That Bachelorette Party I’ll Never Forget

The invitation arrived on a Sunday at noon, when I had already forgotten Andrea even had my number. We had worked together at the same advertising agency for nearly three years, until she quit and the contact gradually faded the way almost all work friendships do: without drama, without a fight, simply by inertia.

But there was her name on my phone. The invitation was brief, unadorned: I’m inviting you to my wedding. I hope you can make it.

I could have ignored the message. It would have been the most comfortable option. But I had spent months in what I myself called survival mode: I had broken up with Rodrigo after four years that had grown grayer and grayer until it wasn’t worth holding them together anymore, and on top of that I was fighting with Catalina, my best friend since college, over something that started out small and grew big without either of us handling it well. I wasn’t in the mood for anything. So, paradoxically, I said yes.

I confirmed attendance at the wedding.

Three weeks later the second invitation arrived: the bachelorette party. It was Andrea herself who sent it to me by message, with that mix of excitement and apology from someone who knows she’s adding one more commitment to your life. She clarified that it was going to be girls only, at a downtown bar they had booked out for the night.

I said yes for the second time.

***

The place had exposed brick walls and a warm lighting scheme that made it seem cozier than it was. I arrived fifteen minutes late — just enough not to be the first one there — and Andrea greeted me at the door with a genuine hug and the exuberance of someone who already had a couple of hours of champagne in her. She introduced me to several people whose names I didn’t retain, and they were friendly in the automatic warmth of people in party mode.

I didn’t know anyone. It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.

I got myself a drink at the bar and settled into a corner to watch. The decor was explicit but tasteful: balloons in suggestive shapes, banners with words that made people laugh, a cake whose decoration I would never have expected from the Andrea I knew from the office. The music was at a volume that allowed people to talk without shouting, at least for the moment.

The games started around nine. They all had some sexual component, from the most innocent to the ones that were no longer innocent at all. At first I participated only on the periphery, laughing but not really getting involved, because I didn’t know anyone and it felt premature. Little by little I gave in. The alcohol helped. The atmosphere helped more: there is something about collective uninhibition that is contagious in a way that has nothing negative about it.

By ten-thirty, things had escalated considerably. A girl I didn’t know pulled a fairly large vibrator out of a wrapped box, and after the whole group identified it by touch amid laughter, she simply took off everything from the waist down and used it in front of everyone without the slightest modesty, while the group cheered her on loudly. On the couch in the corner, two women were kissing with such total concentration that they excluded the rest of the world. Several people had partially removed their clothes. The level of uninhibitedness had reached a point of no return.

My head was somewhere else too. Somewhere more relaxed than it had been in months.

I was on a barstool with my drink in hand when Andrea’s friend, who had organized everything, asked for silence in the tone of someone about to announce something important.

—And now — she said, drawing the words out theatrically — the surprise everyone has been waiting for.

They came out in threes.

They were wearing only boxers and white sneakers, which was the only vaguely ridiculous detail in something that otherwise was not ridiculous at all. They were three perfectly built men, the kind of bodies that are the result of years of discipline. One blond with tattoos on his forearms, another with dark skin, Mediterranean features, and a jawline that might have been sculpted, and the third.

The third was Black, tall, with broad shoulders and a musculature that was proportional rather than exaggerated, the kind that looks good in any setting and better in none. He had the expression of someone completely used to exactly this situation: calm, present, with none of the visible effort of someone performing for an audience. That was, paradoxically, the most interesting thing of all.

I didn’t look away from him.

***

The dynamic between the three of them and the group followed a fairly orderly progression: dancing first, physical contact afterward, kisses after that. All with the background noise of several women shouting and laughing and pushing to get closer to one of the three.

I watched them from the bar.

I was timing the moment.

When he finished kissing one of the girls and took a step back to reposition himself, I got down from the stool. I walked up without hesitation: there is nothing worse than hesitation once you have already made a decision. I put a hand on his shoulder before standing in front of him. He was quite a bit taller than he had looked from a distance.

I took the back of his neck with both hands and kissed him. It took him exactly one second to kiss me back, and when he did, he did it well: no rushing, no excessive tongue from someone who doesn’t know how to pace himself. I slid one hand down his torso while we kept kissing and touched him over the fabric of his boxer shorts. It was obvious what was there.

