What I Paid That Afternoon Wasn't Just the Money

My name is Marcos and I’m from Zaragoza. What I’m going to tell you I kept to myself for a long time, until I understood that keeping quiet about it didn’t make me a better person, only a more cowardly one. It isn’t a fantasy or a story I made up to impress anyone. It’s something that really happened to me, and I still think about it more than I’d like to admit.

I’m an ordinary guy. Nothing special, not handsome or ugly, one of those people who walk into a room and no one remembers. I was never any good at flirting. I’m too soft, too proper, and we all know how this works: the one who gets ahead is the guy who can be a bit of an asshole, the one who doesn’t care about embarrassing himself. I complicated everything.

At twenty-one, I still had never really been with a woman. A couple of awkward kisses at some party, not much more. And there comes a point when desire weighs so heavily on you that you stop thinking clearly. I didn’t have the nerve to approach a stranger in a bar, and the idea of going to a professional made me uneasy. It felt too cold, too clinical, like going in to buy bread.

So I came up with something else. Look for a normal girl, not a professional, someone I could at least talk to. I wasn’t exactly rolling in money either; I was a student and living on a shoestring. But I could scrape together a little.

One night, locked in my room with the lights off and my phone screen lighting up my face, I sent the same message to half a dozen girls I didn’t even know. I told them the truth, or almost: that I was shy, that I wasn’t looking for anything weird, that I just wanted to meet someone who would give me a handjob in exchange for some money. Nothing more than that. A strange kind of friendship, if you want to call it that, where every so often we’d see each other and I’d pay.

I felt pathetic the moment I hit send. So pathetic that I shut my phone face down on the table and promised myself I’d delete everything the next day.

***

I didn’t have time to delete anything. A few hours later, one of them replied.

Her name was Daniela. She was twenty, with blond curly hair tied back in a loose ponytail, according to her profile photo, and a way of writing that disarmed me from the very first message. She didn’t treat me like a pervert. She asked me things, laughed at my bad jokes, told me she was short on money that month and that, as long as it was only what I’d said, she didn’t mind trying.

—I’ve never done anything for money —she wrote—. But I don’t think it’s that big a deal. And at least you seem like a decent person.

Decent person. If she only knew how little that helped me in life.

We talked for nearly an hour. We agreed on every detail, what she would do, what I would do, how much I’d pay her. Twenty euros. We said it with a naturalness that feels strange to me now, as if we were making plans to meet for coffee. And, in a way, that was what surprised me most of all: how easily two strangers can come to an agreement about something so intimate.

We arranged to meet that same afternoon.

***

I got to the shopping center door half an hour early. My hands were shaking. I went over a thousand times what I was going to say, rehearsed greetings, regretted it, almost left three times. My stomach had tied itself into knots and my heart was in my throat.

I recognized her right away. She was walking slowly through the crowd, in jeans and a gray hoodie, much prettier than in the photos. She smiled at me from a distance, as if we’d known each other all our lives, and that smile wiped away all my nerves in an instant.

—Marcos? —she asked.

—Yes. You’re... you’re Daniela, of course.

—The one and only. Are you okay? You’re a bit pale.

I laughed, and it came out awkward.

—It’s the first time I’ve done something like this.

—Relax —she said, putting a hand on my arm—. Me too. Let’s keep it simple.

We walked inside, talking about nonsense, as if the real reason for that meeting didn’t exist. She told me she studied nursing, that she lived with two roommates, that she hated winter in the city. I talked to her about my classes, about how bad I was at math. For a few minutes I almost forgot why we had come.

But the body doesn’t forget. Every time she leaned in to talk to me over the noise in the mall, I felt the warmth of her arm brushing mine and my pulse kicked up again.

We found the bathrooms on the upper floor, the least crowded ones. We waited for a man with two bags to come out and went together into one of the stalls at the back. The space was cramped, it smelled of industrial soap, and the white ceiling light lit everything mercilessly.

