Masturbation

I learned to count the hours until she fell asleep. Only then, in the darkness of the bunk bed, were her sandals mine and no one could see what I did with them.

I went to her house for a school assignment and found her in flip-flops. From that moment on, I could never look at her without thinking of her feet.

I turned my back to the camera, moved my hips slowly, and waited. I only wanted a stranger to tell me what to do with my own body.

It was midnight when I crossed the patio barefoot. Her pink flip-flops were still there, warm, with the mark of every one of her toes waiting for me in the dark.

The moment the gathering loosens up and no one’s watching, I slip into the bathroom. I know exactly what I’ll find in the basket, and I know perfectly what I’m going to do with it.

I’d never paid for anything like that before. We met on a Tuesday morning, she handed me the bag in a hurry, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what was waiting for me at home.

She boarded the bus barefoot, sneakers in hand, and at the back a stranger couldn’t tear his eyes from her bare feet on the seat.

The store suddenly emptied, and when Diego peeked into the fitting rooms, he never imagined that afternoon someone would watch him while he watched without permission.

I didn’t let you lift your face until you understood that, while you’re behind me, my mouth and nose belong to me and you’ll use them however I order.

She smelled the flower that should not have existed, and her body stopped obeying her. Among the trees, someone watched and waited for the exact moment to approach.

Ever since I was a child, balloons both terrified and aroused me. At that birthday party, locked in the bathroom, I discovered how far that contradiction could take me.

He left me alone in his living room, still trembling, and I walked out of his house without saying goodbye. That same week I understood that something inside me had ignited and I would no longer be able to turn it off.

“We’re not doing anything, it’s a piece of silicone,” she told me. But the way she looked at me while opening the box said exactly the opposite.

Friday night, alone at home, caged, with the key hundreds of kilometers away. She left me only one huge toy, and I knew right away she’d bought it for this.

I was days past my due date and could think of only one thing. When a contraction bent me over in pain, I asked Rocío to slip her hand under the sheet.

No one would imagine those giant, ridiculous sneakers were keeping my secrets. That night on the road, with everyone asleep, I finally dared to do what I’d been fantasizing about.

When the bathroom light suddenly came on, I froze, bikini bottoms in my hand and her eyes locked on mine. I knew I wasn’t in charge anymore.

I went down to the garden in the dark, not knowing that this time she wouldn’t leave me alone with her underwear: she had something of her mother’s saved for me.

Every night she asked me for something new through the bars of her window, and I couldn’t bring myself to say no, even if it meant rummaging through my own mother’s laundry basket.

Carla appeared barefoot among the shadows of the garden, with that good-girl face that hid the most perverse girl I had ever known.