What I Did in the Movie Theater That No One Should Have Seen

It’s been a while since I felt like telling this, but there are memories that come back on their own, especially the ones that still leave my skin hot. I wasn’t always like this. For years, I was the girl who changed with the lights off, the one who crossed her arms over her chest on the beach, the one who would die of embarrassment if a blouse was even a little sheer.

All of that changed with Mateo.

He discovered something in me that I didn’t even know I had. One night, almost as a joke, he asked me to go out without wearing anything under my dress. I laughed and told him he was crazy. But that same night, while we walked down the street feeling the air where no one should feel it, I understood that fear and desire were the same thing. After that, going out with him became a game, and each time we raised the stakes.

The movie theater became our favorite place.

***

That afternoon we went to the cinemas in a big shopping center, one of those with twenty theaters and always packed with families. Before going in, we stopped to eat at a restaurant right at the entrance to the mall. I was wearing a very short white-and-orange striped miniskirt and a thin white blouse. Nothing else. No bra, just a tiny thong that barely covered what it had to.

We sat in a secluded corner, me pressed against the wall so no one would see too much. Mateo couldn’t keep his eyes off me. Halfway through the meal, he leaned in and spoke softly, almost in my ear.

“Go to the bathroom,” he said. “I want to see you walk back. I want to see how your breasts move.”

I felt that rush I already knew so well, the one that climbs up my back and leaves me without arguments. I got up and stepped over him to leave the booth. As I did, his hand slid up my thigh as if by accident, checked that the thong was still there, and he spoke to me again in a low voice.

“Take it off,” he murmured.

I didn’t argue.

I walked toward the bathroom feeling how the thin fabric of my blouse shifted with every step. Along the way I passed a man about forty, attractive, sitting with his wife and two daughters. I wasn’t the one looking at him; it was him who couldn’t stop looking at me. His eyes dropped straight to my chest, where the white blouse left everything underneath to the imagination. I felt my cheeks burning, but not with shame. With something else.

In the bathroom I took off the thong and held it in my fist. I looked at myself in the mirror for a second. My nipples were pressing against the fabric as if the blouse didn’t exist. I can’t believe I’m going out like this. But I went out.

When I got back to the table, Mateo had that smile I already knew how to read. He was enjoying every inch of me bouncing under my blouse. When I passed by that man’s table again, I opened my fist and let the thong fall to the floor, right beside him. I didn’t bend down to pick it up. I kept walking.

Later I looked for it with my eyes and it was gone. I never knew whether he picked it up or whether they simply swept it away. I like to think he took it with him.

When I sat back down, Mateo took me by the nape and pulled me close to his face.

“Did you see him looking at you?” he asked.

“I saw him,” I admitted.

“And did you like it?”

I didn’t answer him with words. The way I was breathing was enough, the way I pressed my thighs together under the table. He smiled, satisfied, and kept eating as if nothing had happened, while I wondered at what point I had become this woman who enjoyed being a stranger’s secret in a restaurant full of people.

***

We finished eating and went to the parking garage. Mateo always parked on the same level, in a spot where, even though it was covered, the afternoon sun came in from the sides. He parked, turned off the engine, and turned to face me.

What came next was already part of our ritual. His hands, his mouth, the fingers that knew exactly where to touch. By the time he told me to get out, I was already trembling and my thighs were wet. I got out of the car with my legs still weak, adjusted my skirt as best I could, and when I looked up, I saw him.

A security guard, standing a few meters away, had seen everything. He didn’t look away. Neither did I.

I didn’t tell Mateo anything. I kept that detail to myself, like a secret that made me feel even more exposed. And that feeling, knowing a stranger had watched, turned me on in a way I hadn’t expected.

The sun came in from the side and fell right across my legs as we walked toward the entrance. I knew that anyone passing by in a car could see more than they should, and instead of quickening my pace, I slowed down even more. Mateo noticed and squeezed my hand. He didn’t need to say anything. We both knew I was no longer the girl who hid herself.

We entered the mall through the shops area to get to the cinemas. I walked feeling the aftermath of what had happened in the car, that wetness running down the inside of my thighs. I told Mateo I needed to stop by the bathroom for a moment.

“Buy the tickets,” I asked him. “I’ll catch up with you.”

I cleaned myself up a little and fixed my clothes. Before leaving, I looked at myself in the mirror again and was surprised, once more, by how transparent everything was. The blouse didn’t hide a single thing. Anyone who paid attention would see. And I want them to pay attention. That thought, which months earlier would have terrified me, now made me smile.

***

The theater was dim when we went in. We found our seats and, as always, Mateo lifted the armrest between us so I could lean against him. He held me, and his hand immediately found its way inside my blouse. He didn’t care who was sitting next to us. He never cared. That indifference of his was part of what drove me crazy.

On my other side was a young couple, a guy with his girlfriend. I kept settling into the seat, sliding lower, and the skirt rode up without me doing anything to pull it down. In the dark, you could barely make out anything, but that’s how the movies are: every so often the screen bursts into light, a daytime scene, an explosion, an open sky, and for an instant everything is illuminated.

In one of those moments I felt it. The guy next to me turned his head just slightly. The screen flooded with light at that exact moment, and I knew he saw. He saw my skirt bunched up, saw that I wasn’t wearing anything underneath, saw everything I had deliberately left exposed. I brushed against him with my knee a couple of times while I adjusted myself, and each brush was an excuse not to pull my skirt down.

Meanwhile, Mateo’s hand kept working inside my blouse, playing with my nipples, and I had to clench my teeth not to make a sound. The tension of staying silent while I was falling apart inside was almost unbearable. Every time the theater lit up, I thought about that guy’s gaze, about what he must have been imagining, about what his girlfriend had no idea was happening a couple of seats away.

I don’t know how many times I came that night. I lost count. I only know that I left the seat soaked and had to bite my lip again and again not to scream in the middle of a room full of people. Each wave was stronger than the last, fueled by the darkness, by Mateo’s hands, and by the certainty that someone was watching me.

When the lights came on at the end of the movie, I pulled my skirt down calmly, as if nothing had happened. The guy gathered his things without looking directly at me, but I caught him swallowing hard. His girlfriend was talking to him about the movie. He nodded without listening.

***

We left the parking lot hand in hand, and Mateo asked me what I thought of the movie. I laughed, because I couldn’t remember a single scene that wasn’t the light illuminating my own body.

Years have passed since that afternoon, and I still remember it with the same wicked thrill as the first day. I think about the man in the restaurant who may have kept my thong, the guard who saw me get out of the car trembling, the guy in the theater who took home an image he’ll never be able to tell anyone about.

I like to imagine that, when they least expect it, one of them remembers me. The girl with the sheer blouse, with the skirt that rode up on its own in the dark. The woman who stopped hiding and discovered that her greatest fantasy was simply to be seen.

And if any of them ever reads this someday, I hope he recognizes me. And smiles.