I Touched Myself While the Party Went On in the Patio

There’s a secret advantage to being the invisible cousin in the family: no one looks for you when you slip out of sight. I discovered that on that Sunday afternoon at my grandparents’ house, while the patio filled with aunts speaking too loudly and uncles toasting with warm beer. I was twenty-two and used to blending into the background every time the family got together.

I hardly have any cousins my age. The ones I do have are older, already married, with babies in their arms and conversations that don’t include me. And there are much younger ones, shrieking kids running between the flowerpots. I end up in a mute in-between, on a shore no one notices. Sometimes it bothers me. That afternoon, though, it worked out more in my favor than I could have foreseen.

My grandparents’ house is one story, with a huge front patio where the grills get set up and the fairground lights are hung. The back rooms open onto a narrow hallway, and mine—the one I use when I stay over—has a window that looks straight out onto the patio. A large window, with lightweight fabric curtains my grandmother washes every season.

“Mariela, come help me with the empanadas,” my mother had asked as soon as we arrived.

I helped her all morning. I folded dough, pinched the edges, dried dishes, carried trays. When the oven started smelling of cumin and browned onion, I knew my shift was over. My mother kissed my forehead with both hands full and told me to rest for a while. I took advantage of that. I slipped down the back hall, opened my bedroom door, and closed it behind me with a sigh that was almost relief.

The curtain was drawn, or so I thought. I kicked off my sandals against the wardrobe, let my hair down, and dropped onto the bed. I was wearing a short cotton jumper, a V-neck not too deep, loose stretchy fabric, cool for November heat. Underneath, a cheap lace panty I’d bought at the neighborhood market. Nothing special. The kind of clothes you wear to a family gathering when you know you’re going to be invisible.

I took out my phone and started scrolling without really looking at anything in particular. Memes, photos of people I didn’t care about, short videos I forgot the moment they ended. The voices from the patio came in filtered through the wall, distant, muffled. My aunt Renata was shouting some story about her trip to Bariloche. My uncle Hernán was laughing with that laugh of his that carries from two streets away. I settled onto my side and crossed my legs over the bedspread.

Right in front of the bed there’s a full-length mirror, old, with a dark wooden frame, that my grandmother moved from her room last year. It leans against the wall and its lower edge sits almost level with the mattress. I had forgotten about it until I turned my head to reach the charger and my eyes met my own reflection.

What I saw surprised me.

The fabric of the jumper, pulled up by the way I was lying, had settled in a strange way between my thighs. And the light coming in through the window—not through the center of the curtain, but through a side gap—hit right on my crotch. In the reflection, through the cotton, you could make out the exact shadow of the lace. As if I were wearing clothes and not wearing them at the same time.

Pure reflex, pure boredom, I brought my free hand down there. I wasn’t thinking about anything sexual yet. It was that gesture some women have—and many men too, I suppose—of resting a hand over the intimate area when they’re doing nothing. A neutral gesture, almost one of relaxation. My palm lay flat over the warm fabric and my fingers settled by themselves into the shape of me.

I stayed like that for a few minutes. Looking at my phone, listening to the party, feeling the heat of the room. Without meaning to, my middle finger started tracing the lace line over the jumper. Up and down. Once. Again. The stretchy fabric moved with the pressure and let me feel the groove of my own body as if nothing were between us.

***

Only then did I notice something that changed everything.

The curtain wasn’t fully closed. In the center, where the two panels were supposed to overlap, there was a gap of about fifteen centimeters. Fifteen centimeters of clear glass, unfiltered, looking straight out onto the patio. At exactly the height of my bed. If someone walked across the main patio, they wouldn’t see me. But if someone came a few steps closer to the window, out of curiosity or to escape the noise, they’d have a full view of me, reclined, with my hand between my legs.

I should have gotten up to close it. That’s what a sensible person would do. Instead I stayed still, my heart suddenly pounding in my throat, weighing the possibility. I calculated the distances. The window is about three meters from where the grill gets set up. For someone to see me, they’d have to want to see me. They’d have to come closer, shade their eyes with their hands, press their face to the glass. Unlikely. Not impossible.

That word—impossible—kept echoing in my head.

And my hand, which up to that point had been moving on its own, found a purpose. I shoved the jumper fabric aside just enough to slip two fingers under the edge of the lace. My skin was hotter than I expected. Wetter too. For two days I’d had a tingling in my body that I blamed on the heat; now I understood it was something else. I was probably ovulating. My body was reacting with an urgency I had never given it permission to feel.

I rested my middle finger right on the entrance. Left it there for a second, feeling my muscles contract by reflex. Then I slid it just a little, just enough for it to sink a millimeter. Pulled it back out. Looked at it. The tip gleamed under the light coming through the curtain slit. I brought it to my mouth, not out of perversion, but out of curiosity, to see whether I would recognize myself in it. The taste was mine. Stronger than usual, almost salty, almost sweet. I was embarrassed that I’d done it and, a second later, a rush of heat hit the back of my neck.

I shot up. Locked the door with the key—the snap of the latch sounded louder than it was—and went back to the bed practically throwing myself onto it. I grabbed my phone, opened a short video I’d saved, turned the volume down to the minimum, and set it on the pillow. My free hand was already busy. My fingers slipped under the lace again, this time without any pretense.

