I Confess That I Fantasize About a Much Older Woman

It’s been months since I’ve been able to fall asleep without imagining her.

She doesn’t have a fixed face. Sometimes she’s the ceramics workshop teacher I go to on Tuesdays, a woman in her fifties who corrects the position of my hands with a patience that seems far too deliberate, and when she leans over me she lets me see the swell of her breasts inside her clay-stained apron. Other times she’s the owner of the bookstore on Mendoza Street, with gray hair pulled back in a low bun and glasses hanging from her neck on a gold chain, and on those nights I imagine her slipping her fingers between the books at the back, with the shop door left unlocked. The fantasy changes leading lady, but the script is always the same, and it always ends with my hand under the sheets, with two fingers moving in circles over my clit until I bite the pillow so my mother, on the other side of the hallway, won’t hear me come.

I’m twenty years old. I’m five foot four, soft in the hips and chest, white-skinned though summer left the freckles on my nose more visible. I’ve been dressing differently for a while: shorter skirts, blouses with lower necklines, lingerie no one sees but that makes me walk straight. My mother asks me if I have a boyfriend and I tell her no. I’m not lying. I don’t have anyone. I only have this fantasy that repeats itself with the discipline of a prayer, and a cunt that gets wet the moment I rest my head on the pillow.

***

I imagine it’s Friday afternoon. It’s hot. I’ve spent two hours in front of the mirror choosing what to wear and in the end I settle on the blue pleated skirt, the one that barely covers half my thighs when I sit down. Under it, the white lace panties I bought one Sunday afternoon in a downtown shop and that made me blush when I paid for them. I paint my lips a discreet red. I let my hair down. I look at myself and think I’m pretty. I think I’m pretty for her.

We meet in a small bar in a neighborhood that isn’t mine. She gets there early. She always gets there early. She’s in her late forties, wearing a black dress to the knee and a silver bracelet that tinkles when she lifts her glass. She looks at me come in and I see her narrow her eyes for a second, just enough to let me know she’s taken in every detail: the length of the skirt, the neckline, the new shoes.

—You’re late —she says.

—Only five minutes.

—Five minutes is five minutes.

I sit across from her. The chair is high and I have to cross my legs carefully so I don’t show her everything at first glance. She orders red wine for both of us. She doesn’t ask what I want. She stopped asking me what I want a long time ago, and I like that more than I know how to explain.

***

The bar gradually fills up. A group of boys comes in and settles at the counter. One of them, tall, with a three-day beard, turns his head toward our table and keeps staring a little longer than he should. I ignore him. But she doesn’t.

I see her squeeze the stem of the glass between her fingers. How her jaw tightens just a little, that tiny gesture she has when something doesn’t please her.

—We’re leaving —she says.

—We just got here…

—I said we’re leaving.

She leaves some bills on the table, takes my wrist with a firmness that isn’t anger but isn’t affection either, and gets me out of the bar without looking at anyone. The sidewalk is almost empty. We walk fast, one corner, two corners, until she goes through the door of an old building and makes me go in ahead of her. The lobby smells like old wood and dried flowers. A yellow bulb flickers on the ceiling.

—Your apartment? —I ask, softly.

—No. A friend’s. She’s traveling.

We go up two floors on a narrow staircase. While I climb, I know she’s looking at what the skirt leaves visible, and I deliberately walk slower. On the second landing she puts a hand on my ass, over the fabric, and squeezes just enough to let out a sigh.

***

The living room is small and has a warm light coming in through the half-open curtains. She closes the door and stands there a second with her back against the wood, watching me as if I were something she’s bought and is still deciding where to place.

—Do you know what you were doing in there? —she asks.

—I wasn’t doing anything.

—You were showing off.

—That’s not true.

—That skirt is ridiculously short. That boy was looking at your legs like he had a right to.

—I didn’t dress for him.

—No?

—No.

—Then who for, then?

I lower my eyes. My whole body is pounding in my throat. Her voice has gone lower, slower, that cadence she uses when she knows exactly what I’m going to answer and just wants to hear me say it.

—For you —I say.

—I can’t hear you.

—I dressed for you.

***

She takes two steps until she’s within inches of me. She still doesn’t touch me. She only looks at me, and I feel I’ve run out of air somewhere between my ribs.

—You dressed like that for me and half the bar was staring at you.

—I didn’t think…

—No, you didn’t think. That’s the point.

