Masturbation

When I saw my underwear on the glazier’s nightstand, I knew he’d been watching me for weeks. Instead of exposing him, I decided to give him something better to remember.

We hadn’t seen each other in nine months. When Renata opened the door and hugged me, I felt something different against my chest—something I wouldn’t understand until that afternoon.

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 went down to my room wanting to escape the noise. I ended up with my legs open in front of the mirror while everyone toasted a few feet away, suspecting nothing.

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.

That folder was never supposed to exist. But I opened it—and among hundreds of photos of me asleep and naked, I found something worse: the email where he shared them.

At eighteen I thought I’d seen everything, until my cousin pulled the blinds, put on that movie, and started touching herself without taking her eyes off me.

I turned on the phone, cracked the curtains open just enough, and waited for his shadow to cross the window while I stayed naked in front of the mirror.

I closed my eyes in the empty locker room and let the fantasy carry me farther than I’d imagined. When I opened them, there was no going back.

I started the diary because nothing was happening in my life and closed it because everything began to happen. Between signed hospital shifts and a boy who knew how to wait, I was never the same.

I told her she could bathe on her own now. She lowered her head and whispered she was still scared. I never imagined how far that shower would go.

I set the cup on the bedside table, knelt beside the bed, and understood that that morning nothing in this house would ever be the same again.

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.

When I came out of the bathroom that afternoon, I saw him pull his hand out from between his pants. And the TV was lower than usual. It wasn’t a coincidence.

I spent twenty-eight years married to a man who treated me like furniture. At fifty-two, a delivery man rang the bell and gave me back things I didn’t even know were lost.

We’d been talking on WhatsApp for almost a year without ever meeting. That afternoon, in the hotel room, she sat down in front of me and started taking off her clothes.

I opened the curtains, turned on the corner lamp, and knew he’d be peering in from the next terrace over. That night, we were going to give him something he’d never dare ask for.

I dressed to blow my boyfriend’s mind. The one who opened the door was his older brother, and his eyes ran over me before he even said hello.