My Former Teacher Showed Me What School Didn’t

I’ve wanted to tell this for a long time, with every detail. It’s the story of my first time, and out of respect I won’t use her real name; I’ll call her Marina. If you make it to the end, you’ll understand why it still makes my pulse race when I talk about it.

It happened in the fall of 2016. I was walking home from work, headphones on and my head somewhere else, when I came face to face with a woman I recognized right away. She had been my literature teacher in my first year of high school, a decade earlier. She was wearing a wine-colored blouse with a V-neck that suited her very well, a not-too-large but firm pair of breasts, and her brown hair loose to her shoulders. We smiled at each other like two polite strangers and kept moving. She went on toward the avenue and I stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, repeating her name to myself.

That same night I looked her up on social media. Several former classmates had added her, so it was easy enough. I sent her a clumsy message, reminding her who I was, and we started talking about stupid things: school, teachers who were no longer there, the city that had changed. After three or four days of chatting, I did something I still don’t understand how I dared to do.

—Marina, I’m going to ask you something, and I know it’s crazy. Would you have an affair with me?

She took a while to answer. When she did, it was clear and kind: no, she was involved with other things, she appreciated my honesty but no. I apologized, told her I understood, and kept writing to her as if nothing had happened. I didn’t want to lose the conversation, so I forced myself to behave. And, without meaning to, she took a liking to me.

One afternoon she invited me to go with her to do some shopping at the mall in the north end of town. We walked through the corridors, I helped her carry two bags, we ate ice cream in the food court. She treated me with a mix of affection and distance that I couldn’t quite place. Before we said goodbye, she told me something that got me thinking.

—You’re a strange guy. You asked me for something pretty bold, and then you were the most polite man in the world. You don’t see that every day.

I laughed, gave her a weak hug, and left her headed toward the taxi stand. But as soon as she was ten meters away, something hit me in the chest. One idea, and only one. I quickened my pace and caught up with her before she crossed the street.

—Marina, sorry. I wanted to ask you one more thing.

—Another indecent proposal? —she said, smiling.

—No. Well, not that much. I wanted to know if you’d let me kiss you.

I’m shy. Very shy. Those words coming out of my mouth were almost a miracle.

She stayed quiet for a few seconds, looking at me with her head slightly tilted, as if weighing whether it was worth it. Then she shrugged.

—Well. Let’s kiss and see what happens.

It was a brush. Barely a touch of lips, like two teenagers at first break. I felt my knees tremble. She laughed softly.

—That was birdlike. Wait, let me settle in.

She put a hand on the back of my neck, moved closer, and this time the kiss was something else. There was tongue, there was broken breath, there was a pause where we looked at each other and knew something had shifted. We said goodbye without saying anything else. I walked to the subway as if I were floating.

***

From that night on, the conversations changed temperature. We started talking at all hours, her from her bed and me from mine. One dawn the message arrived that finished twisting everything.

—You shouldn’t have asked permission for the kiss. It’s hotter when you steal it.

—I didn’t want you to get mad at me.

—I know, you’re shy. But be careful, I don’t forget you came with bad intentions.

—It was a crazy thought that crossed my mind. Anyway, I know nothing’s going to happen.

—And if I had said yes? How would you have done it?

I stared at the phone screen as if it were the first time I had ever seen letters. I swallowed and started typing slowly, weighing every word.

—I don’t know. It would be my first time. But I’d kiss your mouth, and then go down your neck, your collarbone, until I got to your breasts.

—Oh, so you’d pass through here?

Attached was a photo: her blouse unbuttoned down to her navel, her black lace bra peeking out. I answered with my hand shaking.

—Yes. I’d love to kiss you there.

—Want to see one without a bra?

That was the first of many. We spent that whole week sending each other increasingly explicit photos. I discovered that the imagination, when you’re in your early twenties and have never touched a naked woman, is an animal impossible to stop. Marina, on the other side, seemed to be enjoying herself as much as I was.

***

The following Saturday we went out again, this time with one of her friends, Cecilia. Marina was wearing dark jeans that outlined everything, a red blouse, and a black tank top underneath that lifted her breasts in a way I struggled to hide my reaction to. We had dinner at a cheap, old-school restaurant near the station, drank wine, talked about a thousand things. Around ten at night Cecilia got on a bus and I offered to walk Marina to the park where the taxis stopped.

We were walking down a street still full of people. I took her by the waist, pushed her against a wall, and kissed her without warning. She responded for a second, then gently pushed me away.

—Not here, there’s too much light. Let’s go a little farther.

We went two blocks to a darker corner. At the park entrance we found a bench hidden behind some bushes, with a broken lamppost above it. It was the perfect setting. I sat her down, sat beside her, and resumed the kiss where we’d left off. I ran my hand over her blouse, over her breasts, over her waist. Her breathing got faster.

—Wait —she murmured—. Let me help you.

She adjusted her blouse and tank top with a quick movement, and suddenly one of her breasts was exposed, free, the nipple hard from the cold and from everything else. I leaned in and started kissing it, running my tongue over it, tasting it. I heard her moan softly, just once, and then say against my ear:

—It’s so intense knowing a former student is sucking on my tit in a park.

That sentence lit me on fire. I slid my hand up inside her jeans as far as I could, and she pulled down my zipper. I asked, almost voiceless, for her to do with her mouth what the photos had promised. She told me to watch the park entrance and knelt down. What followed is something my head kept frame by frame: the cold on my legs, her hair falling over me, the sound of a dog barking far away, and the feeling that reality was finally starting to look like what I’d imagined for years.

