When the sun went down on the tenth day since I had opened up to Christian about my secret past in pornography, he still had not called. He had texted a couple of times in reply to me, but it was bland stuff like, “How was your day?” and “College going ok?”. After our conversation, he’d said,

“Will you understand if I take some time to think? I’m not breaking things off. But this is kind of a shock, Roser. It doesn’t sound like the Roser I’ve been getting to know. I’m a bit like, who is this woman? I want some time, ok?”

But he hadn’t called and the voices in my head were saying something like the following,

‘He doesn’t have to marry Roser. He can just jerk off to videos of you performing as Joana la Loca. He’ll marry a nice girl and all he has to do is look up your films and wank.

He thinks you’re dirty, and he’s right, Roser. He thought he had met a sweet girl, but he’d actually met a whore who sold her body. Christian has gone to look for a woman he’d be proud to take home to his parents. Someone who he could respect…’

Now, you might be thinking, ‘Oh, so she was lovestruck. She was lying around mooning over Christian and how he was the second guy she’d lost because of her porn films...’

But I was not.

I was tempted to drink again those dark days, for the first time since leaving rehab. Every ampoule of mental energy that I had was being spent on the mental battle of staying sober. Not taking a drink was far more important to me than Christian. There were other men in the world, however much I liked him. But there was only one Roser. And returning to the path I had been on meant death.

My name is Roser, and I am an alcoholic.

                                                                                                         *

I stared at the email. It had arrived out of the blue. I’d had no contact with Laia, the woman who had produced my first porn film, for more than six months. But here she was, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, here to tell me I had unfinished business.

“Dear Roser,

I was sorry to hear on the industry grapevine that you decided to curtail your career. Of course, if you feel you were mistreated, it is completely understandable.

I would be sad, however, if your view of what we do was permanently clouded. To this end, I’m writing to ask if you could be tempted out of retirement for one last shoot with me. I’d pair you with Pau. S. He’s an actor known in the industry for his care for female pleasure in the shoots that he does. I’ve had women report that they would marry the man if they could!

Filming with Pau might give you a more…satisfactory conclusion to your experience? I’ll pay a good rate. No anal, no rough stuff. Just a good old-fashioned fuck. If it’s not for you, no hard feelings.

All the Best,

Laia.”

I walked around the city for hours thinking about it. I had sworn off adult film after the disgusting experience of the rough anal shoot I had done, the shoot that had tipped me over the precipice from ‘heavy drinker’ to ‘full blown, drinking night and day alcoholic’.

But now Christian had walked away, just as Roberto had before him, I was sure that I would never be married.

The alcoholic woman who’d sold her body. Who was below me in the dating queue? The murderer? Ok, obviously I was ahead of her. The clinically insane? Granted. I couldn’t think of anyone else.

I was a hopeless case, so why not go all in? As Macbeth had said, “I am by now so steeped in blood and gore, it would be as tedious to return as to go o’er.”

I’d come this far. Why not go on and take the money? God knows, I’d made more doing the films than any of my college peers did slaving in the fast-food restaurants and the cinemas of Madrid for peanuts.

Plus, at the end of the day, porn star or not, I was a woman with sexual needs and desires. If no one would date me, I couldn’t never have sex again, surely?

That night, I locked my bedroom door and watched a couple of videos starring Pau. S. I could see what Laia meant when she had described the man she wanted me to fuck.

He seemed like a relaxed, cool guy. He made the girls laugh. I watched one woman, who was Asian and had long black hair and a pierced navel, being pleasured by his tongue. I watched her chest rise and fall. I watched her neck arch back. Her pale cheeks were flushing red. There was no faking that. She gave shrill moans as she came.

I saw another video. Pau. S was stood and holding the girl up by her ass, her arms flung around his neck. Pau had a tight ass and a barrel chest. It was only now, when he was standing, that I saw how fit he was and how tight his muscles were. Oh, it was hot, seeing her riding him like that. My nipples were swelling. I rubbed them, almost subconsciously commencing the journey to orgasm through masturbation. Pau’s eyes didn’t have the glazed, emotionless look I had seen in some of the male performers I’d been with. With Biel Zebub, who had rough fucked me, it was as if he was having sex with himself. But Pau smiled warmly at the woman.

