The Afternoon I Learned to Know My Own Body

Wednesday was one of those days that had no shape of its own. Outside, it had been raining since morning, that kind of gray, steady rain that neither lets up nor intensifies, that simply is. My roommate had gone out early with her partner and wouldn’t be back until evening. I had the apartment to myself, which in winter is a luxury and a sentence at the same time.

I had showered late, around four in the afternoon. A long shower, the kind where the hot water lasts too long and you stay under the stream thinking about nothing in particular. Steam filled the bathroom. Through the small window overlooking the inner courtyard, barely a thread of cold air came in, but inside everything was warm and still.

When I turned off the tap and grabbed the towel, something had changed. I don’t know how else to explain it: it was that low tension that appears without warning and doesn’t hurt, but isn’t neutral either. A vibration in my lower belly, a kind of concentrated heat between my legs that hadn’t come from the shower. I dried my arms, my shoulders, my torso. When I lowered the towel to my hips, I stopped in front of the fogged-up mirror and looked at myself: my nipples had gone hard, not from the cold but from something else, and I noticed that when I passed the towel over my pussy, the simple brush of the fabric sent a tickle through me that made me stop.

For months, maybe longer, I had been ignoring that kind of sensation. Not exactly out of guilt or shame, but because I had never quite learned how my own body worked in that respect. I had tried once or twice: lying on the bed, at night, without much conviction. I never got anywhere. Some noise would distract me, or I would get stuck at some point without really knowing what to do next, or I would simply get bored too soon and give up. My friends talked about coming, dicks, how they liked being fucked, with an ease that seemed almost extraterrestrial to me. It just doesn’t happen to me, I thought. Or it doesn’t happen to me the same way.

That rainy Wednesday, alone in the bathroom still full of steam, I decided to try again. Without rushing. Without any particular expectations.

***

I sat on the edge of the toilet. I hung the towel on the hook behind the door. The bathroom light was that cold, direct light that hides nothing, but I didn’t care. I leaned against the cistern, spread my legs wide, and braced my feet against the tiled wall in front of me. From where I was, I could see myself in the mirror: my pussy open, my pink lips gleaming with moisture, my hair trimmed short, and my clitoris already peeking a little out of its hood.

The position was a little uncomfortable and a little ridiculous, and it amused me for a moment. But it was the only way to stay steady, with my hands free and no tension in my legs. So I stayed like that, my ass resting on the cold porcelain and my knees spread wide.

I started slowly. Just with my fingertips, barely brushing the outer lips, without going inside yet. I wanted to pay attention to what I was feeling instead of hurrying as I always did. The initial contact was soft, almost neutral. But I immediately noticed something that surprised me: I was soaked. Literally dripping. Just running my fingers along the slit let me feel my wetness sticking to my fingertips, viscous and warm, and a trickle slowly running down toward my asshole. I brought my fingers to my nose and smelled them: they smelled like me, like a hot female, a thick scent that, instead of embarrassing me, turned me on even more.

I continued exploring calmly. I opened my lips with two fingers of my left hand and with my right traced small circles around my clitoris, varying the pressure, pausing whenever something sparked pleasure and repeating the movement to see whether it held or had been a coincidence. My clitoris gradually swelled beneath my finger, growing harder and more sensitive, until a direct brush across the tip made me jerk and let out a moan that bounced off the tiles. I wasn’t in any hurry. Outside, it was still raining. My roommate wouldn’t be back until nine. The bathroom was a world apart, still and warm.

After a while I lowered my hand and slipped one finger into my pussy. Slowly, carefully, giving myself time with every centimeter. I felt the inner walls squeezing my finger, hot, slippery, softly throbbing. The pleasure wasn’t immediate but gradual, like something building in layers. I moved my finger in and out, changing the angle, curling it upward, searching without knowing exactly what I was looking for but recognizing it when I found it: a spongy area a few centimeters inside, on the upper wall, that when I pressed it sent a tug through my lower belly unlike anything else. I tried inserting a second finger and felt that it was too soon: my body wasn’t completely open yet for that added pressure, and my nails bothered me. I stopped. One finger was enough for now.

