Masturbation

Behind those boxes, I thought no one could see me. The red camera on the ceiling and the footsteps at the door told me otherwise.

For months, he had stared at the dark corner of his bedroom. The wrong doll they sent him was the closest thing to companionship he’d had in years.

When he said it out loud, the silence lasted exactly three seconds. I felt fear and desire at the same time, and I couldn’t tell which one was stronger.

The half-open door let out a muffled moan and I, frozen in the shadows of the hallway, couldn’t move or stop staring at what I was seeing.

She was thirty-six weeks pregnant and I was alone with her all week. No one knew what crossed my mind every time I helped her.

At sixty-three, after a decade of masturbating alone, I never expected the girl in the spare room to change everything forever.

The boy from the neighborhood looked me up and down without shame while I tried to keep my voice from trembling. I was forty-six, with a son to save.

We’d been going out together for years without anything ever happening. That night at the club something changed: his body pressed to mine on the dance floor, and neither of us tried to stop it.

I had her underwear in one hand and her phone in the other when I heard the front door open. Camila was there, staring at me from the hallway.

A half-open door was the beginning. Then came the mirror I installed in her room so I could watch her better, night after night.

Rodrigo convinced her to turn around. It was only for a moment, he said. Marcos had been looking at her that way for years, and Sandra hadn’t seen it until now.

I know I’m dreaming, but the heat of his hands on my skin is too real to ignore. And I don’t want to wake up yet.

I promised myself I’d wait. That the more I denied it, the more intense it would be. But the body has its own reasons, and that night it wasn’t willing to give in.

When Bruno put out the joint and looked at me that way, I knew the night would end very differently from how it had begun. Neither of us regretted it.

There was something her uncle had been asking for months. She had been refusing for months—until she saw that phone on the counter and everything between them changed.

I crossed my legs in his class and he couldn’t look away. I knew the game had begun, and this time I was the one with the advantage.

I pushed open the garage door and froze. My mother and my aunt, topless, with their hands wrapped, ready to fight.

I put on the shortest skirt I owned, opened the door, and greeted them knowing exactly what they’d seen and what else was going to happen that night.

I sat on the floor with her photo and some candles. When I opened my eyes, I was her: her voice, her body, her backstage dressing room.