 I slipped my own fingers into my panties. Slowly, I rubbed my palm over my vagina, waking it up, preparing it for my fingers. On-screen, Pau. S and the lady had moved back to the bed, and she was riding him in cowgirl. They made a handsome pair, there was no denying it. I rubbed my thighs and massaged my breasts and nipples with the other hand. I decided to move to the bed, and I moved the laptop with me. I was getting properly horny now. I lay on my stomach, still watching Pau fuck the woman, and I put the pillow between my legs and slipped two fingers into my now-wet vagina.  Oh, I wanted a dick that night, let me tell you. I could feel that my clit was swelling. I felt the blood rushing to my head, blurring my focus and drawing ever breathier puffs from my lungs.

On screen, Pau was having sex with the woman in the missionary position and…she was smiling. She looked really, genuinely happy as she was fucked on that bed. She looked radiant, in fact. All I could think of when I thought of pornography was Biel Zebub’s dick ramming into my ass and hurting me. I had forgotten that women, that I, could enjoy sex on camera. I had forgotten that I HAD enjoyed it, at least the first couple of times. Now my fingers were strumming my clit faster, and the pillow between my thighs was nudging my labia and I couldn’t focus on the film anymore. I was going to…

Like a siren luring me onto the rocks, the woman on screen squealed as she orgasmed on that big cock, and it was as if she cried out to me through the ether. “Come!” she seemed to be saying to me, “Come like me, Roser! This could be you, getting paid to come like this!”    

I did come. Not as spectacularly as she did, but that could wait. I took a deep breath and wrote back to Laia. I said I’d do it.

                                                                                                         *

“Hi. My name is Roser, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Roser!” Everyone else in the room joined in the chorus of voices.

“I’m not proud of this, but about eighteen months ago I got involved in some adult films. The first four were okay, but the fifth was really demeaning. It made me feel horrible about myself. I started drinking more and more until it was just out of control. At one point, I even lost my sight for a few hours and had to have kidney dialysis.

Anyway, after that experience, I went to rehab and dried out and I’ve been clean for about a year now. But then one day, three or four months ago, I got an email from a producer who offered to pay me for another video. Now, she had been good to me, and I trusted her.

There was a guy I liked, who I’d slept with. But when I had told him my secret, he hadn’t called me in days. I figured he saw me as dirty and had walked away. So, I accepted the offer.

I set out from home that day, not realizing until I was halfway there that I had left my mobile at home. So, I had no Google Maps, no sat navigation. I thought I knew where the street was, though. It was just a matter of finding it. I knew I should be quick though because black clouds were in the sky and I could feel the electricity in the air, you know, that pressure you feel when it is about to rain hard.

It was quite a way from the nearest metro station, however, and at some point, I took a wrong turn. I found myself wandering from street to street, retracing my steps and never getting any closer. And just as I was going to go back home for my phone, the heavens opened. I mean really opened. It was torrential rain, as if a cyclone was passing by. I could barely see three meters ahead of me and after just a couple of minutes, I was drenched to the skin.

I turned a corner and there was a church. The door was open, and a priest was standing there, standing in the doorway, looking out at the storm. He saw me and, with his right hand, he beckoned me in. I hurried through the graveyard to join him inside.

“Thank you, thank you!” I cried.

“It’s no trouble, no trouble at all young lady. Let me look out back, I might be able to find you a towel at least. Maybe even something dry you can put on.” He made me coffee and went out back.

I sat alone in that church, listening to the rain lash against the windows.

I looked up at the cross on the altar, contemplating what it was about that symbol that moved the hearts and minds of so many people.

I looked up at the cavernous ceiling above and, with a jolt, felt the awesome size and scale of what was above me. The magnificent roof. The sky as far as the eye could see. And beyond, the unfathomable vastness of space. The heavens.

