agreed with.
I wanted to be handled.
Just once.
It wasn’t even supposed to be real.
The service was a rumor passed between women like a guilty secret. No website. No app. No profiles to scroll through, no glossy photos of muscles or bios that said “sapiosexual.” Just a whispered email address, shared after two martinis and a glance over the shoulder.
“Type out your darkest fantasy,” my friend Mina Lee had said, cheeks flushed, voice low. “Be specific. One night only. They send someone to your door.”
I’d laughed. Thought it was a joke. Then I’d looked at her—really looked—and seen the shift in her eyes.
She hadn’t been joking .
She’d been remembering.
I’d narrowed my eyes and lowered my voice. “Wait. You actually?—?”
Mina had taken a slow sip of her drink and given me that infuriating half-smile she always wore when she had the upper hand. “I’m not giving you details,” she’d said. “That’s kind of the point. But yeah. I did it.”
“And it’s … what? Safe?” I’d asked. “Sanctioned fantasy fulfillment?”
“Anonymity is sacred,” she’d said without hesitation. “There are rules. You write your request. They pick your guy. No names are shared, no numbers, no follow-up. The only name they ever call you is Lady.”
I’d blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” she’d said.
“And the guy doesn’t get your real name?”
“Never,” she’d said, firm. “That’s the whole appeal. It’s not about who you are—it’s about what you crave.”
I’d leaned back in the booth, struggling to picture it. “Sounds like a lot of money for a glorified fantasy. What’s the price tag?”
“It’s not cheap,” Mina had admitted. “But it’s no more than a high-end matchmaker. And there’s only one match. One night. No strings. You don’t pay him. You pay the service.”
“And that’s somehow not prostitution?” I’d asked, brows raised.
“It’s not prostitution,” she’d said, sharper now. “You’re not buying sex. You’re submitting power. You’re asking for something most people are too scared to say out loud. And they don’t deliver men—they deliver obsession. For one night. That’s not sex work. That’s psychosexual immersion. ”
I’d rolled my eyes, but something about the phrase “deliver obsession” had sent a shiver down my spine.
“It’s not transactional,” she’d added. “It’s personal. Deeply. Which is why it only works once. After that, it’s not a fantasy anymore.”
So I’d gone home, sat in front of my laptop, and typed it all out.
My shame. My need. My weakness, if that’s what you wanted to call it.
I want to feel like I said the wrong thing … and now he’s here to make me regret it.
It had been three days.
No confirmation. No reply.
Just silence.
And a part of me hoped that meant it was all bullshit.
But another part—deep, shameful, aching—kept glancing at the door every night. Waiting.
Wondering.
What if he actually came?
What if he knocked?
What if I opened it?
My phone rang.
I didn’t recognize the number at first—just an 843 area code, local to Charleston—but something about it made my stomach twist. I let it buzz twice before answering.
“Hello?”
There was a pause. Then a voice I hadn’t heard in over a year.
“Hey, Z. It’s me.”
My pulse stuttered. “Trevor?”
He gave a soft laugh, breathy and uncertain. “Yeah. I, uh … I wasn’t sure if this was still your number. Guess it is.”
Of course, it was. I’d had the same number since 2012. But I didn’t say that.
I didn’t say much at all.
“How have you been?” he asked.
I sat up straighter, tugging the sheets over my legs like he could see me. “Busy. Working.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen. Your name’s everywhere right now. You’re on fire.” He paused again. “I read the piece about the drone strike. You always were good at cutting straight to the bone.”
He meant it as a compliment. But his voice was too soft, too careful. Like I was something fragile he was afraid to bruise.
And that’s what killed me—he’d always treated me like that. Like I was breakable. Sharp, sure, but only in theory. The kind of sharp you admired from a distance, not the kind you actually let cut.
“I’m glad you liked it,” I said coolly.
Another silence. Then: “I’ve been thinking about you.”
I closed my eyes.
I knew where this was going. I could already feel it happening. That creeping nostalgia he wore like cologne, the tender little words he used when he wanted something, the way he never said the wrong thing because he didn’t say anything real at all.
“Have you?” I asked.
“I miss you,” he said. “I miss … us.”
