I Discovered I Didn’t Need Anyone to Feel This Way

I’m going to tell something I’ve never told anyone, not even the friends I think I share everything with. It’s not a story about a lover or a night that ended in a stranger’s bed. It’s simpler than that, and that’s why it took me so long to understand it: it’s the story of the morning I learned to desire myself, to fuck myself with my own fingers until I came like a bitch in heat.

My name is Lucía, and that Sunday I woke up alone. My roommate had left on Friday to visit his parents in a town on the coast, and he wouldn’t be back until Monday night. I had the whole apartment to myself: two small rooms, a narrow kitchen, and a big window facing the inner courtyard, through which at that hour a white, clean light came in and bathed everything.

I had no plans. I hadn’t set an alarm. I stayed under the sheets for a very long time, listening to the strange silence of a building that on Sunday mornings feels deserted. No voices, no televisions, no elevator going up and down. Only the brush of my own breathing and the warm weight of the duvet over my legs, and a warm dampness between my thighs that was starting to soak my thin cotton panties.

I hadn’t fucked anyone in months. Not for lack of opportunities, but because of a kind of emotional laziness, of not wanting to explain myself to a stranger. And yet that morning I felt something wake up low in my belly, a lazy, warm current that had nothing to do with any man. My cunt throbbed on its own, in slow pulses, as if it had its own heartbeat. It was mine. It began in me and stayed in me.

When was the last time I really gave myself time?

I couldn’t answer. And that question, as silly as it was, was what made me throw back the sheets and lie there on my back, naked from the waist up, with my hand already under the elastic of my panties, feeling how slippery I was, staring at the ceiling where the light drew the trembling shape of the window.

***

I got up barefoot and went to the bathroom. Not to shower: to look at myself. There’s a full-length mirror fixed to the wall next to the door, and I almost never stop in front of it except to check whether my clothes fit before I leave. That morning I stood in front of it with nothing on and forced myself to really look, slowly, as if for the first time.

I let my hair down, which I’d tied up for sleep. It fell over my shoulders, still tousled, and I liked the image: an ordinary woman, without makeup, with sleepy swollen eyes, but whole. I touched my collarbone, slid down my side, felt the path of my own hand as if it were someone else’s. Goosebumps rose on my skin, not from cold, but from attention. I pinched one nipple between my thumb and forefinger and it hardened instantly, so pointed it hurt. I squeezed it harder, watching myself do it, and my cunt gave a dry, wet jolt that tore a short gasp from me.

I had always been taught to see myself with critical eyes. To look for the flaw, the extra kilo, the mark that shouldn’t be there. That morning, for once, I decided to look at myself with the eyes of someone who wants to fuck you against a wall. And I discovered I liked what I saw. The wide hips I had hated so much as a teenager. The curve of my stomach. The weight of my tits when I leaned a little toward the mirror and they hung heavy with red nipples, swollen from so much pinching. My cunt between my thighs, the hair trimmed short, already shining with my own wetness, parted slightly because I’d spread my legs a little without noticing.

I lowered one hand and opened my lips with two fingers, looking at myself in the mirror. I saw the dark pink inside, the sticky thread that stretched between my fingers and the flesh when I pulled them apart. I was soaked. I hadn’t even been standing five minutes and I was already dripping. I slipped the tip of my middle finger inside, just the fingertip, and pulled it out smeared. Without thinking I brought it to my mouth and sucked it while looking at myself. It tasted like me, like salt and something sweet, and that idea — of eating myself in front of the mirror — sent another shiver through my belly.

I fogged the glass with my breath without realizing how close I was. I laughed to myself, softly, with my finger still in my mouth, and that sound in the apartment’s silence seemed almost obscene. As if I’d been caught.

***

I went back to the bedroom. I opened the curtains all the way, something I never do, because the inner courtyard has other windows facing it and I’ve always felt shy about it. But at that hour all the blinds were down, and the idea of masturbating with the light pouring in, with my cunt wide open to the sun, turned me on in a way I hadn’t expected.