There’s no hurry, I told myself. And I meant it.

I continued with just one, sliding it in and out at the rhythm my body demanded, listening to the wet sound it made as it entered and left. With my other hand I began rubbing my clitoris in earnest, in quick little circles with my middle finger, that area I knew was important but had never really worked properly. It was like finding the right volume on a radio I had always listened to too quietly: suddenly the sound had substance, had presence. My thighs began to tremble, and I felt my pussy contracting around my finger, sucking it in, asking for more.

***

At some point, what I had between my legs began to feel insufficient. My finger was too short, too thin; I wanted something thick inside me, something that would fill and stretch me, that sense of fullness I had only sensed until then. My gaze wandered around the bathroom without much purpose, my finger still inside me and my clitoris throbbing beneath my fingertip. The shampoo bottles, the sponge, the soap.

The toothbrush I had bought a few days earlier and still hadn’t unwrapped because I hadn’t used it.

It was one of those with an ergonomically designed handle: wider and rounder at the base than conventional models. When I saw it at the pharmacy, something in me had singled it out before my mind consciously processed it. I had put it in my basket and then in the bathroom drawer without giving it another thought. Now I looked at it from across the bathroom, and I wasn’t all that surprised that I had bought it.

I picked it up.

I washed it with soap and water, calmly, while my other hand kept rubbing my clitoris so I wouldn’t lose my level of arousal. I dried it. I inspected it. It was smooth plastic, without edges, with that rounded lower end, thicker than a conventional handle. It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t discreet either: it was about as thick as an average cock, perhaps a little less, and when I gripped it in my hand, it felt firm, solid, like something made to be put inside.

I brought it toward me slowly, without stopping paying attention to my body, without forcing anything. I rested it against the entrance to my pussy and pushed just a little. It yielded with a ease that surprised me: the rounded tip sank in without resistance, sliding through all the wetness dripping from me. The smooth plastic helped, and I was so wet that friction wasn’t an obstacle at all. I let out a short moan, surprised by how different it felt from a finger.

I inserted it little by little, centimeter by centimeter, giving myself time to adjust to the thickness. I felt my pussy opening around the handle, the inner walls stretching to accommodate it, the plastic reaching places my finger hadn’t even brushed. It was different from a finger: firmer, steadier, without the jointed flexibility of a hand. When I had it almost all the way in, I stopped for a second and breathed. My pussy squeezed it hard, pulsing around it. Then I began moving it in and out at a slow rhythm, speeding up a little when I felt my body asking for it. Each thrust produced a wet, obscene slapping sound that bounced off the tiles, and hearing myself only turned me on more.

The sensation was different from anything I had experienced before.

It wasn’t explosive or immediate pleasure. It was something accumulating in my lower belly with growing pressure, like a wave that takes a long time to form but is unmistakable when it arrives. I pushed the handle all the way in and twisted it a little, searching for that spongy area I had discovered with my finger, and when I found it with the toothbrush’s thick end, a higher-pitched moan escaped me. My ass lifted off the porcelain with every thrust. My feet slipped against the tiles.

I kept fucking myself with the handle while my other hand returned to my clitoris, synchronizing the movements, searching for the rhythm that connected them. When the toothbrush went in, my finger rubbed in circles. When it came out, I paused. Then I tried the opposite: constant pressure on my clitoris and quick thrusts into my pussy. Then both things quickly at once, and that was when I felt something beginning to tighten deep inside, at a point I had never known how to locate in my entire life.

I found that rhythm.

And when I found it, I didn’t want to change a thing. I continued exactly the same way: the handle buried deep inside me, almost still, moving only a few centimeters but pressing against that spongy spot; the hand above it moving faster and faster over my swollen, slippery clitoris. Pleasure stopped being something vague and concentrated in one precise, intense, impossible-to-ignore point. I began panting with my mouth open, no longer controlling myself, listening to my own voice as though it were coming from someone else.

