The Firefighter I Interviewed and Couldn’t Stop Looking For

I’m going to tell this exactly as it happened, without dressing it up, because I kept it quiet for years and I don’t want to do that anymore. It was 1984 and I worked at a magazine in Rosario, right in the middle of the topless craze. The streets smelled of freshly won freedom, the kiosks were filling up with covers that would have been unthinkable before, and I, having just turned thirty, felt that at last I could write whatever I felt like. My name was Renata, and I was ambitious, single, and pretty damn fed up with the lukewarm men I’d known up to then.

The assignment arrived like a joke from fate: cover the contest for the province’s first firefighters’ calendar.

—That’s what sells, Renata. Oiled-up guys, helmets, hoses. People are going to tear it out of our hands —my editor told me, amused.

I agreed without thinking too much about it. The event was being held at a renovated fire station in the Pichincha neighborhood, with spotlights, photographers, and an audience made up almost entirely of women who applauded without trying to hide it. And that’s where I saw him for the first time.

His name was Damián Ferreyra, the rookie competing for Mister March. Twenty-seven years old, tall, with arms marked more by hard work than by the gym and a fine-line tattoo on his forearm. He posed with his helmet in his hand and his torso bare, the firefighter pants barely hanging from his hips, so low you could make out the beginning of his pubic hair and the heavy bulge straining the fabric. It wasn’t just the body. It was the way he looked at the camera, as if he knew something the rest of us still didn’t.

He’s the one who’ll win, I thought. And not because of the photos.

He won March. I interviewed him in a corner of the firehouse, the air thick with sweat and voices, my notebooks trembling a little in my hand. He looked me up and down, unhurried, and it crossed my mind that he was undressing me with his eyes as calmly as he would roll up a hose.

—You’re the prettiest journalist who’s been through here —he said, in that low voice that seemed made for saying worse things—. Want to see the hose up close?

I felt heat rising up my neck, but also lower than that, a warm pulse between my legs that caught me completely off guard. I blushed like a teenager, and that made me furious. I gathered my things awkwardly.

—Thanks for the compliment —I stammered—. I have to wrap up the piece. Congratulations on the prize.

And I left. Almost running, like a frightened girl, when the only thing I wanted was to stay.

***

I drove to my apartment with my hands steady on the wheel and my head somewhere else. The night air did nothing for me. I got home, slammed the door shut, and leaned against the hallway wall, breathing deeply, still with his image stuck behind my eyes: the gleaming torso, the crossed arms, that half-smile, and the bulge showing in his firefighter pants.

I stripped on the way to the bedroom. My blouse ended up in the hall, my skirt at the doorway, my panties already wet at the foot of the bed. I threw myself down on my back on the comforter, with the bedside lamp as my only witness, and spread my legs without giving myself time to regret it. I ran two fingers through my cunt and I was already wet, soaked, slick. I shoved one finger in first, then two, squeezing my eyes shut tight so Damián’s face wouldn’t disappear from my mind.

I pictured him climbing on top of me, those arms forcing my knees apart, prying me wider open. I pictured his mouth moving down my neck to my tits, sucking one nipple until it was hard and purple, biting just enough to wrench a moan out of me. Going lower, tongue over my belly button, lower still, until he buried his face between my thighs and ate my cunt hungrily, without asking permission. With my free hand I squeezed one breast, pinched my nipple hard the way he would have pinched it, and with the other I started rubbing my clit in quick circles, drenched in my own wetness all the way to my ass.

—Damián, son of a bitch —I whispered out loud, alone in the room, and I felt ashamed and hotter still hearing myself say it.

I imagined the hose, like he’d said. I imagined the cock I could make out under those pants, thick, long, veined, pushing me against the wall of the station. I imagined opening my mouth to suck him off, kneeling on the cement floor, my tongue sliding over his balls and my throat opening all the way. I imagined telling him yes, right there, not caring about anything, my skirt hiked up to my waist and him driving into me in one thrust, all the way in, covering my mouth with his hand so I wouldn’t scream.

