In Public

I went down to the bathroom at three in the morning and heard my aunt’s laugh behind the curtain. My father appeared behind me with the same conspiratorial smile.

Lorena took off her pareo in front of everyone and chose me to count the thirty seconds. Meanwhile, my wife slept in the cabin, suspecting nothing.

When he yanked the towel off me on the porch and the neighbors stopped dinner to stare, I knew that summer was going to be very different from the one I’d imagined.

My friends were strolling past the display windows laughing. I stopped in front of hers and, by the way she looked back at me, I knew that night wasn’t for them.

I went down the bathroom corridor when no one was looking. I heard his voice first, then hers. I didn’t open the door. I stood there, listening to my life break.

I climbed into a van full of foreign guys without thinking twice. My boyfriend would be back from the supermarket in ten minutes. I only needed one.

She was fifty-two, trapped in a lukewarm marriage, and wearing lace stockings for the first time. She didn’t expect the man who would board two stops later.

I came out of the bathroom with my mouth smeared and a new pulse between my legs. She, with my red lipstick on her lips, didn’t know her boyfriend was already watching.

When she took off her dress in the middle of the clearing, her huge belly under the sun and her son’s three friends staring at her, I knew that afternoon wasn’t going to be a bike ride.

At three in the morning, I asked her to open the tent door. I never thought she’d say yes—or imagined what would happen afterward on the beach.

When she got out of the car and every man in the ballroom turned his head, I understood that my wife wasn’t mine that night: she belonged to whoever dared look at her.

When I saw his naked body on the blue towel, I knew I wouldn’t leave without fulfilling your dare. I hadn’t touched him yet and he was already starting to react under my gaze.

I thought the back row at the premiere would let me be alone with him. It took me a while to realize no one is really alone in a dark room.

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 I opened the door to the empty apartment, I wasn’t expecting to see him there with that smile. The client was running late, and the clock was silently marking our only chance.

When we got there that night, my wife was already wearing the plug. What we didn’t expect was to run into a nineteen-year-old who would change the routine.

When I leaned out the car window to see if my sister was still awake, I found him in his window, smoking. And I knew he wasn’t going to look away.

I wanted people to watch her. To devour her with their eyes. What I didn’t expect was that one of the strangers in the back would dare to chase her into the showers.

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.

Behind dark glasses, no one knows where a man is looking—and that July afternoon, he decided to look far beyond the edge of the umbrella.