what i am about to tell you i have never told anyone: in my early twenties when i was travelling alone i slept with people and by people i mean strangers and by strangers i mean generally men and by sleep i mean sleep beside, just that. i did this knowing what could happen, i did this knowing if anything did happen it would be my fault or at least it would be seen as my fault, what did you expect? what were you thinking? but the truth is i wasn’t really thinking at all, or if i was it was along a line i can no longer follow.

like this: once, in the city of _____, a voice called out softly to me from a doorway, it was a young desk clerk of a two star hotel, he said hey ma or cutie or something like that and though i would normally keep walking (people say all kinds of things) i stopped. i think he was disarmed by my stopping and we talked and then i went inside and we talked more at the front desk, and then it was late and i was tired, and then he dragged a mattress out on the floor behind the front desk and we both stripped down to our underwear and we kissed a little and i said ok now we sleep, and then we did, and that was that.

or in the city of ______ i met a trainee lawyer in a deli who said have you never been to the town of _____ it’s so famous, i’ll take you so i said sure and we did, in a little fiat 500, we sat on some ancient steps at one point while he said that the etruscans were a stupid fairytale for tourists and asked me if i was a virgin. later we went back to his apartment and on the wardrobe door in his bedroom he had a small poster of laetitia casta. this is the most beautiful woman in the world he said, almost sadly. i know, i said, let’s go to sleep.

i mostly never even knew their last names, and slept beside them just once.

at no point did i die and at no point was i ever afraid. in itself, neither of those things is meaningful.

i woke up incredibly early on the mattress behind the front desk in the city of _____ just as day was breaking;  i stretched and put on my clothes, careful not to wake my companion, and slipped out to walk back to my own hotel, to shower and then see whatever it was i had thought i had come to see. the streets were empty, and the morning was unfurling like a long golden banner. the city doesn’t know it, but right now it belongs to me, and only me, because i’m the only witness — i remember thinking this.

not long into my walk, there was the sensation of the volume being turned up on the day as life returned to the pavements: first street sweepers, then the people walking to work, those washing the windows of storefronts and so on, and my heart felt so full, as though for a moment i wished i could sleep beside them all, just the once.