Journal Entry – July 2

I suppose I have to stop pretending this will ever be read by anyone else. I’ll use our names because I’m tired of feeling like some adolescent scribbling secret initials in a diary. If I’m going to be honest with myself—truly honest—then I have to admit that what happened at the faculty swim club party today has only deepened my curiosity, and I’m beginning to wonder whether this is curiosity or something altogether more dangerous.

I almost didn’t go. I’d felt rattled ever since what I witnessed in my classroom, and I worried that if I saw Raymon again, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye. But my husband encouraged me to go, saying I needed to socialize more, and in truth, the weather was beautiful. It was one of those sweltering afternoons that makes the pool water look like a turquoise invitation.

I arrived a bit late, wearing a navy one-piece suit and a cover-up, determined to keep things modest. The party was in full swing: music playing, faculty chatting, some of the students and graduate assistants splashing around. The younger women wore swimsuits that made me feel—well, not old, but certainly older. My one-piece with the wrap skirt and a wide-brimmed sunhat were tasteful, appropriate, nothing to invite comment. My husband had said I looked lovely before I left, and I clung to that word lovely like a shield.

Then I saw Brenda.

She was perched on the edge of a lounger beside the shallow end, legs glistening, her pale green bikini leaving little to the imagination. She’s not vulgar—she’s sweet, even a bit reserved—but her body speaks for her in ways I imagine she doesn’t fully control. Slender, toned, skin glowing, youth clinging to her like sunlight. A slender build I recognize, much like mine at her age, a figure I still work to maintain. She laughed at something Raymon had said. I couldn’t hear it, but the way she tilted her head and brushed her hair from her face made it clear: she was deeply aware of him.

And there he was.

Raymon stood beside her in floral swim trunks, white tank top clinging to his torso. The fabric was damp, and the outline of his chest and abdomen was distractingly visible. He wore no shoes, just those long, sculpted feet planted firmly on the concrete. He looked impossibly relaxed, arms loose at his sides, his deep voice rumbling as he spoke to Brenda. She seemed delighted by everything he said.

I couldn’t stop comparing. Her body versus mine. Her smooth limbs, her bright laugh, her sun-dappled ease. My thighs, my lines, my practiced composure. And more than that—the way Raymon looked at her. Easy, comfortable. I tried to imagine him looking at me like that. I can’t say the thought didn’t stir something low in my belly.

Still, I was determined to be polite. I walked over slowly, pretending to be interested in the drink station beside their chairs. Brenda turned first, smiling. Raymon looked up at me with that same casual charm he always seems to wear like a second skin.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Walters,” he said with a grin that made my stomach flutter far more than I’d care to admit.

“Linda,” I corrected, managing a smile. “It’s summer. No need for titles.” I adjusted my sunhat, trying to keep my gaze steady on his face.

He nodded. “Fair enough. You enjoying the party?”

“It’s… lively,” I said, then added, “Nice weather for it.” I was painfully aware of how generic my words were.

Brenda sipped from a can and said something about needing to check her messages. She slipped away to the other side of the pool, and suddenly I was alone with him. Raymon turned toward the lounge chair, picking up a towel and tossing it over his shoulder. That’s when I noticed it again.

The shape in his swim trunks.

It was angled slightly downward and to the side, a long, thick impression beneath the thin fabric. My eyes flicked to it before I could stop myself, then quickly away. I told myself again: It’s his phone. Has to be. The trunks don’t have pockets, maybe he tucked it in the lining.

Still—curiosity clawed at me. The swell didn’t look rectangular. It didn’t sit like a phone would. I tried not to stare, but my traitorous eyes drifted back.

He caught me.

I saw the corner of his mouth twitch, just slightly, as if he knew. Not smug exactly, but... aware. Entirely, effortlessly aware of what I was seeing.

I forced a little laugh, light and casual. “You might want to be careful not to get in the pool with your phone in your pocket,” I said, gesturing vaguely to his waistline.

He tilted his head. “What?”

“Your… phone,” I said, my voice already faltering.

Then, with agonizing slowness, he turned and gestured toward the lounge chair. His phone—an unmistakably large black slab—sat atop the towel, catching the sun.

“Oh,” I said, too quickly. “Right. I guess I… thought I saw it in your… shorts.”

He looked at me then, and I felt something stir behind that relaxed grin. A grin beyond simple flirtation—something more primal. A quiet acknowledgement.

