Masturbation

Three in the morning. A short nightgown. Nothing underneath. And the feeling that every park lamp was a curious eye, waiting for me to go one step too far.

I came down wearing nothing but a towel, and on the next-to-last step I discovered the room was full of people who had already seen me completely on the screen.

When I found the neighbor peering over the wall, I didn’t cover up. I dropped my bikini top under the patio shower and let him see as much as he wanted.

I turned the living-room light down so she wouldn’t see me, but when the sheet started moving beneath her hips, I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping that night.

She went down to dinner without panties or a bra. She said she didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I was starting to understand: that day she was going to cross every line.

That night I went downstairs for a glass of water and never made it to the kitchen. What I saw in the shadows of the corner left me frozen there for a whole hour.

I got to the pool early in a bikini that left little to the imagination. I wanted to know if the girl with the flirty smile would dare to go further.

A blue robe, a book, and one careless moment. One look through the window across the street was enough to change my morning forever.

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.

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.

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 turned off my bedroom light so I could watch him better without being seen. One dawn he turned toward my window, smiled, and I knew I’d never been the only one watching.

I recognized her the moment she crossed the threshold. That twenty-three-year-old girl had been undressing for me on screen for months and didn’t even know it.

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.

For two days I had been lowering the curtains to hide what I was doing. That last morning I decided to leave them open, and the woman in uniform stayed planted on the other side of the courtyard.

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.

When I saw his socks lying on the hotel bathroom floor, I knew I was about to cross a line I could never uncross with my best friend.

Every morning I picked her up for work. That dawn, out in the middle of the fields, I discovered she could no longer hide what she felt when she looked at me.

The tide brought me notebooks and pencils the same day everything I thought was solid between Tomás and me began to crumble. I had no idea what I would use them for.