The Professor Who Taught Me to Be Who I Always Was

All my classmates sighed over him and none of them knew how to keep a secret. He was tall, quiet, the kind of man who never needed to raise his voice for the whole classroom to fall silent. Smart to the point of irritation, and handsome in a way that made people uncomfortable. Being in his class was a relief: with him, the most arid subjects became easy and, above all, entertaining.

I remember the day Brisa swore he had flirted with her at the exit. Everyone envied her. I didn’t believe her for a second. She was simple, transparent, and one look at him was enough to know he liked the complicated, what had folds and twists. My life had plenty of those, and maybe that’s why I allowed myself to fantasize that one day he might notice me.

I was born in the wrong body. That was the phrase that stayed with me all my life, like a label sewn into the inside of my clothes that only I could read. That year I was going through an important transition: my first time away from my parents, my first time breathing without someone watching the way I walked or looked.

At my part-time job I became friends with Lorena, and by chance she knew him too. She had been his student, yes, but before that they had been something else. Friends with benefits, she said, downplaying it as she stirred her coffee.

—You can’t even imagine it, but that man has a side he doesn’t show anyone —she blurted out one night, after a couple of beers.

I didn’t believe her. In my obsessive mind, she wasn’t dazzling enough for someone like him. I was wrong about everything, of course. My surprise was enormous when, between laughs and confidences, she confessed that they had not only been friends: he had a secret life defined by BDSM, and she had been his submissive for years.

It sounded too real to be made up. And then, like someone sharing a heresy, she tilted her phone screen toward me and showed me the videos.

I had never felt so much heat between my legs. I felt it rise slowly, a wetness I couldn’t hide at that sticky table in the bar. On the screen he was someone else: the low voice turned into orders, the steady hands, a cane tracing Lorena’s back until it wrung out a moan that was pain and surrender at once. In another clip he had her tied face-down, her ass red from so many blows, and he shoved his cock into her ass in one single thrust while she screamed with her face smashed into the mattress. In another, she was on her knees, mouth open and tongue out, and he grabbed her by the hair to fuck her throat until she cried. I didn’t look away for a second. I gripped my glass until the chill of the glass pulled me back to the noise of the place, to the background music, to people laughing without suspecting what was brewing inside me, or that under the table I had my cock hard against the seam of my pants.

—And why did you leave him? —I asked, my throat dry.

—Because I broke the one rule —she said—. I told him I loved him.

What he never knew, what she told me that night and never repeated, was that she had been pregnant and decided not to go through with it. She said it without tears, like someone reading an old bill. Me, on the other hand, my head caught fire. Not because of her. Because of me. Because from that moment on I couldn’t stop imagining him doing to me everything he had done to her. That night I got to my room and touched myself thinking about him until I came twice against the pillow, biting my forearm so I wouldn’t scream the name I still didn’t dare say out loud.

***

Weeks passed. I had problems at home and stopped going to class, something normal in the story of a daughter who never fit in. When I finally returned to the university, the last thing I expected was to run into him in the elevator.

The doors closed and we were alone. He smiled at me. I had never seen him smile, and the sight knocked me sideways as if the floor had shifted.

—We missed you in class —he said—. Everything okay? If I can help with anything, tell me.

—I wish someone could —I murmured.

—You’d be surprised —he replied, looking at me in a new way—. Sometimes just saying it is enough.

I had never told anyone who I really was. And yet, that afternoon, in his office, the words slipped out of me like water through my fingers. I told him I had been born in a man’s body but that I felt like a woman. That the day my father found out I liked men, he beat me until I lost consciousness. That when my mother found my underwear hidden in my drawer, she kicked me out of the house without a coat and without an address.

I was crying, and he didn’t rush me. He went to get me sugar water and, before coming back, closed the door slowly after asking me with his eyes if it bothered me. It didn’t bother me. For the first time in a long time, it didn’t.

He took my hand. His was warm, broad, steady.

—Don’t worry —he said—. Nobody’s going to hurt you here. And if you want, here you can be a woman.

—Call me Camila —I asked him, and saying it out loud felt like something was being born.

He talked to me about himself, for once. His father had been violent too; he too had learned not to make trouble, to become invisible, to be alone in rooms full of people. The phone rang and he changed the subject, as if he had said too much. When I said goodbye, I tried to apologize for dumping my problems on him.

—It’s all right —he cut me off—. Anything, any time, you text me.

He gave me his number and made me swear no one else would have it. I walked out of that office with the impossible certainty that my platonic crush had opened a door for me. And I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Lorena.

***

I held out for three days before taking the risk. I texted him asking if he had time to talk and he replied instantly, as if he had been waiting. I invited him to my apartment, a few steps from the university. He arrived in minutes; he was still in his office when I wrote to him.

—Delete the chat —he asked at the door—. And turn off your phone while I’m here.

—Relax —I told him—. I don’t have any friends at the university.

—I know —he replied—. But there are eyes and ears everywhere.

We talked about anything, opened a beer. He was different from the man in the classroom: funny, attentive, with an empathy he had never shown in class. I asked him why he showed students another face.

