“Up here he no longer needed to hide his voice.”

“The beach was empty, the water calm, but on a pole a few meters from shore a red flag was waving.”

“In the factory—she had immediately understood—overwork drove people to want to have sex not with their wife or husband in their own house… but there, at work, morning or afternoon.”

“I tried putting myself in Mert’s shoes—I was in his underwear after all—and wondered at how easily he had offered me something so intimate. Realizing that all my efforts had been so transparent, that I had no protective cover whatsoever, was like being shoved into cold water again and again.”

We clink glasses. I tell my neighbors about the show and how it was canceled, but next time the company performs—at the end of August—we should go together, I say. They can bring the babies.

You’ve never been a woman. You’ve been inside a woman, but you’ve never been a woman with something inside of her. You are inside of me. You marvel at the shape of my bladder.