In the sultry heart of Louisiana, where the bayous meander like drunken snakes, Ashley Martin, a voluptuous 22-year-old senior at Louisiana State University, is spreading her wings, preparing to study abroad in the vibrant corridors of Europe, teaching English part-time to non-English-speaking natives. She’s packing her bags and battling a hangover from crashing an alum party the previous night. She and Laura, her closest colleague in crime, showed up at the Marriott unannounced and partied until the wee hours of the morning before crashing in private rooms.
She carries herself with a regal stride, reminiscent of the upper-class women of New Orleans, often draped in an eclectic mix of resale-store finds and gypsy-like trinkets. She’s a stunner, with large hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and bleached-blonde hair, thinning at the top, a testament to her wild past, and straggly at the ends. And she often goes commando beneath her vintage resale skirts, ready to flash on a whim.
Her praline-white skin, a canvas for the dark tales of her life, glows against the curves and valleys of her full-figured body, a body her stepmom criticizes. And her apple-round ass and muscular thighs from years of gymnastics competition in high school only add to the allure. Her DD breasts, with soft-edged areolas—if you’re lucky enough to see them—are a sight to behold, and her smooth, manicured feet, painted with burgundy enamel, are an excellent, eye-catching detail.
On her first day abroad, Ashley’s exchange mom, Claire, arranges an impromptu date for her with a handsome, up-and-coming bullfighter, Julio, who has a growing reputation. And although she easily succumbs to his aggressive advances—fucking him within minutes of meeting him—the encounter is now a lit fuse, a bomb in her head, a reminder of her stepmom’s naggings about European men and how forceful they can be.
The fuse is lit, and now Ashley decides to strike an entire box of matches, emboldened by the fact that a matador, someone well-known and respected throughout the city—a man that many women would fuck—chose her within seconds and fucked her in the parlor, a modest, former prom queen from the rough side of Shreveport, Louisiana.
She sits on the side of a single bed in her boarding flat, wearing nothing but her black panties, clips and files her nails, and applies a fresh coat of burgundy enamel. She stands up and poses in front of the door-hung mirror, slides down her panties, and begins clipping her pubic hair into a heart shape with a pair of scissors borrowed from Claire’s kitchen, a signature statement of personal fashion that only a lucky few men will ever see.
Her roommate, Nadia, watches with a mix of admiration, jealousy, and desperation as Ashley finishes clipping her bush, pulls on a floral-patterned skirt, and discards her black panties. She begins to feel uneasy as she watches Ashley pedal off into the cool morning air on her bicycle, ready to claim her victories, leaving Nadia alone in their shared room, where she stumbles upon Ashley’s Adderall.
Ashley has a single goal, a twisted challenge of sorts that she’s chosen for herself: to fuck three men in a single day, without knowing their names or showering between the encounters. It’s a fantasy from an old Penthouse article she came across at her brother’s house a few months earlier, a series of sexy adventure stories, written by a young, tattooed woman who spent months exploring Europe. The idea seemed so liberating when she read about it, a purely Bohemian experience that she’s now convinced is more about conquest than sex.
In the pulsing heart of Barcelona, she decides to leave behind the rocky terrain of her past: her deceased mom, her distant dad, and his new disapproving wife, Barbara. Barbara’s voice is always in the background, following Ashley’s every move, and her criticisms are as constant as the Louisiana humidity. Ashley’s response to a fractured family life is to dive headlong into a world of alcohol, drugs, and the warm embrace of strangers.
Ashley meets a middle-aged man at El Campanist, a cramped tapas bar with ceramic tiles and weathered wooden beams. She strikes up a conversation over fizzing glasses of cava and pintxos dripping with the glistening sheen of olive oil.
His English flows with a lilting Catalan accent that makes her skin tingle. And under the crowded table, she slips off her sneaker, exposing her bare foot with its burgundy polish, and begins tracing lazy circles up his calf with her arch. Her lips part in a seductive smile, revealing teeth as white as the porcelain plates between them.
And now they’re both squeezed into the bar’s tiny bathroom that smells like Pine-Sol and piss, the stained walls covered in peeling posters and pornographic graffiti. The sink’s cold porcelain presses against her stomach as she hikes up her flower-patterned skirt. His urgent fingers dig into the sides of her smooth, apple-shaped ass while she’s braced against the mirror, watching her face flush, imagining what Barbara would think of her now, as he finishes with a muffled groan and backs away.
It’s evening, and Mediterranean light washes over the city beach as she strikes up a conversation with a bronze-skinned local with salt-crusted hair, his bronze skin still warm from the sun. They meander to Parc de la Ciutadella, where ancient trees cast dappled shadows across manicured lawns. She decides to dart ahead on the path, giggling as she unbuttons her thin cotton blouse and lets it slide off her shoulders, her bleached-blonde hair catching the setting sunlight. “¡Ven aquí!” she calls, her witch-hazel eyes flashing with mischief.
The encounter turns exhibitionist in the semi-secluded greenery, as Ashley slips her athletic bra over her head, revealing her large, bouncing breasts and her bare, freckled shoulder blades, both slick with perspiration. She calls for him to follow, “Ven conmigo!” as her voice echoes against the neighboring stone pavilion.