When I came, it was long and almost painful, a spasm that arched my back off the mattress and made me clamp my thighs around my hand until I hurt myself. I came with a moan of his name like an idiot, my cunt throbbing out of control, soaking the sheets. It left me trembling and ashamed and happy all at once. I stayed like that for a while, fingers still inside me, feeling my cunt keep contracting on its own in smaller waves.

Then I stared at the ceiling. I’ll call him tomorrow for a second interview, I thought. And this time I won’t run.

That was my first lie. The one I told myself so I wouldn’t have to admit I was already lost.

***

The next day I went back with the perfect excuse: I needed a few more personal photos for the article. I put on a skirt shorter than was sensible, with no panties underneath —a decision I made while getting dressed, looking at myself in the mirror, perfectly aware of what I was doing— and wore my hair down. Damián met me at the locker room door, still sweaty from training, a towel over his shoulder.

—You came back —he said, unsurprised—. I thought I’d scared you off.

—I don’t scare that easily —I lied again.

We took a few quick shots, him with the hose, water running down his chest. Every click of the camera was an excuse to get closer, brush his arm, steal a little of his scent. When we were done, I suggested coffee to go over the details. He agreed with a smile I already knew.

We sat at the back of a corner bar, away from prying eyes. We ordered two cortados and barely touched them. A few minutes later he leaned toward me, lowering his voice.

—I dreamed about you last night —he said—. You were alone in the station and I had you against the garage wall. The siren was going off in the background. I lifted your skirt, pulled your panties down with my teeth, and shoved it in without asking you anything. You came twice before I let you go.

It was a tastelessly brazen thing to say and, even so, I didn’t get up. I felt the heat drop through my belly, a direct tug to my cunt. I laughed nervously, covering my mouth, my eyes shining with something that wasn’t only shame.

—You’re out of line, Damián —I said between laughs—. How do you tell me that here, with people around?

—Because I saw how red you got yesterday —he replied with a shrug—. And because I’d bet you thought about me after you ran off. I’d bet you touched yourself. I’d bet you whispered so the neighbors wouldn’t hear you.

I didn’t deny it. I pressed my thighs together under the table and leaned toward him. Under the tablecloth, I slid one bare foot out and brushed his calf, slowly moving up his leg.

—Maybe. But if you keep talking like that, I’m going to have to set some rules.

—I like women who set rules —he said, lifting an eyebrow—. Tell me them. Then we’ll see whether I follow them or break them one by one.

And that was how, between laughter and knees brushing under the table, the rules I invented that afternoon were born: no taboos, no inhibitions, no commitment. Just desire, in its purest form. I was so sure I could control it.

***

We didn’t go anywhere that afternoon except my bed. And it was everything I had imagined and more. The moment I shut the apartment door, Damián grabbed me by the nape and slammed me against the living room wall, devouring my mouth with his tongue, biting my lip until I moaned. He slid a hand under my skirt and found I wasn’t wearing panties. He laughed against my neck.

—Whore —he murmured, with a smile that made me shiver—. You came prepared.

—Shut up and keep going —I told him, and pushed his head down.

He knelt right there against the wall, lifted my skirt to my waist, and dragged his entire tongue over my cunt from bottom to top, slowly, like someone tasting something for the first time. My knees went weak. He sucked my clit gently, then harder, then stuck his tongue inside and drove it as far as he could, eating me like he’d been starved for it. I pressed his head against me, not letting him breathe, grinding myself against his mouth. When I felt close, he stopped.

—Not yet —he said, looking up at me from below, his mouth shining with me—. You’re not coming yet. You’re going to earn it.

He dragged me to the bed half carrying me, threw me on my back, and took off his pants. When I saw it for the first time, a sound escaped my throat I couldn’t even interpret. He was thick, long, hard all the way to the tip, with a vein running the length of it. I knelt on the edge of the bed and took him with both hands. I slid him into my mouth without thinking, sucked him from top to bottom, letting him fill my throat, hearing him moan for the first time. I licked his balls, ran my tongue over his shaft, took him back in until I gagged, tears in my eyes and saliva dripping down my chin.

—Like that —he murmured, grabbing my hair—. Look at me while you suck my cock.

I looked at him. And I saw the face of a man who was beginning to understand that I wasn’t going to be easy to forget either.