The first thing I did was pay her. I took the bill out of my pocket and handed it to her, and that gesture, clumsy as it was, broke some of the tension. She put it away without looking at it, as if it didn’t matter.

—There —she said softly—. Now relax.

***

I pulled down my pants with fingers that barely obeyed me. I was so nervous I thought my body might not cooperate, that I’d just stand there, ridiculous, unable to react.

—Do you want me to take something off? —she asked in a whisper.

I didn’t know what to answer. I just nodded, not daring to ask for anything specific. Daniela lifted her hoodie and slowly took off her T-shirt, until she was left in her bra, and then she unclasped it. She had small breasts, soft, with her nipples already hard from the cold in the bathroom. Seeing her like that, half-naked a hand’s width from me, took my breath away.

She came closer. Her hand wrapped around me and started to move, first slowly, testing me, and then with a firm, confident rhythm. Not really knowing what to do with my hands, I put them on her breasts. I stroked them carefully, almost fearfully, and I felt her breathing deepen a little when I brushed her nipples between my fingers.

—Like that —she said very quietly—. Don’t be afraid.

And then, without my saying anything, she knelt down.

The cold floor didn’t seem to bother her. She looked up at me for a second from below with those light eyes, then leaned forward. What I felt when her mouth closed around me was unlike anything I’d imagined in all the nights I’d spent imagining it. The heat, the wetness, the slow way her tongue moved over me. I had to brace one hand against the wall so I wouldn’t lose my balance.

She was good at it. Too good. She alternated between her mouth and her hand, going up and down, stopping just when I thought I couldn’t take any more and starting again. I closed my eyes and let myself go, trying to memorize every detail, knowing it would never be the same again.

The rhythm built. My breathing turned ragged and I felt the end approaching, that surge from below that warns you a few seconds ahead of time. I wanted to warn her, opened my mouth to tell her, but she didn’t pull away. On the contrary: she sped up, gripped me firmly, and let me finish like that, in her mouth, while I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t make a sound.

When it was over, I was left shaking, my back pressed to the cold wall and my heart hammering. She stood up slowly, wiped herself with a piece of paper, and gave me a calm smile, without a trace of discomfort.

—Better? —she asked.

—Much better —I managed to say.

***

We left separately, a few minutes apart, so as not to draw attention. I waited outside, by a fountain, not really sure whether the right thing was to leave without a word or say something to her. When she appeared, she had her hoodie back on and her ponytail fixed again, as if nothing had happened.

—Hey —I said to her—. Thanks. Really.

—Don’t mention it. —She shrugged—. Honestly, it was nicer than I expected. You’re a nice guy.

We stayed there a while longer, talking, and from that strange afternoon something came out that I hadn’t planned for. Daniela and I became friends. Real friends. She started telling me about her problems, the fights with her roommates, the boyfriend who treated her badly and whom it took her months to leave. I told her about my own stuff, about how shy I’d always been, about how lost I sometimes felt.

Every now and then we kept meeting, and I paid her what we’d agreed on, but it wasn’t just that anymore. It was spending an afternoon with someone who didn’t judge me, who made me laugh, who had shown me, without meaning to, that desire and affection don’t always go down separate paths.

That lasted almost a year, until she finished her degree and moved to another city for work. We said goodbye with a long hug at the station, and we both knew it was a real goodbye, not a see-you-later.

After that came other stories, other girls, other encounters. Some good, some I’d rather forget. But none of them was like that first afternoon, in the bathroom of a shopping center, when a boy dying of embarrassment paid twenty euros and received, without knowing it, much more than he had asked for.

And that’s why even today, when someone says with contempt that paying for sex is cold and empty, I keep quiet. Because I know it isn’t always like that. Sometimes, behind such a simple agreement, there are two people who recognize each other, who keep each other company, who help one another feel a little less alone. That was what I paid for that afternoon. And the money, I assure you, was the least of it.