Peeping

I only needed a bathroom that hot afternoon. What that old man at the garage did with his phone left me trapped and at his mercy for days.

For weeks he watched her from his window; the night he climbed the fence, he understood that she would decide everything that happened between them.

I was twenty and had never seen a naked man when Mariela took my hand to the back wall and whispered that I should look through the crack.

When I blindfolded her, I didn’t expect to see the old man on the balcony watching us. And instead of lowering the blind, I offered my girlfriend to him.

For a full week I watched her from behind a dune, convinced I’d never dare approach her. Then she lost her house keys on a Saturday afternoon.

We’d been married twelve years, and I’d never seen her so fully in command of herself as that afternoon, standing in the water and letting strange men look at her.

I opened the curtains half asleep and didn’t realize he was on the other side of the glass, watching me. And something in that look made me want to let him keep going.

I boarded the last car expecting a quiet trip. I never imagined the woman in the green dress would invite me to watch what her partner was about to do to her.

I told her she set the limit. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy standing aside and watching others discover her.

The first time it was just a reflection in the glass: a still silhouette on the other side of the courtyard, watching her eat breakfast in her robe. She didn’t pull the curtain. She didn’t close it either.

I thought arriving at the dead hour would protect me from their eyes. I didn’t count on them coming in to clean just as I got out of the shower.

She stood there among the trees, red with embarrassment, her hands clasped behind her back. “Just let me watch,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen a man do it.”

My window was open and my hand was where it shouldn't have been when I heard her voice ten feet away. When I opened my eyes, she was already watching me.

I only meant to connect the cameras to my phone. Instead I found, recorded and dated, what my mother did every time my father left for work.

I thought we’d had five perfect years, until she walked into that shop and chose something that made it clear my body wasn’t enough anymore.

I sat in the dim light, determined not to touch anyone and only to watch. But my fingers had other plans as I watched her give herself to two men a meter from me.

I’d been dry for five years, and my husband had just proposed a threesome with him dressed as a woman. The craziest part: I already knew who to invite.

I found him hiding in the garage, frozen with cold. I never imagined that a year later I’d be the one inviting him into my bed and my marriage.

She crossed her legs, looked at me over the book, and I knew that woman hadn’t asked permission for anything in years. The dead hour of the metro turned into something else.

She lifted her dress, looked at me with a smile, and started touching herself for the trucker driving alongside us. It was only the beginning of a trip I would never forget.