The Summer My Teachers Taught Me for Real

This happened years ago, in Seville, when I was eighteen. I’m telling it now because, with time, the memories that matter most are the ones you’ve gone too long without telling, and this is one of them.

I passed the university entrance exams in June, after two years with private tutors in two subjects that had always given me trouble: math and English. In September I was due to start Chemistry, which was what I’d wanted to study ever since I was fifteen and my father let me see the inside of a laboratory for the first time.

I was an only child, pretty introverted, and until that summer I had had no experience with women. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. It was that the idea of approaching them, of saying something, of showing what I felt, paralyzed me. At school there were girls I found very attractive, and I never dared speak to them beyond what was strictly necessary.

My private tutors were different. Adults, years ahead of me, women with whom the dynamic was different because the roles were clear from the start. With them I felt less threatened by my own clumsiness.

Laura had been teaching me math for almost two years on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at my house. She was thirty-one, blond, with green eyes and a direct way of speaking that made even the hardest problems seem manageable. She was beautiful in a way I noticed every time she leaned over my notes to point something out. I never did anything. Never said anything. I just looked at her out of the corner of my eye when I could.

Four days after my university acceptance letter arrived, I found out Laura was leaving for the United States. A university in Chicago had offered her a research position. She was leaving that very Saturday.

On Friday she called me. She wanted to stop by and say goodbye before her flight.

She arrived at six in the evening with a small suitcase and a different perfume from her usual one. I had prepared a gift for her—a silver pendant and a handwritten card—as a way of thanking her for all the time she had given me. I gave it to her at the door.

“You didn’t have to,” she said, looking at the pendant.

“I wanted to,” I replied.

We went into the living room. My parents had gone out to lunch with some friends and wouldn’t be back until night. Laura left the suitcase by the door, turned to me, and looked at me in a way I couldn’t immediately read.

“I brought you something too,” she said. “Even if I didn’t put it in a box.”

She told me she knew. That for two years she had noticed how I looked at her when I thought she wasn’t paying attention. That it wasn’t a reproach, quite the opposite. And that now that she was leaving, she wanted to say goodbye properly.

She took off her jacket. Then, slowly, the sweater she wore underneath. A white bra appeared against very pale skin. She looked at me, waiting.

“You can touch,” she said.

I reached out without thinking too much. They were the first breasts I had ever touched in my life. I was awkward, unsure, not knowing what rhythm to keep or exactly where to put my hands. Laura didn’t get impatient. She guided me with short phrases, with small adjustments of position, with a patience I was immensely grateful for in that moment. She made me slide my palms over the fabric, then under the bra, until I felt them for real in my hands: heavy, warm, with the nipples hard and responsive under my fingers. I pressed them, afraid of breaking something, and she gave a low laugh, taking my wrists to show me the exact pressure. Then she made me lower one hand to her waist, pulled me closer, and let me bury my face between her breasts while she asked me, very slowly, not to hurry, to touch her as if I had all the time in the world.

At some point she looked down and fell silent for a moment.

“Well,” she murmured.

There was a very obvious tension against the fabric of my pants that, focused on her, I hadn’t noticed. Laura unfastened my belt calmly, then the button, then the zipper. She never took her eyes off mine while she did it. She slipped her hand inside my jeans and held me through the fabric, feeling the size, the heat, the hardness I had worked up like a stone. Then she pulled my pants and underwear down to my thighs without looking away. She stroked my foreskin with two fingers, then wrapped her hand around my cock and started to move it slowly, testing me, drawing out a muffled groan that embarrassed me deliciously.

“You’re shy for no reason,” she said.

What followed was something completely new to me. Laura was direct and knew what she wanted. She crouched in front of me, moved my T-shirt aside just enough to kiss my stomach, and, without wasting time, put her mouth between my legs. I felt her all at once, hot and wet, taking the head in with a confidence that made me tremble. She didn’t use only her tongue: she used her hands too, one holding me at the base and the other stroking my balls, squeezing and releasing with a precision that emptied my head. She moved up and down with that obscene sound of saliva and breathing that I had never heard so close in my life. I froze, my hands buried in her blond hair, unable to decide whether to push her or pull back. She set the rhythm with a firmer pressure on my thighs, made me spread my legs wider, and brought me right to the edge without letting me fall. Then she straightened up for a second, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and smiled as if she knew exactly the effect she had just had on me.

“Now come here,” she said, with no softening at all. “To bed.”

She took me to the bedroom.

