In Public

It took me two weeks to admit I wanted it to happen again. And one dawn, instead of running away, I sat on that stair and waited for them.

That night I lost my money, my underwear, and the idea I had of myself. What happened afterward in that empty park is something I had never told anyone.

He slipped a scrap of paper into my hand as he cleared the plate. I read it in the room: it was his number. And I knew I wouldn’t be alone that night.

I hid on the locker-room mezzanine with Bruno pressed against my back. Below, my mother and her friend were undressing among the workers, and I couldn’t look away.

I’m naked while I write this. And I want you to know exactly what goes through my head when I shut the door and no one can hear me.

I kept it for more than a decade. It all started because of a pair of white stockings and ended in a car at two in the morning with the last person I should have gotten involved with.

He shut the room door with all my clothes in his hands and left me on my knees, naked, with one order: “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

I’d spent months imagining it and couldn’t bring myself to admit it. That afternoon, an ordinary conversation was enough to send everything out of control.

She was fifteen years older than me, drove a red convertible, and knew exactly what she wanted that night. All I had to do was obey and enjoy it.

I’d spent weeks avoiding her, convinced what we had was over. Then the phone rang and her voice was enough to tell me I’d fall again.

She pulled my pants down in the middle of the path without a word, and I understood that afternoon my body didn’t belong to me, but to her.

We thought it was a twenty-block ride. Neither Lucía nor I imagined we’d get off that bus as two completely different women.

She slipped into bed naked except for her thong and whispered in my ear: don’t turn around, don’t say anything, just listen. Then she started telling me about that night.

I went out alone to explore the northern area and a blow to the back of my head changed everything. I woke up surrounded by strangers, naked and with no escape.

He’d been ignoring me for weeks. That night I dressed for another man, and just as I was kissing him at the next table, he walked in arm in arm with a stranger.

Every week we stared at the photos by the entrance without daring to go in. The night we crossed that door, I discovered how far I could go with him watching me.

I didn’t tie her hands to immobilize her. I tied them so she would understand, before anything happened, that her body was no longer hers that night.

I’ve spent thirty years pretending to be the modest wife my husband thinks he set free. What he doesn’t know is that on this cruise, I’m the one pulling the strings.

When she told me what really turned her on, I knew we were opening a door we’d never be able to close again. And I didn’t want to close it.

Everyone at the university knew what I was like, and the guard at the gate only needed a smile to understand that that afternoon, after cleaning up, I wouldn’t be leaving so fast.