Party

I’d spent months fantasizing about being with a trans girl. That night, in the passenger seat, she whispered in my ear that she’d noticed the way I was looking at her.

I’d kept that desire locked away for years. That dawn, drunk and defenseless, I let it slip in front of the one person who could make it real.

When I went down to the lobby looking to escape the corporate party, I never expected the bartender who would look at me like he knew exactly what I needed that night.

I asked her to open her legs at the gas station, and the attendant’s eyes nearly popped out. That morning we learned that being watched got us hotter than anything.

Less than a hundred meters from the music and champagne, she spread her legs in the sun, not knowing someone was coming down the path. When she saw him, it was already too late to close them.

I’m 55, with a calm husband and dreams that leave my body burning. That night, in a restaurant storeroom, I understood I could no longer keep pretending.

When he staggered against me on that packed bus, I felt something I should never have felt. Since that day I haven’t been able to think of anything else.

When the whiskey spilled on my pink dress, I knew that wedding wouldn’t end the way I thought. I didn’t know the bride’s uncle would be waiting for me in the darkest hallway.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

For weeks I’d been pretending everything was fine, until that night a man looked at me the way my husband had stopped looking at me, and I chose not to resist.

When Inés opened the door to the two men in uniform at exactly midnight, I knew the promise of a quiet night had been a delicious lie.

My boyfriend was snoring like a log in the back room when she came up to me. Her southern accent and those black eyes told me everything before her hands did.

Three days at the beach, five friends, and a phone that was never turned off. I thought I was among innocent laughs; others saw it as a show.

From my wheelchair I watched my wife get out of the car on my boss’s arm. And I knew, without knowing how, that that night I’d be surplus in my own marriage.

At three in the morning, Damián was still sunk into my sofa, shirt soaked with sweat and breathing heavy. And I was no longer thinking about anything else.

I went into the bathroom as a man and came out in a minidress and platforms. My girlfriend was waiting in the room with three strangers and a smile that said it all.

I thought the party was over when I closed the door. But she was still barefoot on my sofa, glass on her knee and another box in her hands.

I thought it was a secret date with my girlfriend’s cousin. What I didn’t know was that the phone beside the bed was streaming everything live.

Lucía was the most proper girl in the school crowd. That night I saw her walk into the birthday party in a miniskirt and realized the Sunday-Mass girl was gone.

When she pointed me out in the sea of people, I knew that night was going to break something I’d spent years trying to keep intact.