The Swimmer I Met at the University Games

I still keep the photos from that tournament, and every time I look at them I stop on the same face. Many years have passed, but there are things you never tell anyone and that, nevertheless, never fade. This is one of them.

When I was in my third year of college, they organized an interuniversity games event in a city in the north, on a huge campus with its own dormitories. For ten days, teams from half a dozen universities gathered to compete in soccer, basketball, swimming, track and field, and volleyball. The dorms were spacious but divided by buildings: the men slept in one wing and the women in another, separated by a courtyard and by the coaches’ watchful eyes.

I competed in track and field and on the soccer team. She swam and did gymnastics for her school. Her name was Carolina, she had long black hair, light eyes, and a way of laughing that undid me from the very first afternoon. We were both around twenty-two and hit it off almost without even trying.

We cheered each other on from the stands every time one of us went up to compete. I shouted her name when she climbed onto the diving board; she stood up in the bleachers when I stepped onto the track. Between event and event we looked for any excuse to sit together, and the coaches never took their eyes off us, which made every touch a small challenge.

To get a moment alone, we started training very early, when the campus was still asleep. She timed me on the track; I accompanied her to the pool and corrected her arm entry in the butterfly stroke, which I also swam. The cold water, the echo of the empty venue, and no one else around: that was our territory.

One of those mornings, while I was showing her how to turn on the flip turn, my hands slipped and ended up on her hips, on her ass, very close to her crotch. We froze, looking at each other, suspended in the water, and I kissed her. She responded without thinking, and I pulled her against my body.

She pulled away sharply when she felt my erection against her belly. Her cheeks flushed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I really like you, it’s a reaction I can’t control.”

“No, it’s okay,” she replied, taking my hand. “It’s just that no one had ever kissed me like that before, and feeling you so close made me nervous.”

I had never seen her as beautiful as she was in that moment, wet and flustered.

“We’ll take it slow,” I told her, and helped her out of the water. I didn’t miss the way she glanced sideways at my groin, which still hadn’t quite calmed down.

We dried off and sat on the grass, still with our hearts racing. She asked me if I’d had many girlfriends. I told her the truth: a few, and that with her I didn’t need words, that at our age the natural thing was to experiment and let ourselves be carried along. I stroked her arm and asked if the kiss had bothered her.

“No, not at all,” she admitted. “I wanted it too. I just have very little experience, almost none.”

“Then we’ll have to practice more often,” I joked.

She laughed, picked up her towel, and said goodbye with a softer kiss, while I slid my hand along the curve of her hip. I watched her walk away in the blue swimsuit clinging to her body, and I knew those ten days were going to be long.

***

In the following days, things between us gradually heated up. Any excuse worked to pull us away from the group and kiss behind a wall, in a hallway, between two courts. At first they were timid brushes; later, more open caresses. I kissed her neck, her shoulders, the insides of her thighs, very close to where she tightened when my fingers brushed over her clothes.

The day she broke the record in her event I kissed her in front of the whole team, pressed against her in the water, and had to wait a good while before getting out of the pool. She felt my erection between her legs and opened her eyes, surprised, spreading her thighs a little to steady herself in the water.

Later I followed her to a secluded garden behind her building, where I found her sitting on a bench with a worried expression. I sat down beside her.

“You should be happy, you won,” I said.

“I am. But the coach saw me when you kissed me and she’s definitely going to say something. Before the tournament she warned us not to get distracted, that afterward everyone goes back to their own thing.”

“We’re from the same city,” I reminded her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “It doesn’t have to end here. Relax and enjoy it.”

I kissed her and, when I turned, her hand brushed my erection over the swimsuit. She stroked it just a little, as if trying to recognize what she was touching, and quickly pulled away. I slipped my hand under her robe, caressed her waist, hip, thigh, until I reached her crotch.

She stopped me, interlacing her fingers with mine.

“I just feel things,” she murmured. “And I don’t know if it’s right.”

“It’s the way we show each other we like one another,” I told her in her ear, breathing against the nape of her neck. “Or don’t you feel like touching me?”

I took her hand to my erection and made her stroke me over the fabric. I let go of her wrist and slid mine to her sex, speaking softly to her while I kissed the lobe of her ear, her cheek, her neck, until we melted into one long, deep kiss. She squeezed my cock, ran her palm up and down it, and when she tried to pull her hand away I stopped her.

“Do you want to touch it for real?” I asked.

Without waiting for an answer, I freed it from the fabric and put her hand back on it. She looked at it, then looked at me.

“I’ve never seen one like this before,” she said, gripping it. “It’s so hard… and hot.”

I put my hand over hers and guided her up and down, teaching her the rhythm, while with my other hand I stroked her sex over the suit. Her breathing quickened. The fabric wedged between her lips, soaked through, and I whispered for her to let go, to enjoy it.

“Do you like it?” I asked. “Do you want me to keep going?”

“Yes,” she panted, while her hand matched my pace.

We came together for the first time, almost without realizing it, muffling our moans into each other’s mouths. I moved the fabric aside and stroked her clitoris directly; she kept moving her hand until she felt my wetness soak her fingers. Then she stared at her palm, mesmerized, and I brought my fingers to my mouth with a smile that made her laugh and blush at the same time.

