The Stranger in the Chat Who Made Me Lose Control

It was almost midnight and the house was silent. I’d spent the whole week going to bed early, with routine weighing on my shoulders, and that night I simply wasn’t sleepy. I poured myself a glass of red wine, sat on the bed with my back against the headboard, and opened the laptop without any clear plan. I just wanted someone to talk to me. Someone to make me feel, even if only with words on a screen, that I was still capable of wanting.

I went into one of those adult chat rooms where nobody uses their real name. I picked my usual nickname, “Nocturna,” and let the message list scroll. Most of it was the usual: impatient men writing in all caps, pictures nobody had asked for, sentences with not a single punctuation mark. I was about to close the window.

Then he wrote to me.

—Good evening, Nocturna. Can’t you sleep either?

His nickname was “Lobo.” Nothing original, I thought, but there was something about that first line, about the fact that he wrote with accents and calmly, that made me answer instead of ignoring him.

—Not much —I replied—. Too much on my mind for such a short night.

—That’s the worst kind of insomnia. The kind that can’t be cured by sleeping.

Wow, he knows how to talk.

I took a sip of wine and crossed my legs under the sheet. We started with the banal stuff: what I did for a living, why I was awake, what I was looking for in a place like that at that hour. He wasn’t in a rush. He didn’t ask about my body in the first minute or send me anything I didn’t want to see. He took his time, and that time was exactly what turned me on.

—I’m going to be honest —I typed, emboldened by the second glass—. I didn’t come here to make friends.

—I figured as much. Nobody comes online at midnight looking for friendship. —There was a pause, those three dots that appear when the other person is typing—. So what are you looking for, then?

—For someone to make it hard for me. To make me think about something other than tomorrow.

—I can do that.

***

What came next wasn’t abrupt. It was like a hand settling slowly on the small of your back and squeezing just enough. He described me sitting on top of him, his mouth trailing along my neck while one of his hands slid down to find the curve of my hips. He didn’t start with vulgar words. He built the scene piece by piece, and I found myself reading every line twice.

—Move slowly over me —he wrote—. I want to feel how you breathe before I even touch you.

I let out a breath without realizing it. I set the glass on the nightstand because my hand was already starting to tremble a little, and it wasn’t from the wine.

—I need you to touch me —I replied, and I was surprised by how direct I sounded—. It’s been too long since anyone did it right.

—What are they like? —he asked—. I want to know everything before I put my hands on you.

—Big. Soft. And tired of nobody paying attention to them.

—That ends tonight.

I slid a little farther down the bed until I was almost lying flat. With my free hand I stroked myself over my T-shirt, following the rhythm of what he was typing. He told me how he’d hold me, how he’d close his mouth over me, how he’d bite slowly and then soothe with his tongue what he had just bitten. Every message left me with a second of silence in which I could only hear my own breathing.

—You’ve got me very focused —he wrote—. Do you know how hard it is to write well with one hand?

I laughed to myself in the dark of my room. That little joke, that acknowledgement that he was losing control too, pleased me more than I expected.

—Then we’re even —I typed—. Although I still have both hands available.

—For now, I hope.

***

I told him there was plenty of room on the floor of his imaginary room for me to kneel. I wanted to go down, I wanted to take control even if only in my head. He let me. He described himself staying still, seated on the edge of the bed, watching as I unbuttoned his pants with calculated slowness.

—I’m not helping you —I wrote—. I want to do it myself. I want to watch you wait.

—I’m all yours. Just don’t take too long, or I can’t be responsible for myself.

I bit my lip reading that. I closed my eyes for a moment and let the image take shape: the low light, his quickening breath, the way he’d look down at me while I held his gaze from below. I told him I wanted to lick him first, unhurried, looking him in the eye so he’d start to lose his mind before his time.

—You’re mean —he replied.

—I’m patient. It’s not the same thing.

—And does that all fit in that mouth of yours?

—Let’s find out. Slowly. I like it when you start to lose your head.

