Party

We’d talked about swapping partners for weeks, but neither of us imagined that crossing that red-upholstered door would make us forget who belonged to whom.

I fell asleep in my underwear thinking how fun the party had been. Renata got under the sheets, and her hand didn’t seek my waist: it sought something else.

I woke up with my head about to explode. Beside me slept a woman who wasn’t just my wife, and I couldn’t remember a thing about how I got there.

Two beeps, a lit screen, and his wife’s voice filling the garden: “Everything that’s happening to me… everyone needs to know this.”

I saw him dancing with another girl, and something inside me broke. I wasn’t looking for revenge—I was looking for someone to make me feel what he no longer gave me.

The screen lit up, her voice filled the speakers, and in front of the whole family, she said goodbye to me forever. I still didn’t know who the other man was.

The music vibrated through my body, his eyes never left me, and I knew that night I was going to do something I’d never regret.

When the doorbell rang, I thought my friends had ordered dessert. Four men walked into my living room, and for the first time in years, I stopped thinking about my ex.

That night I put on the flesh-colored tights, the golden little jacket, and the long-haired wig. I had no idea the costume would unleash what it did.

I thought of him as just a mate and nothing more. Until that dawn he grabbed me by the neck outside the club entrance and everything I thought I knew about myself fell apart.

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.

In front of the bedroom mirror, she discovered her body still knew how to ask. What she did not expect was for someone to be willing to listen that very night.

When everyone fell asleep, Diego stayed next to me in bed. He said he wasn’t sure whether he liked men. What happened next was planned by neither of us.

I liked being watched, desired, chosen above everyone else. That night, a country man took me from the dance floor to a place there was no turning back from.

He wore an expensive suit and had a stare that intimidated everyone at the table, but he couldn’t stop looking at my feet. And I knew exactly what I was going to do with that.

I went down to the bar for two more drinks, and the voice saying hello was the last one I expected to hear at an adults-only hotel on a Saturday night.

I’d never let so many eyes run over me all at once. And the worst —or the best— part is that my husband enjoyed every second from the bar.

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.