I Confess What I’m Looking for on the Subway Every Morning

I’m going to confess something I’ve never said out loud, not even to the friends I tell everything to after the second drink. Every morning I take the subway at Parque del Sur station, and every morning I deliberately choose the most crowded car. I don’t do it to get there sooner. I do it because there, among strangers, I stop being the proper woman everyone thinks I am.

That morning I was wearing very tight black leggings and, underneath, barely a tiny thong that disappeared between my buttocks with every step. I dressed thinking about the ride. I admit it. I put on my makeup in front of the mirror already knowing what I was going to look for among the tide of bodies that gets on at seven.

In this city, as in so many others, public transport has a problem no one wants to name outright: men who lose control, or pretend to lose it, and press themselves against you with any excuse. Most women suffer it and hate it, and with every reason in the world. I should hate it too. The problem is that some time ago I discovered that something else happens to me.

I had lived through dozens of rides like that, the kind where the car is so packed that chance leaves you crushed against strangers’ backs, arms, and stomachs. Never, until that day, had I taken the fantasy so far. I had always stopped at the shy brushing, at the groping that pretends to be an accident, at the heat that later took me home to end up alone in my bed.

Because yes: many nights I had touched myself thinking exactly about this. About the pressure of a body I don’t know, about the hardness that appears against my thigh or my ass without warning. It turned me on in a way I struggled to explain to myself, and for years I believed that fantasy would always stay just that, a story I told myself with my hand between my legs and the lights off.

***

That day, when I got into the car, I barely had room to turn around. People shoved me toward the center, all of them silent, all of them looking at their phones or the ceiling so as not to look at one another. When I finally managed to settle facing the doors, I felt it. Something hard, unmistakable, pressing against my right butt cheek.

I turned my head just enough to catch him out of the corner of my eye. A medium-height man, in his early thirties, his jaw tense and his gaze fixed on the floor as if nothing were happening. At that very moment he moved his hip back, withdrawing, gauging my reaction. He wanted to know whether I was going to move away, protest, make a scene.

I didn’t.

I knew at once that there was nothing accidental about it. That man was looking to feel me, just as I was looking to be felt. Part of me called myself filthy, as I had so many times before. But that morning the guilt lasted less than usual. There had been a long drought behind me, months without anyone touching me, and the built-up heat weighed more than any reproach.

So instead of moving away, I let the rocking of the train do the rest. With every stop, the whole car moved as a single mass, and I took advantage of that momentum to end up pressed against him again. Anyone who hasn’t traveled like that doesn’t understand how easy it is to hide desire inside something that looks like pure bad luck.

I counted the stations left. If he did what most people do, he’d get off at Catedral station, where you switch to another line, and we’d have to separate there. I had a few minutes. I decided not to waste them.

***

We passed San Andrés and, as soon as the doors closed, I felt the bulge against me again. This time softer at first, pressing slowly, as if it were still unsure. Then I did something I had never dared to do: I rocked my ass from side to side, very gently, until I fit his crotch right into the hollow between my legs. At his height it fit perfectly. I felt him growing against the lower part of my buttocks, millimeter by millimeter, and I had to bite my lip to keep from letting out a sigh.

It’s one of my fetishes, and I’ll confess it without beating around the bush: crowds. The rubbing of people I don’t know, their soft or hard flesh pressed against mine, absolute anonymity. Sometimes they aren’t even men. One morning I ended up crushed face to face against another woman, about my age, one of those big-breasted women who was half a head taller than me. We couldn’t move, and I’d swear we both noticed the pressure of our breasts squeezing together with every lurch of the train. Neither of us looked away and neither of us said a word. Sometimes silence is the most honest confession.

Back to that man: for almost eight stations I felt him grow and harden against me. On the last stretch I began to notice a throb under the fabric of his pants, a pulse that tightened and loosened in two- or three-second cycles. I recognized that rhythm. I knew he was close, that the ride was doing to him what it was doing to me, and the idea of provoking something like that in him without even touching him only turned me on more.

***

At Mercado station three more people got on and the car became even more compressed. One of the newcomers ended up right in front of me, pushing me backward, which finally left me completely pressed against the body of the man behind me. Fate, or the crush of bodies, was playing in my favor.

I kept my ass nicely arched, feeling him defined between my thighs, and I started squeezing and releasing the muscles of my buttocks, slowly, as a sign of approval. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I didn’t want him to think, for even a second, that he should stop.

That was when I noticed something in front. A hand, a different one, trying to settle itself at the height of my stomach. The man in front, the one who had just gotten on, about forty years old, had his arm down and his fingers feeling their way toward where my legs meet. I was holding my small backpack against my left thigh, and I felt his hand go around it to get through.

For an instant I was really scared. I thought maybe they were in on it together, that this could end badly. But I dismissed the idea almost immediately; it was too far-fetched. Yes, danger always exists, and no woman should go out into the street afraid of being hurt. That’s no way to live. Even so, I decided to stay still for a few seconds, alert, not moving.

And precisely when I stopped, I felt everything more clearly. Behind me, the first man’s hand was timidly tracing my butt cheek while his erection stayed jammed between my legs. In front, the second man’s fingers found the crease of my leggings, right in the center, there where the fabric was already wet and betrayed everything I wasn’t saying.

There were two of them. Two strangers enjoying my body at the same time, one with his sex wedged between my thighs and his hand on my ass, the other drawing the shape of my sex with his fingers over the wet fabric. I closed my eyes for an instant. Don’t move, let it happen, I don’t want it to end. It was exactly what I had imagined so many nights, only this time it was real, and that changed everything.

I felt that if we went on for a couple more stations, I would come right there, standing up, in silence, surrounded by people who would never suspect a thing. But all good things come to an end. We reached Catedral and the tide of bodies suddenly emptied onto the platforms. My two strangers vanished without a word, without a look, returned to the anonymity they had come from.

***

I walked toward the transfer with trembling legs and my breathing still short. I got on the first train of the other line and, the moment I stepped in, I felt a shameless hand pass beneath my ass, from bottom to top, with absolutely no attempt to hide it. This time I didn’t even turn around to see who it was. I was completely given over.

And I want to be honest about that surrender: it wasn’t resigned exhaustion. It was the opposite. I was willing to let anyone touch me under the excuse of the crowd, because by then I was already one more of those who look for on the subway what they don’t dare ask for in broad daylight.

I know what many will say, and they’re right: on this line, as on every other, there are real episodes of harassment, women who suffer groping they never asked for, and that is serious and no one should normalize it. I know. That’s why this is a confession and not a recommendation. I’m not speaking for anyone else. I’m speaking only of myself, of this lust I recognize in myself and that makes me feel, in these circumstances, as depraved as they are.

Maybe it’s pure biology. If someone brushes against you in just the right way, the body responds even when the mind says something else. I’ve spent months telling no one about this, and writing it relieves me and excites me in equal measure. So I’m leaving it here, as what it is: the secret I carry every morning when I deliberately choose the fullest car on the subway.