The Stadium’s Stares When My Shorts Gave Me Away

My name is Renata and, if I’m honest, almost all my wildest moments have the same origin: the way people look at me when I show a little more than I should. I didn’t go looking for that as a girl. It came on its own, that day I understood that a short skirt and a smile opened doors, got favors, and, above all, got looks. And I’ve always liked looks more than I should admit.

I’m almost thirty and I grew up in Saltillo, though the story I want to tell happened when I worked for a while as a promotional hostess. I lasted little in that world, and one of the reasons I got out is exactly what I’m about to confess. I still bite my lip when I remember it.

I started as a counter promoter, handing out product samples in stores. I was covered up, proper, boring, and they paid a pittance. When they offered me event work at the stadium, I almost screamed with excitement. Finally, something different, something where my body and my years of gym training would be worth something.

The soft drink brand uniform was genuinely comfortable: red runner’s shorts, with that side slit where the two pieces of fabric meet, a white stripe down the side, and a fitted blouse with the company logo on the front. Best of all were the sneakers. After months in heels, working in sneakers was heaven.

Of course, we folded the shorts over at the waist to make them smaller and a little bolder. I ended up wearing a thong, because with that short a fabric anything else showed too much. It’s not my favorite garment; I’m more into boxer briefs. But that night the thong was the right choice. Or the wrong one, depending on how you look at it.

***

There was a weekday game, I don’t remember why, right in the rainy season, when the sky clouds over every afternoon. The cheerleaders were short-handed and they asked us to cover. I was shocked when I saw the wardrobe change.

The cheerleading uniform was something else: black shorts with green straps, warrior style, a matching top, and pom-poms. The shorts fit me like a brief, tight, tiny, the fabric biting into the curve of my ass. I looked at myself in the dressing-room mirror and thought that even when you don’t want to, sometimes work forces you to go around being provocative.

I thought the plan was to dance at halftime and that was it. What no one had explained to me was the “batucada”: going out before the game to make a full lap around the stadium, stopping in sections so each one of us would go to the center of a circle and dance. In other words, putting ourselves on display in full view of the entire grandstand.

I felt that familiar tingle running down my belly. When we started walking and I saw how the crowd packed into the stands, how the men left their beer half-finished to come closer to the railing, my heart took off. It wasn’t fear. It was something else, that mix of nerves and heat that always rises in me whenever I know I’m being devoured with the eyes.

And this time I didn’t have to fake anything. I didn’t have to make my skirt ride up “by accident,” because I wasn’t even wearing a skirt. I was in something that barely deserved the name shorts, practically in underwear, in the middle of hundreds of strangers, and no one could say anything to me because it was my job.

***

At the first stop a huge crowd gathered. I watched how they looked at the teammate dancing in the middle, how they followed every movement of her hips with an almost animal attention. I didn’t go in that first round, but my cheeks were already hot and there was an uncomfortable, delicious wetness between my legs.

We kept moving. Every meter was a pleasurable torture. I was literally walking around in briefs among a crowd, feeling the air on my bare skin and adrenaline pounding in my chest and lower down. My teammates walked calmly, used to it, oblivious to what was happening inside me. Me, on the other hand, I clamped my thighs together as I walked.

We stopped again. This time I was third in the circle. I watched the first girl go by, then the second, and with each one my pulse quickened more, until I noticed the thong fabric was already clearly wet. The way they watched her, with that shameless, undisguised desire, lit me up as if their stares were hands.

Then my turn came.

I bit my lip, took a deep breath, and walked into the center swaying as slowly and sexily as I could. I started moving my hips, then my ass, which has always been my best asset. I bent down slowly and came back up lifting my rear first, and every time I raised my eyes I saw those fired-up faces, those eyes fixed on me, and something inside me swelled, a hot rush that made me forget where I was.

What I hadn’t calculated was the effect of the dance itself.

