The Fantasy She Left Me With When I Woke Up

I wake up before the alarm goes off, naked and hard, the sheet tangled between my legs as if I’d been fighting with it all night. The room is still dim. Through the slats of the blinds, a thin line of gray light falls across the bed and stops right where her body had been resting a few hours ago.

The first thing that comes back isn’t an image, it’s a taste. The taste of her in my mouth, her scent still clinging to the pillow beside me. I close my eyes and there she is again on top of me, laughing softly, whispering things no one else had ever said to me before.

Mariana left early. I know because her side of the bed is cold and because she left a note on the bathroom mirror that I caught out of the corner of my eye when I got up to drink water in the middle of the night. Keep thinking about me. That’s what it said. As if she needed to ask.

I don’t move. I stay like that, on my back, listening to my own breathing and letting memory do the rest. My skin is sensitive, alert, as if everything from last night left an invisible mark that only I can feel.

***

I turn my head toward the nightstand and there it is. The plug, resting on a paper tissue, barely gleaming in the little light that gets in. I didn’t put it away. I left it out in plain sight, almost on purpose, knowing it would be the first thing I’d see when I woke up.

Seeing it brings the whole scene back. Mariana kneeling between my legs, with that smile she gets when she discovers something she likes. Her hands, her fingers exploring me with a patience that drove me insane. The way she looked me in the eyes while she did it, checking every expression on my face, measuring how far she could take me.

I’m straight. I always have been, with no doubts or questions. But she understood before I did that pleasure doesn’t have as many rules as people think. That the whole body is made to enjoy itself, not just the part one expects. And that night she proved it to me without haste, without asking permission except with her eyes.

—Do you trust me? —she’d asked, her voice low, almost against my ear.

—Yes —I said, and it was true.

I trusted her. I trusted her more than anyone.

***

My right hand starts moving on its own. It glides down my chest, down my belly, slowly, while my left stays propped behind my neck. I’ve been hard since I opened my eyes, but I don’t want to rush. I want to drag this out. I want it to last as long as last night did.

I wrap my fingers around myself and squeeze without moving, just to feel the pulse. The memory of her mouth hits me like a wave: how she took me all in, without disgust, without theatrics, with a hunger that left me breathless. She rose and fell while looking at me, and every time I closed my eyes she stopped and waited until I looked back at her.

—Don’t hide —she told me one of those times—. I want to see you.

And I didn’t hide. I held her gaze until the end, until I felt I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.

But last night she didn’t let me finish that soon. She had other plans.

***

I sit up a little, lean my back against the headboard, and stretch my arm toward the nightstand. Next to the plug there’s a bottle of lubricant, also in plain sight, also left there on purpose. It’s no coincidence that the two things are there, waiting for me. Last night I planned it without admitting it to myself, while I watched her get dressed and promise she’d be back for the weekend.

I open the bottle. The sound of the cap breaks the silence in the room and makes my skin prickle. I put a little on my fingers, warm it by rubbing them together, and lie back down again.

My left hand is still busy up top, stroking me with a slow rhythm, while my right goes lower, between my legs, toward that spot I spent years believing didn’t belong to me. I barely touch it with the pad of one finger and my whole body answers. A shiver runs up my spine and my breath catches for a second.

It’s ridiculous how much I like it. How long it took me to admit I like it.

***

The first time Mariana suggested it, I laughed. Not at her, but at myself, at the awkwardness, at not knowing what to do with that proposal. She didn’t push. She just told me to think about it, that there was nothing wrong with it, that the body belongs to the one who lives in it and to no one else.

It took me weeks to work up the nerve. And when I did, it felt like opening a door that had been painted onto the wall all my life, a door I’d sworn was just decoration. Behind it was an entire room I’d never known.

Now I know it well. Too well, some would say. But I don’t care what anyone says.

I press with one finger and it goes in easily. I’m more than used to it. I move it slowly, in circles, searching for the exact angle, the one that makes me see pinpricks of light behind my eyelids. I find it and a groan slips out of me, breaking the silence. I’m startled by my own voice, rough, still thick with sleep.

