The Video Game Boy Showed Up at My Door

Two and a half years ago, my head was somewhere else. I was in my final year of technical high school at a school in the southern neighborhood, living with my mother and my younger sister in a two-room apartment that was getting too small for us, and the only certainty in my life was that I didn’t want to tie myself to anyone. I had plans. I wanted to finish high school, enroll in a programming technical degree, and, if the scholarship allowed it, move on to university after that. A relationship, at that point, seemed like a distraction I couldn’t afford.

What I could afford were the nights.

A desk mate, Tobías, gave me a used virtual reality headset for my nineteenth birthday. It was an old unit, with the foam peeling off and a strap that smelled like someone else’s sweat, but it worked. I connected it to the computer in my room and downloaded one of those social games that were all the rage, a kind of Sims in first person, where the avatars talked by voice, could dance, sit on couches, and, if you wanted, lock themselves away in private rooms.

The first week I went in out of curiosity. The second I already had a female avatar with pink hair, an impossible waist, and a wardrobe I kept changing every night. By the third I started talking to strangers.

At first it was innocent. I sat at the virtual bar in the main lobby and listened to other people’s conversations until someone asked my age and where I was from. I lied by omission: I said I was twenty-two, that I lived alone, and that I studied design. It was easier to build a character than explain reality.

Then the boys came along.

***

There were a lot of them. Some were handsome, others had that ordinary kind of beauty that gets interesting when they talk. Most of them shared something: tattoos on their arms, careful clothes, a particular way of putting sentences together, a sense of humor that wasn’t for everyone. I liked that aesthetic of guys who spend too much time on the internet. They felt familiar.

And, yes, there was tension. Sexual vibes that came and went even through clumsy avatars with repeated animations. When one of them came up to me in the lobby and suggested we go to a private room, I’d agree knowing exactly what was going to happen: talking about anything at first, then a long silence, then the inevitable question of whether I had my mic close to my mouth, whether my breathing could be heard properly, whether I wanted to tell him how he had his hand inside my panties, whether I was touching myself while I talked, whether I was fingering myself with one finger or two.

I learned the most important rule of that world quickly. Before any intimacy, I made my position clear.

—I want something casual —I’d say—. I’m not looking for a partner, boyfriend, or digital girlfriend. If it works for you to jerk off with me for three nights and then disappear, perfect. If not, better to end it here.

Half of them stayed. The other half disappeared in less than a week. Some left angry, others blocked me without explanation, and a few showed up again months later with the same speech about how “this time is different.” I learned not to answer them.

The ones who accepted the rules fulfilled their respective functions in my life and left as quickly as they arrived. They made me run my mouth, told me in explicit detail how they’d fuck me if they had me in front of them, and I described to them every time how I’d spread my cunt open with two fingers and wet it with the saliva from the other. No scenes, no reproaches, no broken promises. It was the healthiest form of relationship I’d ever had, and at the same time the coldest.

Until Mateo showed up.

***

Mateo didn’t come up to the lobby looking for me. He didn’t send me friend requests or invite me to private rooms right away. I met him at an in-game event, some kind of virtual party with electronic music and avatars jumping on a flashing dance floor. I was leaning against a wall, watching, when he sat down on the floor beside me and asked if I liked techno.

—Not much —I told him.

—Me neither.

We talked for two hours without moving from the floor. He had the most understated male avatar I’d ever seen in that game: jeans, black T-shirt, white sneakers, short dark hair. No virtual tattoos, no wings, no garish colors. When I asked him why he’d chosen something so boring, he told me his avatar was him, no filters.

I liked him. I gave him my usual warning.

—I’m not looking for anything serious. With that cleared up, we can keep talking.

Mateo laughed. He laughed for real, not that pre-recorded laugh the game offered as an animation. It was a real chuckle on the other end of the microphone, deep and a little rough.

—Relax —he told me—. Me neither.

***

What came after made no sense for someone who said they only wanted something casual. We started logging on at the same time every night, after dinner. He lived in another city, about six hundred kilometers away, in an apartment he shared with two friends. He was studying sound. He worked as a waiter on weekends. He was twenty-four and had a voice that got into my head during the day while I was in class.

We talked about everything. Movies we liked, series we abandoned halfway through, family, the stupid things we thought at four in the morning when we couldn’t sleep. Sometimes the avatar would just stand there and the game would warn us that twenty minutes had passed without us moving. We didn’t care much. The avatars were an excuse.

