Masturbation

On the other side of the wall, his mother’s moans kept him from sleeping. And when she called him into her room the next day, Bruno knew nothing would ever be the same.

For days I’d had my eyes covered and only recognized people by their perfume and their voice. That night, her hands were nothing like a nurse’s.

I saw his silhouette outlined against the refrigerator light, barefoot on the cold tile, and I knew I hadn’t come down that night for a glass of milk.

I went into his room like any mother. I came out knowing my own son desired me, and that a part of me had spent months waiting for exactly that.

I knew him when he was shy and fragile, when his name was Tomás. Ten years later he came back through the door in a miniskirt, with a smile that promised to ruin my summer.

We asked for two singles and split the beds without thinking. By eleven everyone was asleep; in ours, Mom started asking questions no mother should ask.

The moment the elevator doors close, my sister kisses me like she’s been waiting all week for it. Truth is, we both had.

She wore a tiny black bikini, two triangles tied with strings, and looked at me over her shoulder as if she already knew what was about to happen between us.

I opened the door thinking the house was empty. The noise was coming from Marina’s room, and what I saw when I peeked in froze me in the doorway.

I turned off the light, and as I settled in, I felt a lump under the sheets: it was the shorts I had lent her. I brought them to my face without thinking, and my body understood before my mind did.

Andrés was always the strong brother, the one who brought food home and slept with his girlfriends. Until one night of withdrawal he came looking for me in the dark.

I thought the whole house was mine that night. Then the lock turned, he looked at me from the doorway, and I was still naked on the sofa.

I only meant to tell him to turn the porn volume down. I never imagined that argument would end with the two of us on his bed, with nothing between us.

When Greta opened the bathroom door and found us like that, I knew the lockdown was only just beginning to drag all our secrets into the light.

I called my psychologist because I’d been burning all day. Her voice convinced me that no desire was a sin, not even what I felt for Diego.

I turned off the TV when she went upstairs to sleep, but the scene kept replaying in my head with my sister’s face instead of the actress’s.

I thought it would just be a few more photos in exchange for a few dollars. But when I got on all fours in front of the camera, I knew tonight the desire would be mine alone.

My friend couldn’t take his eyes off her. I pretended to be annoyed, but the truth is I understood perfectly what he felt when he looked at her.

At four in the morning, alone in the bakehouse, he discovered that the divorce had not awakened his usual desires: it had awakened others, with a neighbor’s name.

I had begged her a thousand times and she always stopped me with the same excuse. Until that night, in the dim bedroom, she said yes.