Confession: What My Stockings Provoked That Night

I’m going to tell you something I kept to myself for more than ten years, and it still makes me smile to myself when I think about it. I had sex in a car, one morning at dawn, with the mayor’s son in my city. Yes, exactly as you’re reading it. And the most absurd part of all is that a pair of stockings was to blame.

It happened one October night, around two in the morning, quite a while ago now. Impossible to forget the date. And the story had a second chapter last year, when we ran into each other again after a very long time without seeing one another. Our bodies, which apparently have a better memory than we do, recognized each other instantly with a hug that lasted too long to be just politeness.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

It all started when I organized a benefit festival in the neighborhood. I put it together with the neighbors, with a little help from the municipality, and it went so well — so many people, so much money raised for the soup kitchen — that suddenly everyone was asking who this Mara was, the one who’d brought eleven artists together on the same stage on an ordinary Sunday. I, who until then had just been one more face in the crowd, suddenly had a name.

And among the people asking was him. Tobías. The mayor’s son. In the neighborhood they called him the Flea, because he was short and skinny, but he had one of those smiles that knock you off balance before you can say a word.

The festival got me an invitation to join his political group. He said he was interested in my commitment. I, who was itching to do something different, accepted. So I started getting involved, and at my first event as part of the group I was put in charge of entertaining the kids dressed as a TV host, the kind who sings and dances for little children. An utterly innocent role.

What wasn’t so innocent was one wardrobe detail.

It wasn’t the skirt. It wasn’t the top. It was the garter stockings. I swear they were the first thing I found in the drawer that morning, I grabbed them and put them on without thinking. And with every step in the routine, without my realizing it, the skirt kept riding up a little, and a little more, until the lace was on display. My God. There I was dancing for a circle of children while the parents were looking at something else.

When did I realize it? When the show ended and Tobías came up to me, with a crooked smile, and said in my ear, low:

—More than entertaining the kids, you entertained the parents.

I was left speechless. He froze me in place. And then he walked off as if nothing had happened, hands in his pockets, whistling. That was the first round.

The second came at the next event. I repeated the same routine, and since I was wearing a crossbody fanny pack that time, he stopped me as he passed and tossed out another one of his compliments:

—They say women who carry small purses do it because they’ve got a big ass.

Again I was mute. But inside I was laughing. And I liked it. I won’t deny it.

Things escalated in September. The group organized training for the activists and, to coordinate, someone made a WhatsApp group where we were all included. Tobías too. There everyone was throwing out ideas; I suggested organizing a weekend camping trip, and he replied in the group, in front of everyone:

—Good idea, the camping trip, Mara. You organize it.

There was an odd silence in the chat. The flirting was already so obvious it was uncomfortable, and he didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

A minute later he wrote me privately:

—But on one condition. That you wear the white stockings.

And there, not slow on the uptake at all, I played along:

—Okay, sure. I’ll wear them. —And I added—: Looks like you liked them a lot.

—A lot —he answered.

That word, drawn out like that, was the spark. All at once the conversation took on a different color and we got completely carried away. We started trading hints, then less subtle hints, until the hints turned into photos. Well, mostly my photos. I was horny and emboldened, and I sent him one I shouldn’t have sent.

—Mmm —he replied when he opened it—. I’d eat you whole.

My heart was pounding against my ribs. I wrote without thinking:

—Where are you?

—At the group’s office, three blocks from my house. Why?

—Come. Let’s meet up.

—Sure! Wait for me. I’m coming out now.

Since he already knew my address from the festival, it didn’t take him long. He came flying over. I waited for him on the sidewalk, half nervous and half cracking up, wearing tight light-blue shorts and a black tank top with no bra that showed everything. It was hot. Or at least that’s what I told myself to justify the clothes.

***

He pulled up in front of my house and rolled down the window. I got in, he gave me a quick kiss on the lips, just a brush, and drove off.

—Hey. Everything okay? —he said, pretending at a calm he didn’t have.

—Yeah, yeah —I answered, and I had no calm at all.

—So where are we going?

