The Upstairs Neighbor Learned to Listen to My Nights

There’s something I tell almost no one: I learned more about my own body in six months of lockdown than in all the years before put together. I live alone in a small apartment in an old building where the walls are as thin as paper, and when the entire world came to a stop and it was no longer possible to fuck anyone, I had no choice but to turn my gaze inward. Toward myself, toward my cock, toward everything my body had been screaming for while I’d spent years dismissing it in two minutes.

I’m thirty-four, and I’ve always been the kind of guy who needs to get off often. I’m not exaggerating: there are days when desire wakes me in the middle of the night as if I were eighteen again, my cock hard against my belly and my head full of images that don’t ask permission. Nighttime is my time. When the building falls silent and all you can hear is the hum of the refrigerator, something inside me switches on, and there’s no way to turn it off until I come.

I used to deal with it quickly, almost as a formality: four wanks a day, shooting my load into a tissue, and on to the next thing. But lockdown forced me to be patient with myself, to treat myself the way I would have wanted someone else to treat me. And I discovered, almost by accident, that pleasure in solitude doesn’t have to be an inferior version of anything. It can be an entire territory to explore, a map of nerves and holes I didn’t even know I had.

***

My first companion during those months had been sitting in a drawer for quite some time, bought on impulse one afternoon and almost forgotten afterward. A thick, dark dildo, its veins pronounced, and large enough that the first time I saw it, it intimidated me so much I put it back in the drawer without ever getting it inside me. I rescued it one ordinary night, after one glass of wine too many, with the house in darkness—and that night everything changed.

I lay on my back on the bed with my legs spread, smeared my ass with so much lube that my fingers slipped on their own, and started with one. Then two. When the third went in easily and I felt my hole opening, asking for more, I knelt over the toy, stuck to the mattress, and lowered myself slowly. The thick head forced its way in, stopped for a second, and then my own weight drove it all the way to the bottom. I screamed into the pillow. Not from pain—from fucking surprise. From feeling full for the first time in months, my cock dripping on its own without me touching it, pointing at the ceiling, while I raised and lowered my hips, seating that piece of rubber inside me as if it were someone’s dick.

I came within a few minutes, hands-free, squeezing my ass around the toy, thick ropes falling onto my chest and stomach. I stayed there, impaled, panting, and knew that drawer was finished. That thing was never going anywhere again.

Like a lot of people, I could work from home. I spent my mornings in front of the computer, answering emails and sitting through endless meetings. And it was right there, between one spreadsheet and the next, that I had the most absurd and best idea of the whole quarantine. I discovered that if I secured it properly on the chair, with the suction cup stuck to the seat, and sat down slowly, I could keep working with my cock hard beneath the desk and my ass open, pierced by a slow sensation that climbed up my spine every time I moved even a little.

I learned how to hide it during meetings. How to press my lips together when pleasure threatened to escape as a moan, how to barely move my hips while someone talked about quarterly targets and I felt the silicone cock buried to the hilt, touching a spot that made my cock weep into my underwear. If they only knew, I thought, and the idea turned me on even more. I imagined the director talking about KPIs while I, with the camera cut off below the waist, fucked myself using nothing but contractions. I ended every morning with my underwear soaked in pre-cum and, as soon as I hung up from the last meeting, tore off my pants, lay facedown across the desk, and jerked myself with both hands until I unloaded onto the floor. My coworkers probably attributed my smile to being eager to start the day.

***

The shower became another of my favorite places. I’d bought another toy with a suction cup, thinner and more curved, and fixed it to the tiles at exactly the right height. Beneath the hot water streaming down my back, with the steam fogging everything, I braced my hands against the wall, stuck out my ass, and impaled myself backward. I drove my hips against the wall again and again, fucking myself, feeling every thrust tear a rougher, more animal moan from me. The sound of the water drowned out my cries—or so I thought at the time. My cock hung hard between my legs, bouncing with every thrust, until I couldn’t take it anymore; then I grabbed it with my soapy hand and gave myself a quick, brutal wank, shooting ropes across the tiles while the water carried my semen down the drain.

And then there was the house, which had never been so clean. I discovered that housework, besides being necessary, could be a game. While I vacuumed or hung out the laundry, I went naked with a plug in my ass, one of those with a wide base that won’t slip out even if you walk around. I kept inventing ways never to stop completely. I improvised with whatever I had at hand, learned to adjust the thickness and weight, to squeeze my asshole around the plug and feel it dance inside me. The trick was not to come, to let the most boring chore become an excuse to parade my swollen cock from one room to another, like someone carrying a secret dripping beneath clothes he wasn’t wearing.

I remember one Sunday afternoon, with the radio on and the light coming in at an angle through the window, when I caught myself ironing shirts with the plug inside me and my cock braced against the edge of the ironing board, trembling at the same time, biting my lip to keep from screaming. In the end I had to put down the iron, brace myself face-first against the wall, pull out the plug, and jerk off with both hands like a madman, spitting my load in ropes across the hallway tiles. I laughed by myself afterward, sprawled on the sofa with semen still running down my thigh. I’d never imagined lockdown would take me there.

***

But where I truly indulged myself was in my bed. The old bed, with the wooden headboard that knocked against the wall—that thin wall separating my bedroom from the rest of the building.

I had entire nights devoted solely to myself. I covered my body in oil and explored myself slowly, pinching my nipples until they grew hard, prolonging every sensation, denying my cock release again and again until I couldn’t take it anymore. I learned what they call edging: bringing yourself right to the brink, feeling your balls begin to tighten, and stopping abruptly. Waiting. Breathing. Starting again. Five, six, seven times a night, until semen gathered at the base of my cock like a threat, until the slightest caress made me jerk.

