Two Men and Me on That Trip to the Coast
I offered the bus window seat to the old lady and she didn’t even look at me. I had no idea the real journey would begin in the hotel dining room, across from two strangers.
I offered the bus window seat to the old lady and she didn’t even look at me. I had no idea the real journey would begin in the hotel dining room, across from two strangers.
He challenged me to one last sprint with a condition neither of us intended to honor. But that night the pool was empty and nobody was watching us.
I felt his large body pressing against my back whenever the train braked, and when he whispered, “We’re getting off at the next stop,” I knew I wouldn’t be able to say no.
When that man put his hands on my back, I knew it was no longer about the fever or the exhaustion from the trip, but about something I had been avoiding for years.
It was almost eleven when the elevator dropped me at the empty parking garage. I had no idea those keys would cost me so much, and so little, at the same time.
I was twenty-one, coming off a disastrous year, and desperate to be distracted. That June afternoon, one different message changed everything.
Marcos let me go in first, like a gentleman with a crooked smile. Inside, on some planks, two strangers were looking at me, their hands already at their zippers.
I went to fix his washing machine with a red thong under my pants. I only had to find the moment for him to notice. He said nothing, but he kept watching.
When he looked up and caught me staring at him in the locker room, something shifted between us. I just didn’t know exactly what, or how far it would go.
When the smuggler told us the price, we all looked at one another. It wasn’t jewelry or money. It was us, our bodies, twelve hours a day in front of his cameras.