After a month, the silences changed nature.

—Are you alone? —he asked one night.

—My mom and my sister are asleep already. Yeah.

—Is your headset on right?

I swallowed. My avatar’s animation didn’t catch the gesture, but he noticed it in my breathing.

—Yeah.

—Close your eyes. And pull down your panties.

I closed them. I lifted my hips off the seat and yanked my panties down to my knees with one pull, my heart pounding inside my ribs. I was still wearing a long T-shirt I used to sleep in, nothing else. The air of the room hit me hard between my legs and raised goosebumps on my skin.

—Done —I said.

—Open your legs. All the way. Like I’m sitting on the floor looking at you.

I spread them. I felt how wet I was even before touching myself. With just his voice, the son of a bitch had already soaked my cunt.

—Now I want you to suck your fingers —he told me, lower now, deeper, almost in my ear—. The middle two. Good. Get them wet.

I put them in my mouth. I sucked them like they were a cock, slowly, listening to him breathe on the other end. On the other side of the microphone there was a slow, rhythmic rustle, and I didn’t need to ask what he was doing. I was imagining it too: his hand on his dick, hard, moving up and down slowly to last.

—Got them nice and wet yet? —he asked.

—Yeah.

—Now take them out. Slowly. Start with your tits, pinch your nipples hard with your nails until it hurts a little. I’d do it with my teeth.

I pinched my right nipple until a short moan escaped me. He heard it and laughed, that broken laugh that made me squeeze my thighs together.

—Now lower. Don’t touch your cunt yet. Go around it. Run your fingers along your inner thighs, along your groin. Let them get close without quite reaching. I want your cunt throbbing on its own, begging for them.

I did as he said. Every word he spoke, I did to myself, with obedient, whorish discipline, with my legs opening wider and wider and my hips moving on their own against the air. When he finally gave me permission to touch myself, I was so wet my fingers slid without friction over my swollen lips.

—That’s it, slut —he told me—. Find your clit. Circular motions, slow, like I’m licking you. And don’t go quiet. I want to hear how your voice changes when you’re close to coming.

I rubbed myself the way he asked, slowly at first, then faster when his voice told me to. He described in real time what he’d do to me if he were there: how he’d spread my legs with his hands, how he’d run his whole tongue from my ass to my clit before shoving it in, how he’d slip it in at first just a little, two centimeters, so I’d beg for it. How then he’d drive it all the way in with one thrust so a cry would tear out of me.

—I’m about to come —I told him, my voice shaking.

—Two fingers —he ordered—. Inside. Deep. And keep rubbing your clit with your other hand. I want you to come hearing my voice.

I shoved my fingers in up to the knuckles, felt my cunt tightening around them with those early spasms that announce everything, and came with my mouth open against the headset, not stopping listening to him breathe heavily on the other side. The orgasm slipped out through my fingers, ran down my hand to my wrist, and stained the sheet. I heard his rough groan a little later. He came with me, without us ever touching.

I came without moving from the seat, hair stuck to my forehead, and stayed still for a while, listening to him breathe like he’d just finished a race.

***

From that night on, the virtual wasn’t enough for me. I started waiting for the moment he’d take off the headset and turn on the webcam, and a few days later I asked him for it.

—I want to see your face.

—Are you sure? Once we break that, there’s no going back.

—I’m sure.

When I saw Mateo for the first time outside the game, he looked nothing like I’d imagined. He was thinner, paler, with deep dark circles under his eyes and a tiny piercing in his eyebrow. He wore an old T-shirt with a faded logo, his hair messy to one side, his shoulders a little hunched in front of the screen. He was real. That was what hit me hardest: that he was a person, with a messy room behind him, a mug beside the keyboard, and a yellow light falling across half his face.

I liked him better like that. I liked him so much that I realized I was breaking my own rule.

We talked until five in the morning. The camera showed me everything: the yawn when he got tired, the way he bit the side of his lip when he thought of something he didn’t dare say, the hand he ran through his hair when he laughed. When he said, “I should come visit you,” I didn’t tell him no.

I asked him “when.”

***

He arrived on a Saturday at dawn, after six hours on a coach. I waited for him at the bus terminal in an oversized sweatshirt and with frozen hands. When I saw him get off the bus, backpack over one shoulder and the same tired face from the screen, I felt something drop in my stomach. It was him. It was him in person, with smell, with weight, with hands you could touch.

