My Aunt Taught Me to Spy on the Lake Neighbors

Florencia would never forget that January in Aunt Lucía’s cabin. She was nineteen, with copper hair falling past her shoulders and a rather vague idea of what desire was. She knew boys her age were always thinking about one thing, but she had never stopped to think about what happened inside her own head when she looked at them for too long.

The cabin stood on the outskirts of a town on the lakeshore, wedged between pine trees and two weekend chalets. Her aunt had left her alone that morning to go shopping in the city. The plan was a late lunch, so Florencia stayed stretched out on the living-room sofa with the fan aimed at her face and a T-shirt far too thin for any unexpected visit.

She heard the splash before she stood up. A sharp sound, followed by male laughter. She walked barefoot to the back window and peered out between the curtains.

—The neighbors —she murmured.

The cabin next door was usually empty. Her aunt had explained that it belonged to a family from the capital who barely used it two weekends a year. But that morning, in the garden pool, there were three boys splashing around as if they owned the world. Florencia guessed they were her age, maybe a little older. And, she admitted, they had nice bodies. Firm shoulders, broad backs, that skin burned by several days in the sun.

She rested her elbow on the frame and bit her lip. She was feeling a heat that had nothing to do with summer.

And then it happened.

All three got out of the water at once, looked at one another with a childish air of complicity, and pulled down their swimsuits at the same time. Florencia covered her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh. It was the first time she had ever seen a man naked for real, and the surprise was double: because there were three of them, and because none of them had anything that impressed her very much.

One was blond, with curly hair plastered to the back of his neck from the water. The other two were dark-haired, almost twins in posture, standing with their hands on their hips as if they were posing for a sports photo. They had barely any pubic hair. And between their legs, three small cocks swayed in the breeze like three short pendulums.

They’re boys. Three boys playing at being men.

—Mine’s the longest! —the blond shouted, gripping himself with an open palm.

—And mine’s the thickest! —one of the dark-haired ones answered, lifting his proudly.

The third, the quietest one, didn’t even join the comparison. Florencia leaned a little farther over the sill, unable to look away. There was no desire in what she felt, not yet. There was pure curiosity, a mixture of stifled laughter and a question growing in her chest.

Is that all they have?

She took out her phone almost without thinking. She snapped a photo, then another. She didn’t plan to show them to anyone. She just wanted to be able to look later, calmly, at that scene that would seem impossible to her as soon as she closed the curtain. The boys kept walking naked toward the porch, unhurried, and went into the cabin without getting dressed again.

***

Aunt Lucía came back around noon with bags of bread and a split watermelon. They ate on the porch, in the shade. Florencia waited until dessert to bring it up.

—Aunt… do you know who the boys next door are?

Lucía lifted one eyebrow, amused.

—Oh, now then. The three musketeers. They come from Mendoza, sons of some friends. They’re all twenty-one, but their heads are still fourteen. When they get together, they look like a bad TV show.

—They bathed naked today —Florencia said, pretending to focus on the watermelon—. As if nobody could see them.

Lucía let out a short laugh.

—They always do that. They know I live alone and they think I’m not watching. Once, two summers ago, they came to ask me for salt with their swimsuits deliberately pulled low. I gave them a good earful and since then they’ve behaved a little better… but only a little.

—They’re… boys —Florencia said, doubtful about the word.

—They’re not boys, my love. They’re immature. Which is different. They’re twenty-one and still measuring themselves against each other as if that decided anything. —She took a sip of water—. Tonight, when you hear them laughing, you’ll realize they’re drinking. And tomorrow they’ll be in the buff again, as if nothing happened.

Florencia stayed quiet for a while, stirring her ice with the spoon.

—It’s the first time I’ve seen a man like that.

Her aunt looked at her over the rim of her glass, with a smile that took a second to appear.

—Those aren’t men yet. A man is something else. —She tilted her head toward the cabin across the way—. A man is that over there.

***

The next morning, the two of them were in the same spot by the window. Her aunt with mate in one hand and Florencia hugging her knees on a low chair. The three boys came back out to the yard on time, this time already naked from the start, as if the pool were just an excuse.

—Those three love being watched —Lucía said in a low voice, still sipping—. A bunch of exhibitionists who don’t dare call themselves that.

Florencia tried not to laugh. It was hard. The three of them chased each other around the pool, slapping backs and other places. Their cocks, still soft, bounced as they ran back and forth. It was an image as ridiculous as it was hypnotic.

—Look —her aunt said suddenly, turning her head the other way.