I let out a slow breath, long and quiet. My body was still warm from the orgasm I’d given myself minutes ago, but now that heat was shifting. Dimming. Tightening into something resentful .
Us.
What was us ?
A year of stifled sighs and scheduled sex. A string of nights where he kissed me like I was glass and fucked me like he was afraid I’d write about it later.
He was sweet, I’ll give him that. Generous. Patient. Always checking in.
But never once had I felt claimed. Never once had I looked into his eyes and seen someone who could pin me down with a word.
With Trevor, it had been slow kisses. Tongues that moved like apologies. Careful fingers that waited for permission at every turn. He never pulled my hair. Never made a sound. I’d fake-moaned just to fill the silence.
He’d whispered “you’re so beautiful” while I was biting my lip to stay awake.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“You don’t think what’s a good idea?”
“Us,” I replied, sharper now. “Whatever this is.”
He was quiet again, and I imagined him frowning into the phone, hurt but trying not to show it.
“I’ve changed,” he said. “I’ve been working out more. I started that Substack—political commentary. I even got a new therapist.”
“That’s great, Trevor.” My voice cracked a little on the edge. “I’m happy for you.”
“But not interested?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Because I want a man who’d tear that phone out of my hand and throw me over the couch.
Because I want someone who wouldn’t need a therapist to figure out what I want in bed—he’d just know .
Because I want someone I’m scared to crave.
But I didn’t say any of that.
Instead, I said, “Because I’m not the woman you remember. And honestly? I don’t think I ever was.”
He sighed. “Z …”
But I was already gone—mentally halfway out the door, already peeling off the last traces of what we’d been.
Because the truth was, he hadn’t changed.
And maybe I never wanted him to.
Not the real him.
Not the man who bought me books about mutual emotional labor and cooked vegan dinners on date night. Not the man who never raised his voice, or his hand, or his expectations of me.
Trevor had been safe. Thoughtful. Soft in all the ways a “good man” was supposed to be. The kind that got applause from my friends and nods of approval from my mother. The kind that posted #FeministFridays and listened to women talk about their trauma like it was his spiritual practice.
But he never wanted me in a way that made my body ache.
And maybe that was my fault.
Maybe I’d been picking men like Trevor all along—men who worshiped me like a figurehead but never saw the animal underneath. Men who kept their distance under the guise of respect. Who told me I was powerful, but only if that power stayed rhetorical.
I’d dated poets, activists, therapists, gentle-souled professors who smelled like bergamot and wore rings made of recycled copper.
And I’d told myself I was fulfilled. That I didn’t need anything more than aligned values and deep conversation and slow, affirming sex with a man who called me goddess.
But deep down?
I wanted to be ravaged.
Not convinced. Not negotiated with. Not treated like a loaded topic at a dinner party.
I wanted a man who didn’t flinch when I pushed, because he could push back harder.
Someone who could see through the sharp words and well-argued points to the craving buried beneath.
Someone who wouldn’t just let me have my darkness?—
But meet me in it.
Trevor never had.
He was the kind of man who thought passion was pulling the sheets back carefully and asking, “Is this okay?” in a whisper every time he moved.
The kind who only ever wanted missionary, like any other position might bruise his sense of moral superiority.
He never gave oral—not once in the entire time we were together.
Said it made him feel “too exposed,” like his masculinity might shrivel if he put his mouth anywhere near what he couldn’t control.
I used to joke that he probably thought a clit was a government conspiracy.
In hindsight, maybe he was just disgusted by desire itself. Or by mine, anyway.
Hell, maybe he was gay. Or maybe he just liked the idea of fucking a feminist more than the act itself—like it proved something, politically or otherwise.
All I knew was that every time we had sex, I ended up feeling lonelier afterward than I did before.
“Goodnight, Trevor.”
I hung up on him and placed the phone on the nightstand like it had dirtied the air. Then I lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as the silence thickened around me again.
And for the second time that night, I wondered what I’d done when I sent that email to Alpha Mail.
What kind of man reads a message like that … and decides to show up?
What kind of man wants a woman like me?
And what happens when I open the door?
I stared at the dark window, wondering how many more soft men would try to fix me before one finally tried to ruin me.
Why was I becoming so obsessed?