The Night I Discovered the Voyeurs’ Club

Esteban had two lives and only one was real. By day he was an office worker, arrived punctually at work, answered emails without passion, and went back to his apartment with routine stuck to his body like a second skin. By night, when the neighborhood slept, he turned into something else: a silent hunter, a collector of other people’s sounds.

His habit had begun when he was in his early twenties, with porn and slow masturbation in front of the screen. But soon he discovered that the screen wasn’t enough. What really sped up his pulse was knowing that on the other side of a wall there were real people doing it. So for years, his ritual was always the same.

Every two or three weeks he would slip away to one of the cheap motels around Centeno Avenue, those places with neon lights blinking over the sign and a receptionist who didn’t care who came in or out. He asked for the cheapest room, left the money on the counter, and climbed the stairs trying not to make a sound.

Once inside, he turned off the light, sat on the edge of the bed, and waited.

The motels were predictable in that way: there was always someone on the other side. A couple arguing and ending up fucking furiously, two furtive lovers who laughed softly before starting, a woman alone who called someone on the phone and touched herself while she talked. Esteban undressed slowly and pressed his ear to the wall. The springs of the neighboring bed vibrated against the wood, moans came in waves, half-finished words slipped into his head like a whisper.

He stroked himself with the same slowness with which he listened. He synchronized his hand with the rhythm from the other room. He closed his eyes and invented the scene: the position, the faces, the clothes thrown on the floor, the bathroom mirrors fogged up. When the neighbors finished, he did too, almost always soon after, biting his lip so as not to give himself away.

That had been his existence for years. Until it stopped working.

***

The problem with any vice is that it always asks for more. The motels started to seem like used sets, the moans on the other side of the wall sounded repeated, as if the couples had agreed to imitate one another. One night, in his apartment, he opened his laptop with a vague hope of finding something new and went into one of those forums that appear and disappear every few months, full of threads about fetishes, sauna recommendations, and warnings about dangerous men.

In the middle of a thread titled “For Those of Us Who’ve Seen It All,” someone wrote a single line: “Penumbra. Tárcoles Street, block eight. But not for everyone.”

Below it were a dozen comments. “It’s real. It costs. Worth it.” “If you go, don’t ask. Just look.” “Not for beginners.” No one gave concrete details. They only hinted at booths, acoustic panels, mirrors, real neighbors. A barely sketched promise that got into his head and refused to leave.

It took him three weeks to work up the courage. He drove past the place twice before going in; both times he forced himself to keep driving, his heart pounding against his ribs. The facade was absurdly discreet: a black gate between a laundromat and a closed-down shop, no visible sign, just a tiny red light over the doorbell. The third time he got out of the car and rang.

An older man with a scruffy beard and glasses slipping down his nose opened the door. He sized him up without bothering to hide it. He didn’t ask for a name or ID.

—First time? —he asked, chewing on a toothpick.

—Yes.

—Basic booths or suite. The booths are seventy. The suite is two hundred.

Esteban paid for the booths in cash, counting the bills slowly so his hands wouldn’t shake. The man stuffed the money into his trouser pocket and motioned for him to follow.

The corridor was narrow and smelled of damp mixed with a sweet disinfectant, as if someone had tried to cover up something worse. The walls were lined in burgundy velvet worn out by the years. There were six numbered doors. The man opened number four and gestured him inside.

—One hour —he said, and shuffled away.

***

The booth was the size of a closet. A synthetic leather reclining chair, a screen at eye level, a pair of headphones hanging from a hook. On the side wall there were two discreet buttons: one green labeled “content,” one red labeled “neighbor.”

Esteban closed the door behind him. He slid the bolt twice, just in case. He sat down. The chair’s upholstery was warm, as if someone had just gotten up. He tried not to think about that.

He pressed the green button and the screen lit up. The menu was long, much longer than he had imagined, with categories sorted in a bureaucratic neatness that contrasted with the place. He chose something soft to start: a couple on a rumpled bed, kisses that lasted too long, hands moving unhurriedly. He loosened his belt and unbuttoned his pants. Excitement rose in him with the old familiarity, that tingling at the base of his spine.

But after a few minutes the red button weighed on his gaze. He took a long time to press it. When he did, the sound hit him through the headphones like a slap.