***

I don’t know how long I stayed like that. I lost all sense of time. The rain continued outside, but I could no longer hear it. I could hear only my ragged breathing, the wet slapping of the handle moving in and out of me, the moist rubbing of my fingers over my clitoris.

There came a moment when the sensation changed its nature: it was no longer something I controlled but something that was simply happening, carrying me away. I felt my pussy clamp suddenly around the handle with a strength I hadn’t imagined it could have, felt a long, deep contraction begin in the center of my abdomen and spread through my legs, my back, my thighs, my ass, my nipples. I let out a short, hoarse cry and arched against the cistern. My clitoris throbbed beneath my finger as if it had a heart of its own. My pussy contracted in waves around the plastic, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. I felt a warm gush escape me and run beneath my ass onto the porcelain. It lasted a few seconds that seemed much longer. I stayed motionless, my breath cut short, trembling all over, the handle still inside me and my hand frozen over my pubic mound.

Then silence.

My breathing returned little by little. My body gradually relaxed, muscle by muscle. I could still feel my pussy throbbing, with small residual spasms that made me squeeze the handle from time to time.

So that was what it was.

I knew it the instant it happened: that was what my friends described when they talked about coming. What I had spent months believing didn’t happen to me, or happened to me in a different, lesser, incomplete way. It wasn’t a myth or an exaggeration. It was this, exactly this: a real orgasm, my whole body trembling, my pussy dripping, my mind empty. And I had gotten there alone, on a rainy Wednesday, sitting on the edge of the toilet with my feet braced against the cold tiles and a toothbrush handle buried deep inside me.

When I tried to remove the handle, I noticed that it had penetrated much farther than I had registered during the process. My body had been so occupied with everything else that it hadn’t paid attention to the depth. I pulled it out slowly and carefully, and watched it emerge shiny and soaked with my own wetness, viscous strings stretching between the plastic and my pussy lips before breaking. The empty feeling it left behind was as noticeable as its presence had been: I felt my pussy opening and closing in the air, as if searching for something that was no longer there.

I stayed sitting for a while longer, without rushing. My back against the cistern, my feet still against the wall, looking at the ceiling with a calm that wasn’t usual for me, my legs still spread and my pussy gently throbbing. There was something strange and good about that moment: the feeling of having learned something about myself that I should have known earlier, while at the same time feeling no guilt about the delay. It simply was what it was.

I stood up, washed my hands, washed the toothbrush with soap until the smell of pussy was gone from the plastic, dried it, and put it away in the drawer.

***

A few days later, the package I had ordered online weeks earlier arrived: the toy I had told my friend Daniela about in a conversation that had seemed more theoretical than practical at the time. A silicone vibrator, not too large, with different modes. I opened it with curiosity but also some anxiety. I took it out of the box, weighed it in my hand, and mentally compared it with the toothbrush handle: it was thicker, longer, with a rounded head that imitated the glans of a cock and a curved protrusion designed for the clitoris.

After what had happened on Wednesday, I knew my body could reach that point. But I also knew that the path mattered as much as the destination. I lay down on the bed, spread my legs, and ran the tip of the vibrator over my lips, switched on at the gentlest setting. My first attempt with the toy was clumsier than expected: I couldn’t find the angle to insert it, the vibration was so intense against my clitoris that it burned instead of giving me pleasure, I distracted myself switching between the settings, and I ended up turning it off without getting anywhere, my pussy wet and me equally frustrated.

I didn’t get frustrated. It even amused me.

I need practice, I thought. And for the first time in a long while, that didn’t sound like resignation. It sounded like a promise.

I know I’ll find a way. I’ve already come once, alone in a bathroom with the rain outside and a pharmacy-bought plastic toothbrush buried in my pussy. The rest is learning to listen to what my body already knows and what I’m finally beginning to understand.