What Camila Taught Me on a Winter Night

It was a Thursday in July, and the cold cut right to the bone. I had been looking for work for three months without any luck: I was twenty-one, had a résumé nobody read, and a girlfriend, Valeria, who had gone to Europe with her family, as she did every year-end. Two months of travel, two months in which I would have to prove that I was worth something. Before getting on the plane, she had told me, very seriously, that she didn’t care whether I had money, but that she would never, ever stay with a failure.

Those words kept circling through my head day and night.

One noon I checked my pockets and found barely enough for two bus tickets. I thought of Marcos. We had gone to high school together, but he had dropped out a year before graduating, fought with his family, and moved out on his own to a city thirty kilometers away. Now her name was Camila. We hadn’t spoken in a long time, but I knew that if anyone knew the tricks for surviving with nothing, it was her.

I took the bus and reached her door after eight that night. I rang the bell, and she opened it as if we’d seen each other the week before, with a kiss on the cheek and coffee already heating on the stove.

—Come in. You didn’t tell me you were coming, but it doesn’t matter —she said.

I sat down in her kitchen and spent two hours telling her everything: the job that never came, the money I didn’t have, Valeria’s words before the flight. Camila listened without interrupting. When I finished, she stood up, told me to wait, and came back wearing the face of someone who had just made a decision.

—There’s a party at the club by the highway tonight. You’re coming with me.

—To a club? I don’t have a cent, Camila.

—I don’t have much either, but the tank is full and I have enough for one bottle. And tonight anyone in costume gets in free.

—And what am I supposed to dress up as? —I asked.

She smiled in that way she had, halfway between mischievous and conspiratorial.

—A woman, obviously. We’re almost identical physically, so everything will fit you perfectly. It’ll be fun, I swear.

It seemed absurd. It seemed impossible. But it was Thursday, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have any money, and I had nothing better to do. I said yes.

***

Camila put me under the shower, lent me underwear, fishnet stockings, a short black skirt, and a tight top. She straightened my hair, which I wore long and light-colored back then, and did my makeup with an artist’s concentration. When she placed me in front of the mirror, it took me several seconds to recognize myself.

—Oh my God —I said.

—Oh my Goddess —she corrected me, satisfied.

She was right. I’m completely hairless and slender, and the clothes suited me better than I could have imagined. I felt ridiculous for exactly thirty seconds. Then something changed, though I couldn’t have explained what.

We reached the club around eleven. We got in without any trouble; the security guards barely looked at us. Once inside, the music was loud and the lights changed color every two seconds. We crossed the dance floor toward the bar, and on the way I felt more than one hand brush my hip, my arm, once directly against my thigh, and another time slide up beneath my skirt to squeeze my ass without the slightest attempt at hiding it. I told Camila in her ear.

—Welcome to my world —she replied without letting go of the bottle—. Most of them will ask you to fuck them and then tell you they’re not like that. They all want to stick their cocks in you; none of them will admit it tomorrow.

We drank something strong and stayed at the bar. A few minutes later Camila was talking to two guys our age who had approached with transparent excuses. I watched her laugh, lean toward one of them, leave her open hand resting on his thigh, and understood that her night was off to a good start.

I moved aside a little so I wouldn’t get in the way. That was when I noticed him.

He was a man of about thirty-five, well dressed, wearing a light-colored shirt buttoned all the way to the top, his dark hair combed back. He was standing beside the two guys talking to Camila, but he wasn’t taking part in the conversation. He was looking at me.

I looked away. Took a sip. Looked back at him. He was still there.

After a while he came over, placed a hand on my waist with a calmness that threw me off, and asked my name. I searched for one and couldn’t find any.

—Lucía —I said at last—. My name is Lucía.

—Andrés —he replied, holding out his hand as if we were at a business dinner. His clothes smelled expensive. He had dark eyes and a jaw that looked sculpted.

A few minutes later, Camila came up to my ear and told me she was leaving with the guys for one of their apartments, a few blocks away. She left before I could answer. I didn’t have money to get home from there. I had no choice but to go along with it and see how the night ended.

We all walked there together. Once we were in the apartment, it was clear that Andrés knew the other two, because he took a beer from the refrigerator as if it were his own home. We sat around for a while, drinking and talking about nothing. Then Camila stood up, winked at me, and disappeared into the bedroom with the two guys. Before the door had even closed, I heard her laugh in a different way, deeper, and a few seconds later a clear moan came through the wall. Then another. Then the unmistakable sound of a bed moving against the baseboard, and a male voice telling her to spread her legs wider, that the two of them were going to fuck her.

Andrés and I were left alone, listening.

After a brief silence, he got up and said he would let me rest. I offered to leave with him. We walked out to the street, and there I explained that I had no way to get home.

