Masturbation

It was exactly midnight when I crossed the patio barefoot. Her pink flip-flops were still there, warm, with the imprint of every one of her toes waiting for me in the dark.

The moment the gathering loosens up and no one is looking, I slip into the bathroom. I know exactly what I’m going to find in the hamper, and I know perfectly well what I’m going to do with it.

I’d never paid for anything like that before. We met on a Tuesday morning, she handed me the bag in a hurry, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what was waiting for me at home.

She boarded the bus barefoot, sneakers in hand, and at the back a stranger couldn’t tear his eyes from her bare feet on the seat.

The store suddenly emptied, and when Diego peeked into the fitting rooms, he never imagined that afternoon someone would watch him while he watched without permission.

I didn’t let you lift your face until you understood that, while you’re behind me, my mouth and nose belong to me and you’ll use them however I order.

She smelled the flower that should not have existed, and her body stopped obeying her. Among the trees, someone watched and waited for the exact moment to approach.

Balloons had terrified and aroused me in equal measure since childhood. On that birthday, locked in the bathroom, I discovered how far that contradiction could take me.

He left me alone in his living room, still trembling, and I walked out of his house without saying goodbye. That same week I understood that something inside me had ignited and I would no longer be able to turn it off.

“We’re not doing anything, it’s a piece of silicone,” she told me. But the way she looked at me while opening the box said exactly the opposite.

Friday night, alone at home, caged, with the key hundreds of kilometers away. She left me only one huge toy, and I knew right away she’d bought it for this.

I was days from giving birth and could think of only one thing. When the contraction bent me double with pain, I asked Rocío to put her hand beneath the sheet.

No one would imagine those giant, ridiculous sneakers were keeping my secrets. That night on the road, with everyone asleep, I finally dared to do what I’d been fantasizing about.

When the bathroom light suddenly came on, I froze, bikini bottoms in my hand and her eyes locked on mine. I knew I wasn’t in charge anymore.

I went down to the garden in the dark, not knowing that this time she wouldn’t leave me alone with her underwear: she had something of her mother’s saved for me.

Every night she asked me for something new through the bars of her window, and I couldn’t bring myself to say no, even if it meant rummaging through my own mother’s laundry basket.

Carla appeared barefoot among the shadows of the garden, with that good-girl face that hid the most perverse girl I had ever known.

I always thought there was nothing dirtier than feet. That night, barefoot and nervous in my friend’s bed, I found out how wrong I was.

No one at the office imagined what my boots were hiding that rainy morning—or why I refused to take them off all day.

I only wanted to sit in the dim light and touch myself for a while. I didn’t expect a complete stranger three seats away to make me lose my mind.