I learned that the secret wasn’t coming quickly but holding back: taking my cock to the edge and pulling my hand away, then returning, then pulling away again, until pleasure became almost unbearable and then—and only then—letting myself fall and shoot long ropes that reached my neck, my face, my mouth.

Face down, with a pillow folded beneath my hips to raise my ass and both hands gripping the headboard, I pushed the large dildo inside me and set a rhythm that grew on its own. Slow at first, almost timid, feeling my asshole stretch with every downward movement. Then insistently, thrusting my ass backward to swallow it whole. Finally, frantically, fucking myself against the mattress while my cock rubbed against the pillow, the wood knocking against the wall in a steady pounding that filled the room, my legs tense, my whole body pulled tight like a cord about to snap. And when I came, I came with a muffled scream into the sheet that even I didn’t recognize as my own, coming inside and outside at the same time, my ass squeezing the toy while my cock emptied itself between my belly and the soaked sheets.

During those months I stopped being ashamed of my own pleasure. I stopped coming silently, hiding from no one, because there was no one. Or so I thought.

***

One morning, when I picked up the mail from beneath the door, I found a sheet of paper folded into four among the flyers. There was no return address. I opened it in the kitchen, coffee in hand, expecting a complaint from the building association or a notice from the doorman.

It was nothing like that.

“I live directly above you,” the note said, in a neat, masculine hand. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. But these past months have been very hard, and without meaning to, I’ve heard you on more than one night. I’ve heard you moan, I’ve heard you scream, I’ve heard you come. You have no idea how many wanks you’ve made me have. Thank you for reminding me that I still know how to desire. A grateful neighbor.”

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, reading it over and over, my face burning and my cock swelling inside my pants. The embarrassment lasted exactly as long as it took me to realize something else: it didn’t bother me. Quite the opposite. The thought that someone on the other side of the ceiling had been listening to my nights, had gripped his own cock at the same time I squeezed my ass around the toy, had emptied his balls while listening to me empty mine, ran through my body like an electric current.

I knew who he was. I’d passed him a couple of times on the stairs. A guy around my age, maybe a little younger, with an easy smile, thick arms, and a mouth I now imagined open, panting against the ceiling while he came because of me. He lived alone too. We’d never spoken beyond a greeting. And suddenly we shared a huge secret, held between us by a plaster wall and a pool of semen on either side.

***

That night I couldn’t think about anything else. I went to bed early, but not to sleep. I lay in the darkness, my cock already hard against my navel, listening. And for the first time I became aware of the sounds coming from upstairs: a chair scraping, footsteps, the creak of a bed.

I smiled in the gloom. He’s awake. Just like me. Horny. Just like me.

I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the certainty of having an audience, of not being alone in my solitude. I took out the large dildo, the one that hit hard, stuck it to the headboard, and knelt over it. I started slowly, as always, but this time with all the intention in the world. I let the headboard speak for me, knock by knock against the wall, setting a rhythm I knew he would recognize at once. I let out the voice I normally smothered against the pillow. I moaned loudly, moaned like a filthy animal, said softly, “That’s it, more, harder,” knowing every word passed through the ceiling and reached his cock directly.

I fucked the toy for nearly an hour. Going up, coming down, changing positions. I got on all fours with my head pointed toward the ceiling, imagining him right above me, cock in hand and mouth open. I lay on my side, spread my cheeks with both hands, and loudly asked the ceiling to fuck me. I whispered filthy things into the mattress: that I wanted his semen, that I wanted to swallow it, that I wanted to feel his cock where I had the rubber one now.

And above me, the silence changed. It became a listening silence, a charged, attentive silence. For a moment I thought I heard, between one knock and the next, a creak answering mine, like an echo arriving a second late. A muffled moan. The wet, unmistakable sound of a hand racing over a slick cock. Two bodies separated by a ceiling, masturbating for each other without touching, every moan of mine feeding his wank, every creak from him tightening my balls further.

I had never felt anything like it. It wasn’t merely the pleasure of the body; it was knowing myself desired, heard, accompanied across the only distance lockdown hadn’t managed to close. When I couldn’t hold back any longer, I grabbed my cock, shook it three times, and came with an intensity that left me empty and trembling, shooting thick ropes against the headboard, against the wall, even across my own face, the toy still buried to the hilt and the name of a stranger on the tip of my tongue, though I didn’t know it. Above me, a sharp thump. A moan escaping. And then silence. We had both finished at the same time.

***

The next day I left him a note. It took me half an hour to write three lines. “I didn’t take it the wrong way. Quite the opposite. When this is over and it’s possible, I’d like to invite you for coffee. And for whatever comes afterward. The walls already know us far too well.” I signed it with my apartment number and slipped it beneath his door before I could change my mind.

Weeks passed. There were more nights and more shared silences, a wordless conversation made of moans, headboard knocks, and simultaneous orgasms neither of us yet dared put into words during the day. I learned to desire with the certainty of being heard, and discovered that certainty multiplied every sensation until it became something else: every wank thinking of him, every toy inside me thinking of his cock, every orgasm offered upward like a prayer.

Lockdown taught me to be with myself without fear, to turn solitary pleasure into an art rather than a substitute. I learned that knowing your own body—every nerve, every hole, every way of coming—isn’t a consolation prize but the foundation of any fuck worth having with someone else afterward. But it also gave me something I hadn’t expected: the fantasy of another person within reach of my voice, coming at the same time as me, separated by only a few inches of wall. That impossible closeness, that game of echoes and semen in the darkness, marked me more deeply than any real fuck I’d had before.

When we could finally open our doors to the world, the first door I knocked on was his. He opened it in his underwear, his cock already outlined beneath the fabric, and there was no need to say anything. But that, friends, is another story. And I swear it was worth every night of waiting, every solo orgasm, every moan sent toward the ceiling like an invitation.