Oral

He shut the bathroom door, looked at himself in the mirror in the short blouse and wet lace, and knew there was no way back tonight.

I’m twenty-four and I’m still learning what turns me on. That afternoon, with my hand at my throat, I discovered something I didn’t know I needed.

I hadn’t written to him in a year. That afternoon I opened the email, typed his name, and before I thought it through, I was already telling him exactly what I wanted him to do to me.

When she shut the door, she told me I wasn’t enough of a man. I never imagined that same night I’d stop being one forever—and that it would be the best thing that ever happened to me.

She had red hair, painted lips, and a body that stopped traffic. What I didn’t imagine was what I’d find when I slipped my hand under her dress.

When the scarf covered my eyes I thought it was an innocent game. It wasn’t. Mariela had other plans, and I didn’t want her to stop.

I warned her that if I didn’t like it, I’d let her out at the next corner. She smiled, reclined my seat, and told me to close my eyes for a second.

When she sat on my couch with smeared mascara and a trembling voice, I knew a whiskey and a few comforting words wouldn’t be enough.

When I bent down to put the box away in the storeroom, Adela turned slowly and let me see the white lace under her blouse. That night I knew the route had changed forever.

The drawer was jammed by a handwritten notebook. Inside were the most intimate pages of a stranger and his eight-year lover.

When I knelt in the sand with the sun beating on my back, I never imagined someone was watching every move from the other side of the crag.

I ordered a piña colada at the beach bar and the waiter brought it with a smile. By day two, I knew his service went far beyond the bar.

That night they shot me up with the first hormones and made me throw out all my men’s clothes. “You’ll see how pretty you get,” she said, smiling.

What started as a stupid afternoon on his sofa ended with me kneeling between his legs, discovering that some favors can’t be returned.

I got into the car with my heart in my mouth and told him, almost without thinking, that I finally understood what a woman feels when she’s on her way to give herself up.

I opened the door expecting dinner and found a slight girl with red-painted nails and a smile that said much more than “good evening.”

Her white nightgown with lavender flowers barely covered her thighs, and I knew that night I’d undo it all, button by button, in silence.