The Night a Stranger Made Me Lose Control

I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this. I was never the diary type, and even less the type to put into words something I wouldn’t even dare tell my best friend. But there are nights that stick to your skin, and if I don’t get them out of me, I feel like I’m going to explode. So here I am, sitting on the bed, with the lamp low and my hand still not fully responding.

I’ll start at the beginning, even if the beginning was a stupid thing: an invitation to an opening I didn’t want to go to.

***

My coworker, Carla, had been insisting all week. A small gallery in the old neighborhood, cheap wine in plastic cups, people pretending to understand art. I said yes just to get her to stop bothering me, and at the last minute she canceled because she got a headache. I thought about staying home. I didn’t. I still don’t know what pushed me to leave in that black dress I hadn’t worn in months.

The gallery was exactly as I had imagined: noisy, too brightly lit, full of lines nobody truly believed. I grabbed a drink, planted myself in front of a huge canvas of red splotches, and tried to look like I was reflecting. The truth is I was thinking about the taxi ride home.

—You’re pretending —said a voice beside me.

I turned. He was looking at the same painting, not at me, with a half smile that didn’t ask permission for anything.

—Excuse me?

—That you’re pretending to be interested. You’re good at it, but it shows in your shoulders. When we really like something, we let our guard down.

What an insolent bastard, I thought. And at the same time I felt something in my stomach I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

His name was Adrián. Or that’s what he said, and at this point it hardly matters whether it was true. He had dark eyes, the kind that always seem on the verge of asking you something uncomfortable, and a measured way of speaking, unhurried, as if we had the whole night ahead of us. We talked about anything: the bad wine, the people, why someone ends up going to places they don’t want to be. He never once asked whether I was alone, what I did for a living, or any of the things people usually ask to fill silence.

At one point he set his glass on a shelf and looked straight at me.

—Do you want to get out of here?

It wasn’t a crude come-on. It was almost a practical question, like suggesting we change bars. And I, who have spent years calculating every step, measuring the consequences of everything, said yes before I even thought about it. I set my glass down beside his and we left without telling anyone, without sending a message, without anything.

***

We walked a few blocks in silence. It wasn’t an awkward silence; it was the kind that makes the air tense. I could feel the night cold on my arms and the heat rising somewhere else, completely different. Every so often our hands brushed and neither of us pulled away. That small shared cowardice excited me more than any line he could have said.

His building was nearby. We went up a narrow staircase, and on the landing on the second floor, before reaching his door, he stopped and looked at me again with that mute question. I nodded. Nothing else was needed.

The moment the door closed behind us, he turned me around and pinned me against it. I’m writing it and I still can’t believe it was me. His mouth came down on mine without gentleness, with an urgency that knocked the air out of my lungs. I grabbed his shirt, not to stop him, but to pull him closer. I didn’t want tenderness that night. I wanted exactly that: someone who wouldn’t treat me like something that could break.

His hands slid down my back and found the zipper of the dress. He opened it slowly, far too slowly for the urgency with which he was kissing me, and that contradiction drove me insane. I felt the cool air on the bare skin of my back and a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

—Wait —I said, without really knowing what I was asking him to wait for.

—Do you want me to stop? —he asked, his mouth still on my neck.

—No.

That was the only thing I said for a long time. No.

***

The apartment was almost dark. Only the streetlight came in through a large window without curtains, a yellowish light that cast long shadows over the wooden floor. He took my hand and led me to the bedroom without turning on a single light. I followed him with my dress half fallen, barefoot because at some point I had taken off my shoes without noticing.

I sat on the edge of the bed and he knelt in front of me. He started at my ankles, moving his mouth up my legs, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world and I was the only thing that existed in that room. Every kiss was a step. When he reached the inner part of my thighs I felt my legs tremble, and not from nerves.

—Look at me —he said.

And I looked at him. That was the most intimate thing of the whole night: holding his gaze while I came apart. Not the moans, not what came after. That soft, obscene command, look at me, and my total inability to disobey.

He laid me down on the sheets. His mouth traveled over my neck, my breasts, my belly, leaving a line of heat that slowly consumed me. I tangled my fingers in his hair and arched my back, offering myself in a way I never thought I’d be capable of. I didn’t recognize my own voice. I didn’t recognize the woman who answered every caress with such hunger.

There was a moment, right before, when he stopped. He pressed his forehead to mine and we both stayed there breathing hard, looking at each other in the dimness. He said nothing. Neither did I. But in that silence it became clear there was no turning back, and that neither of us wanted there to be.

When he finally sank into me, I closed my eyes and a sound escaped me that wasn’t a word or a name, something older than that. He moved slowly at first, measuring me, reading every reaction in my body as if he knew how to read things I didn’t even know myself. Then the rhythm changed, it grew deep, demanding, and I clung to his back and dug my nails in without apologizing.

It wasn’t romantic. There were no declarations or promises. There were two bodies in the dark recognizing each other for the first time, a conversation made of broken breathing and hands gripping hard. He took me to the edge and held me there, teasing, until I begged him. Yes, begged. Me, who never beg for anything.

When I came, it was a wave that swept me from head to toe, long, almost unbearable, leaving me empty and full at the same time. I heard him say my name, his voice broken against my shoulder, and that was enough for pleasure to shake through me again, like an aftershock.

***

Afterward we stayed still for a long while, legs tangled, skin stuck together with sweat. My heart was pounding in my ears. He brushed a strand of hair off my face with a gesture that, for the first time all night, was almost tender. We didn’t say anything. Sometimes words ruin things, and we both knew it.

I got dressed when it was already starting to get light. He offered to call me a taxi and I told him I’d rather walk a little. The truth is I needed to be alone with what had just happened, chew it over, make sense of it. At the door he kissed me one last time, not urgently this time, slowly, and told me he hoped we’d see each other again. I didn’t leave him my number. I don’t know why. Maybe because I was afraid of spending that night wanting to repeat it.

I walked the blocks back with the first light of day and a smile I couldn’t wipe off my face. On the empty street, with my shoes in my hand, I felt freer than I had in years.

***

Now, while I’m writing this, I realize something that’s hard for me to admit even on these pages that no one is ever going to read. It wasn’t the sex that changed me, intense as it was. It was discovering that inside me lived this other woman, one who is capable of saying yes, of leaving the gallery with a stranger, of asking for what she wants without apologizing. I had spent so long being careful, being proper, being what was expected of me, that I had forgotten I also have desire, and that desire doesn’t ask permission.

I don’t know if I’ll see him again. Probably not. But I don’t need to. What stayed with me isn’t him; it’s the version of myself that appeared that night. And now that I know her, I’m not going to lock her away in a drawer again.

Tomorrow is Monday. I’ll go back to the office, to the meetings, to being the usual me for everyone else. But I’ll know. Every time I look in the mirror I’ll remember the woman who walked barefoot at dawn, and that, for now, is enough for me.