Alone at Home, My Body Stops Obeying Me

The last glass of the night still left a red ring on the table when I heard Mariela’s car engine fade away down the street. They’d come for dinner, to play cards, to laugh at stupid things until late, and I’d been the perfect hostess: attentive, friendly, smiling. But inside, I was counting the minutes. I knew what was waiting for me as soon as the house fell silent again.

I cleared away the glasses, brushed the crumbs from the tablecloth, and turned off the television without even looking at it. The heat that summer night was thick, sticky, the kind that seeps under your clothes and won’t leave. I was wearing light pajamas over tight underwear and a thin blouse that barely covered me. Every movement reminded me that I was alone. Finally, alone.

When there’s no one around, I don’t recognize myself. Something switches on in me that by day I keep locked up tight, and the mere idea of taking off my clothes and standing naked runs through me like an electric current. It’s not a decision. It’s something that happens, like breathing.

I opened the bedroom windows, hoping for a breeze that never came. I took off my bra first, and my breasts were left free beneath the fabric. My nipples brushed the blouse with every step, and that tiny contact, almost nothing at all, was already starting to tighten me. Better lie down before I lose control, I thought. A lie I tell myself every night.

I never made it to the bed.

I stood in front of the large bedroom mirror, the one that runs from floor to ceiling and shows me all of myself. I slowly lowered the pajama bottoms, centimeter by centimeter, watching myself. I pinched my nipples softly, almost to test myself. Calm down. You can handle this. This doesn’t turn you on. Another lie. The pants were already around my ankles, and I was staring at my firm butt reflected in the glass, the taut curve of my back, the shadow between my legs.

—Don’t touch yourself —I said in a low voice, almost a plea—. Please, don’t.

It was useless. I reached back and spread my ass cheeks so the snug fabric of my underwear would slip between my lips. I pulled it up, stretched it, tried to make it sink in, make it part me, remind me it was there. With both hands flat on my own skin, I closed my eyes and imagined someone behind me. A big man, heavy, impatient, holding me by the hips.

I started moving my hips as if helping him in. At first rhythmically, then with force, rocking against a body that didn’t exist but that my skin was already starting to believe in. I climbed onto the bed and got on all fours, offering everything to that invented silhouette. The wetness came on its own, and the fabric soaked it up. I pulled harder on it, wanted it nice and deep. I was moving as if he were inside me, and my nipples, now truly, were harder than ever.

My hands didn’t wait for permission. They moved on their own, seeking between my legs, finding the heat and the slickness. I tore off the underwear and the blouse in one yank and ended up naked in the middle of the bed, on all fours, panting, surrendered to a lover who existed only in my head. My hand moved fast, desperate, and by then I was no longer thinking about anything but that frenzy.

The wetness had soaked my fingers and, without noticing, I took them farther back. I brushed the other place, the one I almost never dare touch, and an electric spasm ran through my whole back. I froze for a second, surprised by my own trembling.

And why not? What’s stopping me?

If I didn’t like it, I could always go back to what was safe, what was familiar, and no one would ever find out. I started stroking myself slowly, opening up patiently, with fingers slick from my own wetness. Each caress opened me a little more, and every opening tore a sigh from me that I barely recognized as mine.

***

I keep my toys on the nightstand. All of them seemed too big for what I intended that night, but there was one with a suction-cup base, the kind that sticks to any smooth surface. I stuck it to the mirror, calculating the height, measuring the angle with a precision that made me laugh and cringe at the same time. I positioned myself in front of it, with my back to the glass, and started rocking my hips, looking for that exact spot, wanting it to go in on its own.

It was difficult. My body resisted, but arousal outweighed any hesitation and I kept pressing, pressing, until a muffled moan escaped me into the pillow. The tip had gone in. I stopped, breathed, silently encouraged myself. The worst is over. Hold still. Get used to it.

My own contractions wanted to push the intruder out, fought against it, and for a moment I lost. I bore down, making an enormous effort, almost instinctively, as if trying to force it out, and the surprise was exactly the opposite: that pushing opened me more and the toy advanced a little. I’d found the trick. I repeated the movement, that strange, contradictory pressure, and centimeter by centimeter it went in, until my ass cheeks hit the cold mirror and I had it completely inside me.

I stayed still for a few seconds, taking in that new sensation, full, almost excessive. Then I started moving. Softly, slowly, without pulling it out, just rocking enough to feel it. I poured a little lubricant over it, let it run between my ass cheeks, and then I did pull it out a bit and pushed it back in. It slid now, in and out cleanly, without resistance, and with each movement the pleasure climbed another step.

I moved hard against the glass. The thud of my body against the mirror made a dull, rhythmic sound that excited me even more. Every thrust tore a broken moan from me, cut in half by the impact. I moaned louder and louder, alone in my room, possessed by an imaginary lover and a toy attached to a mirror, and I had never felt so free and so lost at the same time.

I wanted to see myself. I needed to see myself like that, in that pose, devoured by my own desire. I grabbed the phone from the nightstand, propped it against the lamp until it framed my whole body, and hit record. Not for anyone. Just for me, for that other me that comes out when the house is empty.

I went back to thrusting, faster, deeper. I sped up without thinking, panting, and a cry escaped me that I couldn’t hold back. I know my body: when I start screaming, it means the end is already coming and there’s no way to stop it. I shoved hard. In, out, in, out. I cried out again, and I knew there was no turning back.

—Yes, yes, yes —I kept repeating, not recognizing my own voice—. I’m coming, I’m coming.

I felt tears welling up on their own, crying from sheer pleasure, and I let out one last long cry that emptied me out completely. The spasms came brutally, in waves, shaking me from top to bottom until I collapsed flat on the floor, trembling. In front of me, in the mirror, my lover was still firm and gleaming, and I looked at it with a mixture of gratitude and madness.

I crawled toward it with almost no strength left and licked it, desperate, while the last tremors still ran through me. My body no longer obeyed me, my legs felt heavy, but I couldn’t let it go. I was completely surrendered, and for a moment I stopped being the cautious woman everyone knows and became only this: desire, sweat, panting, total abandonment.

***

Calm returned little by little. My breathing settled, my heart slowed down, and the sweat began to cool on my skin. I turned my head to look at myself one more time in the mirror, still lying on the floor, and I saw myself exactly as I had imagined: open, stretched, shining with wetness, marked by my own daring.

I stayed like that a long while, stretched out on the cool tiles, resting, catching my breath. I’d have to turn off the phone, delete the video, pretend tomorrow that nothing had happened. But not yet. Not yet did I want to go back to being the other one.

Because the arousal wasn’t going away. It beat low and persistent, like embers that never quite die. I stretched my hand toward the nightstand, toward the other toys waiting in the drawer, and I wondered, with a smile no one would ever see, if this time I’d dare to do more. To ride slowly in front of the mirror. Maybe to try two at once, one in each place, and find out how far this body that stops obeying me at night can take it.

I was so hot again that I already knew the answer. The night had barely begun, and I, luckily, was still alone.