As I sat there in the silence of the church, safe from the storm and contemplating my existence, I swear, a great wave of inner peace ran through me. It was not entirely dissimilar to an orgasm, to be honest, except that it started in my chest. I knew as surely as I knew anything that God was speaking to me. Not with words, but speaking, nonetheless.

The priest returned with a towel, and I dried my hair. I looked at my watch. The appointed time for my shoot had come and gone. Laia and Pau would be furious. And you know what? I didn’t care.

The priest offered me another coffee.

“I’ve not seen weather this bad in years,” he said, shaking his head. He sat in the row in front of me. There was a long silence in the church. Silence between us, that is. The thrum of the downpour on the ceiling filled the room.

“Father,” I said slowly, “Would you hear my confession?”

I told him everything. Not in graphic detail, of course. But I told him I had sold my body. The priest told me that, if I was truly sorry, I would be forgiven. And I realized I was sorry.

“I have sinned, God, and I repent,” is not how I would have expressed it. But in that confessional box, for the first time, I knew certainly that, deep down, I wished I had never done any of it. Even the times I’d physically enjoyed the sex had been a mistake.

When I left the church, having prayed for the first time since I was a child, the most beautiful rainbow I’ve ever seen arched across the sky. The very next day Christian, the man I liked, called me.

I know they say that God is mysterious. I don’t think he sent that storm just for little old me, but perhaps he made me forget my phone!

So, there we have it. For a while, I was about as lost as a person can be, but then I was found. I was blind, in every possible sense of the word, but now I see. Thank you very much!”

Christian, sitting next to me, took my hand. A smattering of applause swelled suddenly into an ovation, and all the people in the church were on their feet applauding, but to me, they were a blur, because tears of joy and relief were streaming down my face.

                                                                                          *

“Thank you for not judging me,” I whispered as Christian helped me remove my clothes piece by piece. He was standing behind me. He unhooked my bra and reached around to gently caress my breasts. Pushing my hair aside, he kissed my neck and then he whispered into my ear,

“I sensed that there was more to you than…your past. I sensed you didn’t belong in that world. That you never had. I knew, deep down inside myself, that you were a soul who had lost her way on the journey.”

I nodded but said nothing more, enjoying the gentle massaging of my breasts and the pinching of my nipples, and the way he held his body close to mine. I could feel his erection building against my buttocks.

When I was naked, Christian kissed my body. He kissed my skin not as if I were a sexually experienced woman who had given her body for money, but as if we were teenagers losing our virginities together, and he were a lovestruck teenager unable to believe a woman had undressed for him. 

He went down on me for what felt like an age. Slowly, lovingly, he raised me to the brink of my first orgasm with his tongue. I held the top of his head, feeling the wet mess of my juices, his tongue, two fingers, and his lips between my legs. Whatever was going on down there was just pure, pure pleasure. My chest rose and fell. My head was light. It was…heavenly. I said a little prayer of thanks to God for bringing Christian into my life.

It was not the last time God was to be named in that room that night, for an hour later, with my legs high in the air, I came so hard that I screamed,

“Oh God, oh God! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I know, I know. Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain. I said sorry for that one afterwards, but I think he’ll let it slide, considering how much closer we are now.

I could feel my clitoris tremble as his cock slid in and out of my vagina. I had lost all control over the muscles in my genitals and even my back as orgasm surged up. I had a hot flush in my chest, and my nipples were like stalagmites.

“Oh! Oh! Don’t stop!”

My legs were shaking now. Euphoria swept throughout my body in waves. It was the strongest, most powerful orgasm of my life.

All that night, Christian and I did it urgently and passionately, until the sun had arisen on the new day. We burned through four condoms. As soon as he was ready again, so was I.

With the morning sun bursting through the open window, we lay side by side, his hand in mine. On the brink of sleep, he leaned over and kissed my ear. And then, only half awake, he whispered, for the first time,

“I love you, Roser.”

My story began with me being disappointed with men and sex and seeking the fucking I deserved.

It ends with me falling asleep in the arms of a kind and gentle man, knowing that I had just done something worth more than any fucking.

I had made love.