Write your fantasy,
make it real.

Day eighteen postpartum. Her husband is in Guangzhou closing a three-million-dollar deal and has not come once. What comes instead is the confinement center’s only male masseur, there to do abdominal repair, his hand stopping eleven seconds above her pubic bone. She books one extra session, then nine more. The baby goes down to the nursery, the nurses knock at the door, and he drives into her from behind. The day she checks out her husband pulls up in his Mercedes, and there is a new contact in her phone saved as “Postpartum Repair.”

Zeng Xue, thirty-five, creative director at an ad agency, E cup, one nodule in her left breast. Her husband is a corporate executive, eighty flights a year. A colleague tells her to go for a breast lymphatic detox; the manager says the best therapist is a man. Xiao Kai is twenty-eight. He says: Sis, you’ve got a nodule here. The first time he does the deep-tissue, she comes clutching the sheet. After that, every Wednesday, Room 3, extra sessions, deep-tissue, doubles.

Lin Lan, twenty-nine, four years an off-establishment grid worker for the sub-district. The district ran an open recruitment, she came first in the written exam, and on August 21st her name went up for public notice — thirty days with no letter of complaint and the post is hers. But the second week the red paper was up, she found she was not happy at all. On the third evening of the posting she went up to the fifth floor herself, knocked herself, undid the buttons herself. Reading off the roster under the Party flag, the basement, the property monitoring room — and the Tuesday and Thursday slots were hers to schedule.

Qin Lan, thirty-three, head nurse at a top-tier hospital, 85G. Her husband is an attending surgeon: once a month, three minutes. In the night-shift break room she stumbles onto a forum: Old Zhou, a retired PE teacher, takes in married women as bitches, lives by rules, keeps a notebook. The interview is ten minutes on her knees before she’s sent away, and back in her car she tears right through her pantyhose. From then on it’s two hours every Wednesday: call him Master, report before every shower, cut open the pantyhose under her nurse’s uniform and kneel by the exam table swallowing in time with her heartbeat. The notebook grows thicker and thicker. One observer comes, then another.

Jiang Xue, thirty-two, company cashier. Her husband blew up his stock account and her credit card is days from going on her credit report. She knocks on the finance director’s door and borrows thirty thousand of his own money, writes the IOU herself, and clears it in one payment the moment the year-end bonus lands. The month-end she tears that IOU up, she is the one who stays behind to reconcile, and she is the one who locks the finance room door. He tells her: walk out now and tomorrow nothing happened. She says, I am not here to pay money back.

Song Jia, twenty-eight, a sales consultant six months married, is three units short of her annual target. When Old Jin from Wenzhou comes to see the model unit the director has assigned someone else, so she walks into his office and says: I want this client. In the master bedroom of the model unit the curtain stays open, and she says, whether you buy is your business, and this is this. By year-end she is a manager, and on launch day she walks to the Maybach at the door herself.

Xu Wei, thirty-three, acting head nurse of Obstetrics at the municipal women and children’s hospital, eleven months in the job. The selection is scored by a panel of seven, two of them brought in from another hospital; the department director holds one vote, and losing only means going back to her old post and four hundred a month less. He says all of that to her face first — and then she locks the on-call room door herself. Eleven months of scheduling seventeen people, and the only empty square is her own. The day the roster becomes hers alone, she fills it with seven days of leave.

Ye Nan, thirty, is the first Party secretary posted down from a municipal bureau, eleven months into her village assignment. The road is built and the lamps are up; the county assessment team brings in a third party, draws sixty households at random, and the score comes back ninety-one, signed off that same day. At the celebration dinner she does not touch a drop, and after everyone leaves she bolts the second-floor meeting room door herself and climbs up on that long table herself. After that she goes up to the second floor every night. The loudspeaker pole at the village entrance was her choice, and the order of the three men was hers to set.

Shen Qing, thirty-six, has sat in the archive room of the municipal water group for ten years. Thirteen hundred people’s promotions, penalties and marriages have passed through her hands, and her own line has been one line of text for ten years. Her husband’s case closed in three days, and the deputy secretary of discipline inspection was left holding nothing on her at all. She went up to the ninth floor herself, undid her own shirt, and bent over in front of her husband’s file cabinet. After the resignation letter went in, the rules for the annual party were hers too: when each man is finished, she says Thank you, Leader.

Zheng Wan, thirty-four, a bank branch manager. Her husband drinks with clients till the small hours and comes home only to sleep. She goes alone to the foot spa across from the Wanda mall, and Xiao Liu, the twenty-six-year-old technician crouching at her feet, asks: “Sis, want to extend?” She extends. From her feet to her calves, from her calves to the tops of her thighs inside her stockings, from the private room downstairs to the soundproofed suite on the second floor. She starts going every week, then three times a week, and then she brings her husband along.

Seven names on the layoff list, and the seventh line she typed in herself. The next day the boss lady crossed that line out in red pen and wrote “renew for three years.” With the contract settled, the thirty-four-year-old HR manager pulled her leggings down to her knees in the factory gym, looked back and said: my contract is already approved — don’t think this is a trade for anything.

Han Jing, thirty-five, dean of studies at a primary school, ten years married to Wang Lei, who sells building materials. Their life is so good it has gone dead. Then he finds the novel she hid inside her lesson plans and asks whether this is how she wants to be treated. Belt, kneeling pad, collar, the rules go up one at a time, and then he says he wants other people to see how well he has trained her. At a business dinner she is under the table sucking off two of his partners while, above her, he signs a one point four million contract.

Wang Qi, twenty-nine, a tour leader for a travel agency, 75E, one meter sixty-eight. Her husband is a middle school PE teacher: twice a month, three minutes a time. She takes a group to Bangkok, the whole group goes for Thai massage, and so does she. Ah Ti, a thirty-year-old Thai masseur, jams his knee in and spreads her legs apart. The next day she goes back to the shop on her own and tells the front desk: I want the special. On day four, with her group singing next door, she gets fucked front and back by two masseurs at once in a private room upstairs.

Luo Ya, a thirty-two-year-old history teacher, is married to a tax clerk so by-the-book he’s by-the-book in bed too. A bad back walks her into a blind-massage shop, where the male masseur Old Sun is blind, his hands unerring. One line—“I can’t see, you can take it off”—presses her, step by step, onto that pink massage table. Extra time, requesting him by name, the lights blazing over the mirror—she sinks deeper and deeper, until the glint in the gap of the door curtain.

Feng Chuchu, thirty-three, regional manager at a multinational, skirt suit and black stockings, sees her university-lecturer husband fewer than sixty days a year. Her flight is delayed three hours, and the masseur in the VIP lounge says: Your flight has been delayed. I can help you relax. Fifteen minutes on the neck and shoulders is free; a private room is two ninety-eight. She says: Full body. When the boarding call sounds, she is on her knees on the massage table, stockings torn open, and she does not stop.

Five years married, our days gone flat as boiled water. I booked a suite with a private onsen and a couples spa, betting on one thing: whether, in the rising steam, I could find the man who once made my heart race.

Marriage was like a room held at a constant temperature — until, that summer, someone pushed the window open. All adults, purely fictional. (Adult NSFW zone.)