The Last Night I’ll Touch Myself Thinking of Him

Do I miss him?

This time the goodbye is final. I swore it to myself in front of the bathroom mirror, my voice breaking and my eyes already dry from crying so much, and I mean to keep it. There will be no midnight call. No message at three in the morning. No hastily bought plane ticket on the credit card I’m still paying off. It’s over.

Do I miss him? Ha.

Anxiety makes me chew my nails until they bleed, just like every time we argued about when we’d see each other again. Whether I’d fly to Medellín or he’d come to Valparaíso. Whether it would be in March or if we should wait until winter. Arguments that stretched on for months, calls that ended with the two of us in silence, listening to each other breathe, until somehow we managed to turn the promise into reality.

I chew my nails until they bleed, like when he told me he’d come in April 2018 for my birthday, after four years without touching each other, of loving each other only through a screen. Like when he kept his word and showed up for real, with the same worn jacket from the photos and a smile that undid me at the airport gate. I got out of the car before it had even finished braking and hugged him with all my strength, as if I wanted to climb inside him.

That will never happen again.

I miss him. Yes, I miss him, and I can’t find a way to explain how much. I miss his smell, that trace of tobacco and cheap soap that clung to my sheets for days. I miss his rough hands, his slow kisses, the weight of his body on mine. And more than anything I miss his laugh, that honest laugh he lost years ago, the one that went out because of me and that I never knew how to bring back.

With him I lost my virginity. With him I also lost my shame, that stupid modesty women carry like it’s a virtue. I was nineteen the first time and shaking so badly that he stopped, held my face in his hands, and asked if I was sure. I told him yes through clenched teeth. After that night I was no longer afraid of my own desire.

I remember every detail of that first time as if it were tattooed on my skin. The curtain, badly drawn, letting in a stripe of streetlight. The nervousness that made me talk too much, say any old thing to cover the fear. He didn’t laugh at me: he kissed my forehead, my neck, undressed me slowly, piece by piece, as if we had all night ahead of us. And we did.

When he finally entered me, I dug my nails into his back and held my breath. It hurt, yes, but what I remember isn’t the pain, it’s the way he looked at me, attentive to every expression on my face, stopping every time I tensed. “Easy, I’m here,” he’d whisper. That night I learned that desire and trust were the same thing.

He taught me to truly enjoy sex, to stop pretending, to ask for what I wanted. We learned every inch of each other’s bodies together, like people studying a new language. I knew exactly where to touch him so his breath would catch; he knew the precise spot on my back that made me arch without meaning to. There were no secrets between our bodies, even if there were so many between our words.

And with him I also lost my fear of my own fantasies. I would confess to him in a low voice, my face buried in his neck, the things I imagined when I was alone: that he’d hold me against the wall, that he’d blindfold me, that he’d make me wait naked until he decided. Far from being scared off, he collected them like little treasures and, on the next visit, would surprise me by making one come true without warning. I learned from him that speaking desire out loud wasn’t shameful: it was power.

I know he loved me. And he knows I loved him. But it’s over.

***

I wish I could make love with him one more time. Just once. Give him my darkest desires again, the ones I never dared tell anyone else, and let him turn them into reality without judging me. Because that’s what he did: he listened to me say the dirtiest things and instead of getting scared he smiled, grabbed me by the hair, and whispered in my ear that I was a bad girl.

But he never fully understood what making love with him meant to me. That every time he entered me he took me to a place I didn’t want to come back from, and then brought me down to earth slowly, kiss by kiss, until he left me wrecked and trembling in his arms.

I miss him. I remember his mouth on my nipples, his tongue circling slowly before his lips closed and he sucked until I moaned. I remember how he looked up at me while he did it, checking on my face how much I liked it.

I’m wet, you know? And I’m touching myself while I write this, as if the words were his fingers.

Let me think of him one more time. Of his mouth between my legs, of the way he took his time with everything, kissing the inside of my thighs until I begged him. “My queen,” he’d say. That’s what he called me down there, with his mouth pressed to me, and just hearing him already made me melt.

I slide two fingers in slowly and close my eyes. It’s not the same. It’s never the same. My fingers know too much, they calculate, they don’t have his sweet clumsiness. But tonight the memory is enough, because after today I won’t even allow myself this.

I imagine him on top of me. His body sweating, his chest heaving, his teeth sinking into my shoulder. I imagine him entering me slowly the first time and then without mercy, holding my wrists against the mattress while he tells me in my ear that I’m his alone, nobody else’s, that no other man will ever touch me like this.

“You’re mine,” he’d tell me, and I believed him with every thrust.

“Yours,” I’d answer, and I wasn’t lying.

I move faster. One memory takes me to the edge: the night at the airport, when we got to the hotel and didn’t even manage to turn on the light. He pressed me against the still-closed door, hiked up my dress, and pulled down my underwear with one hand while the other covered my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. Four years of waiting slammed against that cheap wooden door.

Later, when we had no strength left, we stayed awake until dawn talking about everything and nothing, our legs tangled and his hand drawing slow circles on my back. I told him things I had never told anyone. He confessed that he had thought of me every night of those four years. And I, stupid that I was, believed that was enough, that love that survived distance could survive anything.

It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Every visit ended at the same airport, with the two of us pretending something inside us wasn’t breaking as boarding was announced. I went back to my apartment, suddenly smelling like him, slept in the T-shirt he’d forgotten, and started counting the days until the next time. Like that, for years. Until I counted too many and got tired of living while waiting.

***

I come alone, in my empty bed, with his name trapped between my teeth so I won’t say it out loud. Pleasure runs through me and, for the briefest second, he’s back with me. Then it leaves, as everything leaves, and I’m left staring at the ceiling, my breathing ragged and a dampness on my cheeks that I don’t know when it appeared.

That’s the worst part of missing someone with your body: the orgasm doesn’t fill the hole, it makes it bigger.

I miss him. And my chest hurts just thinking that he’s no longer there, that it really is over, that he’ll keep on his way toward whoever waits for him on the other side of the map and I’ll keep on mine, toward wherever life wants to drag me.

I thought a thousand times about writing to him. About sending a message that said “come” and nothing else, knowing that would be enough, that he’d take the first flight. But I don’t want to start again just to end again. I don’t want to keep buying goodbyes in installments.

What we had was an impossible promise held together by saliva and desire thousands of miles apart. A fantasy that became flesh for a few days each year and otherwise consumed us from the inside. Two people loving each other in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with all the desire in the world and no real chance.

I wipe my face with the back of my hand, the same one that a moment ago was between my legs, and I laugh at myself in the dark.

Do I miss him?

I miss him so much it terrifies me. But what really scares me, what has me awake at this hour chewing my nails, isn’t continuing to miss him.

It’s knowing that one day, not too far from now, I’m going to stop.