Renata Taught Me What No Man Ever Knew How to Give Me

I’m writing this after a long time, because there are nights one doesn’t tell until one is ready to understand them. Mine was in the fall of 2014, when I was still dragging my second divorce around the house like a heavy piece of furniture and spending my time collecting mistakes with the conviction of someone trying to prove something to herself. I was thirty-four, carrying two breakups on my back, and certain that nothing could surprise me anymore.

I was wrong.

Renata was Sofía’s friend, and Sofía had dragged me to a gathering for another woman’s birthday in the group. We went to a restaurant in Polanco, one of those with dim lights and long tables, where the drinks keep coming before you finish the last one. I didn’t know half the women there, and among all those new faces, hers was the first one that stayed with me.

She was forty-two, though anyone would have put her at thirty. Black hair gathered into a loose bun, bare shoulders, and a smile that seemed aimed only at me from across the table. Sofía introduced us with a quick gesture, and Renata gave me two kisses that lasted a second longer than they should have.

—Sofía has told me about you —she said, and there was something in the way she said it that wasn’t exactly courtesy.

—I hope not too much.

—Just enough —she replied—. The rest I’d rather find out for myself.

I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I spent the first hours feeling her eyes on me every time I lifted my glass. They weren’t invasive, but they weren’t discreet either. When she came over to greet me a second time, by dessert, she rested her hand on my waist and didn’t take it away the whole time she was talking to me.

She smelled of something citrusy and almond-like, and she had that habit of leaning in when she spoke, as if what she was saying was too important to share with more than one person.

—You’re gorgeous —she told me in a low voice, close enough for me to feel her breath—. Do people tell you that often?

—Sometimes.

—Then they’re saying it wrong. It should be said like this.

I didn’t know how to answer. Sofía was watching us from the other end of the table with a stricken face, and I understood that this made her uncomfortable. She’d been dropping hints for months, waiting for a sign from me that never came, and Renata —who clearly knew the story— had just stepped into the middle of the picture without asking permission.

After dinner, someone suggested going on to a bar nearby. We danced. I was wearing a short skirt and heels that pinched me, and Renata pulled me onto the dance floor before I could say whether I wanted to or not. She danced pressed against me, both hands on my hips, leading me. She whispered things in my ear that I don’t fully remember now, loose phrases that sounded like compliments and invitations at the same time. At one point she kissed my cheek, very close to the corner of my mouth, and I froze. I didn’t push her away.

Sofía left the bar without saying goodbye. I knew because at some point I looked toward the counter and she was gone. Renata noticed too, and kept dancing as if nothing had happened.

—There are no witnesses left —she whispered in my ear—. Do you want to come to my place?

—I don’t know.

—I have a bottle of wine I won’t drink alone. Just for one glass.

—I didn’t come here for that.

—What did you come for?

I didn’t have an honest answer. I’d been running away from my own house on weekends for months, no matter the excuse. Renata paid the bill without waiting for my confirmation and offered me her arm at the bar door as if we’d already discussed everything.

***

Her apartment was in Las Lomas, in a building with a doorman and a mirrored elevator where I saw myself go in with her and thought I was about to make a mistake. I didn’t care. The living room carpet was light gray, thick, the kind that invites you to take your shoes off before stepping on it. I took mine off before she asked me to.

—That’s how I like it —she said, and went to get the bottle.

We talked for a while about things that weren’t what was happening: her trips, my job, a mutual friend, a show neither of us had finished. But all the while her fingers were playing with the collar of my blouse or brushing my hair off my face, and I didn’t stop her. I was sitting with my legs tucked under me, barefoot, and at some point she took one of my feet and started massaging it without asking.

—You have the prettiest feet I’ve seen in a long time.

—Oh, please.

—I’m serious. You can tell right away who takes care of herself.

Her hand moved from the sole of my foot to my ankle, and from my ankle to my calf, and from my calf to my knee, and I said nothing. She looked at me steadily, set the glass down on the table, and leaned over me.

The first kiss was slow. It was different. It had nothing to do with kissing a man: no beard scratching, no rush, no awkwardness some people mistake for passion. It was a mouth that knew what it was doing. When she pulled back, she looked at me as if giving me time to run.

—I don’t know if I want to do this —I said, hearing how unconvincing I sounded.

—You don’t have to decide anything. Just let go.

***

She unbuttoned my blouse one button at a time, slowly. When she took it off, she folded it over the back of the sofa as if she had all the time in the world. I closed my eyes. I was afraid to look at her and regret it, or to look at her and want more, and I didn’t know which was worse.