I slide in a second finger. It isn’t enough. Last night was so much more and my body remembers it, demands it. I look back at the plug on the nightstand.

***

I pick it up. It weighs more than it looks, cold against my palm. It’s a sizable one, almost five centimeters at its widest point. The first time, it seemed impossible. Today it’s almost a habit, though it never stops commanding a little respect from me, and that respect is part of what I like.

I coat it with lubricant calmly, without hurrying, turning it between my fingers the way she did. I remember her hands doing exactly this, her voice telling me to breathe, to relax, that she’d take care of everything.

—Slowly —she’d say—. We’re in no rush. We have all night.

I get myself into position. I raise my knees, plant my feet firmly on the mattress, and bring the plug back. I take a deep breath, like she taught me, and start to push.

The first resistance is always there. That instant when the body hesitates, when it closes before giving in. But it isn’t pain. It’s something else, a pressure that transforms, that forces me to focus on every millimeter. I push a little more and feel it make its way in, slow, firm, until suddenly the body gives and the widest part passes through.

The sphincter closes around the base. There. Inside.

I stay still, panting, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Inside, everything is tense and at the same time surrendered. I feel its weight, its constant pressure, that friction that doesn’t go away, that beats in time with my own pulse.

***

And now, yes, I go back to my cock.

I take it in my hand, still slippery with lubricant, and start stroking, slowly at first, hard from the very first moment. The combination is brutal. In front, the familiar pleasure I’ve always known; behind, that fullness that fills me, that makes me feel every nerve ending lit up all at once.

I close my eyes and there she is again. Mariana on top of me, moving, controlling everything, whispering in my ear how good I was doing it, how much she liked seeing me like this, open, defenseless, without the armor I wear through the world the rest of the day.

—Look at you —she’d say—. Look at what you’re capable of feeling.

And I let myself be looked at. For the first time in my life, I let myself be truly seen.

***

The rhythm of my hand speeds up. I can’t help it. Every time I clench my body, the plug answers, returns the pressure, pushes me toward an edge that’s approaching too fast. I want to hold out. I want to stretch this stolen moment out of an ordinary Tuesday, this half hour before I have to be myself again.

But I’m not going to make it.

I grit my teeth, arch my back. The pillow beside me still smells like her and I breathe that scent as if it were oxygen. My hand is flying now, out of control, and inside I feel something building, rising from very deep down, from a place she taught me how to inhabit.

I think of her smile. Of her fingers. Of the note on the mirror. Keep thinking about me.

I’m not thinking about anything else. I can’t.

***

When I come, I come all at once. My body goes rigid from head to toe, the sphincter clamps down hard around the plug and that multiplies everything, takes it to a place nothing else gives me. I come with a long, held-out groan that I don’t bother to hide because I’m alone and because I don’t care who might hear me.

For several seconds nothing else exists. Not work, not the alarm about to go off, not the orderly life waiting for me on the other side of the door. Just this trembling, this emptiness being filled, this pleasure I denied for years without even knowing what I was missing.

Then, silence.

***

I lie there, breathing deeply, my hand still on my chest as it rises and falls. The plug is still inside me, reminding me what just happened, what happened last night, what will happen again this weekend when she comes back.

I laugh to myself, softly, staring at the ceiling. I think about the man I was a year ago, the one who laughed awkwardly at a simple suggestion, the one who believed his body had no-go zones. That man knew nothing.

I reach for the phone on the nightstand and send her a short message. I was just thinking about you. A lot. I send it without thinking twice.

The reply comes almost immediately, as if she were awake too, waiting.

—Prove it on Saturday —it says.

I smile. I set the phone down and stay in bed a little longer, with no desire to move, letting my body slowly come down from the clouds. Outside, the day is beginning, indifferent. But I’ve already won the morning, and no one’s taking that away from me.

There are five days until Saturday. I’m going to count them one by one.