—Not just to them —he said—. To everyone.

I looked at him and, underneath the pleasant conversation, all I could see was the video. The cane, the commanding voice, Lorena screaming that he was her owner, his cock burying itself deep in her ass. I wanted to be her. I wanted to be his.

When he said he had to go —a meeting with the rector—, I asked him to stay for another beer. He said he’d love to, but he couldn’t. We walked to the door together and I hugged him. I thanked him, very close to his ear, for making me feel like I wasn’t alone in the world.

He hugged me back. And then, against my neck, in a low voice, he said:

—Camila, whenever you want to feel accompanied, call me.

And he kissed my neck.

I couldn’t let him go. I turned my face and kissed him on the mouth. He answered with a force that took my breath away, one of those forces that don’t ask permission. He shoved his tongue all the way in and sucked on mine as if he wanted to tear it out. I will never forget ending up trembling in his arms before anything else happened, defeated by a single kiss, with his bulge pressing into my stomach over my clothes.

He grabbed my neck with one firm hand and held me up at eye level.

—Hold on like a man —he said slowly—, but enjoy it like a woman.

And he yanked my pants down.

His expression changed when he saw the tiny black fabric I had on underneath. He ran his eyes over me, the feminine body, the soft features, the curve I had always known was my best argument. He turned me toward the wall and pressed me with a hand that hurt and felt good in exactly equal measure. With the other he ripped my thong off in one yank; I felt it tear at the seam and fall to the floor in shreds.

—I like it like this —he said, his lips against my nape—. Hard. But I’m going to teach you how to enjoy it.

He shoved two fingers into my mouth without warning and made me suck them until they were soaked with saliva. Then he moved that hand down my back and shoved it between my ass cheeks, finding my asshole with a precision that made my knees tremble. He pushed one finger into me to the knuckle while with the other hand he squeezed one small breast under my T-shirt. I moaned against the wall, a sharp, feminine moan I had never let out with anyone before. He heard it and gave a low laugh, right by my ear.

—That’s it, Camila. That’s how I want to hear you.

He worked the finger inside me slowly, stretching me, and added another. I opened myself against his hand, shoved my ass back shamelessly, looking for it. I looked for him with my hand. He was so hard he seemed capable of breaking whatever was put in front of him. I undid his belt blind, pulled down his pants, and when I took his cock out of his boxers, I almost gasped: it was thick, long, veined, and the tip was already wet with pre-cum. While he kissed my shoulder, I stroked it with the firmness he had asked for without words, paying attention to every breath he took, measuring what made him close his eyes. I was learning fast, and he knew it: with every movement of mine his jaw tightened a little more, his hand on my nape squeezed a little more, as if it was becoming hard for him to keep being the one in control.

I knelt down without him having to ask. From below I saw him huge, absolute master of that tiny room that suddenly was my whole world. His cock bounced at my face level, thick and throbbing. I stuck out my tongue and licked him from base to tip, slowly, tasting the salty flavor desire had left behind. Then I took him all the way into my mouth, as much as I could, until he hit the back of my throat and I had to breathe through my nose so I wouldn’t choke. He grabbed my hair with both hands and started setting the rhythm, going in and out of my mouth firmly, looking down at me with a calm that was frightening, that calm of someone who knows exactly what’s going to happen. Saliva dripped down my chin, my eyes filled with tears, and I kept sucking with my lips tight around his cock as if my life depended on it.

—Look at me —he ordered.

I lifted my eyes without taking his cock out of my mouth. He held my gaze while he shoved it into my throat again and again, faster each time, until I understood there was no turning back now and I didn’t want one. He pulled it out suddenly and rubbed it over my lips, my cheeks, my chin, marking me, dirtying me. Then he put it back in my mouth and sped up.

—I’m going to come —he warned, his voice breaking for the first time.

—Where? —I asked, already on my knees, looking up at him with my mouth parted and my tongue out.

He chose my face. He took his cock out of my mouth and gripped it in his hand, aiming at me, and started coming in thick, hot ropes. The first spurt closed my eyes, the second filled my mouth, the third marked my chest, and the ones that followed painted my chin, my neck, my collarbone. I opened my mouth as wide as I could, sticking out my tongue, swallowing what fell inside me, feeling it thick and salty slide down my throat. Then he made me lick every drop clean with my tongue, slowly, first from his fingers and then from his own cock which he brought to my lips, while he held my chin so I wouldn’t look away. I sucked the tip until it was dry, and he looked at me with a smile that wasn’t tenderness but ownership. He recorded it. He took out his phone with the hand he still had free and filmed how I, kneeling, my face smeared with his semen and my eyes shining, licked his cock and thanked him in a low voice. I let him, because belonging to him also meant that: that he would keep a record proving I had been his.

When he finished dressing, he adjusted his shirt in front of the mirror by my entrance as if nothing had happened. Before opening the door, he leaned in and whispered in my ear the sentence that still makes my skin crawl today.

—From today on, you’re mine alone, Camila.

I didn’t answer. There was no need. That was the first of many nights, the beginning of a story I learned to carry in silence and that today, finally, I’m brave enough to tell you.