I lift my eyes. There’s a small crease between her brows that shows when she uses that tone, and two fine gray hairs starting at her temples that I find beautiful in a way I wouldn’t know how to explain.

—Sorry —I say, and my voice comes out more childish than I’d like.

Her face softens. Barely. A tenth of a second.

She doesn’t hate me. She’s playing.

—Lift your skirt —she orders.

—Here?

—Here. So I can see how you dressed for me.

I do it. I take the hem of the skirt with both hands and lift it slowly, until the white lace panties are on display. She tilts her head, examining them as if they were a technical detail she has to approve. I see her lower her gaze to the fabric triangle and leave it there, and I know, without needing to be touched, that she’s already noticed the wet spot in the lace isn’t water.

—Now turn around. Slowly.

I turn. I feel her eyes on every inch of me. When I give her my back she stops me with a word —stay— and I feel her hand sliding up the backs of my thighs, very slowly, tracing the curve of my ass over the lace. She pries one cheek apart with her thumb, runs a finger along the line of the panties, and lets go before the moan can reach my mouth.

—Finish the turn.

When I face her again, the corner of her mouth trembles in a restrained smile.

—Good —she says—. That’s good. You’re soaked, baby. I can tell from here.

I lower my head. I don’t know what to answer. She’s told me the truth in two sentences.

***

She moves closer. She takes me by the shoulders and gently presses me against the hallway wall. The wall is cold. My back prickles in a tenth of a second. Her hands travel from my shoulders to my neck, from my neck to my face, and she holds my jaw with one of them as if she were holding something that could break.

—Did you get mad at me? —I ask, whispering.

—I got mad because I can’t stand other people looking at you.

—But only you can…

—I know. I know. But I can’t stand that they don’t know it.

And she kisses me. It’s not a greeting kiss. It’s the kind that starts with biting before any tenderness. She sinks her teeth into my lower lip, tugs just a little, lets go, and pushes her tongue deep into my mouth, finding mine, forcing me to suck it. Her lips are thinner than mine and taste faintly bitter of red wine, and when she lets go I have to hold myself back from asking her to do it again.

Her hands move to my chest. She squeezes it over my blouse, one breast first and then the other, with a surgical calm that makes me think she’s going to do everything in her own time, not mine. She unbuttons my blouse three buttons at a time. Leaves it open without taking it off. She pulls the cups of my bra down in one tug, without unclasping it, and my breasts spill out, my nipples already hard from thinking about this moment for so long. She bends down and takes one whole nipple into her mouth. Sucks hard, her tongue flat, pressing the nipple against her palate, and with the other hand she pinches the other one, not gently: hard, until a little gasp escapes me and makes her smile against my skin. She switches breasts. Sucks. Bites. Sucks again. She leaves both nipples shiny with saliva, swollen, so sensitive that the air in the living room hurts.

—Don’t move —she says.

—I’m not moving.

—You’re going to move. And when you do, I’m going to stop you.

***

She plants one knee between my thighs. The pressure is exact, neither too much nor too little, and I feel the heat beginning to rise from my lower belly up to my neck. I want to grind against that knee. I do it by a millimeter and she, true to her word, retreats that same millimeter.

—Stay still.

—It’s hard.

—I know.

I obey her. It’s difficult. My hands are open against the wall because I don’t know where to put them and because she hasn’t told me I can touch her. Her fingers slide down my waist, trace the edge of the skirt, slip just beneath the elastic of the panties. First she brushes the hair there with her fingertips, like someone mapping unfamiliar terrain. She runs a finger between the lips of my cunt, from top to bottom, without going in, and pulls it out shining wet. She shows it to me. She puts it in my mouth.

—Suck it.

I suck it. It tastes like me, sweet and thick, and she watches me do it with satisfaction she doesn’t bother to hide. She takes it out of my mouth, brings it to her own, licks it too.

—Good girl —she murmurs.

Those two words undo me.

***

Her fingers finally slip under the lace. She finds how wet I am and laughs softly, a contained laugh of victory, as if she’d known before checking. She starts making slow, exact circles over my clit while holding my nape with the other hand so I won’t pull her face away. Then her fingers go lower, she opens me with two, and she drives one in all at once. My knees buckle. She holds me against the wall with her forearm crossed over my chest.

—I said stay still.

She inserts the second finger. They go in easily, squelching inside me, and when she starts moving them upward, searching for that spot I’ve only barely found in myself, I close my eyes and forget the rule.

