Confessions

I lived on the farm and could wear women’s clothes all day without anyone bothering me. Until a stranger wrote saying he liked my photos.

When I came out of the shower, she was there in black lingerie with that smile I hadn’t seen in years. That night she had a plan for me I would never have imagined asking for.

Sandra needed help with a blind. I needed to forget the worst day of my life. Neither of us expected Valentina to arrive so soon.

I didn’t know how Marcos would react when I told him. But with Andrés only a few feet away at that party, I couldn’t keep quiet for another second.

I got off the bike half a block away and slipped in through the back door. From the bedroom came voices I took a moment to recognize.

When she opened the door she wasn’t wearing makeup, and her gaze held a melancholy that hit my chest before we exchanged a single word.

My friends were late and he appeared without my calling him. Ten minutes later, we both already knew where we were going to end up.

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.

I arrived at their apartment at the agreed time. He opened the door in a bathrobe; she came down later, nervous and excited. It would be a long night.

I’d filtered through dozens of profiles before getting to Marcos. Everything I asked for, and the patience that’s never in surplus. But someone always shows up too early.

Someone was touching me in the dark, with a slowness that had nothing urgent about it. I opened my eyes and Valeria’s voice said: “Are you enjoying that, baby?”

I’d spent years hiding that side of myself, but with her it was different. When she told me she wanted to watch, I knew there was no way I could say no.

I’d been left three weeks earlier. That night I walked into the bar wanting nothing and left knowing I knew nothing about pleasure.

I recognized the surname as soon as she said it. Two years earlier I’d been with her aunt, and now she was looking at me with those same dark eyes and that small mouth.

The first time I put on someone else’s heels, I knew the image in the mirror was the most honest version of myself. It took me years to accept it.

We had planned Saturday, but she called on Friday: come tonight, I’m anxious. When she opened the door, I could no longer pretend this wasn’t serious.

Alone in the bathroom, with rain outside and the apartment empty, I finally found what I’d been searching for without knowing how to look for it.

The girls from the team had gone out to see the city. I was alone in the room when someone knocked. It was him, with the smile that had made me nervous since the first Wednesday.

I was forty-six, married, with lovers and a perfectly ordered life. Then I saw him come out of the bathroom, and I couldn’t look away. That was the beginning.

I was forty-eight, had a wife, three children, and no doubt about who I was. Then a young man asked me for a ride to the metro.