Write your fantasy,
make it real.

Six years married, she is a bridesmaid at an old classmate’s wedding, and the best man is Zhou Kai, the one who chased her all through university and never got a single sentence out. Her husband drinks himself under the table and gets hauled up to the room. She has had two glasses and is completely sober. The second the elevator doors close, she is the one who presses the red stop, and she pulls his hand up under the bridesmaid dress: back then you did not dare — do you dare now.

Thirty-eight, partner at an accounting firm, husband a surgeon who is home two nights a week. Every Wednesday at seven the math tutor comes; at nine the lesson ends, the boy is collected, and two people are left in the apartment. She laid it out flat: the lessons go on, the money stays at the original rate, and you can stop any time you want. Nine months, twenty-one thousand six hundred, not a cent more. The day the account was settled in full was the day she threw the deadbolt.

Two thirds of my husband’s stomach was gone. Two weeks in the hospital and I was there around the clock. Old Kang in bed two is fifty, one leg in a cast, and the aide does not come during the day, so the room is down to the two of us. He asked me to help change his dressing and I put my hand inside his hospital pants. Later, while my husband napped, I pulled the curtain and knelt down. The day he was discharged he pressed a key into my hand.

Ten years married, and the hundred-and-forty-square-meter apartment is hers alone most of the year. Her husband is out of town twenty days a month, and under every single thing she posts there is exactly one man who likes it: the chairman of the homeowners’ committee, twenty-sixth floor of her own building. The night the prep meeting broke up he said he was going her way, the car was on B2, and the back seat was stacked with undistributed supply boxes. Three months later she is vice chair, and when the dinner breaks up three men are standing at three doors, waiting to see which way she goes.

Yang Ting is thirty, a full-time mother four months postpartum, and her programmer husband will not touch her. She goes in for pelvic floor rehab, and on the second visit the male therapist, A-Jie, stops and asks: press any further and this stops being rehab — do you want it? She says she does. He transfers her remaining eight sessions to another therapist on the spot and tells her he gets off at five thirty. The half year that followed, she typed into her phone one line at a time.

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.

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.

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.

Han Miaomiao, a kindergarten teacher of twenty-seven, buys a 12,800-yuan pre-wedding body package thirty-one days before her wedding. The male therapist, Ah Wei, says: Bride, the whole body has to be done. The first time his hand stops at the top of her thigh, the second time his fingers go into her, the third time she asks for the intimate care herself. The day before the wedding, the dress hangs on the wall of room three, and she kneels on the massage table and says: shoot it inside. The next day, walking the red carpet, what she thinks of is the sweet almond scent of room three.