What I Learned Among Strangers in a Virtual World

I was eighteen when I started getting into that virtual reality video game. It was called Encuentros and it was a bit like The Sims, but with more detailed avatars and voice conversations that felt way too real. I discovered it on a sleepless dawn, after a silly fight with my mother about my schedule and my urge to do everything my own way.

I wasn’t looking for a partner. I had never really looked for one. I was finishing my final year of high school in Mendoza and I knew the next step would be a technical degree in programming, then university, then an office job like any functional adult woman. The rest — dating, dinners with in-laws, long-term commitments — seemed like a detour on a road I had only just begun to open.

Casual, on the other hand, worked for me. Casual didn’t steal my time. Casual let me sleep alone, with my hand between my legs if I felt like it, and get up without having to explain myself.

That’s why I got into Encuentros. That, and because the avatar I designed that first night had hair longer than I dared to wear in real life, eyes a little more slanted, tits two sizes bigger than mine, and a skirt so short none of my cousins would have worn it to a family gathering.

***

The first one was named Iván. Or that’s what his profile said. He lived somewhere in northern Argentina, according to what he told me, and he had an entire arm tattooed with koi fish that moved when he flexed his bicep in the game. We talked at two in the morning, when he got back from his night shift at a bakery and I shut down my math notes.

—Do you always study this late? —he asked me the third night, with that voice, half-broken by exhaustion, that I later learned to recognize as a sign.

—When I don’t have anything else to do —I answered.

—And tonight, do you have something else?

That was the first time I felt how a conversation can sharpen. There was no physical contact, of course. Just two avatars standing in a virtual park, talking through a microphone. But there’s something in a voice when someone decides to lower their guard. A vibration in the listener’s chest. A contraction somewhere lower down, in the cunt, that you didn’t know could be awake at that hour.

I told him yes, that I had something to do. I told him what he wanted to hear. I told him what I also wanted to hear while he was telling it to me. I wedged the door of my room shut with a chair, got into bed with my headphones on, and asked him to tell me what he would do to me if he were there.

—I’d pull your panties down with my teeth —he told me, with that half-broken voice right in my ear—. And I wouldn’t take them off all the way. I’d leave them caught around one ankle, so you’d remember that it’s you letting yourself be done to.

I bit my lip. I slipped two fingers up under my shirt, grabbed a breast, and pinched my nipple hard enough to hurt a little.

—And then? —I said, my voice already low, hoarse.

—Then I’d spread your legs and look at you. I’d look for a long time, until you got embarrassed. Until you started moving on your own, asking me.

—I’m already moving on my own.

He laughed. I heard the sound of a buckle on the other end, his breathing changing, and I understood he was doing the same thing to himself. I slid my other hand under the pajama pants, found my swollen clit, and started circling my fingers slowly, as if I had all the time in the world.

—I’m wet —I told him into the microphone.

—Suck your fingers and tell me what you taste like.

I did as I was told. I put both fingers in my mouth, with the salty, acidic taste of my own cunt stuck to my tongue, and I made noise on purpose so he’d hear it.

—Me —I told him—. I taste like me.

—Beautiful little whore. Put three in now. All the way in. Like it’s my cock.

I put them in. I arched on the mattress without meaning to, three fingers all the way in, and on the other end he started jerking off harder too. I could hear his hand sliding up and down his cock, a wet rhythm, dry, wet again.

—Tell me how you’d fuck me —I asked.

—From the side. First from the side, slow, so you can feel it going in little by little. Then face down, my hand on the back of your neck, fucking you hard until you run out of breath. Then on top of me, so you can move yourself and I can watch your tits bouncing.

—I’m about to come.

—Come. Come hard. Let me hear you.

I came with my mouth open against the pillow, rocking my hips against my hand, with spasms that lasted forever. On the other end he gave a short, tight groan, and then came the silence of someone who has just finished in his hand and still doesn’t know what to say.

That night I slept better than I had in weeks.

***

I laid out the rules from the start, the way my aunt Marta had taught me to lay out everything in life: in writing, with a copy, and before the other person starts getting ideas.

Casual. Temporary. No plans for the future. No good-morning messages with heart emojis at seven in the morning. No couple profile pictures. No introductions to the family, or the virtual family, or the game’s friends. Fuck, talk about any random bullshit for half an hour, and then sleep.

