I Stripped Naked at the Window So They Could Watch

That afternoon I had a date. Not with a flesh-and-blood man, but with Damián, my lover of every week, the one who lived hundreds of kilometers away and whom I only knew through a screen. We’d been living like that for months, trapped in that game of cameras and whispers, and even so I had learned to want him more than anyone I’d ever had near me.

With my husband away on business, the house was all mine. I had three full days to myself, with no schedules or explanations, and I had decided to make the most of every one of them. I had dabbed perfume behind my ears and on my chest, dimmed the lights, and turned on the camera with that mix of nerves and desire I already knew by heart. But as soon as his face appeared on the screen, he frowned.

—There’s a lot of noise —he said—. What is that?

I turned my head toward the window. He was right. In the house across the street, a crew of builders had been working all week. There were seven of them, young, and at that hour they were hammering, carrying sacks, and shouting to one another under the sun.

—They’re the workmen —I explained—. They’re renovating the neighbors’ house. They’ve been at it for days.

I expected him to ask me to shut everything and lower the blinds. Instead, I saw something change in his gaze. A slow smile spread across his mouth.

—What if you put on that dress I like so much? —he said—. The tightest one. With the smallest underwear you have underneath. And you dance for me.

My heart sped up. I knew where he was going, or thought I did, and that suspicion alone had already set my skin on fire.

—Whatever you want —I replied.

***

I put on music, something slow and heavy, and started moving in front of the camera. The dress was a black fabric that clung to every curve, so short it barely covered me. Underneath, a tiny lace set that left nothing to the imagination. Damián watched me in silence, and I danced for him, sliding my hands over my body, letting the dress ride higher centimeter by centimeter.

Every movement was for him. I lowered the dress straps a little, pulled them back up, played with the fabric as if I had all the time in the world. I knew that on the other side of the screen he was holding his breath. That idea, that I had him hanging on every centimeter of my skin, was what made me keep going.

I took it off slowly, turning my back to him, looking over my shoulder. When I was down to lingerie, his voice came out rough through the speakers.

—Now open the window —he said—. Like that, just as you are.

I went still. My head was spinning. I couldn’t imagine opening that window, not with the builders right across the way, not in my underwear, not in broad afternoon light. My mouth went dry.

I can’t. They’ll see me. They’ll see everything.

And yet, that was exactly what made my legs tremble. The idea of pleasing him, of obeying him, weighed more than embarrassment. I walked to the window with my pulse in my throat and opened it wide.

The hot air hit my bare skin. The sound of the street flooded in at once: hammer blows, a distant radio, the men’s voices. For a second nothing happened. I stayed there, offered up to the afternoon, feeling my heart slam against my ribs. Then one of them looked up.

He froze. He nudged the man beside him with his elbow. In seconds all seven had dropped their tools and were looking toward my window. They whistled. They shouted something I didn’t quite understand and didn’t care about either. I was still there, standing, almost naked, letting those strangers look at me.

—They’re looking at you —Damián said from the screen, and you could hear how much he was enjoying it—. Do you feel it? Now take everything off.

I did. I unclasped the hook, let the lace fall, and stood completely naked in front of the open window. The whistling from across the street grew louder. A wave of heat ran from the nape of my neck to my feet. Never in my life had I felt like that: exposed, watched, desired by several pairs of eyes at the same time.

—Now go to the bed —he ordered—. Lie down where they can see you. And touch yourself.

***

I dragged the bed a few inches, just enough to be in the window’s line of sight. I let myself fall onto the sheets with my legs open toward the outside, toward them, and began to caress myself without taking my eyes off the workmen crowding the scaffold across the way.

—Moan —Damián told me—. I want them to hear you. I want them to know what you’re doing to them.

And I moaned. It wasn’t hard to fake because I wasn’t faking. My fingers moved between my legs, and every moan that slipped out of me seemed to drive the men across the street crazy. Some had come down to the sidewalk to see better. Others stayed up on the scaffold, motionless, their eyes fixed on me.

I could feel the sun entering through the window and falling over my body, as if it too were watching me. I had never been so aware of my own skin: of the heat running through it, of the way it prickled under so many gazes. I didn’t know those men. I didn’t know their names and they didn’t know mine, and precisely because of that I felt so free. For them I was just a stranger in a window, a woman without a story, offering herself and asking nothing in return.

Damián kept talking to me nonstop. He told me what he saw, described how they were looking at me, repeated over and over what I was doing. And I, between his words and the eyes of those seven young men fixed on my body, could only ask one thing inwardly.

Not yet. I don’t want it to end so fast. Let it last.

I felt like a professional in desire, a woman made only to be watched. The sheets grew damp beneath me while I kept going, without pause, offering myself to the window as if that were my only reason for existing that afternoon.

—Look at yourself —he said—. See how they can’t look away.

And it was true. None of them moved. One had both hands on the scaffold railing, his knuckles white from gripping so hard. Another had taken off his cap, as if he needed to see me more clearly. I was the center of all those gazes, and that certainty drove me closer to the edge with every second.

Damián could tell from my voice, from how my words broke between one moan and the next. He asked me to hold on, not to finish yet, to give them a little more. And I obeyed him, delaying the moment, prolonging that delicious tension of knowing myself watched, until I felt I wouldn’t be able to hold back any longer.

***

—Stop —Damián said suddenly.

I stopped, gasping, my whole body vibrating.

—Stand up like that, naked, and close the window. Slowly. Let them see you until the very last moment.

I stood up. I walked to the window feeling all those eyes follow me, and I closed it slowly, letting the curtain fall like a theater curtain over the performance. From the other side, whistling could still be heard when I was left alone with the screen again.

—Now point the camera at you —he said—. I want to see everything. I want you to come for me.

I adjusted the angle, lay back down, and this time I didn’t hold back. I touched myself again, now without restraint, with the image of those seven men still burned into my head. The memory of having been looked at that way, of having become pure provocation for a few minutes, was more powerful than any caress.

The orgasm hit me like a wave that never ended. I writhed on the bed, crying out in pleasure, and when I thought it was over another came, and then another. Knowing that I had done that, that I had exposed myself shamelessly to please him, turned me on to a degree I didn’t remember ever reaching.

When I finally went still, trembling, my breathing broken, Damián was still there, watching me from the screen with that same smile.

—You’re incredible —he said softly.

I didn’t answer. There was no need. I lay there, naked, listening in the distance to the sound of the work starting up again as if nothing had happened.

***

That was one of the last times we met. A few days later my husband came back from his trip, and between the routine, his schedules, and his demands, I let time go by. The camera was switched off, the afternoons filled with other things, and Damián remained somewhere in memory.

But even today, when I pass in front of an open window and feel the hot afternoon air, I go back to that moment. To the whistles, to the seven pairs of eyes, to the voice ordering me from a screen. And I understand that, no matter how much time passes, some desires never quite shut. They only wait, behind the curtain, for someone to open the window again.