Women Who Share a Flat (and VI)

A conversation between two men in a restaurant, who propose giving up the chase and paying for sens to avoid commitment, leaves three female friends who overhear them with no comeback. The piece explores the wear and tear of relationships and the asymmetry of expectations.

The scene takes place in a crowded restaurant, with tables barely a meter and a half apart. Three women who have been sharing a flat for two years —Gisela, Nuria and Beatriz— are having their monthly dinner. At the next table, two men, Arturo and Diego, hold a conversation the women can't help overhearing. The line that sets it all off: "I've always wanted to be lgtb, but it just doesn't come naturally to me." From there, the story becomes a dissection of the war between the sens from a bar counter.

## Quitting the Chase

Arturo announces that he has decided to withdraw from the competition. No more winning women over, taking them out to dinner, feigning interest in their problems and spending half his life trying to guess what they expect from him. His alternative is paying for sens. Diego confesses he had always felt a bit of a failure over that, as if he had to pay because no woman wanted to sleep with him willingly. Arturo turns the argument around: the problem is having accepted that they get to decide whether you're a winner or a loser.

The logic Arturo lays out has a coldness that unsettles. If you get a girlfriend, you've succeeded. If you don't, you're a pathetic loser. And if you pay for sens, you're a degenerate. Against that outside judgment, he proposes an individual way out: you pay, you enjoy yourself and you go home. No arguments, no jealousy, no anniversaries, no meeting anyone's parents and no one asking why you came home late. His list of advantages reads more like settling scores than a philosophy of life.

The most bitter point comes when Diego compares the situation to that of a dog: always attentive to its owner, trying to guess what she wants. If it gets it right, she strokes it; if not, she punishes it. Arturo adds the example of Marta, his ex-partner, who had a foolproof way to win any argument: she stopped having sens with him until he apologized. And he always apologized, even when he was right. The conclusion he draws is that it took him years to realize he was an idiot.

## Sensual Asymmetry and the Faked Orgasm

The conversation drifts toward what Arturo calls sensual asymmetry. He argues that women are better equipped: they can come five times in a row, ten if they feel like it, while men have sens, come and go rest. He adds that they have to worry about whether the equipment works. And he finishes with a question that throws Diego off: whether he knew any man capable of faking an orgasm. Diego tries a joke —"Oh, darling, here it comes! Here it comes again!"— and the three women at the next table burst out laughing while trying not to make a sound.

Gisela chokes on a sip of water. Nuria covers her mouth. Beatriz, on the other hand, watches Arturo with a curiosity that is starting to look suspicious. The scene works as an uncomfortable mirror: they are hearing a version of masculinity they had never considered, and what they hear is not a complaint but a calculated surrender.

## The Hyena and the Men Who Don't Try to Pick Anyone Up

When the two men ask for the bill and get up, Nuria gives them a cheeky smile. Diego sees it, smiles back and is about to say something to her. Arturo grabs his arm: "Don't feed the hyenas." And they leave the restaurant. The three women stay silent for a few seconds. Gisela explodes: "What a pair of bastards!" Nuria admits the big guy was pretty good-looking. Beatriz keeps staring at the door.

What bothers Beatriz most is not the conversation about paying for sens or the theory about sensual asymmetry. It's that they didn't even try to pick them up. There lies the story's twist: two men who theorize about quitting the chase and, when put to the test, make no move to win anyone over. The indifference strikes them as more offensive than contempt. Gisela declares "screw them," and Nuria replies that that is exactly what the skinny one wanted, but it doesn't come naturally to him.

That night the three friends don't have fun. They go out for drinks as planned, but none of them can get the two men from the restaurant out of her head. They return home alone, much earlier than usual and in a foul mood. As they remove their makeup, each in her own room, all three think exactly the same thing: that those two would already be sleeping soundly, after having had sens at their leisure. And without having had to flatter anyone.

## The Price of Freedom

The story leaves a question hanging: is Arturo's withdrawal a liberation or a surrender disguised as strategy? He presents it as a rational decision, but his speech is full of unhealed wounds. The mention of Marta, the vvife who has married someone else, works as the silent engine of his entire argument. He hasn't regained his freedom: he has abandoned the terrain where he was defeated.

Diego, on the other hand, is the counterpoint. He admits his failure, laughs at himself and doesn't quite buy his friend's speech. The scene ends with no winners. The three women go home with the feeling of having lost something they didn't even know was at stake. And the two men leave without having tried anything, convinced they have won a battle no one had declared.

The story portrays a recognizable phenomenon: the erosion of expectations in contemporary relationships. Arturo has turned his personal experience into a general theory, and Diego listens to him with a mix of complicity and doubt. The women, for their part, discover that indifference can sting more than rejection. The story offers no solutions, only a mirror. And in that mirror, no one comes out looking good.