Confessions

When he had us go up on the stage and people started betting on what we were wearing under our dresses, I knew the luxury party was no longer normal.

For years I told myself I was the typical straight guy. I was lying. My hand jobs were for the guys in the locker room, and it took me too long to admit it.

I came to Buenos Aires to save up a little money for my family. I never imagined the nicest house in the neighborhood would change my life the way it did.

I’d spent weeks avoiding her, convinced what we had was over. Then the phone rang and her voice was enough to tell me I’d fall again.

We’d met to review for finals, but by six o’clock the books were closed and no one wanted to leave. What came after still makes my pulse race.

At eighteen I entered medical school with the country’s highest score. At twenty-four I still didn’t know what an orgasm was. This is my story.

We thought it was a twenty-block ride. Neither Lucía nor I imagined we’d get off that bus as two completely different women.

He’d been ignoring me for weeks. That night I dressed for another man, and just as I was kissing him at the next table, he walked in arm in arm with a stranger.

Every week we stared at the photos at the entrance without daring to go in. The night we crossed the threshold, I discovered how far I could go with him watching.

When she told me what really turned her on, I knew we were opening a door we’d never be able to close again. And I didn’t want to close it.

Everyone at the university knew what I was like, and the guard at the gate only needed a smile to understand that that afternoon, after cleaning up, I wouldn’t be leaving so fast.

I stopped my bike in front of Andrés’s house not knowing his mother was waiting for me in the doorway, and that that empty afternoon would change everything between us.

He unzipped her dress in front of the entryway mirror, and when she saw herself wrapped in his arms, she knew there was no going back that night.

I took my time handing her coat over, enjoying the way men looked at her. I never imagined one would dare that much in front of me.

I learned very early that my body was worth more than any degree. What none of them knew is that I never felt a thing while they paid me.

My husband had spent two decades waiting for me to cross that line. I never imagined I’d do it on an ordinary afternoon, against the wall of my own office.

When she stepped off the plane in those shorts and with that smile, I knew the rule about not touching a friend’s sister was going to cost me dearly.

I was married, I was straight, and I was sure of who I was. That dawn, in a car parked by the beach, I stopped being so sure.

No one on that trail could imagine what I was wearing under my clothes, or the wild woman the brush of the air ended up awakening in me that afternoon.

We were never friends, but she looked at me with contempt every time her boyfriend lingered too long staring at me. So I gave her a real reason to hate me.