He turned me over, put me on all fours on the mattress, and opened my ass with both hands. He drove his cock into me in one thrust, all the way in, and I screamed into the pillow. He started fucking me hard, gripping my hips, his skin slamming against mine in a rhythm that made the bed creak. He took one hand to my hair, yanked, forced my back to arch so he could sink deeper. With the other hand he found my clit and started rubbing it with two fingers while he kept driving into me.

—Come —he ordered in my ear—. Come with my cock inside you.

I came screaming, clenching around his dick in spasms that shook my whole body. He didn’t stop. He flipped me over again, put me on my back, spread my legs until my ankles were on his shoulders, and entered me again, looking me in the eye as he moved. He pushed in slowly, all the way to the hilt, and came nearly all the way out before slamming back in hard. It hurt me and I loved it and I couldn’t stop moaning his name.

—Damián, harder —I begged, and hated myself for begging, and got even hotter for having hated myself.

He sped up. He grabbed my tits, pinched my nipples between his fingers, bit my neck. I felt the orgasm rising from my belly again and came before he did, squeezing his waist with my legs, clawing at his back. He kept going a few more thrusts, faster and faster, and when he was about to come he pulled out, climbed up over my chest, and finished on my face and tits, a thick rope of cum that ran from my chin to my nipples. I saw his wrecked face, eyes shut, mouth open, and I felt powerful for the first time that night.

We stayed there, gasping, him on top of me without fully pulling out, while I ran a finger through the semen dripping down my neck and brought it to my mouth without taking my eyes off him.

—I told you you’d beg —he murmured later, while I was catching my breath with my face against his chest.

—Don’t get ahead of yourself —I told him. But we both knew he was right.

What came after was months of a vertigo I didn’t know how to climb down from. We saw each other anywhere: at my apartment after an “interview” that lasted until dawn, in the empty firehouse in the middle of the night, in roadside motels, in the car parked by the river. In the back seat of the Renault, with my legs pressed against the roof and him kneeling on the floor eating me until the windows fogged over. In the firehouse locker room, against the lockers, with the showers running to cover the noise, while he drove into me with the uniform half down. In a shithole motel on Route 9, where he tied my hands to the headboard with my own stockings and fucked me for hours, not letting me come until I begged. I kept inventing rules for every encounter, and he kept breaking them all, one by one, until he left me spent and laughing at my own defeat.

—You’re my favorite journalist —he’d say, his mouth against my nape, still inside me after coming.

—And you’re a problem —I’d answer, and I meant it without yet understanding it.

The calendar came out and was a huge success. Damián started appearing in other magazines, on some TV show, turned into the firefighter everybody wanted. I covered every step with ever more heated pieces. My coworkers started noticing I was arriving late, with dark circles under my eyes and a smile that wouldn’t leave my face.

***

And then Esteban showed up.

He was a new journalist, thirty-four years old, arriving with a reputation for good prose. He had nothing of Damián’s body: he smoked too much, he carried a few extra pounds that made him seem more human, and he had just published an investigation into police corruption that had won him awards. But he was smart, quick, sharp. He made me laugh out loud in meetings and, above all, he really listened when I talked about my work.

With Esteban I felt something that didn’t exist with Damián: the possibility of an afterward. Coffees that stretched until dawn, conversations about everything and nothing, an awkward kiss at my front door that went no further that first time. With him I could be myself, without the role of femme fatale I had learned to play in the firefighter’s bed.

The first time we slept together was slow, almost shy. Esteban undressed me carefully, kissed every part of my body as if he were learning a map, and made love to me slowly, looking me in the eyes. He came inside me with a short moan and then held me from behind for an hour, breathing into my nape. It was tender. It was nice. I came once, barely, with him rubbing my clit with his hand while he moved softly. Nothing like the three or four times I came with Damián.

I started failing Damián little by little. I canceled at the last minute, arrived late, and when we saw each other, the sex was still intense but it didn’t fill me the same way. He noticed. He said nothing, but he gripped me harder, pushed deeper, marked my hips with his fingers as if he were trying to claim something he could feel slipping away. One night he had me face-down for almost an hour, fucking me nonstop, not letting me turn my face, until I came crying into the pillow.