Some understood. Others didn’t.

Iván lasted three weeks. Then he started sending me five-minute voice notes telling me about his day, about the sourdough he was trying to make, about a sister who had gone to live in Spain. I listened in silence, without replying with the same intensity, until one night he said what I had already been expecting:

—I think I’m falling in love.

I answered, with all the tenderness I could gather at that hour, that that wasn’t the song we had agreed to dance to. That he should take care of himself. That he should block me if that helped him. And he left, with a short message and a sad emoji that kept me thinking for half an hour.

***

The second was Damián. He was twenty-three and worked at a design agency in Rosario. The avatar was almost identical to him, according to what he swore: dark hair, a scar on his right eyebrow, broad shoulders for someone who spent all day in front of a screen. He didn’t talk much. When he did, he said things that made me close my eyes and press my thighs together under the desk.

With Damián, the dynamic was different from the start. He didn’t want anything serious either. He had a recent ex, he said, and he was still picking the pieces off himself. I understood right away. Two people with the same sign hanging on the door: “do not disturb, under reconstruction.”

One night he asked me to turn on the camera. He asked like it was a favor, not a demand. I said yes.

He did the same.

He appeared on the screen bare-chested, with his hand already inside his boxer briefs, waiting for me. I was in an old T-shirt and panties, with the bedside lamp on on purpose.

—Take everything off —he told me, without saying hello, without preamble.

I took off my shirt first. My tits hung small and firm against my chest, my nipples already hard from knowing he was watching. Then the panties, slowly, with two fingers, until I caught them on one foot and kicked them out of frame.

—Open up —he asked.

I spread my legs, planting my feet against the headboard. He yanked his boxer briefs off and for the first time I saw his cock in full: hard, thick, with a vein running up the underside. He grabbed his cock with his right hand and started stroking it slowly, staring at me hard.

—Suck your fingers —he ordered.

I put my middle and index finger in my mouth, got them nice and wet, and brought them down to my clit. I started rubbing myself in circles, with my cunt on display for the camera, not closing my legs even when pleasure made me want to.

—Put them in —he told me.

I put them in. One first, then both. The camera caught me all the way, from my tits to the hand fucking me, and he kept jerking himself off on the other side, his breathing getting heavier and heavier.

—Damián, I want to lick it —I told him, my voice half-broken—. I want it in my mouth.

He moved closer to the screen. He showed me his cock in close-up, shiny with saliva and with what was leaking from the tip. I took my fingers out of my cunt, turned around on the bed, knelt, and showed him my ass to the camera. I looked over my shoulder.

—Fuck me like you’re giving it to me —I asked.

He started jerking off faster. I buried my face in the pillow, lifted my ass higher, shoved three fingers into my cunt up to the wrist, and started moving my hips against my hand as if it were him. The bed creaked. He was groaning softly, tightly held in, as if someone were sleeping on the other side of the wall.

—I’m going to come —he warned me.

—Come on me. Tell me where you’re coming on me.

—In your ass. I’m coming all over your ass. Then I’ll lick it down with my tongue.

I came right there, with that image in my head, biting the pillow so I wouldn’t wake my mother. I heard his short groan, the wet sound of the load landing in his hand, and then his tired laugh.

—You’re crazy —he told me.

—So are you.

It wasn’t just what we did that dawn that stuck to me, though that too. It was the way he looked at me before, after, while. As if he were studying a map he had no intention of keeping. As if he knew he was going to lose it and that forced him to memorize it. I, who always turned the light off so I wouldn’t have to see myself, left the lamp on that night and let myself be watched in full, with the imaginary cum still warm on my back.

We were like that for three months. I finished high school in that stretch. I remember taking my final exam with the mark still warm from what he had told me two nights earlier, while he made me come twice in a row against the edge of the desk. I sat down at the desk with my pen and thought: no one in this room has any idea what kind of words I was hearing yesterday at four in the morning, or how many times I came with those words in my ear.

***

Damián left the way he had arrived. One night he wrote me that he had to stop. That he didn’t want to stop, but he had to stop. That he had started talking to his ex again and needed to see if there was anything left to salvage.

I wished him luck. I thanked him. I didn’t ask for explanations that were none of my business.