She started at my neck. Down my collarbone, my shoulders, my neckline. Her tongue traced lines that went cold a second after she left them. Every time I thought she was going to reach my breasts, she would move upward again, until I heard myself ask her in a low voice to stop making me wait. Only then did she unfasten my bra, slip it off slowly, and look at my tits for a second before bending down. She sucked one nipple whole, first barely brushing it with her tongue, then with her mouth full, tugging and letting go, while with her other hand she squeezed the other breast and pinched the nipple until it was hard as stone. She moved from one breast to the other without hurry, biting softly, sucking hard, looking up at me from below to see what kind of face I was making.

—They get so beautiful —she murmured against my skin—. I could suck them all night.

The men I’d been with always went straight to the destination; she stayed on the road and made the road the destination. She laid me down on the carpet and got behind me. I felt her mouth on my heels first, then moving upward, not skipping a centimeter: calves, the backs of my knees, thighs, all the way to my ass. She bit one cheek and licked over the bite, and I jerked. Every kiss was a question. I answered by breathing harder, squeezing my thighs, seeking her mouth with my ass lifted. When she yanked down my skirt and panties in one pull, I was already completely surrendered, soaked, with my legs open without even realizing I’d opened them.

I don’t recognize myself. And I don’t want to recognize myself.

—Look at you —she said softly, almost to herself—. Look how wet you are. Dripping, and I haven’t even touched your cunt yet.

She ran two fingers through my slit, from bottom to top, very slowly, gathering how wet I was, then held them up to show me the shine before putting them in her own mouth and sucking them like candy.

—You taste good —she said—. I knew you’d taste good.

She undressed in front of me, shameless, looking at me so I would look at her. She had a body that didn’t look her age: firm breasts with dark, large nipples, a defined waist, a shaved mound with a thin line left, and a small scar on her hip that I didn’t ask about. She came back to me, finished undressing me completely, and settled between my legs with the easy confidence of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. She opened my legs as wide as they would go, propped herself on her elbows, and paused for a second looking closely at my cunt, breathing onto it.

—It’s so pretty —she said—. Pink, swollen. You can tell nobody’s eaten you properly in a while.

—Shut up and do it —I begged her, embarrassed to hear myself speak like that.

She laughed against me and ran her whole tongue over me, from bottom to top, pressing firmly, pressing everything, and a long moan escaped me that I had no idea where it had come from. Her tongue was something else. That’s the only way I can say it without lying. It had nothing to do with what anyone had ever done to me before. She knew where to stop, knew when to press harder, knew when to blow gently. She started with a flat tongue, sweeping all over me, and little by little she narrowed the circle until she reached my clit, where she stayed for a while. She sucked it like a tiny nipple, tugging at it with her lips, then traced it with the tip of her tongue in fast little circles that made me lift my ass off the carpet. I gripped the rug as if I were about to take off.

—Do you like it?

—Keep going. Don’t stop.

—Tell me you like it. Tell me what it’s called.

—I like it. I like it so much, eat my cunt, please, don’t stop.

—That’s how I like hearing you.

She slid one finger deep inside me, and I felt her curl it in there, searching for something. When she found it, I learned what that was, what no one had ever touched properly before. Then she added a second finger and moved them slowly, in and out, making a wet little sound between my legs that turned me on even more, while she kept sucking me without pause. When she saw I could no longer speak, that my thighs were tightening and my stomach was shaking, she stopped abruptly and pulled her fingers out. She looked up at me from below, mouth shining, chin wet with me, smiling as if she knew exactly what she was doing to me.

—Not yet —she said, licking the fingers she’d just fucked me with—. I don’t want you to finish too fast. I want to keep you like this for a long time.

—Bitch —I said, laughing without much humor.

—That too.

She turned me over. She put me on all fours on the carpet, ass lifted and face buried in the cushion, and got herself behind me. She spread my ass cheeks with both hands, without ceremony, and started again, this time from behind, her tongue going in and out of my cunt as if she had all the time in the world. Then she moved higher, over the other hole, and ran it slowly, in circles, until I heard myself moan in a way I had never moaned before. No one had ever done that to me. No one had dared, or I had never let them. With her, I said nothing. I only arched my back further and offered her my whole ass.

—Look how nicely she opens for me —she murmured—. Rich little slut.

She went back to my cunt, put two fingers in again, and this time moved them fast, sloshing, while she bit one ass cheek softly and with the thumb of her other hand pressed my clit from below. I bit the cushion that had fallen from the sofa. My face was burning, my thighs trembling, and a heat was rising from my center to the nape of my neck. I started rocking my ass into her, searching for her fingers, moving myself, and she let me, laughing softly and whispering in my ear, “that’s it, fuck my fingers, like that, like that.”

When I came, it was long. It wasn’t one of those short orgasms from which one recovers right away. Everything around her fingers tightened, I felt one contraction after another, and she didn’t pull them out, she kept moving them slowly inside me while I shook all over. It lasted, it rattled me, and in the end she left me with my forehead on the carpet, ass in the air, breathing as if I had run blocks, moaning softly every time she moved the fingers she still had inside me.

