The Afternoon I Discovered What My Body Desired

From a very young age I knew there was something different in the way my body responded to the world. Any scene in a movie, a couple kissing in the street, a deep voice on the radio: all it took was a detail for something to ignite inside me, in a place I didn’t know how to name. I didn’t understand what it was or why it happened to me, and for years I learned to hide it, to squeeze my thighs under the table and pretend I felt nothing.

I turned nineteen and still didn’t dare explore that territory. I lived with my parents in an apartment in the center of Valverde, was in my first year of Design, and spent most of my time locked in my room, among my notes and the laptop they had given me for university. I was a girl curious about everything except my own body, as if desire were an exam I preferred not to sit.

That Friday in November changed everything. My mother was cooking downstairs and the smell of stew drifted up the stairs. I was, supposedly, reviewing an assignment for Monday. But curiosity had been nibbling at me for weeks, and that afternoon, with the door closed and silence on my side, I opened the browser and typed into the bar something I had never before allowed myself to search for.

I’m just going to look for a moment, I told myself. To understand what this is about.

The page filled with images and links, too many to process all at once. I moved the cursor from one to another without making up my mind, my heart pounding in my throat. And then I saw it: the thumbnail of an older woman, with brown hair and a calm gaze, sitting on the edge of a bed. There was no one else in the video. Just her and the camera.

I hit play almost without thinking. I turned the volume down to the minimum in case my mother’s footsteps came closer, and I leaned toward the screen as if I wanted to enter it.

The woman was called Renata, according to the title. She moved slowly, without haste, with a confidence that left me hypnotized. She stroked her arms, her neck, ran her fingertips over the blouse before unbuttoning it. Every gesture of hers was deliberate, as if she knew exactly what her body needed and enjoyed making it wait.

Without realizing it, I had started to imitate her. My fingers slid up my ribs, still over my T-shirt, clumsily repeating her movements. I felt ridiculous and fascinated at the same time. I didn’t want to miss a single detail of what she was doing, so I leaned my back against the headboard and let my hands follow hers from a distance.

***

My mother’s shout broke the spell all at once.

—Aitana, come down to eat before it gets cold!

I slammed the laptop shut, my heart racing, and adjusted my clothes as if someone could read on my face what I had just discovered. I went downstairs trying to breathe normally, but my mind stayed up there, trapped in the image of that woman who seemed like a goddess indifferent to the rest of the world.

I sat at the table and my mother looked at me over her plate. She has always had a radar for my moods.

—Everything all right, sweetheart? You’re flushed.

—Yes, yes —I answered too quickly—. I think I’m coming down with something, I feel weird.

—Then finish eating and go back up to rest, it’s Friday and you don’t have to get up early —she said, returning to her stew—. Your father’s late tonight, so relax.

—Thanks, Mom. That’s what I’ll do.

I ate as fast as I could without making the hurry obvious. Every bite tasted like impatience. The lie about catching a cold had bought me exactly what I needed: an entire afternoon with no one bothering me, no one knocking on my door. My mother, as always, treated me with the sweetness of someone who still sees a girl where there is already a woman with urgent questions.

I went up saying I’d sleep for a while, that please they shouldn’t wake me. I closed the door, this time locking it too, and stood for a moment in the middle of the room, listening to the noises of the house: the water in the sink, the television on downstairs, the routine carrying on, unaware of me.

***

I took the laptop to bed and put on my headphones, determined that no sound would escape that room. I hit play and found Renata again, right where I had left her, as if she had been waiting for me all that time.

She was finishing undressing with the same calm as before. And I, almost by inertia, did the same. I took off my T-shirt, my pants, and left everything piled on the floor beside the bed. The cool afternoon air raised goosebumps on my skin. I had never looked at myself so much: my breasts, the curve of my belly, the way my breathing moved them. For the first time I felt not shame, but a new, hungry curiosity.

I started as she did, from the top. I stroked my neck, brought my hands down to cover my breasts, squeezed them gently to see what it felt like. A warm current ran up my back. I repeated the gesture, this time more slowly, surprised by how much everything changed depending on pressure, rhythm, intention.

I paused for a moment to look at myself in the wardrobe mirror, half-open in front of the bed. Seeing myself like that, naked and surrendered to something I had always hidden, gave me a shame that lasted only a second and then immediately turned into something else. I liked what I saw. I liked the woman looking back at me, her cheeks flushed and a determination she had never known in me. I looked away from the mirror and focused again on the screen, determined to get to the end of that discovery.

On the screen, Renata slid a hand between her legs. I copied her without thinking, holding my breath. The first touch of my fingers tore a spasm from me so intense I nearly screamed; I bit the pillow just in time so my mother wouldn’t hear anything. I stayed still for a few seconds, frightened by my own reaction, my body vibrating like a tightened string.

Then I tried again, more attentive, more careful. I traced slow circles, discovering which spots made me arch my back and which forced me to clench my teeth. I was drenched, so much that the sheet beneath me was dampening, but I didn’t care. Only the woman on the screen and I existed, two bodies separated by glass, doing the same thing at the same pace.

I slid one finger in slowly, imitating every movement she marked, and felt everything inside me open to a sensation that had no name. I pulled it out, went back in, played with the cadence until I found one that left me breathless. The initial clumsiness had become something almost instinctive, as if my body remembered a language my mind had just begun to learn.

The tension kept growing in waves, each one higher than the last. I closed my eyes and stopped looking at the screen; I didn’t need it anymore. I focused only on what I felt, on the heat gathering in one point and threatening to overflow. I squeezed my thighs, threw my head back, and let that wave finally break.

The orgasm shook me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. I had to bury my face in the pillow to smother a sound I didn’t recognize as mine. My legs trembled, my thighs were soaked, and for a few seconds I wasn’t capable of thinking about anything, only of breathing in ragged bursts, my chest rising and falling as if I had run for miles.

So this was it, I thought when I caught my breath. This was what my body had been asking me for all these years.

***

I closed the page and lay there for a while on my back, staring at the ceiling, with a smile I couldn’t erase. My body felt light, released, as if I had taken off a weight I hadn’t even known I was carrying. The guilt I had expected never came; in its place was a kind of peace, the certainty of having discovered a part of myself that was mine alone.

I got into the shower to wash away the sweat and the heat of the afternoon. The warm water on my still-sensitive skin was another kind of pleasure, calmer. Then I changed the sheets, hid them at the bottom of the hamper, and opened the window so the room could air out, carefully covering up the traces of my little mischief.

When I went down to dinner, my mother said I looked better. I told her the rest had done me wonders, and that wasn’t entirely a lie. That night I slept better than I had in a long time, hugging my pillow, knowing that Monday university, the notes, and the routine would return, but that I would never again be quite the same shy girl as before.

Sometimes I think about Renata, the woman in that video who will never know I exist, and I thank her in silence. Without meaning to, she taught me to look at myself without fear, to understand that desire wasn’t something wrong in me, but something that had been waiting too long for me to dare to listen to it. That Friday afternoon I stopped ignoring it. And since then, every time the house falls silent, I know exactly what to do with it.