First Time

His hands were no longer seeking the pain in my back. I knew it, he knew it, and still I said nothing when they traveled down the cleft to places they had never reached before.

When she went into the bathroom, I didn’t expect her to kneel between my legs, or for her tongue to decide for me what I’d been avoiding asking for years.

I told the guys at the bar I liked men and, without meaning to, opened a door I couldn’t close. That same night, someone followed me into the bathroom.

When Mariela asked her to take off her panties too, Carla looked to her mother for the stop she expected. She found none—only a complicit smile.

When I offered to shower together to wash off the sweat, I thought it would be an innocent gesture. The way she looked at me from the bathroom door said otherwise.

When I opened my eyes in that white room, my mother was standing naked in front of me, and nothing we had been taught about good and evil ever made sense again.

Adela had always avoided being touched. That January night, a translucent-skinned stranger sat on the edge of her bed and knew she could not send her away.

We talked for weeks without sending each other a single photo, until she told me she wanted to be the first to do it to me, in person, in her bed.

We hadn’t seen each other in nine months. When Renata opened the door and hugged me, I felt something different against my chest—something I wouldn’t understand until that afternoon.

She told me a thousand times that she liked me; that night she came down with wine, turned off the TV, and said what she’d been wanting to tell me for two years.

I thought she was just flirting with me, until she took me to her apartment without asking and I understood the night would not end with one drink.

When I put my hand on his chest and didn’t take it away, I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end like the others. He was twice my age and smelled of cold beer.

At eighteen I thought I’d seen everything, until my cousin pulled the blinds, put on that movie, and started touching herself without taking her eyes off me.

We were having a perfect day when she came to sit on my lap. I never imagined that one touch, one curiosity, and one mistake of mine would erase the line between father and daughter.

Camila whispered in the elevator that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. When Diego opened the door, I knew the afternoon was about to get out of hand.

I started the diary because nothing was happening in my life and closed it because everything began to happen. Between signed hospital shifts and a boy who knew how to wait, I was never the same.

I thought nothing could be worse than letting him drive me home. Until he shut the apartment door and I put my bag on the couch.

I told her she could bathe on her own now. She lowered her head and whispered she was still scared. I never imagined how far that shower would go.

I was eighteen and had never been with anyone. My mother’s aunt ended up sleeping beside me that night, and everything I thought I knew about desire broke in silence.

When his hand settled on my hip and he whispered “Hi, baby,” I thought he meant one of my friends. When I turned around, I knew the night wouldn’t end as expected.