The first time was clumsy on my part, no doubt, though she never pointed it out. Laura undressed completely in front of me, slowly, without shame. She slid down her skirt, took off her panties, and let me see her standing there, legs apart, with her pussy already shiny and flushed with arousal. I moved toward her as best I could, almost afraid, and she grabbed the back of my neck to kiss me for the first time on the mouth, a long, wet, tongue-filled kiss, as if she wanted to push me at last to the right place. Then she made me lie down and got on top of me, guiding my cock with her hand until she set me exactly where she wanted me. I felt her sink down little by little, millimeter by millimeter, squeezing me with a mixture of heat and resistance that left me breathless. Laura stayed still for a moment, breathing deeply, and told me to look at her, not to look away. Her lips were parted, one hand resting on my chest and the other braced on the bed, while she began to move with a slow, calculated rocking that made me understand immediately that this was not a mechanical act but something alive, carnal, brutally physical. Each rise and fall dragged at my skin, my muscles, my balls, until the slap of her hips against mine sounded sharp in the room. Then she changed angle, threw her body forward, took my face in one hand, and started kissing me again without stopping fucking herself on me.

At some point she changed positions and took complete control, getting on top of me and setting the pace she liked. I was surprised by the difference: suddenly I didn’t have to think about anything, only follow her. She straddled me, braced herself on my thighs, and started riding me with a cadence that got faster and faster, pressing her cunt against the base of my cock with each thrust to force me to feel her all the way, wet, throbbing. Her breasts bounced against her chest, the bra already on the floor, and I didn’t know where to put my hands until she placed them on her hips so I could hold her tight. Laura told me not to stay still, to feel her, that if I wanted I should give it to her a little harder. I obeyed as best I could, plunging into her again and again while she moved with dark confidence, completely uninhibited. I was surprised to hear her ask for it harder, deeper, and then, without warning, change again and drop to her knees in front of me so I could fuck her from behind. Then the sound was different: flesh slapping, her breath catching, her voice giving me short, exact instructions. She guided me by pushing her ass back, opening herself for me, and I understood that sex is not something you guess at, but something you learn with another person’s body and mouth.

“Like that,” she said at one point, and she said it as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

I lasted much longer than I had expected. Longer than I lasted alone. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I accepted it.

When it was over, she sat on the edge of the bed with her hair loose and her breathing still fast. There were mirrors on the wardrobes in my room, and for a moment I saw our reflections. We looked like two different people from the ones who had arrived an hour earlier. Laura had her thighs apart, her skin sweaty, her chest rising and falling, still marked red by my hands at her waist. I was wrecked, my cock sensitive, my T-shirt twisted, not knowing whether to look at her lips, her neck, or the rest of her naked body. She wiped between her legs with a tissue, swept her hair back, and smiled at me with almost cruel calm, as if the whole scene had been nothing more than a practical lesson.

“Start dating girls,” she told me. “You have everything you need.”

She got dressed, took her suitcase, and hugged me at the door. All afternoon she hadn’t kissed me on the mouth even once. I noticed that then, though I didn’t really know what it meant.

I haven’t seen her since that day.

***

Two days later I went to Chiara’s house.

Chiara was Italian, from Milan, though she had been living in Seville for several years. She taught English to high school students and spoke all three languages—English, Spanish, Italian—with the same naturalness, without any noticeable accent in any of them. She was also thirty-one, dark-haired, with dark eyes and a wide mouth that curved easily when something amused her. She was attractive in a different way from Laura: more intense, more direct in the way she looked at you.

What had struck me most about Chiara during the months of lessons were her dresses, always very short. More than once I had had to make a conscious effort not to look too much when she sat down across from me at the table.

I brought her a perfume as a farewell gift. She told me she had good news and bad news: the bad news was that she was no longer going to be my teacher, because in two days she was going back to Milan, where they had offered her a job at a training company. As she explained it, she added that the air conditioning was broken too and that was why she wasn’t opening the windows. The apartment smelled a little stale.

She paused.

“The good news,” she said, “I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to show you.”

She started with small kisses on the mouth, exploratory, as if she were asking me a question with her lips. She took my hands and placed them on her waist. When she felt me relax a little, she pulled back and looked at me.

“Today I’m going to teach you something you’ll use for the rest of your life,” she told me.

She took my clothes off patiently. Then she pulled the zipper of her dress down from the top, unclasped her bra, and removed her underwear. She sat in a wooden chair with armrests, lifted one leg onto the seat opposite, and looked at me. Her pussy was completely exposed, the lips wet and parted, and she touched herself slowly with two fingers while I watched her without moving, fascinated by how openly she displayed her desire.

“Come closer,” she said. “And listen to what I’m going to explain.”

She taught me how to explore her with my tongue and fingers. It was a class in the most literal sense: she told me what to do, corrected me if I changed pace too quickly, told me when it was right. I slipped in one finger, then two, and felt her close and open around me with a wetness that left my hand soaked. She gripped the armrests and told me to lower my head, not to lick only the center but around it too, to suck her patiently. I obeyed, sliding my tongue between her lips, pressing her clit with short movements while she breathed harder and harder. It took me maybe ten minutes to bring her to orgasm. When she came, she let out her breath all at once and pressed her feet against the floor as her fingers tightened on the armrests. Her face changed completely: eyes half closed, mouth open, her whole body trembling as if she had been run through by a current.

