HugoPerverso

When I passed the half-open bathroom door and saw her naked from behind, I knew that night at my place wouldn’t end with two old acquaintances drinking tea.

When she entered that club hidden behind a theology bookstore, Marlene knew her husband’s freedom would be paid for with every garment she shed before the judge.

I started by telling him made-up dreams about other men. What he didn’t know was that every word that made him moan had really happened that same week.

I woke to the smell of coffee and knew that those two days with her, shut inside while the rain fell outside, would stay with me forever.

I know I should feel ashamed, but at that hour, pressed against bodies I don’t know, I stop pretending the touch is an accident.

She’d go up to her room, open the closet, and change knowing we were watching from the street. I was the youngest in the group, but I was the first to go through her door.

I’m naked while I write this. And I want you to know exactly what goes through my head when I shut the door and no one can hear me.

They went up to the second floor carrying a tray of pastries. None of them imagined they’d learn that afternoon how much desire had been sleeping between the three of them.

When I moved to the capital, I thought I was only looking for work. My roommate taught me something else: that men look at what they shouldn’t, and one gesture is enough to confirm it.

In primary school she loved me more than I could return. Twenty years later, her voice on the phone was the same, and my hands trembled.

We were coming back to the hotel at three in the morning, having gotten nowhere with the guys. What happened once we closed the door changed our friendship forever.

The lover’s initials weren’t written out in full, but they matched the man smoking on my balcony.

I warned her that if I didn’t like it, I’d drop her at the next corner. She smiled, reclined my seat, and asked me to close my eyes for a second.

I opened the door expecting dinner and found a slight girl with red-painted nails and a smile that said much more than “good evening.”

For a whole year I lived two lives: the perfect professional beside my partner, and the insatiable lover who returned to the hotel each night. Until television announced his death.