***

One minute was enough to show me that touching myself over my clothes wasn’t going to be enough. I needed more. I needed skin on skin, no fabric, no barriers, no frustration from lace tickling my knuckles. I took advantage of how stretchy the jumper was. I slipped my hand down through the leg opening of the shorts, reached the panty from underneath, and fumbled it down, first over one hip and then the other. My legs closed automatically to help me get it off. I dragged it all the way out through one of the openings and tossed it into the laundry basket a meter away.

I was left with nothing under the jumper. The fabric hung loose over my thighs, cool, and I was aware of every centimeter of air now touching me without asking permission. I spread my legs. Slowly. I wanted to see myself. The mirror—that edge of the mirror that faced the bed directly—gave me back an image I had never watched with such calm: my own open crotch, shining, throbbing almost visibly.

That was when, right then, I lifted my eyes from the reflection and met the curtain slit.

Fifteen centimeters. The patio light came in like a vertical strip. On the other side I could hear my cousin Damián telling a joke that set off peals of laughter. I could hear my mother asking them to turn the music down a bit. I could hear the grandparents’ dog barking at the pigeons. They were three meters away. Three meters from me, legs open, staring at my sex in the mirror, with one finger about to sink in.

The fear rose in me like an electric current. And behind the fear came something else I had never felt with that intensity. A mix of panic and pleasure that left my breath coming in broken little pulls before I’d even touched myself. Adrenaline did its work. My fingertips started trembling. The skin on my neck stood up all at once.

I touched myself.

Slowly at first, two fingers drawing lazy circles over my clit, measuring the pressure, listening. Every laugh from the patio was both a threat and a permission. Every time I heard a step nearby, I stopped, held my breath, waited. Then I went on. I was learning a new language in real time, one where danger was part of the pleasure and not its opposite.

I didn’t need the phone video anymore. I’d forgotten it. My imagination was working on its own, and it wasn’t the classic pornographic kind. I wasn’t imagining scenes. I was imagining the look on any of my uncles’ faces if they happened to peer into the window at that moment. I imagined the exact second their eyes would meet mine in the mirror. I imagined the shame, yes, but also the possibility that the other person wouldn’t look away. And that made me lose myself.

***

My hand changed rhythm without asking me. The fingers sank in, one first, then two. My other hand slid up under the jumper and found my left nipple. I pinched it between thumb and forefinger and a sound escaped me that I had to smother against the pillow. The pillow gave me back my own hot breath.

My legs were spread so wide my knees brushed the sides of the mattress. I could see everything. I could see my hand moving. I could see my stomach rising and falling. I could see the vertical stripe of the curtain like a pupil watching me without blinking. Somewhere in the house, my grandmother called for Mariela. My name is Mariela. I froze for a second, fingers inside me, holding my breath. My mother answered for me: “She’s resting, Mom, we’ll call her later.” And the party went on.

That line—she’s resting—hit me like an intimate joke only I could understand. Resting. I was resting with two fingers inside me and the curtain half open. I was resting with my entire family three meters away, not knowing what that word meant in my room. I sank back in. Deeper. Faster.

The orgasm came sooner than I wanted. I felt it rising from my heels, like a wave forming far out and growing as it reaches the shore. I clenched my teeth not to make a sound. My legs closed of their own accord over my hand, my stomach muscles tightened, my back arched. I bit the back of my other hand to keep from crying out. The pleasure lingered longer than it ever had, small waves repeating as if my body didn’t want to let go.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the curtain gap. Fifteen centimeters of light. A momentary silence on the other side, someone speaking softly, a new laugh, a toast. No one had seen me. Or, if someone had, they would never say so. That doubt—the eternal possibility—would stay with me for the rest of the afternoon.

***

I stayed on the bed for a while, long after, with the jumper bunched up at my waist and my breathing slowly returning to normal. My whole body was tingling. I wiped my fingers on the sheet, not from laziness, but because the gesture felt like part of the same audacity. The sheet belonged to my grandparents. I didn’t want to think about that, and at the same time I couldn’t think about anything else.

I got up slowly. I washed up in the en-suite bathroom with almost cold water. I put on another panty from a dresser drawer, clean, white, boring. I straightened the jumper. I looked at myself in the mirror and ran my fingers through my hair. My face was shining in a way I couldn’t blame on the heat alone. My eyes looked freshly awakened. My lips a little swollen, not from biting them, but from the blood the body had sent everywhere.

Before leaving, I went back to the window. I peered through the gap without opening it any wider. I saw my uncles raising glasses around the grill. I saw my mother handing out plates. I saw my cousin Damián laughing with his mouth full. No one was looking toward my window. No one had ever looked. And yet, at some point that afternoon, the possibility that someone might had changed forever the way I was going to touch myself from then on.

I closed the curtain all the way. Then I thought about it and left it half open again. Fifteen centimeters. Exactly the same.

I went out into the hall, combing my hair with my fingers, and ran into my grandmother in the kitchen.

“Honey, you’re so flushed,” she said. “Did you fall asleep?”

“A little,” I answered, and smiled at her with a calm that wasn’t mine.

I poured myself a glass of water. I drank it in one swallow. I went back out to the patio with everyone else. I greeted whoever I had to greet, grabbed an empanada, sat down next to my mother, and let the afternoon continue its course. No one noticed anything. No one ever notices anything when you know how to be invisible.

And me, meanwhile, I was already thinking about the next family gathering.