That night I stayed awake, not because of him, but because of myself. Because of a strange feeling, like when you finish a book you really liked and suddenly the room is just the room again. I had learned the golden rule of these relationships well enough: don’t get your hopes up, don’t fall in love. But no one had warned me about the other side, the one where you miss someone you never promised to keep.

***

After that came a run of guys that didn’t work out. One who lied about his avatar and turned out to be fifteen years older. Another who sent messages at five in the morning demanding an immediate reply. A third who, when he realized I wasn’t going to call him “my love,” vanished with a digital slam of the door that still made me laugh days later.

I learned how to filter. I learned to smell insecurity behind flirting, the kind that later turns into demands. I learned that a man who asks too much at the beginning is going to ask twice as much once he gets comfortable.

I also learned what my time was worth. I learned to cut off conversations that didn’t add anything, without guilt, without long speeches. One short sentence. A “this isn’t going where I need it to go.” Block. Next.

***

There was one, however, who broke the mold without breaking the rules. His name was —or said his name was— Tomás. He lived in Córdoba, studied veterinary medicine, and had the calmest voice of any man I’ve ever spoken to in my life. A voice that asked for nothing, not even attention.

With Tomás there was no camera. He never wanted one. I never asked him for it either. Ours, for half a year, was pure language: descriptions, scenes, scenarios we built between the two of us as if we were writing with four hands. He told me things, I answered him. I suggested something, he added an unexpected detail that forced me to stay silent for a few seconds before continuing.

One night he made me come four times without touching me once, without touching himself either. He made me start dressed, with my hand over my clothes. He made me describe how my nipples felt under my bra. He made me wet my index finger with my mouth and slide it over my panties, without putting it in. He made me wait five minutes with my clit throbbing against the fabric while he told me, in that siesta voice, how he’d lick my cunt if he had me in front of him.

—I’d lick you slowly —he would say—. First on the outside. I’d run my tongue all the way from bottom to top, barely brushing your clit. No pressure. So you’d be left wanting.

—Tomás, please.

—Then I’d part your pussy lips with my fingers. I’d leave you open, wet, on display. And I’d blow on you. That’s all I’d do: blow on you.

I’d come without permission, moaning softly into the microphone, my panties soaked through, my hand motionless at my side because he hadn’t given me permission to touch myself. Then he’d ask me to take them off, to put two fingers inside, to describe to him how they went in. And he’d make me come again. And again. Until I told him to stop and laughed because I’d run out of breath.

—And you? —I asked him afterward.

—I’m fine. Hearing you is enough.

And I didn’t believe a word of it, but I also believed every bit of it.

I learned more with him than with anyone. I learned how much can be done with one word placed in exactly the right spot. I learned that the body doesn’t need to be present to respond; it’s enough for the other person to know how to name it. I learned that the cunt obeys the voice more than the fingers. I learned, above all, that imagination is the only territory where you can never lie completely.

Tomás left too. He didn’t get his hopes up. He didn’t get angry. One night he wrote that he was moving south, to do an internship at a reserve, and that he’d be without signal for several weeks. When he came back, he didn’t look for me anymore. And I didn’t look for him either.

Sometimes I think about him. I wonder if he’d recognize me if he passed me on a corner, what would happen if our voices met by chance somewhere else. But I don’t look for him. We both made the rules.

***

Today, two and a half years later, I’m already well into my technical degree. I still sleep alone most nights and that feels fine. I uninstalled the game a while ago, not for a moral decision, but because it stopped serving me the way it had before.

Sometimes, when a classmate tells me in distress about a guy who isn’t answering her messages, I think about everything I learned in there. How to read an intention in silence. How to hold a desire without turning it into an expectation. How to accompany someone for a season without signing a permanent contract. How to come with a stranger’s voice in your ear and greet him the next day as if nothing had happened.

I don’t say any of that, of course. Everyone has to discover their own rules, and what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another.

What I do know is this: during that stage of my life, those boys —the ones who stayed, the ones who left, the ones who understood and the ones who didn’t— were exactly what I needed. No more, no less. And I, I think, was also what some of them needed at that moment.

Casual doesn’t mean empty. Temporary doesn’t mean false. One night can weigh more than a year, if both people know what they’re doing and why they’re fucking.

What I keep from all that is one thing: I learned to listen to myself before listening to them. To listen to my own cunt before any man’s voice. And that, I think, is the only rule that ended up working for everything that came after.