—I’ll take you —he said.

—It’s far. More than thirty kilometers.

He looked at me and considered the situation.

—I’ve had quite a bit to drink, and I’m not in a condition to drive. If you want, you can stay at my place and I’ll take you home tomorrow. I promise nothing will happen to you.

I didn’t have a better plan. I accepted.

***

His apartment was three blocks away. It was a neat, quiet place, with the books lined up and the kitchen spotless. He offered me the living-room couch, brought me a blanket, and went to his room without saying anything else. It took me quite a while to fall asleep.

In the morning, the smell of coffee woke me. I found him in the kitchen, already showered and dressed. He poured me a cup without asking whether I wanted one and stood silently for a moment, his back to me, looking out the window. Then he turned around.

He had a bill in his hand.

—One hundred dollars —he said—. If you let me suck your pussy.

I heard the words and understood each one separately, but the sentence as a whole wouldn’t fit inside my head.

—I can’t. I’m not what you think. This is a costume, so I could get into the club for free.

His expression didn’t change. He took another bill from his pocket and placed it on top of the first.

—Two hundred if you let me fuck you here on the couch.

Something inside me shifted. I didn’t know whether it was fear or something else.

—No, Andrés. Seriously. I don’t like men.

He nodded, put the bills away, told me to finish my coffee, and drove me to Camila’s house without saying a word the entire way. When we arrived, before I got out of the car, he placed his card in my hand.

—Just in case —he said—. Take care, Lucía.

***

Camila arrived half an hour after I did, her hair tousled, a fresh bruise on her neck, and a huge grin on her face. When I told her what had happened with Andrés, her smile grew even wider.

—You’re an idiot —she said, with all the affection in the world—. Andrés is a total hunk. Clean, kind, and he has money. And he was interested in you, not me. Do you know what I would have done in your place?

—I’m not interested.

—With two hundred dollars, you can make Valeria believe you found a job for at least another month. That’s time, and right now time is worth gold. And I’m telling you: he was going to eat your ass, not do anything else. Two hundred dollars just to let him lick you, idiot.

I remained silent.

—What if it hurts? —I asked after a moment.

—If you prepare properly, it doesn’t hurt at all —she replied—. Last night two of them fucked me at once, one in the pussy and the other in the ass, and here I am, perfectly fine and smiling. Let me show you all the tricks, and afterward, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to call him. Nobody’s going to force you to do anything.

I made a decision right there, sitting in her kitchen with an empty cup between my hands. It was curiosity. It was necessity. It was something else that didn’t have a name yet.

—All right —I said.

We spent nearly two hours shut up in her bathroom. Camila was patient, methodical, almost didactic. She made me bend over the bathtub and taught me to wash myself inside with the handheld shower, warm water once and again until it came out clean. Then she sat me on the toilet with a mirror between my legs and made me look at my own hole while she spread lubricant around it with two fingers. I felt a shame that burned my face. When she slipped in the first finger, my whole body jerked.

—Breathe and push against me, don’t squeeze —she told me, as calm as a nurse—. If you relax, it all goes in. If you clench, everything hurts. It’s physics, not a mystery.

She inserted a second finger and slowly spread them apart in a scissoring motion. I stayed still, staring at the ceiling, feeling something inside me grow accustomed to it. Then she handed me a small dildo, about the size of two fingers, and made me put it inside myself while she watched and corrected the angle. When I had it all the way in, she told me to tighten and relax several times, to feel which muscle it was.

—That’s the one you have to relax when he puts it in you. That exact one. Remember that feeling.

At the end she lent me clean clothes, pointed out the public phone on the corner, and offered to walk me to the door.

I called Andrés from the booth. It rang twice.

—Come over now —he said, and hung up.

***

Camila left me at the entrance to the building. I climbed the stairs on legs that didn’t quite obey me. I rang the bell, and Andrés opened the door and kissed me before I could say anything.

It surprised me. Not his decision to kiss me, but what I felt: his lips were full and his breath was clean, and something in me, instead of pulling away, leaned toward him. His tongue opened my mouth without asking permission and tangled with mine, hot and insistent. His hands found my waist, went straight down to my ass beneath the skirt, and squeezed me with both palms, pulling me against his hips. I felt his hard cock, thick and throbbing, outlined beneath his pants against my stomach, and it gave me a dizziness that was far too much like desire.

Now or never. If I walk out that door, I’m not coming back.

I didn’t leave.

He turned me around gently and laid me over the couch, my hips on the armrest and my body bent forward. He pulled my skirt up to my waist, lowered my underwear to my thighs, and for an instant I felt the cold air of the room against my exposed skin. Then he knelt behind me, spread my buttocks wide with both hands, pulling them completely apart, and buried his face between my cheeks without ceremony.