I froze, and in that pause, I understood what I hadn’t allowed myself to believe.

It wasn’t a phone. It never had been.

And the shape I’d seen wasn’t exaggerated by fabric or chance. It was real. The slow, heavy swing as he adjusted his footing, the pronounced bulge that refused to disappear even as he shifted, low and grazing the hemline of his shorts—it wasn’t incidental. It belonged to him.

We stood there in silence for a beat too long, and I felt my skin flush, hot despite the breeze. I made some excuse about needing a drink and walked away, unsteady on my feet.

From a distance, I watched him wade into the pool, water curling up his legs. Brenda rejoined him moments later, slipping in beside him, eyes bright. She reached toward him under the water, giggling at something he whispered. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The water rippled around his hips in slow waves, and I found myself imagining—not idly, but vividly—what it would feel like to reach for him there. To touch what I could no longer deny was – if real, and I was still unsure – shockingly, obscenely massive.

And I almost hated myself for how badly I wanted to.

I stuck around the party, talking to other faculty members, maintaining my composure but it was a challenge staying focused. Every conversation blurred into a meaningless drone. All I could see was Raymon, laughing with Brenda, the sunlight sliding over his skin, the water beading on his chest. And beneath those bright trunks—the truth of what I’d glimpsed before in my classroom seemed suddenly irrefutable.

How can he walk around like that so easily, so utterly unbothered? Does he know what he does to people? What he's doing to me?

I’m embarrassed by how many times today I found myself measuring him with my eyes. Trying to reconcile the sight with what I know of the world, of bodies, of men. My husband and I have a comfortable, loving life. I’ve never felt deprived. But what I saw in Raymon seems outside the realm of ordinary experience—outside anything I believed was real.

I keep replaying Brenda’s expression that day in my classroom, the way she seemed to hover on the edge of something that made her eyes lose focus. I wonder what it felt like for her. Part of me wants to judge her, but why? Am I merely jealous? Or am I simply consumed with wonder?

I’m afraid I’m becoming obsessed. It’s not only physical curiosity, though of course that’s part of it. It’s as though Raymon has become this living question mark in my mind, challenging everything I thought I knew about boundaries, propriety, even biology.

What is it like to carry that much of himself around? Does he think about it constantly? Or is it only the rest of us who can’t look away?

I feel like a teenager. 

My mind won’t stop replaying it—the shape in his shorts, the dark skin stretched under the thin fabric, the memory of how he handled Brenda in my classroom, how calm and unhurried he’d been even while giving her that kind of pleasure. And the possibility that what I glimpsed before really is true—that he’s that large, that he carries something inside his pants that seems almost…colossal, dare I say monstrous in its size.

Back home now, I sit with this swirling inside me. I’m not naïve. I know the world contains men of all kinds, with bodies that vary. But Raymon… he’s something else. Something I don’t have language for.

I stood next to him today and felt the heat of his body near mine. I imagined pressing against him—not out of lust exactly, but out of some terrible, devouring need to know. To understand.

What does Brenda know now that I never will?

Does Raymon understand what he does to women? Or is this simply the gravity of his presence, inevitable and unintentional?

I want to forget what I saw. I want to forget the impossible shape of him. But I also want to see it again. And I will never again look at my husband without wondering how different two men can be.

I don’t know how to reconcile this. I keep thinking about how absurd it is—how preposterous that something so private, so intimate, can have such a magnetic pull on me. I am married. I am not some impressionable girl. But I can’t stop picturing that outline. The way it shifted as he shifted. The effortless confidence of him standing there, so at ease with it, with himself. With me.

I thought if I saw him again in a bright, public place, it would become less overwhelming. Instead, it feels more real now. My mind keeps replaying that moment: his smile as he pointed to the phone across the deck, the implication so clear, so calmly acknowledged.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this fascination. It’s not as though I want anything to happen—God, I don’t, do I?  And yet, I’m compelled to imagine, to wonder, to measure my own reactions like a scientist observing some rare, unsettling specimen.

Tonight, when I lay in bed beside my husband, I closed my eyes and tried to banish the image. But it keeps returning—vivid and persistent. The press of that impossible shape beneath thin fabric. His face when he realized I was looking. That smile.

This isn’t going away. If anything, it’s growing, a curiosity so large it frightens me.