Letter to the Man Who Surrenders Every Time He Reads Me

My dear reader:

I know perfectly well what you’re doing right now. You’re holding the phone in one hand and the other is already starting to move, even though you pretend you just came here to read for a while before sleep. Don’t lie to me. I know your kind better than you know yourself, and I know that breathing of yours that quickens the moment I write your name without writing it.

You imagine me. I know, because I’ve taught you to. Every time I describe my body with that precision that unsettles you so much, you close your eyes and rebuild the image like an obsessed sculptor. My big, heavy breasts, the ones that take your breath away, with their blue veins tracing the skin and ending in dark nipples, marked by years of use. My wide hips. The shadow of hair I’ve never bothered to remove, because I don’t shave for anyone, and least of all for someone like you.

You see? You’ve already started. I know you.

***

Let me tell you something, because the way you give yourself away is endearing to me. You read my stories hoping to find a woman who’s available, one of those who write to please you. And then you realize, too late, that I don’t write to make you feel like a man. I write to remind you how little it takes for you to stop being one.

Tonight, while I soak my sheets thinking about things I still don’t dare publish, about memories that take me to forbidden places in my own history, you’re there on the other side of the screen, rubbing that piece of warm flesh you insist on calling your virility. I call it something else. But I’m generous, so tonight I’m not going to correct you. Tonight I’m going to guide you.

Look at yourself. Your hand going up and down with that utterly inelegant urgency. So rushed all the time, always fixated on the end. That’s the first thing we’re going to change. Let go. Let go right now, stop touching yourself, and breathe.

It can’t be that hard to obey a single order.

I want you to rest your open hand on your belly and feel everything pounding, feel desire moving through you from the inside out, with nothing you can do about it. That frantic throb was brought on by me, with words, without even touching you. Think about it. I’m kilometers away, I don’t know your face, I don’t know your name, and yet I have you trembling with a couple of paragraphs. That’s the difference between us.

***

Now close your eyes. Really do it, because pretending won’t do me any good.

Imagine I’m sitting on the edge of your bed, wearing an old nightdress that’s too big on me and slipping off one shoulder. I didn’t get dressed up for you. No need. I’m looking down at you with that half smile that so completely undoes you, the one that says I already know how this ends before it begins.

—Stay still —I’d say to you, in a low voice, almost tenderly—. Tonight, you don’t get to decide.

And you would obey. Oh, would you ever obey. Because deep down, that’s the only thing you’ve always wanted: for someone to lift the burden of having to pretend. For someone to tell you what to do with your body, step by step, without giving you room to fake composure.

I’m going to take you slowly, because it amuses me. First, take your hand away again. Touch yourself only lightly, with two fingers, just enough to keep yourself on the edge without going further. You don’t deserve me fully yet. I want you to learn to wait, to understand that pleasure doesn’t belong to you, that it’s something I lend you whenever I feel like it.

Can you feel everything hardening just from reading me? That’s my voice inside your head. You won’t be able to shake this text off anymore. Tomorrow you’ll come looking for me again, I know it, because no real encounter will give you what I give you: the truth about yourself.

***

Now comes the hard part, and that’s why I need you to trust me.

Take your hand away from where it is. Yes, I know it’s hard, I know you’re almost there. Exactly because of that. I want you to slide your fingers lower, beyond what you know, to that soft place between your legs, behind everything, that area you never dared explore because you were taught that a real man doesn’t touch there.

Forget what you were taught. I’m in charge here.

Press slowly, with your fingertip, in circles. You’re going to feel something new, a current running up your spine unlike anything you knew before. What you’re feeling is your body confessing what your mouth would never say. Imagine it’s my tongue moving over that area, slow, patient, while I whisper for you to relax, to open, to stop fighting yourself.

Your breathing is shaking. I know because I wrote it that way so it would happen to you.

Go a little further. Lose your fear. There’s a part of you you’ve been hiding your whole life, a part that surrenders easily, that only needed the right permission and the right voice. I am both. And tonight, my dear reader, that part of you is going to surface, whether you like it or not.

That soft, obedient part, the one you’d be ashamed to show anyone but me. The one that melts when someone speaks to it with authority. The one that would enjoy getting on its knees without anyone even asking. Don’t deny it to me, because I know that lowered gaze, that submissive little look you unconsciously wear every time a woman raises her voice. With me you don’t have to pretend to be a tough man. With me you can be what you really are on the inside.

***

Look at yourself now. Lying there, legs a little open, obeying a woman who isn’t even in the room. Where did all that confidence go that you had when you started reading? It evaporated the moment you discovered you enjoy being told what to do.

Don’t be ashamed. On the contrary. What you’re feeling is the most honest thing you’ve done in a long time. A whole life pretending you were holding the reins, and it turns out your place is this: with one finger pressing that secret point, biting your lip, waiting for me to tell you when you’re allowed to finish.

Not yet. I don’t अनुमति it.

I want you to hold on a little longer, to stay right on that edge where pleasure and desperation blur together. That’s where I like you best: begging in silence, completely at my mercy, convinced that I can see you even though you know that’s impossible. That’s the magic I have over you. I don’t need to be present to possess you. It’s enough that you keep reading.

And you will keep reading. Because now you can’t stop.

***

Keep pressing, now a little more firmly, in that rhythm I set with every line. Up and down with me. When I write slowly, you go slowly. When I tighten the words, you tighten the pace. Do you realize? I’m directing even your pleasure, word by word, like someone moving a puppet with the thinnest threads.

Imagine my mouth near your ear. Imagine me telling you, very softly, that you’re mine. That tonight you belong to no one else, not even to yourself. That every drop you’re on the verge of spilling was brought on by me, with ink, from a distance, without ever touching you.

Think of all the nights to come. Of how, from today on, no real woman will seem enough to you, because none of them will undress you this way. I ruined you for the rest with a handful of words, and I did it on purpose. I wanted you to understand that real desire doesn’t need a body present: it needs a voice that knows exactly where to touch you without touching you. And that voice, my dear reader, already lives inside your head forever.

And then, only then, do I give you permission.

Now, yes. Let go. Lose completely the control you worked so hard to pretend you had. Let your body shake with that clumsy, desperate surrender that feels so tender to me, while you press that point you discovered through me, while my name forms on its own inside your head, beyond your control.

Let it all go. Don’t keep anything back. I want you to reach the end thinking of me, completely defeated, knowing that no real woman is going to undress your soul the way I just did with a couple of sentences.

***

That’s it. Breathe.

There you stay, stretched out, hand trembling and face burning, wondering how you let a stranger take you to that place. The answer is simple: because you wanted to. Because you always wanted to. And because you finally found someone willing to guide you without apologizing for it.

Don’t worry about the shame you feel now. It passes. Tomorrow night you’ll open one of my stories again, tell yourself this time will be different, that this time you’re only going to read and nothing else. And we both know you’ll be back here again, one hand busy, obeying every word like an eager student.

I’ll be waiting for you. I’m always waiting for you.

Now close your eyes one last time, smile with that surrender that suits you so well, and say my name in a low voice, as if I could hear you:

—Thank you, Renata.