That Time My Neighbour Had a Threesome in Front of Me

I woke up to a huge breast in my face.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at to begin with, but as my eyes focused slightly and I had flashes of what had happened the night before, things got clearer.

Definitely a breast.

Above it, a woman was sleeping peacefully. I was looking up at her as she slept.

Wait, “looking up?” I was on the floor… Why had I been sleeping on the floor?

I was lying on a thin fold-out mattress, covered by a sheet, my head on a pillow fringed with a bit of lace. Which was rather strange, because I was sure I’d fallen asleep on that double bed where the breast-woman now lay.

Three pairs of feet stuck out at the bottom of the double mattress beside me. Female, male, female. There were three bodies lying in that bed, and judging by the giant breast and the clothes littering the floor – bras, thongs, a belt, a pair of boxers – they were all completely naked.

I spied my phone on the side table, perilously close to the sleeping breast-woman. As I reached up, a figure rose from the middle of the bed,

Yep, that would be my completely naked neighbour.

“Do you want to go and see if we can open your front door now?” he said amiably.

My head still refusing to accept the current state of affairs, I shook my head. Why was my Spanish so bad this morning? Then I remembered. The tequila.

“Um, no it’s fine.. Where’s your bathroom?” I said. Confused by three different doors in the very small bedroom, I did a bit of revolving on the spot until he pointed at the correct one.

Outside the bedroom, I blinked quickly and tried to get my bearings. This apartment looked very different to how I remembered it… To my right was a room, the door open. As I passed it, I saw a man in a white vest sitting comfortably in a plastic chair, watching television. Was there any reaction at the strange Western girl in his apartment? No? Ok then, moving on.

I successfully located the bathroom, locked myself in and stared at my face in the mirror. Thoughts swirling. What on earth was going on?!

The more I stood there, the more memories came flooding back to me.

Coming home at 1.30am after a few drinks out with friends on a Friday night in Medellin. The heavy rain. My absolute inability to get the key into the lock – not because I was drunk, but because it simply would not fit. The panic growing as I rang the doorbell repeatedly to no avail; the calls and texts to my landlady; the calls and texts to friends, none of whom picked up.

And then the crowning moment: realising that the key was now stuck in the lock – presumably from me repeatedly banging it with the palm of my hand in sheer desperation – and it wasn’t coming out.

Locked out of my Colombian apartment at 2am

At that point I’d had to think of other options. Ok, so I wasn’t getting any help from using my phone. So what else could I do?

Looking to the row of houses opposite, I could see lights on in the second floor. I could hear music, and laughter. It was 2am: nobody was walking the streets, no taxis were driving past.

I took a deep breath, made myself trust in the kindness of strangers, crossed the road and rang the doorbell.

A short, stocky man in his late twenties answered the door.

“Estas bien?” he said. Although clearly I wasn’t.

Together, Felipe (stocky neighbour/stranger) and I crossed back over the road to my front door, and he attempted wrestling with the very firmly stuck key. When we both understood it definitely wasn’t moving, he gestured back to his house.

“It’s fine,” he said. “You can come back to mine until we get in touch with your landlady.”

Up the stairs we went, eventually reaching a room filled with about twelve Colombians sitting on a collection of chairs and sofas, happily doing shots of aguardiente and tequila and playing with balloons.

Two girls in tiny black dresses and pointy heels moved apart so I could squeeze between them on the shiny leather sofa. I was introduced to everyone, multiple times. I was a bit drunk, increasingly tired and worried about how on earth I was going to get back into my apartment, but apparently none of that mattered because –

“Tequila!”

The room’s war cry as a bottle was passed from hand to hand, accompanied by numerous little plastic shot glasses and a salt shaker. Eventually, after an hour or so of stop-start Spanish conversation with the two ladies either side of me, plus a number of tequila shots being thrust into my hand, I looked plaintive and weary enough that Felipe took the hint.

“Would you like to go to sleep now?” he asked.