My hand had completely abandoned any pretense. I slipped under my underwear and felt how soaked I was just from reading him, just from imagining him. I told him what I felt without dressing it up, and he answered that as soon as I was done with his mouth he intended to give me back every second with his between my legs.

—Then I’d better hurry —I wrote—, because that’s what I want to see.

—Grab your own hair. I want to imagine you like that, naked and on your knees, mouth full and eyes shining.

—Better you grab it —I answered—. Guide me. Show me how you like it.

There was another pause, longer this time. I imagined him taking a deep breath on the other side of the screen, in some city I would never know, thinking exactly what I was thinking.

—If I guide you, I won’t be gentle —he warned.

—I didn’t ask for gentle.

***

From there the messages grew shorter, more urgent, as if neither of us had the patience for long sentences anymore. He described how he stood up, how he held my head with one hand and set the rhythm, first carefully and then not so carefully. I followed along, typing between breaths, with two fingers moving slowly where I needed it most.

—You’re making me choke —I wrote, and laughed at myself for how far into the scene I was.

—I love hearing that. Are you really touching yourself?

—Have been for a while. What do you think?

—I think you’re exactly what I needed tonight.

That sentence undid me more than any dirty description. I read it twice, my fingers still for a moment, and I felt something I hadn’t expected to feel in an anonymous chat at one in the morning: that there was someone real on the other side, equally lonely, equally awake, equally in need of another body —even if only in words— to make them feel alive.

—Don’t stop —I wrote—. Tell me how you’d do me for real. If this were real.

—I’d lay you down on the sofa. Wide open, no rush. I’d kiss your thighs until you begged me to go higher. And only then would I do it.

—I’m trembling just reading that.

—I’d go down slowly. I’d taste you first with the tip of my tongue, from top to bottom, in circles, while my fingers stroked you everywhere without going in yet. I’d make you wait.

—Don’t make me wait that long —I replied, and it was almost a real plea.

—Then I go in. Slowly at first. Two fingers while my tongue never stops. Like this?

—Like that. Just like that. Fuck.

I arched on the bed, alone, the screen lighting my face in the dark. What surprised me most was how much I cared about his rhythm, his pauses, the care with which he wrote every word. He wasn’t just some stranger vomiting obscenities. He was someone paying attention, and paying attention, I discovered that night, is the most erotic thing there is.

***

—I’m close —I wrote, and I wasn’t acting—. Keep telling me that, I love it.

—I’d love to have you like that for real. Feel you trembling against my mouth. Notice the exact moment you stop holding back.

—Almost there. Don’t stop.

—I’m not stopping. I’m not going to stop until you come for me.

And I did. I came reading his words, with my hand between my legs and my breath broken, in my empty bed, for a man whose face I would never see and whose real name I would never know. It was intense in a way I hadn’t felt in months, and for a few seconds I stayed still, my heart pounding hard and the laptop still open on the sheets.

It took me a while to write back. When I did, I was honest.

—That was… more than I expected when I came in here.

—Same here —he replied—. I didn’t expect tonight to get this interesting.

—And now what?

—Now nothing. That’s the good thing about this. Tomorrow we’ll be two strangers again. But tonight you were exactly what I needed.

I stared at that sentence for a long while. He was right, of course. I wasn’t going to give him my number, or my photo, or my name. I wasn’t going to ruin what had just happened by turning it into something that had consequences in the morning. That was exactly the fantasy: a perfect encounter precisely because it was impossible, because it began and ended on the same screen.

—Thank you, Lobo —I wrote—. For talking with accents and for being patient.

—Thank you for coming in when I was about to log off too.

I closed the laptop with a stupid smile on my face. I switched off the bedside lamp, pulled the covers up to my shoulders, and fell asleep almost instantly, without that heavy head that had kept me awake all week. Sometimes you don’t need someone to know you in order to feel desired. Sometimes all you need is a stranger, one sleepless night, and the right words at the right time.

I never went looking for Lobo again. There was no need. Some fantasies are perfect only once, and this one most certainly was.