It wasn’t a recording. It was the headphones connected to the booth next door. A man breathing hard, the wet friction of skin against itself, a pause, a sigh, then the breathing again. Someone like him, locked in an identical closet, masturbating a meter away, not knowing he was being heard.

Esteban stayed still for a moment, his hand frozen. Then he kept going, slowly, synchronizing as he had learned to do in the motels. The difference was that now the other man wasn’t seeing anything real either; he was living off imagination too. They were two men shut up in adjoining closets, each feeding the other without knowing it, watching different screens and building the same fantasy by touch.

His pleasure climbed in steps. The screen switched to a hidden-camera video, a shower with the glass door fogged over. The sound of water mixed with the neighbor’s breathing. Esteban sped up his hand, let out a low moan, and for a tenth of a second it seemed to him that the other man answered. He went rigid against the air, holding his breath. The pause lasted too long. Then both went on, without breaking the silence again.

When he finished, he stayed sunk into the chair, panting, head thrown back and an odd knot in his chest. He still had twenty minutes left on the basic package. He didn’t use them. He pulled up his pants, went out, paid the difference with the bills he had left, and asked for the suite.

***

The suite was on the first floor. He went up a wooden staircase that creaked with every step. The man with the toothpick left him in front of a door numbered twelve and handed him a key tied to a cord.

—One more hour. If you want to extend, ring the bell in the hallway.

Inside, the air was heavy. A double bed with wine-colored sheets, badly stretched. One wall covered with four small screens connected to the same cable. And on another wall, what Esteban had come looking for without fully knowing it: three rectangular little windows, each the size of an open book, with mirrored glass on the neighbor’s side. Above each one, a plastic label said “do not knock.”

He undressed down to his boxers and sat on the edge of the bed. He turned on the screens with the remote he found on the pillow. The images began to move: four scenes at once, all live, all taken from hidden cameras in different suites in the place. A woman alone, seated on the floor against the wall, feet apart and her hand tucked under her skirt. A couple still fully dressed, fighting and looking at each other as if they were about to break something. A man alone, on a bed identical to his, masturbating with his eyes closed. A group —he couldn’t count how many— undoing buttons and tangling together with laughter.

The screens were good, but the mirrors were something else.

He moved up to the first little window and pressed his forehead to the cold glass. On the other side, a young woman, completely naked, bent over the bed with her legs spread. A man behind her held her by the hips and thrust unhurriedly, biting his lip. The sound reached him only faintly muffled: broken breaths, bodies striking together, an occasional stray word. The woman turned her head over her shoulder and looked toward the mirror, not through it, of course, but against her own reflection. Esteban froze, with the absurd sensation that she had discovered him.

He moved to the second window. A man alone, sitting in an armchair, still dressed for the office with his tie loose, masturbating slowly. His eyes were fixed on something outside the visible frame. Esteban understood that on the other side, that man was also looking at something or someone, and that the chain might never end: every room a mirror, every mirror a voyeur, all of them watching without being seen.

A shiver ran through him, but it wasn’t fear. It was that other thing he had spent years chasing.

He went back to the bed. He took off his boxers, lay down on his back, and let the sound of the invaded suites wrap around him completely. The screens were still on, the mirrors were still in place, the neighbors were still strangers. And for the first time in years, as he touched himself without hurry, Esteban didn’t need to imagine anything. Everything he had always built in his head was there, in four screens and three rectangles of glass, happening for real and at the same time.

He came twice. The first time violently, gasping into a pillow that smelled like someone else. The second time, later, almost in silence, with his eyes open and fixed on the central little window, where a new stranger had arrived to replace the previous one.

***

When he left, it was close to four in the morning. Tárcoles Street was empty and wet, with that stillness cities have when no one is lying anymore about what they’re doing. The man with the toothpick saw him off with a nod, without smiling, like someone who already knows that this customer is going to come back.

Esteban walked to the car with weak legs and a metallic taste in his mouth. He knew that the thin walls of the motels on Centeno Avenue would never be enough for him again. Penumbra had opened a door and, on the other side, there were more doors, all mirrored, all showing someone like him.

He started the engine and promised himself he would come back on Friday. He also knew he wasn’t going to keep that promise. He was going to come back much sooner.