I bade the two girls goodnight and followed him through the flat to a bedroom. He got some sheets from a closet, laid them on the empty double bed and left the room. Exhausted, I fell onto the bed and went straight to sleep.

Back to the present: sorting out the morning after

Being in the bathroom had been an enlightening experience; all the details of the night before coming back to the forefront of my memory. But there was something more confusing that still stuck out like a sore thumb: if I’d gone to sleep in an empty room in an empty bed, why had I woken up on the floor?

More than that – why had I been lying on a thin mattress, covered by a sheet with my head on a pillow? Had Felipe moved me to the floor so they could sleep? Had he lifted me?!

I eventually walked back into the bedroom again and stood awkwardly, just inside the door. I didn’t fancy my chances of sneaking past the elderly Colombian without having some kind of explanatory showdown, so I figured I’d wait till Felipe woke up a bit more and then let me out of the house himself.

I absolutely did not expect what happened next.

What do you do when someone has sex in front of you?

Without making any move to register that I was back in the room, Felipe left his middle position in the bed and climbed on top of the breast-woman. Still under the sheets, he started moving. As far as I was aware, he was having sex with her.

I wasn’t going to get any closer to find out.

For those of you who’ve ever crossed a street with me, you might know I’m of the ‘deer caught in the headlights’ persuasion. When something horribly dangerous or dramatic starts to occur in front of me, I freeze. Like when a speeding car is coming at me. Or, you know, like involuntarily having to watch a group of strangers engage in a threesome.

I began typing furiously on my phone, not caring which keys I hit, solely to have somewhere else to look. Clearly my best move would have been to run screaming out of the door but I apparently didn’t have the capacity to think up such a move. Nope, instead I stood in painful awkwardness, praying it’d be over quickly.

There was also a certain level of utter incredulity. Did they seriously not care that I was in the room too?!

The most worrying aspect by far was that breast-woman’s arm was lying flat against her side; no movement, nothing. I vaguely hoped she was enjoying it, at least. Meanwhile, the other woman eventually sat up, on the far edge of the bed – sex still continuing on the nearest side to me – and fished around on the floor for her thong. She put it on and walked towards me, at which I pretended to be very busy with the texts I was writing.

No conversations with a thong-only-clad Colombian lady in a stranger’s apartment on a tequila hangover, thank you very much.

Where on earth do we go from here?

After a few minutes, Felipe appeared at the end of the bed. I was only looking out from my peripherals by this point so hadnt seen him move – although I can attest that there were no noises to indicate the situation…finishing…

As he pulled his jeans on, my virile neighbour asked breezily for a second time if I’d like to go and sort my house key out. The two semi-naked women were now having a chat – presumably about their recent threesome. I didn’t attempt to listen.

Together, Felipe and I walked through the flat, waving hola to his dad, still stoically watching TV, and his mum hanging out the washing on the balcony. Down the stairs, across the road and towards my front door – where, to my utter relief, there was no key stuck in the lock anymore.

Shrugging off the immediate concern that someone had probably wrestled it out in an attempt to break in, I rang the doorbell and my housemate appeared at the second floor window.

“I lost my key!” I yelled, hopefully, up to her. She disappeared, only to re-emerge at the front door moments later.

Felipe didn’t seem ready for us to part ways.

“Take my phone number,” he urged. I dutifully tapped it into my phone, silently willing him to turn and leave. More specifically, for him to remove his foot from the inside of my doorway.

“Did that honestly just happen?!”

I thought, as I finally made it back to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me while I tried to make sense of the last twelve hours.

Yep, a pretty weird and unexpected turn of events: locked out of my apartment, crashed at a neighbour’s house and woke up to him having sex with a couple of women in the same room as me. Probably the weirdest and most terrifying morning I’ve had in South America.

And I still don’t know how I ended up on the floor…

Have you ever been in a bizarre situation abroad that you couldn’t make head or tail of? I’d love to hear about it – if only to absolve myself about this one…