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 the bathroom mirror, my voice cracking and my eyes already dry from crying so much, and I mean to keep it. There will be no midnight call. No three a.m. text. No plane ticket bought in a panic with the credit card I’m still paying off. It’s over.

Do I miss him? Ha.

Anxiety makes me bite 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 we’d wait for winter. Arguments that dragged on for months, calls that ended with the two of us silent, listening to each other breathe, until somehow we managed to turn the promise into reality.

I bite 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 finished braking and hugged him with all my strength, as if I wanted to crawl inside him.

That won’t 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 trail of tobacco and cheap soap that used to cling 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 open laugh he lost years ago, the one that went out because of me and that I never knew how to give back to him.

With him I lost my virginity. With him I also lost my shame, that stupid modesty women carry around as if it were a virtue. I was nineteen the first time, and I was shaking so badly he stopped, held my face in his hands, and asked me if I was sure. I told him yes through clenched teeth. After that night I never feared my own desire again.

I remember every detail of that first time as if it were etched into my skin. The badly drawn curtain letting in a strip of streetlight. The nerves that made me talk too much, say any nonsense to cover up my fear. He didn’t laugh at me: he kissed my forehead, my neck, and slowly stripped me down, garment by garment, as if we had the whole night ahead of us. And we did.

When he finally spread my legs and went down on me, he took his time. He licked me first with the tip of his tongue, testing me, and then buried his whole face in my pussy until I stopped thinking. I still didn’t know you could enjoy it like that, that someone else could give me pleasure with their tongue until my legs shook. When I came in his mouth for the first time, I covered my face with my hands, dying of embarrassment and pleasure at the same time. He kissed his way back up my belly, my chest, my neck, and whispered in my ear that he wanted to hear me, that I should never cover myself again.

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 softly. He pushed his cock into me slowly, centimeter by centimeter, waiting between thrusts for my body to get used to him. When he was all the way inside, he stayed still, forehead pressed to mine, breathing with me. That night I learned that desire and trust were the same thing.

He taught me how to really enjoy sex, how not to fake it, how to ask for what I wanted. We learned every inch of each other’s bodies together, like someone studying a new language. I knew exactly where to touch him to cut off his breath; I knew the weight of his balls in the palm of my hand, the exact spot beneath the head where I had to press my lips to make him moan when I sucked him off. He knew the precise spot on my back that made me arch without meaning to, and the exact rhythm he had to use rubbing my clit with his thumb while he fucked me so I’d come twice in a row. 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’d confess them in a low voice, my face hidden 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 and on my knees until he decided, that he’d fill my mouth until I was choking. Far from being scared off, he collected them like little treasures and, on the next visit, surprised me by making one come true without warning. He taught me that desire spoken out loud wasn’t shameful: it was power.

I know he loved me. And he knows I loved him. But it all ended.

***

I wish I could fuck him one more time. Just once. Give him my darkest desires again, the ones I never dared tell anyone else, and let him make them real 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 my hair, threw my head back, and whispered in my ear that I was a slut, his slut, and that he was going to do whatever he wanted with me.

But he never really understood what fucking him meant to me. That every time he shoved his cock all the way in, he took me to a place I didn’t want to come back from, and then brought me back down to earth slowly, kiss by kiss, with his come still running down the insides of my thighs, until I was left wrecked and trembling in his arms.

I miss him. I remember his mouth on my nipples, his tongue circling slowly before closing his lips and sucking until I moaned, his teeth biting me right to the edge of pain. I remember how he looked up at me from below while he did it, checking how much I liked it from my face, one hand squeezing my other tit and the other already between my legs, two fingers sinking in and out slowly, searching for me inside.

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 all the time in the world, kissing the inner part of my thighs until I begged him to come up, to lick me already, to stop torturing me. And when he finally closed his lips around my clit and started sucking it slowly, his tongue circling over it, I’d lift my hips off the bed and squeeze his head between my thighs, not caring if I was smothering him. “My queen,” he’d say. That’s what he called me down there, with his mouth pressed to my pussy and his chin shining with my juice, and just hearing him between my legs was enough to make me melt.