—Now rest for a minute —she told me, and kissed my back while at last she withdrew her hand—. Then I want you on top. I want you to do it to me.

***

When I came back to myself, she was lying on her back with one leg bent, waiting for me. She was stroking one breast with one hand and touching herself between the legs with the other, unhurried, watching me while I caught my breath. And I, who had never done anything like that, knew what I had to do without thinking. I knelt between her legs and started with her thighs, just as she had taught me a few minutes earlier. I went slowly. I was afraid of doing it wrong, but what scared me more was stopping.

I kissed the insides of her thighs, went up to the crease of her groin, back down to the other thigh. I heard her snort. When I reached her sex, I stopped to look. She was wet, as wet as I had been, with her lips parted and her clit peeking out, glossy. I touched her with the tip of my tongue, just that at first, and heard her moan softly. That gave me confidence. I ran my whole tongue over her, slowly, as if tasting her, and when she lifted her hips to ask for more, I knew I was doing something right. She tasted different from me, stronger, saltier, and I liked it.

—Like that, like that, don’t stop —she said with a broken voice—. Higher. There. There, on the clit, suck it, suck it hard.

I closed my lips over it and pulled, the way she had done to me. I felt her tremble. That night I learned that it isn’t about imitating what one likes, even if it helps. It’s about listening: where she breathes harder, where she presses your head, where a “yes” slips out that isn’t like the others. When I put one finger in, she arched and squeezed my finger with her whole cunt. When I put in two, she said my name and asked me for more, harder. When I started moving them to the same rhythm as my tongue, following what her hips were telling me, she pressed my head against her with both hands and asked me not to stop for anything in the world.

—Fuck me with your fingers, keep going, keep going like that, don’t let me go.

I sucked harder, sped up my fingers, and when I felt her tense all over I pushed in a third. Her thighs clamped over my ears. She came looking into my eyes, mouth open, not ashamed of anything, holding my face against her cunt as if I were the only person in the world in that instant, while I felt her tighten and release around my fingers, again and again, soaking me to the wrist. That still haunts me sometimes. That look. The way she came without taking her eyes off me.

When she let me out, I drew my fingers out slowly and took them to my mouth without thinking. She saw me do it and laughed.

—You learn fast.

***

After that we lay there for a while in silence, wrapped around each other on the carpet. It was hot despite the cool night outside. She was stroking my hair with strange care, almost tender. I hadn’t expected that part. I had thought that with a woman everything would be faster, more practical. I didn’t know it could be this too.

—Are you staying? —she asked.

—I’m staying.

—Come on, not on the carpet. I want you in the bed.

We moved to the bedroom. The bed was large, the sheets white, and everything smelled of her citrus perfume. We started again. This time it was different. There was no hurry, no nerves, nothing to prove. We took turns without agreement: one on top, the other below, eating each other out, sucking each other’s tits, sliding fingers deep into each other while we kissed with mouths tasting of one another. At one point she sat on my face, settled on top of me with her cunt open over my mouth and moved slowly, rubbing herself, while I stuck my tongue out and let her do it. I looked at her from below, with her tits moving above me, and understood that she wanted me to see her like that, riding my face without asking permission. She came again, her hands braced on the headboard, stifling a cry.

And at some point she asked me to bring our hips together, to cross our legs, and put her cunt against mine, wet against wet, and together we learned how to move. I had never done that before. I didn’t even know it existed as a way to finish. But there we were, cunt to cunt, clit to clit, one against the other, watching each other without stopping, moving to a rhythm that sped up on its own. Each thrust made a wet, obscene sound, and both of us were breathing harder and harder, more and more in sync, until we both ran out of air at the same time. Her nails dug into my thigh. My hand closed over her breast, squeezing it. I felt her come against me at the same time I came against her, both of us soaked, trembling as we clung together. Neither of us said anything for a long while.

—I never imagined it would feel like that —I said when I found my voice.

—Yeah. Nobody imagines it the first time.

***

I left her place at noon the next day. She didn’t invite me to breakfast, but she made coffee and gave it to me in a mug that matched nothing. We barely spoke. We both knew.

A week later she wrote to tell me she was starting something with her neighbor, and that she wanted to try it seriously. That what we’d had had been perfect and that for that very reason it wasn’t going to be repeated. I understood. I thanked her for what she had taught me, though I didn’t say it in those words.

From that night I carry away two things. One is the certainty that desire doesn’t obey a woman’s biography; it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve believed yourself to be one way, it only takes a woman doing things right for you to understand you were wrong. The other is the image of her on the carpet, looking up at me from below with her mouth shining with me, smiling as if she knew something about me that I still didn’t know.

She was right. She knew it. And even today, when I touch myself thinking of someone, it’s almost always her I’m looking for, with my fingers going inside me all the way to where she put them that night.