Fantasies

I closed my eyes beneath the hot water, never imagining that, alone in my bathroom that afternoon, I would discover something about myself I could never stop seeking.

I locked the door, lowered the blinds, and for the first time decided not to rush. That afternoon, the silence of my house became my accomplice.

Nobody knows. Not even the person I sleep with every night. But when I close my eyes I see myself in front of the mirror, transformed into someone else, ready for him.

My family was one floor below and I was alone in my room, phone pressed to my ear, his voice ordering me to do things I’d never dared before.

I don’t want your respect from a distance. I want to be the thing you open in secret at 2 a.m., with your hand already under the sheet and my name stuck in your throat.

I thought I was alone among the trees, until a crackling sound changed everything and I realized how badly I wanted someone to find me like that, naked and surrendered.

I ordered my first toy online so I wouldn’t die of embarrassment in the store. What I didn’t imagine was the delivery guy’s face when he handed me that box.

I read every word he wrote to the other woman and, instead of rage, felt a heat between my legs I didn’t recognize. That afternoon, I stopped being invisible.

That night I locked the door, turned off my phone, and, for the first time, let myself discover what it felt like to stop resisting.

In the darkness of my room, nobody could see me. Or so I thought, until he came to his window and kept looking toward me longer than he should have.

I was twenty-seven and still a virgin. That afternoon, alone in someone else’s house, I found something that forced me to look in the mirror and admit what I’d been hiding.

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’d always fantasized about being with another woman, but I’d never done it. That night, in her apartment, she put her hands on my hips and I knew we weren’t going to sleep.

I walked into the locker room without thinking and walked out trembling, looking at naked women as I had never looked at anyone in my life.

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.

I saw him in briefs only once and since then I can’t sleep without thinking about him. The fact that he’s my half-brother should be enough to stop me, but it isn’t.

I entered the office with a dry throat. I didn’t expect her to ask me to close my eyes and describe, word for word, what I had been hiding for months.

“Good night, princess,” my wife whispered in my ear. And something inside me, something she had planted weeks earlier, answered as if it had been waiting for that name all my life.

I never thought an avatar in a video game would make me want another woman again—or that desire would stay with me long after I turned off the console.

The office door was left ajar, and without meaning to, I became a witness to something I shouldn’t have seen or heard, but couldn’t look away from.