I hugged him in silence. He stayed still for a few seconds and then squeezed me so hard I thought he was going to break something.

—I can’t believe you exist —he whispered in my ear.

—I could say the same.

We walked to my place without talking much. My mother and sister had gone to the country for the weekend, a coincidence that never quite felt accidental. The apartment was empty, tidy, with the dim lights I’d left on so we wouldn’t come in to darkness. I offered him something to drink and he told me he didn’t want anything, that he hadn’t endured six hours of travel to waste time on formalities.

He kissed me in the hallway. Without warning, without asking permission, with his hands on either side of my face and the backpack still hanging from one shoulder. The first kiss was slow, careful, as if we were both measuring whether the other person was real. The second wasn’t. The second shoved his tongue all the way in and pressed me against the wall with his leg between mine, and I felt perfectly the hard bulge he was carrying inside his jeans, pressed against my pussy.

***

I led him to my room without letting go of him. The backpack fell somewhere in the living room; I didn’t care. When we got in, I closed the door with my foot and leaned back against it. He looked at me for a full second without touching me, then grabbed my waist with both hands and gently pushed me toward the bed.

What happened after didn’t resemble anything virtual. Mateo’s hands were rough, bigger than they looked on camera, and they knew exactly where to squeeze and where to ease up. He took my T-shirt off carefully, kissed my neck for whole minutes, bit my shoulder with just enough firmness to pull a sound out of me I’d never made before. I yanked his shirt off. I had no patience for anything.

I unbuttoned his jeans with both hands, clumsy, rushed, and when I pulled down his boxers his cock sprang into my hand. It was thick, thicker than I’d guessed from his voice, with a purple head and a thick drop showing at the tip. I stared at it for a second, and he gently grabbed my hair, inviting me without rushing me.

I knelt on the floor between his legs. I ran my tongue from the base to the tip, slow, looking him in the eyes, and licked the drop off the tip of his tongue. His stomach trembled.

—Holy fuck —he muttered.

I took him in my mouth as far as I could. I felt the bulge reach the back of my throat, swallowed around it, and he let out a groan that tightened my cunt. I started sucking him off the way I liked it done to me: one hand at the base helping, my mouth moving all the way up and down, my tongue working the frenulum every time I came up. I sucked his balls too, one first, then the other, while giving him a slow handjob with my saliva-soaked hand. He got even harder, if that was possible.

—Come here —he said, voice breaking—. Come here, because if you keep going I’m going to come in your mouth and I don’t want that, not yet.

He lifted me off the floor by my armpits and threw me back on the bed. He ripped my pants and panties off in one pull, and before I could breathe properly he already had his face buried between my legs. He pried my lips open with his thumbs, looked at my pink, soaked pussy for a second, and then lowered his mouth.

He ate me out like he was hungry. His whole tongue passing over my clit, the tip of his tongue going in and out of the hole, his lips closing around the little bud and pulling gently. He shoved two fingers in and curled them inside, searching for a spot I hadn’t even explained to him I had, and when he found it I arched my whole body against his face. I buried my hand in his hair and pressed his head against my cunt, shameless, without holding back. He understood and sped up.

I came in his mouth a few minutes later, my legs closing around his face and a cry I muffled myself with my other hand in case any neighbors heard. He kept licking me slowly while I came down, milking out every last contraction, until I had to push his head away because my clit was starting to feel like electricity.

—Come here —I begged, my voice shaking—. Fuck me now.

He climbed up my body kissing my belly, my navel, my tits. He sucked one nipple, then the other, while settling between my legs. I felt the tip of his cock resting at my entrance, sliding on how wet I was, and he rubbed it against my clit a couple of times just to hear me beg.

—Put it in —I told him—. Don’t play around.

—Ask for it properly.

—Put it in, please. All of it. Fuck me hard.

He drove it into me in one thrust, all the way to the base, and we both moaned at the same time. My cunt stretched around him and I felt a brief, delicious burn, that sensation of being filled to the brim that I’d never felt like that before. He stayed inside without moving for a few seconds, his forehead resting against mine, waiting for me to get used to it.

—Move —I begged.

He started fucking me slowly, with long, deep thrusts, coming almost all the way out before plunging back in to the hilt. Every stroke pulled a short moan out of me. I dug my nails into his back and spread my legs wider, planting my heels against his ass so he’d push it even deeper.

