My Professor Caught Me Touching Myself in the Garden

That Friday, the last day before winter break, the faculty was breathing in that strange mix of relief and abandonment that only shows up when everyone wants to leave and no one quite manages to do it. I didn’t want to leave either, but for a very different reason. I was twenty-three, with shoulder-length brown hair, honey-colored eyes, and one fixed idea wedged between my legs since breakfast.

I had dressed on purpose. A short plaid skirt that made me feel like a schoolgirl again, a white blouse almost sheer, and cotton panties I planned to take off as soon as I found the right corner. The adrenaline from my last exam had left my body lit up, and it wasn’t passing that had me like this. It was the idea, the one that had been turning over in my head for months, of being caught by someone. Of being found. Of having someone see what I am when no one is looking.

The back garden of the Faculty of Humanities was the perfect place. It was always half-empty, hidden behind the philosophy building, with two rows of jacarandas and a lawn that smelled of wet earth after the automatic watering. I had wandered around there so many times pretending to study that I knew every bench, every blind spot, every angle from which the entrance could be seen or not seen.

I walked unhurriedly, handbag slung over my shoulder, thighs pressed together. I sat first on a bench, opened a book, and pretended to read for ten minutes. When I was sure no one was coming, I slipped toward a patch of grass behind a boxwood hedge. I lay down on my back, the book open over my stomach, as if it were an innocent nap.

But I hadn’t gone down to the garden to sleep.

I started over my blouse, slowly, pinching my nipples through the fabric. They were hard before I even got to touch them. I felt the hot air coming in and out through my parted mouth, and a familiar tingle running down my chest, my navel, until it stopped at that exact spot that was already asking for more. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t let out a moan. Not yet.

I slid one hand up under my skirt. The skin of my thigh was prickled. I touched myself over my panties and I almost laughed at how soaked I was. I’d been like that all morning without realizing it. I drew a circle with two fingers, pressing right where the cotton was already hot, and the first real moan slipped out of me. Low, rough, impatient.

—Fuck —I whispered.

I looked left and right. No one. Only the buzz of a bee lost in the jacarandas and, far away, the engine of a car pulling out of the staff parking lot. My heart was in my throat. The idea that someone might appear at any moment didn’t stop me; it pushed me to keep going. That was exactly what I had come looking for.

I pulled the fabric of my panties aside and touched myself directly. I was open, swollen, slick against my own fingers. Two slow passes from top to bottom and I knew I wasn’t going to hold out much longer. I tugged my panties down to my knees and left them there, trapping my legs, leaving me halfway between decency and disaster. If anyone showed up, I wouldn’t have time to pull myself together. That was precisely the point.

I closed my eyes. I sank two fingers in. I let myself drop into that warm place where a woman forgets the light, the garden, the entire faculty. My hips started moving on their own against my hand. I let out a longer, careless moan, and realized too late that it had escaped me out loud.

—Camila —said a voice behind me.

I froze with my fingers inside.

—I know it’s you. I recognize you from the waist up.

It was Professor Beltrán’s voice. Adriana Beltrán. Contemporary Philosophy, second semester. The woman whose classes I had memorized while staring at the nape of her neck, her hands, the way she would sit on the edge of the desk to talk about Deleuze. The woman who had been slipping into my dreams for months without me ever asking her to.

I pulled my fingers out. I sat up as best I could. My panties were still tangled around my knees, my skirt rumpled, my blouse undone. I tried to cover myself with dignity and only managed to make it worse.

—Professor, I… I can explain —I said, fully aware that I couldn’t.

Adriana was standing three meters away, a folder pressed to her chest. She wore a gray linen shirt, straight trousers, her hair pulled back into a low bun with two loose strands escaping. She looked at me without anger and without scandal. She looked at me with a calm that was almost worse.

—Come with me to my office —she said simply—. Walk.

***

It took me longer than it should have to pull my panties back up. My hands were shaking. I followed her along the gravel path with my head down and my heart trying to burst out of my mouth. The only comfort I had was that the building was practically empty and no one saw us cross the lobby.

