I stood beneath the shower, miserable, while the cold water pounced on me. And then I remembered the black-and-yellow panty I’d found in the wardrobe. It was a panty worn by someone else, and mouldy to boot – I simply couldn’t use it, could I? Who knew whom it belonged to and how long it had lain there that way? A woman who wears a leopard-print panty must be quite wild. At least when it comes to sex. The question was, how wild? Wilder than me, or less so? As these thoughts ran through my mind, I wasn’t even aware of having taken off my blood-soaked panty and begun to wring and knead it clean beneath the tap. I stood in bewilderment for some time when I realised what I was doing; eventually I washed it thoroughly and spread it out to dry on the towel rod. I persuaded myself that I had no option now but to put on the other panty. I wasn’t going to come in direct contact with the mould, I rationalised. The sanitary napkin would form a layer in between.

Towelling myself dry, I returned to the bedroom and groped for the panty in the dark. I found it, picked up the sanitary napkin I’d laid out on the bed, then paused for a moment before fitting it inside the panty.

I slipped into the panty.

What I did not know was that I had actually stepped into a woman.

I slipped into her womanhood.

Her sexuality, her love.

I slipped into her desire, her sinful adultery, her humiliation and sorrow, her shame and loathing. I had entered her life, though I didn’t know it. I even slipped into her defeat and her withdrawal. I slipped into her nation, too, in that moment. Trite thoughts about her world passed through my mind. How fine the material was, I reflected. Soft. A perfect fit. As though tailored especially for me. After putting it on, I was no longer repulsed. I lay down, spreading my hair out on the pillow. Although I do not admit that I fell asleep, it is undeniable that I was woken up by a series of sounds in the room.

They were making out. Kissing. Fucking wildly. They were panting, but could not stop. Hours seemed to pass this way. They remained engaged in their sex – till I passed out.

I had not understood them that first night. I had opened my eyes at the sounds of passion and felt afraid – who were these people in the bedroom! But they weren’t in the room – they were on the wall. The one which was painted dark brown. Both of them were on that wall whose colour did not match the rest – naked, having sex, delirious, tearful.

Gradually I realised that they appeared on the days when I wore that particular panty. The leopard-print panty. I heard the woman say, ‘If only the past, present and future would pass while we two were conjoined, if only time would just waste away …’ When I heard this desire articulated, I felt as though the big, bigger, biggest expectations whirling restlessly within my vagina had died. So I could not be in pursuit of life any more. A disease had been born within me. My road was gradually coming to an end …