Oral

I offered the bus window seat to the old lady and she didn’t even look at me. I had no idea the real journey would begin in the hotel dining room, across from two strangers.

I saw him alone at the kitchen bar, apart from the group, glued to his phone. One look was enough to know that afternoon he wasn’t going to stay as macho as he thought.

We were alone in the weights room when he took off his shirt and told me to touch. I never imagined how far we’d go after closing the locker room door.

It was three in the morning when I felt his mouth searching for me in the dark, and I knew this time I’d be the one to guide him to the end.

We crossed the apartment threshold knowing we had two hours left, and he lunged at me before I could set the keys on the table.

I was twenty, a virgin, and shut away among comic books. My father thought a trip to the countryside would make a man of me. He had no idea who would be waiting for me there.

I pretended to be asleep so I could watch him. What I saw in the other bed that night completely changed the course of that trip.

I’d been in the waiting room for more than two hours when he called my name. I never imagined that same afternoon would end with us alone in a gurney no one used anymore.

I saw him on the corner with the whistle between his teeth, warning the dealers. I couldn’t stop looking at him, and I knew I wouldn’t go home that dawn without him.

I went trembling into that dark apartment to wait for a man I had never seen. What happened that afternoon marked me for the rest of my life.

I waited naked beside the olive tree, my backpack at my feet and my phone in my hand, never imagining that cold night would leave me with two different tastes in my mouth.

At fifty-three, single and bored, Ramiro discovered that supply and demand also work at three in the afternoon, on the sofa in his living room.

He promised he’d only rub a little. I relaxed, I trusted him, and that was the mistake I should never have made that night in his bed.

He promised me a berth on the schooner if I went with him into the alley. What I saw through that window and what happened next changed everything I thought I knew about myself.

He took off his sweat-soaked shirt in front of me, not knowing I’d heard everything from the shower. What I offered him that afternoon changed his idea of pleasure.

They had spent their whole lives inseparable, but that afternoon, alone on the sofa, neither of them wanted to pretend that kiss had been an accident.

For weeks I’d wanted him to come looking for me again. That night I understood that if I wanted to feel that way again, I’d have to go looking for it somewhere else.

I couldn’t stop looking at Bruno’s body under the water, and when he turned around with his eyes closed I knew that afternoon we were going to cross a line we’d avoided for years.

I was drunk on the subway when I opened the app out of boredom. I had no idea that message from a stranger would end with me on my knees in a dark storage room.

I had a week to decide whether to leave everything behind. That night, four men set out to make me forget the decision, even if only for a few hours.