What followed was something I hadn’t expected.

His tongue landed flat and broad on my hole and licked it from bottom to top, once, twice, three times, each time more slowly. Then he stiffened the tip and began circling it in precise loops around the ring, pressing lightly, sucking at the skin, spitting over it so everything would be slippery. I hadn’t expected that warm, wet pressure, or the way my body responded without consulting me, clenching first and relaxing afterward, wanting more. When he slipped the tip of his tongue inside, barely a centimeter, I felt an electric tug run up my back to the nape of my neck, and I let out a hoarse moan I hadn’t meant to make.

—That’s it —he murmured against my flesh—. Relax your ass, Lucía. Let me eat it properly.

He pushed his tongue in again, deeper this time, moving in and out with a slow rhythm that made me clench my fists against the leather of the couch. With one hand he held my cheek wide open; with the other he found my cock between my legs and took it all in his warm fist. I was rock-hard. I hadn’t noticed when it happened. He began to jerk me off slowly while his tongue kept working back there, and I realized I was dripping fluid into his hand.

Valeria had never done anything like that to me. I had never done it to anyone. And yet there I was, pressing my fingers into the leather of the couch, with a man’s mouth buried in my ass, letting myself be invaded by a sensation that had no name in my vocabulary back then.

When I suddenly stood up, it was because I couldn’t endure being still any longer. I turned around and looked at him. I saw his erection outlined through his pants, the dark spot where he had dripped too, and I didn’t think; I simply acted. I undid his belt, pulled down his pants and briefs in one motion, and dropped to my knees.

His cock sprang toward my face. It was thick, longer than I would have imagined, the skin stretched tight and a swollen vein running all the way to the purple, glistening head. I stared at it up close for a second, smelling clean male skin, soap, and flesh. Then I opened my mouth.

I took it into my mouth without hesitation.

At first, only the tip, sucking it like a piece of candy, circling my tongue around the glans, tightening my lips at the edge. I felt his thighs tense, felt him hold his breath. I took it out of my mouth, held it in my hand, ran my tongue from the base to the top, slowly, and put it back in. Deeper this time. I felt it fill my palate, press against the back of my throat. I gagged once, pulled out saliva, and went lower. I raised my eyes and saw him looking down at me, still, his arms crossed over his chest, jaw tense, a barely suggested smile on his lips.

Something about that image turned me on even more.

I started sucking him seriously, both hands at the base, my mouth moving up and down in a rhythm that came naturally. I pulled out and pushed in, circled my tongue around the crown, then buried it again. At one point he pulled it from my mouth himself, laid it on my tongue outside my mouth, and made me look at him while he shook it over my face. Then he shoved it back in and grabbed my head with both hands, setting the pace, pushing all the way to the back.

—That’s it, slut, take all of it —he said, his voice rough—. You’re going to learn to suck me the way I like.

The word went through me, and instead of hurting, it made me squeeze my thighs together. I kept going. I kept going for several minutes until I felt the first contraction beneath my fingers, at the base of his cock. It grew even harder, thicker, and a muscle in his thigh began to tremble. He held my head tightly and came into my mouth in two, three, four hot spurts that filled my tongue and ran down my throat before I could decide what to do. I swallowed it all because I wanted to taste his lips better when I stood up. I cleaned the tip with my tongue, squeezing out every drop, and stood.

We kissed, and there was something in that kiss that wasn’t only about bodies. He pushed his tongue deep into my mouth, searching for the taste of himself there, and he didn’t care.

He pulled back a little and held my face in both hands.

—Too bad. I would have liked to fuck you —he said—. But a deal’s a deal.

He took the two hundred dollars from the pants lying on the floor and placed them in my hand.

—I imagine you want to leave now.

I stared at the money. Then I looked at him.

—I’m staying —I said—. No money involved. And if you suck me like before, I’ll let you fuck me.

It took him a second to react. Then came the shower.

He put me under the water fully clothed and took everything off himself, piece by piece, without hurrying. The soaked top, the heavy skirt, the fishnets that took him centimeter by centimeter to remove. He undressed too. He soaped my back, my hips, my thighs, and then slipped his soapy hand between my buttocks and ran two fingers over my hole, sliding back and forth without putting them in, only promising. I did the same to him and felt him harden again between my hands, faster this time, more urgently. I soaped his entire cock with both fists closed, moving up and down, and his head fell back against the tiles.

When I knelt down for the second time, there beneath the hot water, I did it because I wanted to.

The second time I sucked him, my hands didn’t tremble. It was direct, confident. I spread his legs with my palm, licked his balls one by one, took them into my mouth, ran my tongue flat beneath his shaft until I reached the tip, and put him all the way down my throat again. He held me by my wet hair and guided me, pushing me against his hips. After a few minutes, before he came again, he lifted me almost into the air, shut off the shower, and carried me dripping to the living-room couch.