Before things could go any further, we stopped. We got our clothes back in order, laughed like two kids who’d just pulled off a prank, and I put her in a taxi. But the decision was already made: next time, we were going to a hotel.

***

The plan came together on Thursday the following week. I had bought a three-pack of condoms and was keeping the box in my pants pocket like a treasure. That day it was raining like rarely before in the city, a heavy rain that drowned the sidewalks, but it never even occurred to me to cancel. I waited under the awning of a kiosk across from the hotel, soaked to my elbows, checking the time every twenty seconds.

She arrived in a short black dress with green detailing along the hem, her hair tied back in a high ponytail. She smiled at me from the other side of the street and I crossed without looking for cars.

The hotel was cheap, one of those everyone in the city knows what they’re for. The room had a double bed, a desk with a mirror, a tiny bathroom with a shower, and an old TV mounted on the wall. It smelled like disinfectant, but it was clean. To me, it felt like a palace.

Marina closed the curtains and I went into the bathroom to splash water on my face and breathe. When I came out, she was already lying on top of the comforter in her underwear, smiling at me with that half-smile I had seen in the photos. I approached slowly, lay down beside her, and started kissing her. First gently, then with everything. I pulled her dress off over her head; she took my shirt and pants off with the kind of ease that betrayed experience.

There came a moment when my boxer briefs were getting in the way. Without me having to say a word, she pulled them down and leaned over me. I have to be honest: mine is nothing special, it’s rather small, and that had always embarrassed me. But Marina took it in her mouth as if it were the best thing she’d ever tasted, and between licks she looked at me and said:

—I like it better in person than in photos. And it tastes good.

That sentence gave me a confidence I hadn’t known I needed.

After that I had to ask her to help me unfasten her bra, because I fought with the clasp for a good while and couldn’t get it. She burst out laughing, reached her hands behind her back, and took it off in one second. I buried myself in her breasts like a starving kid. I kissed her nipples, which were a very pale pink, almost pale, and played with them for a long while. It drove me crazy watching her skin goosebump when I barely blew on them.

I pulled down her panties and stayed looking at her for a few seconds, not really knowing what to do. I had the images from videos in my head, but no real experience. I went for it.

—Tell me if I’m doing it wrong.

—I don’t really like being eaten out much —she told me—, they almost never do it right. But go ahead and try.

I started to explore her slowly with my tongue, first the lips, then moving up to the clitoris. I was going by instinct, attentive to any reaction. When I kissed a specific spot, I heard her let out a long breath and say, in a voice I’d never heard from her before:

—That, that’s pretty good.

I kept going there. The taste was strange at first, but I stopped paying attention to it. I slid two fingers inside her slowly while I licked her, and I felt her hips start moving on their own. That was, without exaggeration, the first time I understood that someone else’s pleasure could give me more pleasure than my own.

***

The moment came. I put the condom on awkwardly, positioned myself over her, and entered her slowly, millimeter by millimeter, until I was all the way inside. We stayed still for a few seconds. She kissed my ear and started moving me with her hands on my lower back. I kissed her neck while I went in and out, slowly, wanting it to last. It didn’t last long. A few minutes later I finished, holding her tight, shaking.

After that we talked for a while and rested. We had two condoms left and wanted to use them. But when we started again, something happened I wasn’t expecting: she gave me head again, got me hard as a rock, and the moment she tried to put the second condom on me, I went soft. We tried again, the same thing. We wasted one from the box.

Marina laughed her ass off.

—It’s your head, not your body. Come on, let’s go shower and forget about the condom for a while.

Under the hot water I kissed her for a long time. I whispered something in her ear that had been burning inside me for a while.

—I want one time with nothing in between. Please.

—It showed —she said, and gently pushed me so I’d bend down—. Come on, help me.

I entered her right there, with her back against the tiles, water falling between us. Just a few thrusts, enough for me to feel the difference: the heat, the wetness, skin directly against skin. My body understood everything in thirty seconds. We got out of the shower and went back to bed with the last condom and me harder than before.

***

The last round was the best one. I asked her to get on top. She did it a little shyly, slowly, and started moving on me, looking for the rhythm. When she found it, everything changed. I held her breasts, ran my thumbs over her nipples, watched her move as if in slow motion. She moaned without restraint, no longer careful like in the park.

We tried it sideways and from behind, but we were clumsy at coordinating. During those shifts I lost the last condom. We ended up both sitting there, hot and unprotected, looking at each other.

—We keep going without anything —she said—. But outside.

I agreed before she finished the sentence. I laid her on her back and entered her without anything, this time with the calm of knowing it was the finish. Then I lifted her up, sat in the desk chair, and she settled on top of me facing me. That position was a blessing: the mirror gave us our reflection back, she could move with all her weight, I had both hands free. It was the first time in my life I felt pleasure like that, sustained, without urgency.

When I knew I was about to finish, I warned her. I knew she didn’t want me to come inside her. What I hadn’t expected was what she did. She got down from the chair, knelt between my legs, and finished me with her mouth, looking straight into my eyes. She left me speechless and boneless.

Afterward we showered together again, unhurried, talking about anything. We got dressed, took a taxi on the corner, and I left her at her place with a long kiss at the door.

We stayed friends. Very close friends. And a few months later there would be a second time, different from this one, in a place I never would have imagined. But I’ll tell that another day, if you let me.

Thanks for reading this far.