A hotel was out of the question for obvious reasons. He was who he was, and in a small town everything gets around. So I told him to turn at the corner, that there was a half-dark square next to the monument, and that at that hour, almost two in the morning, there wouldn’t be a soul in the street.

While he drove, he rested his hand on my thigh and slowly moved it higher, unhurried, breathing hard. I looked out the window at the sleeping houses and thought I was about to do something crazy. And the truth is I didn’t want to stop it.

He parked under a tree, far from the only light in the square. He turned off the engine. For a second we both stayed still, listening to the crickets and our own breathing. Then he leaned in and we kissed. And that kiss was anything but timid: tongue, hands, his mouth moving down my neck, my fingers tangled in his hair.

He bit my lip just as his hand slipped under my tank top and squeezed one breast. A sound escaped me that I didn’t even recognize as my own.

—Let’s go in back —he said in a hoarse voice.

We climbed into the back seats like two teenagers, banging our knees, laughing under our breath. He started unbuckling himself and yanked his pants down to his ankles in one pull. For the Flea, he was anything but little. Powerful little bastard, I thought, and almost laughed out loud.

I leaned over him and took him in my hand first, slowly, looking at his face while I stroked him. Then I lowered my head. I loved hearing him. Every time I had him all the way in my mouth, he let out a moan from deep inside, gripped the seat with his fingers, and threw his head back. Meanwhile his hand slipped between my legs, moved the fabric of my shorts aside, and started touching me. I was already wet, and feeling him made me catch fire.

—Come here —he asked, tugging at my waist—. Get on top.

He couldn’t take any more; it showed. Neither of us had brought anything, and when I told him that, he answered that it didn’t matter, we’d be careful. A textbook piece of stupidity, I know. But by then we had already crossed every possible line.

I pulled my shorts down, sat on him facing away, and felt him enter me little by little. I let out my breath in one rush. I started moving back and forth, slowly at first, while he held my hips and kissed my back. I touched my breasts, braced my hands on the car’s low roof, searching for the angle. The windows fogged up. Outside, the whole world was asleep and the two of us were somewhere else.

The pace sped up. I could hear him saying my name in broken fragments, feel his fingers digging into my skin. He was just about to finish inside me, but managed to lift me at the last second and came over his own hand, gasping, with a long groan that made the hair on my neck stand up.

We stayed like that for a while, both of us panting, sticky, saying nothing. Then he reached out, found a roll of paper towels on the car floor — heaven knows why it was there — and we cleaned ourselves up as best we could, dying of laughter at how ridiculous the situation was.

—You okay? —he asked, still breathless.

—Yeah, yeah —I said. And it was true, I had enjoyed myself more than I had in ages. Even if I still couldn’t quite believe it.

***

We went home in silence, staring at the empty street, both of us pretending that what had just happened hadn’t happened. When we got to my door, I got out, but before that he gave me one last quick kiss, a smile drawn across his face.

—See you —he said. And he left.

I went inside and started pacing back and forth through the living room, unable to believe it. What was that? Did that really happen? With him? He chose me? I asked myself the questions out loud, laughing to myself like an idiot. It took me a long time to fall asleep. It took days, really, to come down from that absurd cloud.

Then life went on, as it always does. I left activism a while later, moved to another neighborhood, changed jobs. I lost track of Tobías. Every so often I’d read his name in some local news item — he’d already gone all the way into politics — and the memory of that dawn would come back to me, warm, like a secret only I kept.

Until last year.

It was at a party event I went back to almost by chance, dragged along by a friend. And there he was. The Flea. Today the mayor of my city, in a suit, surrounded by people, much older but with the same crooked smile as always. The moment he saw me in the crowd, he came straight over. He couldn’t stop looking at me, hugging me, squeezing my hands while he kept saying he was happy, so happy to see me again.

—Very much —he said. And I knew exactly what he meant.

I gave him back my smile with all the calm I could fake. On the outside it was the most normal greeting in the world, two old acquaintances running into each other again. On the inside I was melting just like that morning, more than ten years ago, in the back seat of his car.

Because as everyone knows: where there was fire, something always remains.