With every sharp hip movement, the black shorts started working their way inside, sliding between my ass cheeks little by little. I could feel it and, instead of scaring me, it turned me on more. By the time I fully realized it, the fabric no longer looked like briefs: it looked like a tiny thong, and my ass was practically bare in front of the whole grandstand.

I couldn’t fix it. I had a pom-pom in each hand. Even if I wanted to pull my shorts down, I can’t, I thought, and that helplessness filled me with a new heat. I was trapped in my own display, exposed beyond saving, and the thought melted me.

I went back to my place in the circle with my ass completely out. I stood there clapping, keeping the rhythm, while another teammate danced in the center. And even so I could feel dozens of eyes drifting from her to me, to that mishap that had become the real show.

***

“Your shorts rode all the way up,” the girl behind me muttered, never stopping smiling at the crowd.

“I know,” I answered, letting out a nervous little laugh. “I can’t pull them down; I’ve got the pom-poms.”

“I can’t help you either,” she said with a shrug.

And so we kept walking, with the batucada moving again and a group of men following us pressed against the railing, pointing, elbowing each other, looking for the best angle to see me. I was supposed to look embarrassed, to fake discomfort, and inside I was burning. Every step rubbed the fabric against my wet skin and I had to focus not to tremble.

I thought we were done, that all that was left was to reach the area with no public access. But fate had one last gift: we stopped once more so the last girls could dance.

Standing again, shaking the pom-poms, with my shorts turned into a string and my ass exposed to anyone who wanted to look. I couldn’t describe everything I felt at once: shame, excitement, power, that vertigo of being the absolute center of so many hungry stares. And when I noticed that even while another girl was dancing in the middle several men kept looking at me, I knew my little accident had become the main attraction.

The last round ended. We resumed the march toward the exit, toward the protected area where the batucada ended and, with it, my favorite torment.

***

As soon as we got there, the girl behind me yanked my shorts down and adjusted them.

“Girl, they rode all the way up,” she said, laughing. “How embarrassing, right?”

“Ugh, yeah, awful,” I lied, bringing my hands to my face as if I were dying of shame.

I had to play the innocent girl who didn’t enjoy the moment, when the truth was I couldn’t remember ever being that turned on in my life.

“When we dance at halftime, maybe the same thing will happen to you,” she added, winking at me.

“There aren’t so many people around then,” I replied, and we both laughed.

What I didn’t tell her was what happened afterward, when I got back to my room alone that night. It took me forever to fall asleep. I closed my eyes and went right back to the circle, to the center of the stadium, to that crowd of men with their eyes locked on me. I felt the fabric sliding up again, the skin out in the open, the certainty of showing myself without being able to stop it.

I got into bed with the image stuck in my head and my hand went down on its own, slowly, over the belly that was still buzzing. I touched myself thinking about every look, every man who came up to the railing, the girl who warned me in my ear. I replayed the exact moment I realized I was practically naked in front of hundreds of strangers, and that alone was enough to make me arch in bed, biting the pillow to keep quiet, finishing with an intensity that left me trembling for a long while.

***

A few days later, someone recorded the batucada on a cellphone and, of all the people in the world, ended up showing it to my father. He gave me a hell of a scolding for going around dancing with my ass out in front of half the stadium. I couldn’t defend myself. What was I going to say? That it had been the most exciting moment of my short career as a promotional hostess? I lowered my head, took the sermon, and not long after I quit.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little wet that night at the stadium. There’s one thing about wearing a miniskirt and dancing sexy, showing just a little, playing with suggestion. And it’s something very different to stay there, right out on the field, with your ass in the air and no way to cover yourself, feeling hundreds of eyes run over you as if they were touching you. That’s another level of adrenaline, another level of pleasure.

I admit it without guilt: almost all my wild moments have to do with showing too much and enjoying being watched. That batucada afternoon was only the beginning. I have other stories like it, just as daring, the kind a woman does around this time of year. But those, my darlings, I’ll tell you another time.