Florencia followed her gaze. In the back garden of the other cabin, a man came out who looked nothing like the ones in the first chalet. Tall, shoulders like beams, a back furrowed with long muscles and a deep tan. He wasn’t wearing anything. He walked with the natural ease of someone who doesn’t need to hide what he has, and what he had was hard to ignore. His cock was long, heavy, hanging against his left thigh with a slow sway. The dark, thick patch of hair over his pubis was perfectly trimmed. Just one of his testicles seemed to be the size of what the three musketeers could add up to between them.

Florencia swallowed without meaning to.

That… that really is something else.

—His name is Joaquín —Lucía said without offering any more detail—. He lives alone. He works out in the shed out back. He’s forty-two and just patient enough not to fight with the boys.

—Do you know him?

Lucía took a while to answer. She smiled, like someone remembering something pleasant.

—I know him.

Meanwhile, the three from the first chalet kept racing around like newly weaned puppies. One of the dark-haired ones slipped on a wet tile, took two comic steps trying to recover his balance, and toppled forward. He landed with his pelvis against the cement edge of the pool.

The scream he let out was so shrill it could be heard inside the cabin.

Florencia clapped both hands over her mouth. Her aunt burst into a long, open laugh, not hiding it at all. The other two friends, in an identical reflex, covered their crotches with their palms and froze.

—That’s it —Lucía said, wiping away a tear—. That fall was worth the whole morning.

The boy managed to stand, bent in half, face red and hands protecting what was left of him. The friends helped him into the living room, still without getting dressed, in a clumsy procession that finally left the two women laughing until they cried.

***

The night was another story.

Florencia went to bed early, but she couldn’t fall asleep. Her body felt different, some new kind of restlessness settled in her stomach. She tossed and turned, listened to the crickets, tried not to think about what she had seen. But the images kept coming back, one after another: the three pendulums in the first chalet, Joaquín’s shoulders, the way her aunt had smiled when she said his name.

At eleven-thirty, she heard the garden door close.

She got up barefoot, without turning on the light, and walked toward the living-room window. Her aunt wasn’t in the room. Florencia moved the curtain just a little and looked toward the other chalet.

Lucía was walking along the stone path in a thin dress, carrying nothing. Joaquín’s back gate opened before she could knock. Florencia stayed there, watching the scene without moving.

Ten minutes later, a faint light came on in Joaquín’s living-room window. The curtains were thin. Too thin.

Florencia moved closer to the glass, not knowing whether she had permission to look at what she was about to look at. But she looked anyway.

Her aunt was leaning against the back of a sofa, her back to the window, with her dress hitched up to her waist. Joaquín held her by the hips with both hands, unhurried, setting a slow rhythm that could be seen even from outside in the way Lucía’s body moved forward and back. At one point, he took her hair gently, almost respectfully, and tugged her head back just a little. Lucía opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue, and leaned over the backrest again.

Florencia ran out of breath.

My aunt. My aunt doing that.

She pressed her forehead to the glass and forced herself to breathe. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught another movement.

She lowered her gaze toward the wooden fence that separated Joaquín’s cabin from the first chalet. Three silhouettes, pressed against the slats, looking through the gaps. The three musketeers, this time wearing shorts, but with their hands buried inside them. They moved in time with what was happening on the other side.

Florencia bit her lip.

There was something almost funny about that scene: the immature boys spying on the adult man who had her aunt undone with pleasure. Something funny and, at the same time, deeply exciting. Because now she understood that she was doing the same thing they were. She was on the other side of a window, watching in secret, her heart racing and her pulse pounding in places it had never beaten before.

She felt the heat rising through her legs. A new wetness, not summer sweat.

Slowly, without taking her eyes off Joaquín’s window, she slid her hand under her nightdress. She found the exact place without having to search. And she began, with two awkward, curious fingers, to do the same thing the boys on the other side of the fence were doing.

Her aunt was moaning silently inside the other cabin. Joaquín kept setting the rhythm. The three from the first chalet were masturbating against the wood. And Florencia, alone in the dark living room, discovered that night that looking was also a way of touching.

When she finished, with her forehead still pressed to the glass and her breathing ragged, she didn’t feel guilty. She felt awake, for the first time in her life.

She went back to bed without making a sound. Her aunt didn’t come back until two-thirty. Florencia pretended to be asleep. And the next day, when they crossed paths in the breakfast kitchen, neither of them said a word about the night before.

But Aunt Lucía smiled over her mate.

And Florencia, inside, knew she was never going to be the same again.