As soon as we started up the stairs, my brain, which has always been a mess, did the last thing it should have done. It started fantasizing. As we climbed step after step, I looked at her back and imagined her closing the office door behind us, setting the folder on the desk, pinning me against the wall, and telling me in my ear what she had just seen. I imagined her fingers finishing what mine had started in the grass. I imagined her small breasts against my mouth, those dark nipples that sometimes showed through her thin blouses. I imagined that serious mouth between my thighs, telling me in that same measured voice she used in class what a slut I had been for going down to the garden to touch myself.

When we entered the office, I was in worse shape than I had been in the garden.

Adriana closed the door. Not violently, carefully. She set the folder on the desk and leaned against its edge, crossing her ankles. I stood in the middle of the rug, not knowing what to do with my hands.

—Sit down —she told me, pointing to the armchair.

I sat. My skirt rode up a little. I did nothing to pull it down.

She looked at me for a long time without speaking. Her eyes were dark, almost black under the lamp’s warm light. I couldn’t hold her gaze for more than three seconds at a time.

—You know I’m supposed to report you —she said at last—. For indecent conduct on university grounds. You know that, right?

—Yes —I murmured.

—It’s your last day before vacation. If this goes into your record, you won’t set foot in this building again in September.

I swallowed. I closed my knees. I pressed them together so hard it hurt.

—Please —I said, and hated myself a little for the voice that came out, too thin, too much like a caught little girl—. Anything. I’ll do anything so you won’t write it down.

Adriana raised one eyebrow. Just one. Very slowly.

—Anything —she repeated.

My face burned. Everything burned.

—I’m not going to ask you for that, Camila —she said, and for the first time she smiled a little, a brief smile that disappeared as quickly as it came—. I’m not like that. And certainly not here.

I breathed. A mix of relief and, unwilling to admit it, disappointment.

—But —she went on— I am going to ask you for one thing. Just one. So the two of us know this happened, and the two of us remember it.

—Whatever you want —I said, this time in an even lower voice.

—Give me the panties you’re wearing.

The silence in the office became enormous. The wall clock ticked off the seconds with a ticking that suddenly felt obscene.

—Here? —I asked, like an idiot.

—Here. Now. And then you leave, and you don’t tell anyone about this. Not your best friend, not your partner if you have one, not your therapist. No one. We both go on vacation and come back in September as if this never happened. Do we understand each other?

I nodded. My voice wouldn’t come.

I stood up. I pulled my panties down awkwardly, one leg first and then the other, trying not to lift my skirt any more than necessary and ending up lifting it all the way because there was no other way to do it. I felt her gaze on me the entire time. Not the gaze of someone who wants to humiliate you. The gaze of someone who files things away, who stores an image to look at later.

I handed them to her. They were soaked. We both knew it.

Adriana took them between two fingers, without hesitation, and put them in the top drawer of her desk. She locked it.

—Have a good summer, Camila —she said, and sat back down in her chair as if nothing had happened.

I left the office with my legs trembling, my skirt scraping directly against my bare skin, and the very strange feeling of walking through the faculty corridors with a secret tucked between my thighs.

***

I got to the parking lot without remembering the walk. I got into my car, locked the doors, lowered the seat back. I couldn’t wait any longer. I hiked my skirt up again, touched myself with the hand that still smelled of grass and of me, and finished in less than a minute what I had started in the garden. But this time I didn’t think about imaginary strangers.

I thought about Adriana opening the drawer in her office in a little while, when no one else would be left in the building. I thought about her taking out my panties, looking at them, maybe smelling them. I thought about her long fingers, her low bun, that brief smile that had slipped out when she said I’m not like that. I thought about what would happen in September, when we both came back from vacation and crossed paths in some hallway. I thought neither of us would be able to look at the other the same way again.

I came with my forehead pressed to the steering wheel and my breathing broken.

Three months later, Adriana called my cell phone on a Tuesday afternoon to return my panties. That, of course, is another story.