—Like that, like that, don’t stop —I told him in his ear—. Harder.

He sped up. The bed started slamming against the wall in an obscene rhythm, and I didn’t care about anything anymore. He flipped me over without pulling out, got me on all fours with my hands on the headboard, and fucked me from behind again. From that angle it went in differently, hit different places, and within a few strokes I was shaking all over. He grabbed my hair with one hand, wound it around his fist, and pulled my head back.

—Who are you fucking? —he asked, his rough voice against my ear.

—You.

—Say it right.

—I’m fucking you, Mateo. Tear my cunt apart.

He slapped my ass, not too hard, and thrust faster. With his other hand he found my clit underneath and started rubbing it while he kept driving himself in all the way. It was too much. I came again, my cunt tightening around his cock in spasms that tore a rough groan out of him.

—You’re going to make me come —he told me through clenched teeth.

—Not inside —I said—. On my face.

He pulled out of me seconds later, turned me around quickly, and I got off the bed and knelt in front of him. He took himself in hand and stroked himself three times over my open mouth before coming in spurts. The first landed on my cheek and lips, the second inside my mouth, the third slid down my chin to my tits. I swallowed what had landed on my tongue without taking my eyes off his, and licked the tip clean. His whole cock trembled.

—Holy mother of fuck —he told me, collapsing back onto the bed in a seated position—. You’re a problem.

I rode him after that, once he got hard again, with my knees on either side of his hips, and leaned in to kiss him again. He grabbed my face with both hands.

—Look at me —he said.

I looked at him. His eyes were black, and in the lamp’s low light they seemed deeper than on the screen.

—Don’t fall in love —he asked, almost joking.

—Too late —I answered.

I sank onto his cock slowly, feeling it enter again centimeter by centimeter, and started moving on top of him with my hands braced on his chest. He grabbed my tits, pinched my nipples between his fingers, and watched me the whole time without ever taking his eyes off me. He made me come a third time like that, riding him myself, sweat running down my back and my voice already broken from so much moaning.

When the sun went down and we woke up again, we hadn’t slept more than two hours. He woke me from behind, his cock already hard and pressed between my ass cheeks, and he slid it in sideways, with both legs together and his chest against my back. We fucked like that, slow, half asleep, until he came inside me with his mouth buried in my nape. After that he pulled out and ran his fingers over my cunt to clean the semen that was starting to drip out, then brought them to my mouth. I sucked them without thinking.

—This breaks the rule —I told him afterward, while he hugged me from behind.

—I know.

***

Mateo stayed three days. The best three days I remember from that time. We fucked everywhere: against the bathroom wall while hot water poured over us, him kneeling behind me while I braced my hands on the tiles; on the kitchen table, with my legs open and him standing there still wearing his shirt; on the couch, with the TV on as an excuse, me sitting on top of him while I covered my mouth because the neighbors could hear everything. We cooked together, watched series sprawled on the couch, went out to buy pastries in the middle of the night because neither of us could sleep. On the last night, before going back to the terminal, he told me he couldn’t move, that he had a sick mother and couldn’t ask me to leave my studies.

—I wasn’t going to ask you to —I told him.

We said goodbye at the terminal with a long kiss and a promise neither of us believed. We’d keep talking, we’d see each other again, this wasn’t ending here. Three weeks later, he stopped logging into the game. A week after that, he stopped answering my messages. I never knew whether he’d gone back to an ex, whether his mother had gotten worse, whether he’d simply decided it was easier to cut it off at the root.

It hurt. It hurt the way something hurts when you weren’t allowed to feel it.

***

Two and a half years passed. I finished high school, got into the technical program, and now I’m in my second year with the average I need to keep the scholarship. I’m still single, not for the same reasons as before, but because I understood something new: that casual relationships mark you too, even when you swear they won’t. That the body remembers. That golden rules are made to be broken when the wrong person shows up at the wrong time.

Sometimes I still put on the headset. I go into the game, sit at the virtual bar, watch avatars pass by. Some boys come up to me, ask my age, invite me to private rooms. Sometimes I accept and let a stranger’s voice guide my hand to my cunt, and I come without taking my eyes off the ceiling. Sometimes I don’t.

And sometimes, without warning, I hear a broken laugh on the other end of a microphone and my pulse jumps for a second before I realize it isn’t him.