We cleaned up with a tissue, straightened our clothes, and went back to the group holding hands, as if nothing had happened.

***

From that afternoon on, what was between us grew more intense. One night they organized a bonfire; someone was playing guitar and everyone was singing around the fire. At one point two couples split off from the group and went toward some bushes far from the facilities, where the darkness sheltered us.

We sat on the grass. Carolina was wearing a pleated navy skirt and a light blouse. I held her, kissed her, and slid my hand down her leg until I lost it beneath her skirt. She brought her thighs together, but I kept kissing her, caressing one breast, gently laying her back on the grass until she felt my erection against her hip.

She spread her legs just enough for my hand to reach her sex. She squirmed and moaned when I moved her underwear aside and stroked her directly. She kissed me with such anxiety that she bit my lip. I kept going, slowly, feeling how wet she was becoming.

She found my zipper, pulled it down, and freed my erection. I took her hand and brought it first to my testicles; she stroked them slowly, learning their shape, and then she jerked me off just as I had taught her. Meanwhile, I was stimulating her clitoris and slipping a single finger barely inside her. She flinched.

“Careful,” she whispered.

“Relax, I know what I’m doing,” I told her, and focused again on her clitoris.

She clutched my arm hard and burst into a long orgasm, writhing in the grass. I took the chance to lower her underwear. She held them in place.

“I’m not ready for that yet,” she said, closing her legs.

“I won’t do anything you don’t want,” I assured her, kissing her neck and breasts. “Just relax.”

She slowly loosened up, and when she stopped resisting I positioned myself between her legs and started to work her with my tongue, from bottom to top, trapping her clitoris between my lips. She put a hand on my head.

“What are you doing?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“Giving you pleasure. Enjoy it.”

I slipped a finger into her without going too deep, moving it in circles, never stopping licking her. She bit her fist so she wouldn’t scream, lifted her hips toward my mouth, and when she could no longer hold back, she moaned so loudly she had to cover her mouth with her hand. Her whole body shook and then collapsed, gasping, her breasts rising and falling.

I straightened up, lowered the straps of her blouse, and brought her breasts together around my cock until I finished between them. She just watched, feeling the heat against her neck and chin. I kissed her on the forehead.

“Did you like it?” I asked.

She nodded, still breathless, while wiping herself with the back of her hand. We fixed our clothes and each went back to our building without saying much more. No need.

***

The tournament ended with the track-and-field medal ceremony, a beautiful one, where the swimmers handed the medals to the winners. The next day each university was heading back to its city, so they gave us the afternoon off to pack and say goodbye. All through the gardens and by the pool, you could see couples telling each other farewell.

I looked for her after her synchronized swimming exhibition. She came out of the building with a friend who, when she saw me, smiled and whispered something in her ear before leaving us alone. We took each other’s hands and walked aimlessly. She looked serious, a little melancholy.

“It was nice meeting you,” she said. “And now each of us goes back to our own thing, right?”

“We’ll have to see each other to swap the photos,” I replied, showing her the camera and putting an arm around her waist.

She laughed, looked me in the eyes, and we kissed. We walked to the back of the fronton, the most secluded and silent corner at that hour, and there we let ourselves fall onto the grass without breaking the kiss. My hands roamed over her body beneath the buttoned dress; I unfastened the buttons, lifted her bra, and kissed her nipples, already hard, while slowly moving down toward her belly.

I took off her underwear, kissing my way all along it, from her calves to her pubis, and then retraced her body in reverse. She was fumbling in my pants, unfastening them, pulling them down along with my underwear. The cool air on my skin made me move closer to her, until my erection rested beside her cheek. She took it in her hand and kissed the tip.

“It tastes weird… different,” she said.

“Use your tongue, like I do on you,” I told her.

She ran her tongue all over the shaft up to the head, once, and again. I parted her lips and licked her slowly, sucking in her wetness, while she gathered the courage to take me in her mouth.

“Just with your lips, no teeth,” I asked gently.

She learned fast. My tongue went in and out of her; my thumb stroked her clitoris in circles. Carolina began moaning against my skin, her legs trembling, her whole body tightening, until another orgasm shook her and she pulled her mouth away to breathe, clutching me with her hand while I kept licking her.

When she relaxed, she took me in her mouth again. I held her head carefully and finished, and she swallowed, squeezing me with her lips and not letting anything go in deeper. Then we lay on our backs on the grass, looking up at the sky, catching our breath.

“Thank you,” I said, still winded. “That was incredible.”

She wiped the corner of her mouth with her fingers, we sat up, and we hugged while laughing. She looked for her underwear in the grass and, before she found it, I showed it to her, brought it up to my nose, and kept it for myself.

“This is mine,” I teased, and kissed her again.

That night there was another bonfire, with marshmallows and guitars, and we all sang together late into the night. The next morning we left very early to head back, before the campus woke up, and I never saw her there again.

We did swap the photos, yes, a couple of months later, in a café in our city. But that’s another story. What I kept from those ten days is this: the certainty that first times, the real ones, are neither chosen nor planned. They simply happen, in the cold water of a pool or behind a fronton court, and they stay with you forever.