She finds a spot hidden by drooping willow branches and shimmies out of her floral skirt, standing barefoot and naked in the soft grass, her pale skin luminous in the dappled twilight, her enameled toenails gleaming. She stoops over and helps him smooth out a beach towel that still holds sand, sits down—tits jostling—and lies back, presenting her heart-shaped pubic hair. She then lifts her smooth, pale legs and stretches a V-shape into the night air, her ankles flexed.
It’s nighttime, and Ashley finds herself at a house party in a flat near her neighborhood, the air thick with cigarette smoke, reefer, and the smell of spilled beer. Here she dances with locals, padding her bare feet on cool tiles, her body sensing every beat and electronic pulse of Massive Attack’s “Angel.” And as she moves from room to room, singing along in a monotone voice, she carries with her a strange troll doll that she explains is for good luck, a conversation piece, a prop.
Sweat beads between her DD breasts, so she makes the casual decision to unbutton her blouse and hang it over a sofa, followed by her athletic bra, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. She continues dancing, eyes closed, emphasizing the movements of her shoulders, which begs more attention from the horny bystanders, her large, soft-edged areolas and rosebud peaks catching glimpses now from across the room.
One hungry guy with a neck tattoo and a mohawk haircut moves closer, leans in, and whispers something in her ear. Ashley hesitates, Barbara’s voice suddenly echoing in her head—”cheap, trashy, no self-respect.” She pushes the voice away with a practiced smile, nods, and sinks into the nearby sofa, where she leans back, raises her knees to her chest, and presents her naked, manicured feet.
The mohawked guy steps in front of her, unzips his fly, and presents his crooked cock. He positions his tattooed hands over Ashley’s feet, covers himself with her soft arches, and begins to assist her in the steady back-and-forth movements, her burgundy toenails catching the light, and her troll doll looking away.
She turns her head and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirrored panels glued to the under-skirt of the kitchen bar—a stranger’s eyes looking back. And for a split second, she wonders what her dead mother would think: “Is this what college is supposed to be?”
Onlookers gather, drinks forgotten, to watch an unusual spectacle: A topless American girl is giving a random dude foot pussy at a neighborhood party, her skirt riding up, and her dark tangles visible for everyone to see.
Ashley forces herself to maintain eye contact with the tattooed stranger, determined to prove that she’s not just some Louisiana white trash, that she’s worldly and experienced enough to belong in Barcelona, that she can do whatever she wants without falling apart. Anything.
She brings him to orgasm, everyone applauding as Ashley stands, a hollow victory settling in her chest. And with defiant emptiness, she hooks her thumbs in the elastic waistband of her floral-patterned skirt, slips it down to the floor, and kicks it aside. Naked now, she dances harder, her smile frozen like a mask she can’t remove, and the clove cigarette smoke provides a thin veil between who she is and what she’s becoming.
Some of the hungry men reach out and touch her DD breasts, others her apple-shaped ass, and a few guys ask for blow jobs. Her floral pelvic tattoo, her heart-shaped pubic hair, and her troll doll are all subjects of deep curiosity. She continues to wonder what Barbara would think, imagining her stepmom’s pinched face and narrowed eyes, her thin lips pursed in that familiar expression of Catholic disapproval.
The bass thrums through the floorboards and up through her bare, shifting feet as she continues her gypsy dance, arms raised above her head, her bracelets glinting, her hips swaying in a hypnotic figure-eight, and her exposed breasts catching the colored lights from someone’s portable disco ball. She takes a long drag from her cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke that hangs in the humid air, before disappearing with a long-haired guy sporting a sleeve tattoo. Without a word, she grabs his hand and leads him toward a nearby bedroom, leaving moist footprints across the mosaic tile. She deliberately leaves the door ajar.
And as the curious partygoers walk past the open door, they can look in and see Ashley’s praline legs stretched high and wide, her porcelain feet pointing toward the ceiling, and a naked rocker-looking dude on top of her, working his ass up and down, his thrusts matching the pulse of the electronic bass pulsing through the floorboards.
Ashley continues to light matches, burning as much of her past as possible, until her Adderall prescription runs out, and the Farmacia in Barcelona refuses to fill her script, warning her that the American drug is dangerous. She misses classes, and the school issues a warning, but Ashley remains in her room, sleeps, masturbates, and collects bottles of Captain Jack.
She returns to the U.S. and briefly moves in with her parents in Shreveport, but Barbara corners her in the kitchen on day three. “All you do is stare at yourself in the mirror and go out drinking,” her stepmom hisses, a manicured finger jabbing the air between them. “Two hours on your makeup this morning. For what? To impress? You think you’re so special with your bleached hair and your—” she gestures at Ashley’s chest—lips crinkled in disgust.
Ashley flips her off and mumbles “bitch” at a volume Barbara can’t ignore. And by sunset, Ashley’s belongings are scattered across the front lawn.
She relocates to her widowed auntie’s house in Tennessee, where she continues her Adderall and alcohol addiction, late-night bar visits, and casual hookups. At Two Doors Down, a local biker bar, she meets Victor, a middle-aged biker dude with a Harley, a sweat-stained cowboy hat, and a notable physical attribute.