—Look at me.

I look at her. Her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, that concentration of someone doing something they care about doing well. I keep looking at her while her fingers go in and out, while her thumb knocks my clit with every thrust, while my breathing becomes something I no longer control and the sound of my cunt is audible all over the hallway.

—Hear how wet you are? —she whispers in my ear—. Listen. Listen to how your pussy sounds when I work you with my fingers.

I swallow. I nod without being able to speak.

—Say it.

—I’m wet.

—You’re what.

—I’m a fucking whore —I say, and I blush to my ears, and she gives a low, satisfied laugh and slips in a third finger.

She pulls her hand out abruptly, just as I was starting to tremble. She sucks her three fingers clean without breaking eye contact, one by one, down to the knuckle.

—Take off your underwear —she says.

—What?

—Take off your underwear and let it fall.

***

I do it with clumsy hands. The lace gets snagged around one of my ankles. She kneels in front of me, slowly, with the solemnity of someone entering a church, and spreads my thighs apart with both hands. The wall digs into my shoulder blades. My knee is trembling.

—If you fall, you fall —she says, smiling from below—. But don’t move.

And then I feel her tongue. She passes it once, long and slow, from bottom to top, from the entrance of my cunt to my clit, and I bite the back of my hand not to scream. Her hands travel up the insides of my thighs, open them a little wider, and she passes her tongue again, this time more slowly, as if she were measuring the taste.

—Don’t cover your mouth —she says, lifting her head for a second, her chin shiny—. I want to hear you.

—I don’t want anyone to…

—It’s only me. And I want to hear you.

I drop my hand. I rest it on her head. I touch her hair, gathered in a low bun with a few loose strands escaping. When she buries her face between my legs again, I let a moan slip out, and then another, and after a minute they’re no longer mine: they’re hers.

***

She closes her lips around my clit and sucks it. Hard. With the tip of her tongue she taps quick little strokes, and I feel my legs want to open wider on their own even though she already has them open. She lowers her tongue, buries it inside me, takes me in her mouth for a long while while her thumb climbs back to my clit and never stops. Then she comes back up, changes rhythm, circles, little sucks, circles again, as if she knew by heart a map I haven’t finished drawing for myself.

She slips two fingers in while she keeps licking me. Curves them forward, finds the spot, and starts pressing with her fingertips in a rhythm that doesn’t match her tongue and drives me crazy precisely because of that. I cling to her hair, dig the nails of my other hand into my palm, and my whole body starts shaking from feet to head.

—You’re going to come —she says, against my cunt, and her hot breath on my wet skin is the last drop—. Come in my mouth. Come on. Go on.

I murmur her name. I’m not telling you what it is: in my fantasies she always has the same name and I’m not giving it to anyone else. I murmur it three times, four, and when I come, I come in her mouth, without warning, gripping her hair harder than I meant to, pressing her head against me while the orgasm runs through me in long waves that make my waist fold.

She doesn’t pull away. She stays there, tongue inside, fingers inside, sucking every spasm from me until not even a sound comes out and my legs tremble so much I have to let myself slide down the wall to the floor. She comes down with me. Sits me on her thighs. Wipes the corner of my own mouth with her thumb, brings it to her tongue, and looks at me with something I don’t know whether is tenderness or satisfaction or both mixed together.

—My good girl —she says—. This was your reward for dressing so pretty for me.

She kisses me. She lets me taste myself all over her mouth, her tongue, her wet chin. And I kiss her back as if it were the last thing I’m going to do in my life.

***

I open my eyes.

I’m still in my bed. The sheet is tangled between my legs. I still have two fingers inside my cunt and my other arm crossed over my mouth, as if even asleep I remembered my mother sleeps on the other side of the hallway. The alarm clock on the nightstand says 4:07 a.m. A bluish streetlamp glow comes through the window, sketching the outline of the wardrobe on the floor.

I’ve never seen her. I’ve never spoken to her. Maybe she doesn’t exist. Maybe she does; maybe she’s that woman I sometimes see reading in the square with a thick book in her hands, or the one who gives me change at the bakery without lifting her eyes. Maybe she’ll never actually touch me. Maybe one day she will.

In the meantime, I settle onto my side, hide my face in the pillow, and smile alone in the dark, my fingers still sticky and the smell of my orgasm on my hand.

Tonight, that was enough too.