—Is it like this with the other guy? —he asked in my ear, still thrusting.

I didn’t answer. It wasn’t necessary.

One night, after a quick encounter in the car —a blowjob I gave him in the passenger seat, his hand tangled in my hair and his cum running from the corner of my mouth—, I worked up the courage.

—Damián, I think I need some time.

He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.

—Some time or a replacement? —he said—. Have you already found someone else?

—It’s not just that. There’s someone I can talk to, laugh with, build something with. Not just this.

He adjusted his clothes, looking at me with a new hardness.

—The rules were yours —he said—. No commitment. Don’t come at me with drama now. Go be with your guy. But we both know you won’t feel with him what you feel with me. Your cunt won’t get wet just from hearing his voice. You won’t beg him to fuck you harder.

He left without saying goodbye. And I was left out in the street, alone, with an uneasy certainty lodged in my chest: he was right.

***

Esteban and I started going out for real. We went to the movies, cooked together, stayed up talking late. Sex with him was tender, attentive, he kissed me a lot and held me afterward. He made love to me two, three times a week, always in bed, always with the light off, always in the same position. It was everything they say a woman should want. And yet he never left me the way the other one did: body vibrating, mind blank. With Esteban there was always something missing, an edge I missed and felt guilty for missing. I missed having my hair pulled. I missed hands gripping my throat without choking me. I missed the low voice whispering filthy things in my ear. I missed coming so many times I lost count.

So I lied again. This time to Esteban. At first it was a message to Damián: “one last time.” We met at the fire station in the middle of the night, and he took me against the garage wall, with the siren blaring in the background because of a real emergency that broke out while we were fucking, just like in the dream he’d told me about at the bar. He lifted my skirt, ripped my panties off in one yank, and fucked me standing up, with one of my legs hooked around his hip, biting my neck so I wouldn’t scream. I came twice before he finished inside me, his face buried in my shoulder.

After that there were more. Stolen meetings at any hour, anywhere. He did things to me I would never even have thought to ask Esteban for: he tied me up, blindfolded me, fucked me in the ass for the first time in my life, slowly, with his fingers in my cunt and his voice in my ear telling me to relax, that that hole was his too. I cried and begged him for more. I’d go home to Esteban, shower quickly to get Damián’s smell off me, and crawl into bed beside him pretending to be tired, with my ass aching and my cunt still throbbing.

But even that wasn’t like before. Each time with Damián was different, rougher, sadder. I left feeling less desired and more addicted, which is not the same thing. He almost never kissed me on the mouth anymore. He used me, and I let myself be used, because that was the only way I’d found to feel anything. And I went back to Esteban’s bed staring at the ceiling, dissatisfied, thinking of one while I slept wrapped in the other’s arms.

One night, Esteban confronted me.

—I know there’s someone else, Renata. I’m not stupid. Who is it?

I cried. I told him only part of the truth: a firefighter, from the calendar, something that had started as sex and that I couldn’t let go of. I didn’t yell, he didn’t break anything. He just grabbed his jacket.

—I hope one day you find what you’re looking for —he said from the doorway—. Because with me, obviously, it wasn’t that.

And he left, quietly, which is the worst way for someone to leave.

***

I was alone again. I tried calling Damián, but he no longer answered. The calendar had put out new editions, with other firefighters posing, and Mister March was a thing of the past. I kept writing articles, living the topless boom like everyone else, but every time I saw a photo of a man like that I went back to that fire station, to that first afternoon, to the rules I invented believing I could win.

I tried to remake my life. Outings with friends, dates with proper men, even an attempt at something serious. But at the end of the day I always came back to the same thing: Damián, the only one who had ever made me feel unrestrained and the only one I hadn’t been able to keep. Touching myself alone while thinking of his cock, his voice, the way he grabbed my throat while he drove into me.

I confess it now, so many years later, because I understood what the only rule was that truly got broken. It wasn’t any of the ones I wrote down. It was the one I never even dared to say out loud: don’t fall in love. I lost the man who offered me a future for one who offered me only the present, and ended up with neither. That’s my real story, without adornment. And if I’m telling it, it’s because maybe, by telling it, I’ll finally stop missing what I never should have let in.