The Night I Discovered That Only I Know How to Give Myself Pleasure

That night I came home tired of pleasing everyone. I took off my clothes without turning on the main light, just the little lamp on the table, and let myself fall onto the bed without sheets. It was hot. I lay on my back for a while, staring at the ceiling, listening to my own breathing. And then, almost without meaning to, I lowered my gaze toward my body.

I almost never look at myself closely. I know I have big breasts—I know because I carry them around every day, because people notice them before they look me in the face. But knowing it is one thing, and really looking at them is another. That night I really looked.

Without a bra—I almost never wear one—my tits spilled out to the sides under their own weight, soft and heavy at the same time. I gathered them up with both hands, brought them together in the center, and for the first time I didn’t think about who might want to touch them. I only thought about how they felt between my fingers.

I kept looking at myself. The veins that had become prominent during the years I breastfed had never completely faded. I traced them with the tip of one finger, those blue threads that rose toward the nipple and gave the areola a slightly darker tone. I noticed how long my nipples were, how they hardened as soon as the air brushed against them. And without realizing it, I began to pinch them, gently, and my whole body responded all at once.

How long has it been since I touched myself thinking only of me?

That was the question that crossed my mind. I always get turned on by a memory, by a mouth I miss, by someone else’s hands. I’m always wanting to give someone else pleasure, waiting for them to give it back afterward. But that night there was no one in my head. Only the size of my tits, only the shape of my breasts, only me. And that made me wet faster than any borrowed fantasy.

The pinches turned into massages. I kneaded one breast while my other hand squeezed the nipple of the other, and I noticed how all the tension accumulated over the past few days began to loosen, slowly, like a knot finally giving way. I looked at my hard nipples and my mouth watered. I wanted to suck my own tits. I didn’t want anyone else’s mouth. Mine.

***

And that’s what I did. I kneaded my right breast, bent my head as far as I could, and sucked it. Because nobody knows how to suck them the way I do. Nobody knows the exact pressure, the precise point between pleasure and pain, that edge where my nipple becomes so sensitive that my whole body trembles without it hurting. I found it on the first try, because it’s mine and I know it by heart.

They’re my tits. Big, heavy, with their veins and their marks. And I love them. My abdomen has stretch marks, a fine web just above my navel, and they used to embarrass me. Not that night. That night I lowered my gaze down my belly to the pubic hair and liked what I saw. I liked being me.

I spread my legs in an almost reflexive movement, as if I expected something to enter me. But no. This time nobody entered my thoughts. Not even the memory of him, of his body, of the things he did to me. For once the bed was mine, and so was my mind.

When I parted my thighs, the air filled with my scent. That thick, warm aroma that rises when I’m truly wet. All my life I had been intoxicated by other people’s smells—other skin, other sexes, other mouths—and I almost always ended up feeling used, emptied out, a little less like myself. That night the smell was mine, and I liked it. I got drunk on myself without guilt.

I lowered my free hand. I was soaked. I ran my fingers over my swollen lips and felt them slippery, sticky, alive. I wet my fingertips thoroughly and brought that moisture up to my nipple. I made it shine with my own fluid and sucked it again, and as I did I tasted all of myself: a salty, mineral flavor, mine. And again my body responded, again everything sped up, and more came from below.

***

I hadn’t even touched my clitoris yet, and I already felt I wouldn’t hold out much longer. I know it, I know that current that begins at the base of my back and spreads through my legs, that warning that something big is coming. I wanted to stop it. I didn’t want to rush the orgasm. I wanted to stretch out the night, prolong that strange moment when I desired myself without asking anyone’s permission.

But I’m weak when it comes to my own pleasure. I looked myself over again from top to bottom, the body so many hands had pawed, the breasts so many mouths had bitten, and I thought that of everyone who had passed through me, not one of them had ever truly loved me. Only me. Only I make love to myself the way I deserve.

I slid two fingers inside me. I curled them forward, searching for that rough patch on the inner wall, the one no lover ever found on the first try and that I can locate with my eyes closed. I pressed my thumb against my clitoris and began pressing both places at once, a slow, deep rhythm, while I continued with my breast in my mouth. Nobody knows how to touch me like this. Nobody knows the map of my own cunt better than I do.

I didn’t last a minute. I felt the first spasms rise like a wave and stopped fighting them. I screamed. I said filthy things, the worst things, the ones I would never say in front of anyone, random insults hurled at the ceiling while pleasure split me in two. My whole body tensed, my back arched on its own, and I came with a force that surprised even me.

It was a brutal squirt. I soaked the bed, felt the warm liquid spread beneath my thighs, and didn’t care about anything. I writhed as if my whole body had been seized by a cramp, my legs trembling, my fingers still inside me, unwilling to come out, squeezing out every last contraction. I am mine and I love myself, I thought—or maybe I said it out loud; I don’t know anymore.

***

I lay sprawled across the wet mattress, as always happens to me after a strong orgasm. I don’t know how long I stayed that way, eyes closed, floating in that soft hollow that comes after coming, thinking of nothing, finally owing nothing to anyone.

When I began to return, slowly recovering awareness of the room, I felt something strange. A sticky liquid on my cheek, different from mine, thicker. I opened my eyes with difficulty, still heavy-lidded, and thought I saw a shadow moving away toward the door, slowly, silently.

I parted my lips and recognized the taste before I grasped the idea. Unmistakable. Semen. Warm, foreign, on my face.

I should have been frightened. I should have jolted upright, screamed, looked for an explanation. But I didn’t. I stayed still, staring at the empty doorway, that thing drying on my skin, and the only thing I felt was a strange calm.

Because that night, for the first time in a long while, I belonged to no one. They didn’t use me, lend me out, or leave me half-finished, waiting for an affection that never came. That night I made love to myself. And if someone had been watching from the darkness, if a shadow had taken its own ending from my body without my asking, it had been a witness, nothing more. A spectator to something that did not belong to it.

I wiped the back of my hand across my cheek, without disgust, almost indifferently, and closed my eyes again. Tomorrow I would decide whether it had been real or a remnant of the dream I was sinking into. That night I only wanted to keep feeling this way: whole, wet, exhausted, and, for once, completely my own.