I’m a Sex Coach and This Is My Most Intimate Confession

There’s something I never tell the people who walk into my office: I have secrets too. For years I’ve listened to theirs, nodding with the professional calm I learned to fake, while inside I recognized every desire they confessed because I’ve lived almost all of them. Today, for the first time, I want to turn that dynamic around. I want you to listen to me.

My name is Renata, I’m forty-five years old, and I’m Colombian. I work with couples and with single people who want to reconcile themselves with their own bodies, with what they were taught to keep quiet. I love what I do, I won’t deny it. But I’m also a flesh-and-blood woman, and I’m going to talk to you about all that flesh without shame.

I’m not going to give you the full inventory of me; I’d rather you imagine it. I’ll only tell you that I’m five foot five, that I have skin the color of toasted cinnamon, and green eyes that give away more than I’d like. I’m full-bodied, with wide hips and heavy breasts, and long ago I learned to walk as if everyone were watching me. Most of the time, they are.

I like simple elegance, the kind that doesn’t shout. A soft fabric brushing my back, a perfume that lingers at the nape of the neck, a conversation that starts out about anything and ends up somewhere neither of us planned to tread. My energy speaks before my mouth does. I discovered that when I was very young, and I’ve been using it ever since.

I studied psychology out of curiosity about desire, I’m not going to lie. While my classmates were interested in childhood and trauma, I just wanted to understand why the body gives in where reason says no. That question led me to specialize in intimacy, and that specialization gave me the perfect permission to explore everything I already wanted to explore.

***

I’m telling you where I come from, because without that what follows won’t make sense.

My first marriage was comfortable and lukewarm, like a freshly made bed where no one wants to wrinkle the sheets. I loved him, truly I did, but desire dried up between us in silence until one day I realized I’d been pretending to be tired for months so I wouldn’t have to pretend to be something else. I left without a scene. And the woman who came out of that marriage was a hungry stranger.

It was around those years that a couple of friends invited me, for the first time, to a different kind of gathering. They hinted around it, measuring me, expecting me to be startled. Mateo and Lucía had been together for almost a decade and had that kind of complicity only people who no longer lie to each other have. They told me about the atmosphere, the rules, the respect that held it all together. And I, who listened to other people’s confessions every day, felt that at last someone was offering me a chance to live my own.

—You’re just coming to look, if you want —Lucía told me that afternoon, with a smile that was anything but innocent—. No one will touch you unless you ask them to.

The problem was that I already wanted to ask.

***

The house was on the outskirts, at the end of a road lined with trees. I remember the sound of gravel under the wheels and my own hands gripping the steering wheel harder than necessary. I’d put on a black dress, simple, fitted where it needed to fit and loose everywhere else. Underneath, almost nothing. I had promised myself in the mirror: that night I was going to stop being the one who listens.

Inside, the light was warm and low; there was soft music and a murmur of laughter without urgency. No one lunged at anyone. That was the first thing that surprised me and what made me stay: the courtesy. The drinks, the looks held for a second too long, the conversations moving forward like a slow tide. Desire there wasn’t shouted; it was cooked over low heat.

Mateo handed me a glass of red wine and stayed close, without invading me.

—Lucía says this is your first time here —he remarked.

—It is —I admitted—. But I’m not new to wanting things I’m supposed not to want.

He laughed softly, in that way men laugh when they’ve learned patience. And I felt the heat rise from my belly, that ancient heat I know far too well, the same one that just remembering it now makes me press my legs together while I write to you.

***

I’m not going to tell you everything all at once. That would betray the art of anticipation, and if I’ve learned anything it’s that desire grows in the waiting.

But I will tell you the essential part of that night, because it marked the woman I am today.

It was Lucía who took my hand and led me to a separate room. Not Mateo. And that decision of hers, so direct, completely unhinged me. I sat on the edge of the bed and she stood in front of me, looking at me like someone studying something she was going to savor slowly.

—Relax —she told me—. Tonight you don’t have to understand anything. Just feel.

She slid one strap of my dress down with one finger, unhurried, letting the fabric give way under its own weight. I, who had put into words the pleasure of hundreds of people, was left speechless. Her mouth found my neck first, then the curve of my shoulder, and each kiss stripped years of caution from me. Her hands knew the map of a woman’s body because it was the same as her own, and that certainty turned me liquid.

When Mateo came in later, he did it in silence, and he stood for a moment against the doorframe just watching us. There was no urgency in his gaze. There was desire, yes, but above all there was a kind of calm admiration that made me feel, for the first time in a long while, deeply seen.

***

I came out of that night changed, and not because of the obvious things.

I came out understanding that desire, when handled well, is not chaotic or dirty, as so many had taught me to believe. That bodies can be shared honestly, with clear rules and with a respect many conventional couples would give anything to have. That guilt is almost always a loan we take from others and pay back with our own lives.

I explored the swinger world thoroughly after that. Not in a reckless way, but with the methodical curiosity of someone who wants to understand what she loves. I went to more gatherings, met more people, learned to read a glance across a room and to say yes or no with equal serenity. Every experience taught me something new about boundaries, mine and other people’s, about how pleasure is negotiated between adults who respect each other.

And all of that, without my planning it, ended up making me better at my work. When a couple sits in front of me, afraid of a fantasy they don’t even dare to name, I don’t need a manual. I know that fear from the inside. I also know what’s on the other side, when you dare to cross.

***

I’ll confess one more thing, because half-truths don’t do it for me.

I’m a very horny woman. I say it without flirtation, like someone describing the color of her eyes. There are nights when remembering one of these scenes leaves me restless, with my body on fire and my mind going over every detail, and I have no choice but to seek relief myself so I can sleep peacefully. It took me years to stop being ashamed of that. Today I celebrate it. I think, in fact, that it was exactly that hunger that pushed me to study desire instead of running from it.

In my stories you’ll find everything. Encounters between women that started out like Lucía and me. Threesomes where nobody was left out. Nights in public places where risk was part of the pleasure. Infidelities that I don’t defend but that I’m not going to sugarcoat either, exchanges, games that seemed to go too far until I discovered they were only just beginning. It’s all living fire, as my grandmother says about anything that burns.

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Every story deserves its space, its tension, its time. I wanted this first installment to be just that: an honest introduction, an outstretched hand, an invitation.

If you’ve made it this far, then you know who I am. A woman who stopped asking permission. One who learned that the body, when listened to, tells truths the mouth keeps quiet. And one who, after so many years receiving other people’s confessions, finally decided to tell her own.

Don’t miss any of my stories. What’s coming burns more than this, I promise you.

Until next time. I’ll leave you with the suspense and a slow kiss.