Masturbation

He had saved my course without asking for anything in return. That afternoon, I decided to thank him in a way neither of us would ever forget.

“I want us to masturbate while we watch each other,” she told me in the car. I hadn’t expected it, but watching her without touching her turned me on instantly.

For years she had written orgasms for faceless strangers. That dawn, for the first time, someone on the other side of the screen wanted to know her real name.

I told her I couldn’t think of anything to write. She got off my lap, let her clothes fall to the floor, and ordered me with a smile: “Describe me.”

The corset hugged his body like a second skin and the satin tightened around his wrists. In front of the mirror, Adrián stopped pretending and finally became who he wanted to be.

That morning I woke with one fixed idea in my head, and for the first time I didn’t push it away. What I did alone is still hard to confess aloud.

Between email and email, with the door closed and the stopwatch running, I’ve spent years perfecting a routine I’ve never told anyone. Until today.

I was twenty and had never seen a naked man when Mariela took my hand to the back wall and whispered that I should look through the crack.

At 6:53 p.m., the intercom buzzed. After three weeks of waiting, she was suddenly there—serious and elegant, ready to fulfill every one of her conditions.

For a full week I watched her from behind a dune, convinced I’d never dare approach her. Then she lost her house keys on a Saturday afternoon.

The theater was almost empty when she chose the seat one place away. She wasn’t watching the screen—she was watching me, and wanted me to notice.

I opened the curtains half asleep and didn’t realize he was on the other side of the glass, watching me. And something in that look made me want to let him keep going.

I decided the night before, while he slept: the next morning I would begin, alone, a routine I had imagined for years but never dared to maintain.

I boarded the last car expecting a quiet trip. I never imagined the woman in the green dress would invite me to watch what her partner was about to do to her.

The first time it was just a reflection in the glass: a still silhouette on the other side of the courtyard, watching her eat breakfast in her robe. She didn’t pull the curtain. She didn’t close it either.

I hid on the stair landing just to hear his deep voice talking about my body. I knew it was wrong. I also knew I couldn’t stop listening.

That night, after publishing, I opened my email and found a message from him. I didn’t know a stranger could move me so much with words alone.

She stood there among the trees, red with embarrassment, her hands clasped behind her back. “Just let me watch,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen a man do it.”

I’d spent the whole day not feeling like doing anything. Until, when I switched on the boiler, I saw the woman in the building across from mine walking nearly naked through her kitchen, oblivious to my gaze.

My window was open and my hand was where it shouldn't have been when I heard her voice ten feet away. When I opened my eyes, she was already watching me.