Then she stood up, placed her hands on the back of the chair, and turned her back to me.

“Now fuck me,” she said, without turning around.

With Chiara everything was faster, more intense from the very beginning. She asked for specific things: slower, harder, not like that, like that. She also asked for spanks at a certain point, something I had never done before and that she seemed to enjoy with an intensity that surprised me. The screams she let out were loud, completely uninhibited, and bounced off the apartment walls. I lifted the skirt she no longer had on, spread her legs, and fucked her from behind while she braced her hands on the wood and pushed her ass back toward me, demanding more depth, more rhythm, more pressure. When I spanked one cheek, the flesh cracked sharply and she answered with a broken moan that made me clench my teeth. She asked for another, then another, and each hit left her skin redder, hotter, while she arched her back with a dark, almost proud smile at what she was feeling.

At some point she told me to stop. Then, without me doing anything, she began moving backward against me herself, controlling the depth and the rhythm. I stayed still, holding her by the hip, watching as she took exactly what she needed. It was something I hadn’t seen coming and that seemed incredibly direct to me. Chiara turned around after that, pushed me to the edge of the chair, and rode me facing me, lowering herself onto me with maddening slowness and then suddenly speeding up. She grabbed my face, kissed me with tongue, and at the same time touched herself with her hand, rubbing herself until she was even wetter, shinier. I felt her tighten around me, once, then again, with a tremor in her abdomen that made me follow her almost to the point of losing control.

We changed positions several times. In one of them I held her standing, lifting one leg out to the side. In another she got on top and took the pace head-on, looking me in the eyes, touching herself at the same time. It was in that position that I noticed something different: when she came that time, her body tensed in a completely different way from the previous ones, with a wetness that hadn’t been there before. I watched her arch her back, clamp her thighs against my hips, and let out a long, almost animal sound while her cunt squeezed my cock with delicious force. Then she stayed still for a moment, breathing as if she’d just run a race.

We had been at it for more than an hour when Chiara told me she wanted to finish in a specific way. She dropped to her knees in front of me. She took my cock in her hand, licked it from top to bottom, sucked the head hungrily, and then kept going with her mouth until she brought me to the edge. When I came, she couldn’t take it all and some of it hit her face, her neck. She opened her mouth to take what was left, ran her thumb over her cheek, and wiped herself clean without losing her smile.

“You’re incredible,” she said as she cleaned herself, smiling.

When she got dressed, she took a card from her bag and handed it to me. Her name, her phone number, and an email address.

“Whenever you want to write me,” she said, “you know how to find me.”

***

The next day she came back.

She arrived at seven-thirty in the evening, when she knew my parents weren’t home. She was wearing a long trench coat, and when she took it off in the hallway she was completely naked underneath. She said nothing for a second, just looked at me.

“Take me to your room,” she said.

That second encounter was different: there was less uncertainty on my part, less clumsiness. Chiara noticed. She kissed me on the mouth that time, something she hadn’t done the afternoon before. We did things we hadn’t done before: the 69 position, which she directed with precise instructions; new positions I would never have imagined on my own. She lay on her back on the bed, I got between her legs, and she held my head while she put her pussy on my face, setting the rhythm with her hips to force me to lick her deeply. Then we switched positions and she took my mouth with the same hunger with which I had touched her. She stayed for a little over forty minutes, amid broken breathing, saliva, nails digging into skin, and the sound of the bed hitting the wall.

When she left, I realized that in forty-eight hours I had learned more about the human body than in the previous eighteen years combined.

***

In the days that followed, I talked about it with two friends I trusted, Marcos and Javier. They were very happy for me, especially because they knew Laura from seeing her around the neighborhood and had always said she seemed like a very open person. They explained a few things I didn’t fully understand.

About why I had lasted so long before coming: when you masturbate alone, there’s a pressure and a rhythm the body learns to need. With another person, all of that disappears. The body takes time to adjust to something different, softer, more unpredictable.

About the faces the two of them made when they came—those expressions that to me seemed almost like pain—they explained that some women express it that way. That very intense pleasure sometimes looks like pain on the face. That it doesn’t mean anything is wrong.

Not all the answers convinced me completely, but some of them matched what I had lived through. The rest I came to understand only with time.

That summer I went out at night with my friends for the first time. The difference amazed me. The clubs, the looks, the way people found each other in the dark. I began to understand things I had seen before without understanding.

That summer I also went to spend a few days in Ayamonte, at my cousins’ place. Something else happened there, with one of their neighbors, though that’s another story.

What Laura and Chiara left me was not only the memory of those afternoons. It was also the certainty that shyness is not a permanent condition. That it is, above all, a lack of experience.

And that experience, at some point, always arrives.