Young

At fifty-five I thought desire was a thing of the past, until my daughter’s husband looked at me the way mine had long forgotten how.

He was old enough to be my son, but he looked at me like a man looks at a woman he wants to undress slowly. And I did nothing to correct the misunderstanding.

I turned off the TV, waited for my aunt to start snoring, and lifted my leg over his hip. I felt how hard he was and knew there was no turning back.

I watched him through the window while he touched himself, thinking no one could see him. The next day I went down with the excuse of using the bike, and I wasn’t leaving without trying him.

I hadn’t set foot in a club in years, but that night my son’s friend looked at me in a way no man had in a long time.

By day she humiliated me in front of her friends; by night she begged me to put her in her place. No one imagined what was happening inside that car.

I was forty-one and had spent months pretending nothing was happening whenever he looked at me. That night, I stopped pretending.

She climbed the ladder in front of me with nothing beneath her nightgown, and I knew I wouldn’t leave that apartment the same man who entered.

That afternoon his mother wasn’t home and he had a surprise waiting. I still didn’t know those minutes would awaken a taste I’d never let go of.

Every time she leaned over to write down my answers, her vest opened a little more, and I could no longer concentrate on a single question in the questionnaire.

When the most elegant woman in the room took my hand and whispered, “Come with me,” I knew that night would be unlike any other.

I left the curtain half-open on purpose. That afternoon wasn’t just for Adrián and me: someone else was waiting for the show from across the street.

She came upstairs with two containers and a smile that was far too sweet. He was twenty-two, had the whole weekend free, and an idea he knew he shouldn’t have had.

The divorce didn’t break me: it gave me back my breath. That night, with a button-front dress and a poured drink, I let a much younger stranger make me feel alive.

I’d been sleeping with men for five years, and kneeling there again, I did the exact math of how many had gone through my mouth. That night I realized something had broken.

I’d been at the company barely a month when my director put her hand on my thigh and ordered me upstairs for a drink. I wasn’t about to disobey her.

She gave me a hundred euros in tip for a three-kilometer ride. It took me two days to understand the money was only the beginning of what she wanted.

I opened the door wearing a single button-front dress and nothing underneath. If he understood the invitation, perfect; if not, I’d make it clear.

I never told her what I imagined at night while she slept beside me. This is the confession I’ve kept silent since we arrived in that city.

I grew up understanding naturism as something natural, but nothing prepared me for the day my mother’s boyfriend stopped covering himself in front of me.