Confessions

The day they lowered Rubén’s coffin into the earth, Mariela already knew that night she would seek out Damián in the back room, and that no one in the house would judge her for it.

It was my first serious job: door-to-door sales. I never imagined that behind that townhouse there would be a man, a camera, and the afternoon that would change everything.

I had never done anything like that before, but that night the neckline, the music, and two persistent stares pushed me across a line I didn’t want to come back from.

I’d never done it with anyone. And the first person who entered me wasn’t my boyfriend, but his father, one afternoon when the house was empty and I couldn’t say no.

I woke up not knowing how I would ever justify what they forced me to do that night, or how I could look the man I still loved in the eyes.

He had spent years perfecting an expression that revealed nothing. But that afternoon, in the hotel lobby, his eyes betrayed the one thing he must not feel for her.

I took off my panties, slipped them under his pillow, and moved up against his back without even saying good morning. I had half an hour before first tutorial.

He dismissed the woman who offered to help without a second glance. An hour later, he discovered she was the one deciding whether his career survived.

She knew exactly what she wanted that night: a man who would look at her as though she belonged to him and give her no respite. All she had to do was cross the door of that room.

Everyone suspects what I am from the way I dress, but I never confirm it. It’s my secret, and telling it anonymously turns me on more than anything else.

I threw the curtains open at two in the afternoon with my hair still wet and thought no one in my town would dare look toward my window at midday.

We’d spent months fucking under the rule that he was straight. That night, with my plan on hold, he looked at me in silence and I knew something was about to break.

I was straight my whole life. Until one afternoon my son crossed the living room and I couldn’t look away from his crotch. That night I knew I couldn’t stop.

I touched it for only a moment, and the softness of the lace awakened something dormant. That night I dreamed of wearing it, and knew I would return for it sooner or later.

Her boyfriend smiled at us and said love wasn’t exclusive. That same afternoon Marisol came up to the hotel room with us.

I climbed over her garden fence at nine at night thinking only of confessing my feelings. I left with a video that was going to change both our lives.

When the whiskey spilled on my pink dress, I knew that wedding wouldn’t end the way I thought. I didn’t know the bride’s uncle would be waiting for me in the darkest hallway.

I’d never been attracted to men, but that figure on the screen stirred something I couldn’t name. Then she offered to pay me.

The first time I went out on the street dressed as a woman, my legs were shaking. Ten years later, nothing feels better than being watched.

He made me wake at an exact time without an alarm, with only his words inside my head. And I obeyed while my boyfriend snored beside me.