Then he’d slide in two fingers, then three, curled upward, searching for that spot only he knew how to find, while he kept sucking me without pause. I’d yank his hair, scratch the back of his neck, say filthy things that in any other context would have embarrassed me. “Harder, you motherfucker, suck me harder.” And he’d obey, burying his face even deeper, and when I started shaking and clenching around his fingers, he’d lift his gaze and watch me come in his mouth without looking away from my eyes.

I sink 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 biting my shoulder. I imagine him grabbing the back of my neck and lowering my head to his cock, forcing my mouth open, sliding it down my throat until my eyes filled with tears. I’d look up at him with my mouth open and my cheeks wet, and he’d smile, satisfied, and whisper, “That’s it, my love, just like that.” I’d lick his balls, suck him all the way, pull him out and take him back in until he had to move me away himself before he came, because he wanted to finish inside me, not in my mouth.

I imagine him entering me slowly the first time and then without mercy, fucking me with that held-back rage of months without seeing each other, holding my wrists against the mattress while he tells me in my ear that I’m only his, nobody else’s, that no other man is ever going to fuck me like this. He’d spread my legs to the limit, shove himself in to the hilt with each thrust, and every so often he’d stop inside, very deep inside, so I could feel him throbbing and begging me to keep going.

—You’re mine —he’d say, his cock buried to the balls—. All mine. Say it.

—Yours —I’d answer, and I wouldn’t be lying—. All yours. Fuck me, please, fuck me.

He’d turn me over, put me on my knees, grab my hips and fuck me from behind, one hand pulling my hair and the other spanking me until my ass turned red. He’d slip his thumb, wet with spit, into my hole, teasing, and ask me in my ear if I wanted him to fuck that too, and I, my face crushed into the pillow and my cunt dripping, would tell him yes, everything, to do whatever he wanted with me.

I move faster. One memory takes me right to the edge: the night at the airport, when we got to the hotel and didn’t even have time to turn on the light. He pressed me against the still-closed door, lifted my dress, and pulled down my panties with one hand while covering my mouth with the other so I wouldn’t scream. He slid two fingers into me first, without warning, and found my cunt soaked, already ready for him from the flight. “How are you like this,” he murmured against my ear, almost laughing. He yanked his pants down, lifted one of my legs by the thigh, and rammed into me in one thrust, all the way, pulling a muffled cry from me against the palm of his hand. He fucked me against that door as if he wanted to break me, with the keys still jingling in the lock and my back slamming into the wood with every shove. Four years of waiting spilled out there, and when he came he did it inside, biting my neck, filling me with a warm burst that ran down my legs afterward while we laughed like idiots in the dark, still half dressed.

After that, when we’d already fucked two more times and had no strength left, we stayed awake until dawn talking about everything and nothing, our legs tangled, his semen dried between my thighs, and his hand drawing slow circles on my back. I told him things I’d never told anyone. He confessed that he’d masturbated thinking of me every night for those four years. And I, idiot 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 in that same airport, with the two of us pretending we weren’t breaking something inside while boarding was announced. I’d go back to my apartment, which suddenly smelled like him, sleep in the T-shirt he’d forgotten, and start counting the days until next time. Like that, for years. Until I counted too many and got tired of living in the waiting.

***

I come alone, in my empty bed, with his name trapped between my teeth so I won’t say it out loud. My back arches, my cunt tightens around my own fingers, and for a second he’s with me again, over me, inside me. Pleasure courses through me and leaves my thighs trembling and my hand soaked. Then it goes away, as everything does, and I’m left staring at the ceiling, my breath ragged and a dampness on my cheeks I don’t know when 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 not here anymore, that it’s truly over, that he’ll keep going his way toward whoever is waiting for him on the other side of the map and I’ll keep going mine, wherever life decides to drag me.

I thought a thousand times about writing to him. 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 over just to end again. I don’t want to keep buying goodbyes in installments.

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

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

Do I miss him?

I miss him so much it frightens me. But what really scares me, what keeps me awake at this hour biting my nails, is not that I’ll keep missing him.

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