I lay on the bed, on top of the rumpled duvet, and let the sun hit my skin. It was warm. I closed my eyes and started slowly, unhurried, tracing my neck, my tits, my stomach, as if I were introducing myself to myself. My fingers wandered down to my pubic mound and stayed there, making wide circles over the hill, not touching my clit yet, tormenting me on purpose. I wasn’t trying to come. I was after the path.

I was surprised by how much I had forgotten. When you’re fucking with someone else, part of you is always paying attention to the other person: whether he’s hard enough, whether you’re moaning the way you should, whether your face looks pretty while he’s fucking you. Alone, there was nobody to please. I could stop wherever I wanted, repeat what I liked, ignore everything else.

At last I lowered my fingers to my clit and rubbed it in slow, small circles, feeling it swell under my fingertip until it became a hard little button that stuck out. I discovered I liked slowness. That rushing the moment was wasting it. With my other hand I opened my cunt and pushed two fingers deep inside, very slowly, feeling the walls close around them and suck me inward. I pulled them out shiny, dripping, and shoved them back in. I stayed right on the edge, where pleasure turns almost unbearable, with my fingers buried and my clit throbbing, and then I backed off, let the current ebb a little, and started again. It was a game with myself, a wordless conversation, a sweet torture.

My breathing began to quicken without my asking it to. I felt sweat starting at my hairline, in the hollow between my tits, in the fold of my groin. The pillow had slipped under my back and I left it there, arching against it, pushing my cunt against my own fingers as if I were riding myself. I thought of things I wouldn’t tell anyone. Loose images, without story, without names. A hand at the nape of my neck pushing me down. A mouth against my ear saying dirty girl, slut, look at yourself. A hard cock driving in hard and without warning. A voice that didn’t quite belong to any real person whispering to me: keep going, don’t stop, come for me.

***

At some point I opened my eyes and saw myself reflected in the wardrobe mirror, which had been left slightly ajar. Seeing myself was like looking at another woman. My face was flushed, my lips parted, my hair stuck to my forehead, my tits bouncing softly with the sway of my hand, two fingers to the knuckles buried in my cunt and my thumb pressed against my clit. I didn’t recognize myself, and at the same time I had never felt more like me. That contradiction gave me a delicious vertigo.

I half sat up and kept staring at myself while I fucked myself with my fingers. It was the first time in my life I did it with my eyes open, watching myself, not hiding from my own image. I saw my hand going in and out, how the lips of my cunt stuck to my fingers when I withdrew them, how a thick trail dripped down my groin to the sheet. I had always lived pleasure in the dark, as something to conceal, almost to apologize for feeling. Seeing myself like that, legs spread wide open, cunt soaked and shining like a split fruit, my hand a mess with my own fluids, was the freest thing I had done in a long time.

I brought my free hand to my mouth, sucked my index and middle fingers until they were well coated with saliva, and moved that hand down to my ass. I had never touched myself there alone; it had always seemed like too much, a line I wouldn’t cross even out of curiosity. That morning I placed my fingertip on my asshole and pressed slowly. It opened a little, gave way, and my finger sank in up to the first knuckle with a dry jolt that made me moan out loud. With two fingers in my cunt and one in my ass, pressed together inside me and separated only by a thin membrane, it felt like I might split in two right there.

The neighbor’s cat appeared on the ledge opposite, indifferent, and sat down to bask in the sun. For a second I met its yellow eyes and almost laughed again, with three fingers still buried inside me. I didn’t feel ashamed. If anything, I felt a kind of absurd complicity with that animal that wasn’t asking anyone’s permission to be where it was.