He arranged me facedown, my hips on the armrest again and my knees forced apart. He did with his mouth what he had done before, this time with no clothes or fabric between us, his tongue directly against my open hole, spitting, sucking, pushing it deeper and deeper inside me. After a while, a finger followed. Then two. He moved them in the same scissoring motion Camila had taught me, and I relaxed that exact muscle she had made me identify, feeling them slide in to the knuckles without resistance. He stayed like that for what seemed an eternity, eating me and opening me with his fingers at the same time, until I couldn’t take it anymore and told him aloud to stop making me wait.

—Do you want me to make love to you, or do you want me to break your ass? —he asked in my ear, his rough voice against the nape of my neck.

—Fuck my ass —I replied.

—Louder. I can’t hear you.

—Break my ass already! —I shouted, and I didn’t recognize my own voice.

I heard the pop of a bottle cap, felt cold lubricant running between my buttocks, and his hand spreading it with two fingers that went in all the way again. Then I heard him oiling his cock with his other hand, that wet, steady sound that stayed burned into my memory. He took me by the waist with both hands, placed the tip against my hole, and pushed.

He entered slowly, waiting for my body to give way at his pace. First I felt the head forcing the ring, a sharp burning that made me clench my teeth. I breathed as Camila had told me, pushed back instead of resisting, and suddenly the head slipped through and the rest followed, centimeter by centimeter, until I felt his hips pressed against my ass and his balls hanging against mine.

The first moment was intense. The second was too. But afterward the pain went away, and what remained was something else: a pressure filling something I hadn’t known I had, a spot inside me that, when he brushed it, made me see lights behind my eyes.

He stayed still for a moment, buried to the hilt, letting me feel his size. Then he began to move. He pulled almost all the way out to the crown and plunged back in with one thrust. Again. Again. Each drive tore a growl from me that I no longer minded letting out.

—Look how your ass opens up, slut —he said, his voice broken by exertion—. Look how it sucks in my whole cock. This ass is mine now, do you hear me? Mine.

—Yes —I said, realizing I was about to come without anyone touching my cock—. Yes, it’s yours. Fuck me harder.

He fucked me for a long time, with a steady, sustained rhythm, changing the depth, changing the angle. He lifted one of my legs over the back of the couch to open me wider, and that let him go even deeper. At some point I noticed the large mirror on the side wall. There we were: him standing, feet planted on the floor, hands on my hips, his thick cock sliding in and out, gleaming between my spread buttocks; me bent over the armrest, my skirt already on the floor, my makeup smeared, my mouth open, watching him penetrate me without pause. Twenty minutes, or perhaps more.

He pulled out in one thrust, threw me onto my back on the couch, took both my legs, and placed them over his shoulders. He pushed his cock inside me again, this time looking me in the face. I could see everything: the vein in his neck, his dark eyes fixed on mine, his mouth clenched with sheer pleasure. He grabbed my cock and began jerking me in time with his thrusts.

I lasted ten seconds. I came hard, in spurts that splashed across my chest, stomach, and face, and with each spurt I felt my ass clench completely around him. I shouted something I don’t remember. He sped up, thrust five, six, seven times with all his strength, and when he finished, he came inside me. I felt the heat, the pulsing, every beat of his cock unloading deep inside me. I fell onto my side on the couch and took several seconds to breathe normally again. When he pulled out, I felt a hot stream run down my thigh. Andrés sat beside me, still hard, breathing heavily. Neither of us spoke.

I showered again. When I came out, he was in the kitchen and had prepared something to eat. I sat down and ate without saying anything. Then we talked for two hours, and at some point I told him everything: the job search, Valeria, what she had said before the flight. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, we were both silent for a moment.

When I stood up to leave, he stopped me at the door.

—I need someone I can trust —he said—. Someone to manage my schedule, accompany me on business trips, and be discreet. A thousand dollars a month.

I looked at him.

—And another thousand if you dress up as Lucía for me from time to time. A company car at your disposal. All expenses paid on trips. Besides, you can stay with Valeria if you want; I don’t care about that.

Lucía, I thought. A name I invented in thirty seconds at a club.

I thought of the résumé nobody read. I thought of Valeria’s words before she got on the plane. I thought of the two hundred dollars in my pocket and the look Camila would have on her face when I told her. I thought of the hot stream I could still feel running down the inside of my thigh beneath my clean pants.

—Yes —I said.

***

I worked for Andrés for eighteen years. I traveled with him, managed his schedule, and slept in his bed more times than I could count. I married Valeria. She never found out about any of it, and that’s another story.