I pulled just a centimeter away from his mouth.

—I like what you’ve got —I told him, and looked him in the eyes while I bit my lower lip.

He smiled. It wasn’t a work smile, one of those rehearsed for the setting. It was the smile of someone who had just seen me for real for the first time all night.

I went back to my stool.

***

The girls lowered all three pairs of boxers almost at the same time, with the coordinated chaos of a group that no longer had any brakes. I stayed where I was, watching from the bar.

He was exactly what I had intuited. Big, but in a way that didn’t intimidate so much as hypnotize. The kind of presence one doesn’t easily forget.

The group started taking turns going up to them. When I decided it was my turn, I went straight to him.

I knelt on the wooden floor and took him in my right hand. I looked up at him from below. He looked back at me calmly, but it was no longer the calm of before. It was full attention.

I started slowly, with my tongue first, learning the shape before opening wider. He was big and demanded concentration, which made me like it more, not less. I used my hand at the same time, feeling his breathing change rhythm. At some point I heard him let out a short, deep sound that went straight to my stomach.

I wrapped my hand around the base, the other hand braced on his thigh to support myself, and began moving down and up slowly, testing him, getting used to the weight and the taste. His skin was tight with pure desire, his breathing shorter every time my mouth closed a little more around him. A couple of times he lifted a hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, as if he needed to see me clearly while I did that to him. When I felt he was close to losing control, I pressed the inside of his thigh lightly with my fingers so he wouldn’t come too quickly.

I didn’t want to let him go. I wanted him all to myself.

I pulled back just enough to speak.

—Stay with me tonight —I asked him—. Just with me.

He frowned slightly, as if he hadn’t heard me right or as if he hadn’t expected exactly that.

—What? —he said.

I didn’t repeat myself. I stood up, pulled my dress off over my head — it was a short black strappy dress, nothing underneath — and sat on the edge of a low sofa with my legs open. I kept my shoes on. They were red strappy stilettos with high heels, and that night they turned out to be the best possible choice.

I looked at him.

—Put it in me —I asked.

The group erupted. Someone turned the music up. There were shouts from everywhere, some people chanting instructions, others simply cheering without really knowing what to say.

He looked at me for a few seconds that felt considerably longer than they were. Then he knelt in front of the sofa.

He opened me wider with his hands, parting my legs carefully at first, as if he were still gauging how far he could go without breaking me. I leaned back, one hand on the backrest and the other on the back of his neck, feeling his hot breath against my groin before he actually touched me. He started with my thighs, moving upward slowly, brushing me with his mouth and tongue just enough to make me arch my back. Then he licked me with insulting patience, dense, firm, never losing himself in delicacy. He did it like he knew exactly what he was after.

—There —I told him, my voice already lower—. Don’t stop.

He didn’t stop.

He sucked me eagerly, opening me wider with two fingers while his other hand held my hip so I wouldn’t move too much. The wetness, the heat, the pressure of his tongue and the way he looked at me every now and then between strokes were emptying my head completely. His face was buried between my legs and I could feel his beard scraping the sensitive skin on the inside of my thighs. When he slid one finger in first and then two, setting a slow rhythm that kept deepening, a moan escaped me that I didn’t try to hold back.

He was dismantling me right there, in front of everyone, and I didn’t care.

I grabbed his hair, not hard but with intent, and forced him to keep going exactly the way I wanted. He obeyed. He did even better. He changed angle, pressed his tongue harder, left me trembling in that way bodies do when they start asking for only one thing and will accept nothing else. I felt the orgasm gathering low inside me, thick, imminent, and when it hit it was brutal, a shudder that bent my fingers over his head and made me say his name without yet knowing what it was.

He smiled against my skin, straightened up a little, and kissed my mouth with the same wetness he had left between my legs. He tasted like me and him mixed together, and that left me even worse off.

—Now it’s your turn —I whispered, dragging my hand over his abdomen until I touched him again.

I ran my fingers along the side of his boxers until I found him again, hard and heavy, throbbing beneath the fabric. I pulled them down completely with an urgency that no longer had anything shy about it. He stood up, took off the last of his clothes, and looked at me as if he were waiting for my next order. I got up from the sofa, spread my legs in front of him, and placed a hand on his chest.