I lay back down. My body wanted more and at last I stopped holding back. I picked up the pace, started pumping my fingers hard inside my cunt, sloshing, while my thumb punished my clit in quick circles and the other finger stayed buried in my ass, moving only slightly, marking each thrust. I let my hips move on their own, let my tits bounce, let my breathing break into guttural moans and stray words — fuck, yes, like that, more — that in any other situation would have embarrassed me. But there was nobody there. Nobody to be embarrassed in front of. There was only me and the heat of the morning and the certainty that this soaked cunt and this open ass belonged entirely to me.

***

The end came like a wave I hadn’t seen building. It hit me from behind, bent me in half, made me clutch the sheet with my free hand until my nails dug into my palm. My cunt contracted around my fingers in violent spasms, one after another, squeezing them so hard I could barely move them. I felt a warm gush soaking my hand and running down my arm, a puddle spreading beneath my ass on the sheet. It had never happened to me before. I didn’t know then whether it was cum or piss or both and I didn’t care; I kept rubbing my clit despite the cramp, lengthening each surge. It was long, much longer than I remembered it could be, and it came with a howl that tore out of my throat without my deciding it, hoarse and foreign, a bitch-in-heat cry that bounced off the empty walls of the apartment.

When I thought it was ending, I pulled my fingers out of my cunt with an obscene sucking sound and pressed my whole palm against my clit, and another smaller jolt came after, and another, aftershocks that left me trembling as if I had a fever. I lay there with my legs open, my chest rising and falling, my eyes full of tears that weren’t from sadness. It had never happened to me alone. Coming like that, until I cried from pure relief, from pure fullness, with nobody beside me to misread the tears, without having to explain that no, I wasn’t sad, it was exactly the opposite.

I covered my face with my hands — the clean one, and the other I let fall to the side, shiny and sticky — and I breathed. My heart gradually calmed down. The sun kept streaming in, the cat stayed on its ledge, the building’s silence remained intact, as if nothing had happened. But something had happened, and I knew it, and the soaked sheet under my ass was proof.

***

I stayed like that a good while, sprawled out, thighs open and cunt still throbbing in little aftershocks, staring at the ceiling, not wanting to move. I thought about all the times I had looked in others for what that morning I had found in myself. The nights when I’d spread my legs for people I didn’t care about just so I wouldn’t sleep alone, the mediocre cocks I’d put up with out of politeness, the orgasms I’d faked so as not to offend. How little I had given myself, how much I had expected from others.

It’s not that I decided to give anyone up. It isn’t about that. I still want other people’s hands, other people’s mouths, other people’s cocks buried all the way in, the weight of another body pushing down on mine. But that morning I understood I didn’t need them to be complete. That desire wasn’t a debt someone else came to settle, but something that already lived in me, waiting for me to pay attention to it.

I finally got up, dizzy and light at the same time, my thighs sticky and my legs still weak. I made myself a coffee and drank it naked, standing by the window, feeling the cool air on skin still warm, with my juices drying slowly along the insides of my thighs. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t in a hurry for anyone to arrive. I was fine, exactly where I was, with myself.

***

Months have passed since that Sunday. My roommate came back, the routine came back, work and plans and rush came back. But I keep that morning like one keeps a good secret, one of those that warm you when you remember them, one of those that make me squeeze my thighs on the subway when the image comes back to me.

From time to time, on Sundays when the apartment falls silent, I repeat the ritual. I open the curtains, look at myself in the mirror, sink two fingers deep into my cunt, and give myself the time I spent years not knowing I deserved. I don’t always try to come. Sometimes I just touch my clit with a saliva-wet fingertip to remember that I’m alive, that this cunt is mine, that pleasure doesn’t need witnesses or permission.

I tell this because I think many women live the way I lived for too long: waiting for a cock to wake us up, without realizing the key is between our legs. That morning of white light I learned how to use it. And of all the things that have happened to me in life, that small nameless revelation is one of the ones that has changed me most.

There was no one else in the room. Nobody was needed. The woman in the mirror and I fucked each other until the sheet was soaked, and that, though some might think it’s no big deal, was the most intimate thing I have ever lived.