Masturbation

Sometimes the greatest pleasure is doing nothing. I lay on the sofa, arms spread, and let her take control.

The ropes marked my skin red. Guilt marked my soul black. And that man kept looking for the crack where he could break me open completely.

The TV was on, the lights were off, a blanket covering the three of us. No one said a word. It was my friend who moved his hand first, slowly, as if he’d been waiting for that moment for a long time.

I found her dancing with a stranger when she was supposed to be with her friends. I followed her, hid, and what I saw behind that curtain changed everything.

I went into his room and found him with tears in his eyes. He was about to cancel his girlfriend’s visit out of fear of his first time. I couldn’t leave him like that.

With her eyes closed, she built every detail: someone’s hands, his lips, the weight of another body on hers. She hadn’t lived it yet, but she already needed it.

It was the night I got furthest on my own and with not a stitch on. Dogs, men, motorcycles, and the main park: I saw it all in my naked skin.

She has many names for me. None matter while I watch her obey from the other side of the screen, waiting for the day I have her on her knees in front of me.

Renata showed up at my apartment with a bottle of wine nobody had asked her to bring. The next morning, neither of us pretended it had been the wine.

My boyfriend didn’t show up to the Christmas party. Instead, his godfather—my neighbor across the street—offered me a drink, and that extra glass changed everything.

After years of keeping the secret, I blurted it out: my wife slept with other men, and I knew. What I saw in my uncle’s eyes wasn’t judgment, but something darker.

As soon as the last classmates left, she went upstairs. She took off her skirt first. Then her blouse. Then everything else.

When I saw her cross the terrace with that expression I know by heart, I knew words wouldn’t be enough. Luckily, she had brought her favorite weapon in her bag.

The receptionist went off to lunch and the doctor closed the office door. I had gone in for a simple chafing injury. I came out from something entirely different.

I had never been with a woman. When I opened the door and saw her standing there, I knew something in me was going to change forever that night.

I never thought getting waxed would change anything. But when he ran the wax over my buttocks and told me to get on all fours, something in me lit up.

For weeks I had been secretly masturbating to videos of well-endowed men. Then I saw him come out of the water and knew it: that boy was what I needed.

Twenty years old, a virgin, and frozen in the hallway when I saw him through the crack in the door. What happened that night wasn’t what I expected—but it was exactly what I needed.

Santiago walked into the classroom that Monday in that fitted shirt and with a deep voice that raised goosebumps on my skin from the first word he spoke.

I pedaled to the river with my blood already hot, knowing what I was going to do when no one could see me. That afternoon, at last, fantasy would become real.