—Hold me tight —I told him.

He lifted me with his hands under my thighs, as if I weighed nothing, and settled me against him. I felt his cock pushing between my folds, hot, hard, searching for entry. I wrapped my legs around his waist and guided him with my hand so he wouldn’t miss the angle. When he started to enter me, he did it slowly, centimeter by centimeter, filling me with a delicious pressure that drew a long sigh from me. His forehead was pressed to mine and his jaw was tight with the effort of holding back the urge to slam into me all at once.

—Like that —I told him—. Keep going.

He found a steady rhythm. I stopped hearing the group and stopped thinking about everything else. Only that existed: the sofa, his hands on my hips, the sensation of being filled in a way I hadn’t felt in many weeks and had almost forgotten. I clung to his shoulders. He tilted his head and bit softly at the curve of my neck, right where the shoulder ends.

I hadn’t expected that detail. It was what stayed with me most from that night.

He changed my position without asking: he turned me around and set me on my knees on the sofa seat, leaning against the backrest. From behind, the sensation was different, deeper, and the sound of his hips against mine mixed with the noise of the place in a completely unreal way, as if everything were happening in a dimension that had nothing to do with the rest of my life.

His hand closed over one of my breasts and squeezed firmly, his thumb brushing my nipple while he kept moving inside me. The other hand held me by the waist, setting the rhythm with a confidence that made me lose all sense of where I was. I spread my legs wider, pushing back to take him deeper, and he answered with a harder, dirtier thrust that made me rest my forehead on the backrest and let out a moan that sounded too loud. He pushed my hair away from my neck and spoke into my ear, with a deep voice I could barely make out over the music.

—This is how I like you, all open for me.

I laughed between gasps and answered over my shoulder:

—Then fuck me like you’re going to lose me.

And then he did lose some patience. He drove his cock deeper, over and over, with sharp thrusts that made my legs shake. The sofa creaked under us. I noticed that one of my hands had grabbed the upholstery so hard my fingers hurt, but I didn’t let go of anything. He alternated between sinking all the way in and pulling back just enough to push in harder, maintaining that exact back-and-forth that was dismantling me from the inside.

At no point did I care that people were watching. It wasn’t exhibitionism in the calculated sense of the word. I hadn’t sought it out. But it didn’t bother me either. The only focus that existed was him and what he was doing to me, and everything else was noise without relevance.

He lifted me again, this time with my back to him, and took me from behind standing up, leaning me slightly over the edge of the sofa. I felt his hands marking my hips, his fingers digging into my skin every time he drove into me. The friction of my wet sex, open for him, against his movements had me completely on the edge. I asked for more without knowing whether I was saying it out loud or in a moan. He answered with another series of deeper thrusts, and then I started coming again, a second orgasm that ran from my back down to my belly and left my legs trembling. He kept moving the same way, holding me up, using my own shaking to carry me all the way through.

When he came, I was kneeling in front of him. I took everything without pulling away. The group applauded from some corner of the venue.

***

After that I drank more than I should have.

I don’t have a clear memory of the end of the night. There are scattered images: Andrea dancing with a crown of artificial flowers, a girl laughing until she cried in the bathroom, the chill outside when someone put me in a taxi. I know I got to my apartment and fell asleep on top of the bed without taking off my shoes. The next morning I woke up with a heavy head and fragmented memories, and I assembled them one by one while I drank my first coffee.

I remembered everything. In enough detail.

A few days later I asked Andrea for his name. She told me it was Mateo. That they had hired him through an agency and that she had no more contact information.

I looked for him with the little context I had. I didn’t find him.

The wedding was a month later. I went, of course. I sat at a table with people I didn’t know, drank red wine, and danced on the floor when the music called for it. I wished Andrea genuine happiness, because she deserved it, and not once that afternoon did I think about the bachelorette party.

But I do think about it sometimes. About his hands on my hips, about that unexpected bite on my neck, about those red strappy stilettos on the wooden floor.

Mateo, if you read this for some reason: it was me, the girl in the red shoes. Talk to me.