The Stranger Who Rubbed Against Me on the Women’s Bus

There are desires one keeps in the most private corner, the kind you don’t even tell your best friend about. Mine is simple to name and almost impossible to explain: there is nothing in the world that turns me on more than the furtive brush of another woman in a crowded place. I write that now with a calm I don’t have when I’m living it.

My name is Mariana and I work as a receptionist at a spa downtown. I’m twenty-five, fair-skinned, with brown hair that always falls below my shoulders. I know the effect I have when I walk, and I’d like to say I don’t care, but I’d be lying. I care a lot. I like feeling eyes cling to my hips, to my back, to that part of me that has been drawing everyone’s attention since my teens.

When I started developing, my school friends turned my ass into a kind of game. They’d slap it, squeeze it between laughs, tell me it was unfair for one person to have so much. I’d act offended, but inside I was melting. It wasn’t boys who made me hot like that. It was them, their slender fingers, the way they looked at me when they thought I didn’t notice.

I never went beyond that with a woman. I had boyfriends, of course, men who adored my body and got lost in my curves. But I always kept my desire for another girl for the darkness of my bedroom, for those nights when I touched myself thinking about soft mouths and skin that smelled like floral perfume. It was my secret, untouched, with no witnesses.

Maybe that’s why the habit was born. Without meaning to, I started looking for contact on public transport, in lines, at concerts, anywhere a crowd would give me an excuse to get close to a stranger. I did it carefully, measuring every gesture. If I noticed the slightest discomfort, I moved away at once and pretended nothing had happened. But sometimes, more often than anyone would imagine, the other woman didn’t move away. Sometimes, she even moved closer.

***

That Thursday I wasn’t looking for anything. I swear it. I’d left the spa late, exhausted, with only one idea in my head: get home, fill the tub, and disappear under the hot water. My boyfriend had offered to pick me up, as always, but that night he had a game with his friends and the timing didn’t work out. So I waited on the avenue for the women-only bus, the kind that by that hour are already hard to come by.

It arrived close to nine, packed full. I got on pushing through and stood near the back, holding onto one of the side rails. I was wearing slim tailored pants that clung to my legs and a light blouse that hinted at more than was prudent. I was thinking about anything and everything, dinner, how tired I was, when I felt someone pass behind me. It wasn’t an ordinary brush. It was a whole body sliding against my back.

I turned with an almost automatic gesture of annoyance.

—Sorry, really, they pushed me —said a voice, soft and a little breathless.

—Don’t worry, things happen —I replied, and my annoyance dissolved into the air.

I didn’t get a good look at her. Only a fair profile, hair tied back, a dark sweatshirt. But that voice left me imagining a face I still didn’t know. The girl stayed behind me, back to back, in that forced closeness a crowded bus imposes.

And then I felt it. Not her back. It was her hips, seeking mine with a slowness that couldn’t have been a coincidence.

I froze for a second, holding my breath. Then, slowly, I did what I always do: I leaned back just enough to check whether I was imagining it. Her body answered. She didn’t just stay put; she pressed more firmly, as if she had been waiting for me to give permission.

This is really happening.

The rubbing became constant, a silent conversation between two bodies pretending not to notice each other. The thin fabric of my pants and her leggings were barely a boundary. I closed my eyes and let the bus’s sway rock us both in the same rhythm. I could feel myself getting wet, feel my breathing quicken no matter how hard I tried to stop it. I didn’t want that stop to come ever.

But it did. The bus braked, some women got off and many more got on, and the reshuffling tore us from our corner. I regretted it the way you regret losing something you had only just begun to have.

***

Fate, or whatever moves these things, wanted her behind me again. But this time she was facing my back, her chest almost pressed to my shoulders.

—Sorry again —she murmured near my ear, and I noticed her voice no longer sounded quite so calm—. You saw how people pile on here.

—It’s okay —I said, and my own voice sounded strange to me, too low—. It’s nothing.

Her breath on the nape of my neck was a jolt that ran all the way down my spine. She smelled like floral perfume and something else, warm skin, desire without a name. I felt my nipples tighten under my blouse, my whole body surrendering before she even did anything. And then she did. She pressed her pelvis to my ass and started moving, barely, a minimal sway no one around us would have been able to read.

I answered her. I pushed back, sought the contact, and the two of us began rocking to the same beat, hidden among the tired bodies of the other passengers. Every now and then a sound slipped out against my ear, so low I more than heard it, I guessed it.

When the bus went into a long tunnel, the darkness emboldened her. I felt her tongue trace my earlobe, slow, shameless, for a few seconds that felt eternal. Her hands took my hips and squeezed, and the swaying stopped being a brush and became something else.

The traffic gave us more time than either of us expected. The bus got trapped under a bridge, stopped, the engine purring and the driver’s music covering any noise. One of her hands slid from my hip to the front and stroked me over my pants, right where I was burning. I sent my arm back and returned the caress, feeling her through the fabric already warm and wet over her crotch.

We touched each other like that for a long while, without separating our bodies, without saying a word, breathing faster and faster. No one around us suspected a thing. The music covered our sighs, the night covered our hands.

***

Armed with a courage I didn’t know I had, I turned to face her. And I nearly melted on the spot. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, with a sweet face, a small heart-shaped mouth, and eyes that hid something much less innocent than her features. No one would have guessed, looking at her, the kind of mischief we had shared the whole ride.

We didn’t say anything. We just breathed each other’s air, giving one another our breath like someone feeding a fire. With the free hand we held each other by the hips, hidden by the bridge’s gloom and the rocking of the nearly empty bus.

By then, the last passengers had gotten off. We were left alone at the back, slid into the deepest corner, and at last our mouths found each other. It was a relentless kiss, lips crushing together, tongues searching and tangling, saliva mixing until it became one. I felt her breasts brush mine, her hard nipples answering my own through our clothes.

Her hand went down to my ass and pulled me tighter against her, as if she wanted to fuse us together. I did the same with both hands, squeezing those firm curves that had driven me crazy the whole trip.

—Please… —I begged between kisses, breathless—. Don’t stop.

She smiled with a wickedness that didn’t fit her angelic little face. She slipped her hand inside my pants, pushed aside the soaked fabric of my underwear, and touched me at last without barriers. I reached for the same inside her leggings, slid my fingers between her legs, and felt her wet, eager, throbbing against my hand.

We fingered each other standing up, in the corner of that bus, foreheads pressed together and moans smothered in each other’s mouths. Her fingers found my clit and mine found hers, and we began rubbing in a rhythm that grew more and more urgent, clumsier, more desperate. I had never felt so turned on, so unrestrained, so animal.

The pleasure rose fast, faster than I could control. I felt the wave building, tightening, and I knew from her breathing that the same thing was happening to her. We came almost at the same time, into each other’s hands, with a groan we couldn’t hold back this time.

It was that sound that gave us away. The driver turned his head toward the back and saw us: two disheveled, flushed women with our hands where they shouldn’t have been. Before he could say anything, we both straightened up, broke the kiss halfway, and still trembling, got off the bus almost in a leap.

***

We came out onto the street hand in hand, laughing like two girls who had just pulled off a huge prank. Neither of us really knew where we were; we had both missed our stop long ago, lost in what we were doing.

We stopped under a yellow light and looked into each other’s eyes, trying to read in the other what came next. My body was still vibrating, my mouth still missed hers, and from the way she squeezed my hand I knew she felt exactly the same.

And this is where the confession should end. But it wasn’t the only time I saw her, and that night was far from over. What happened after, however, is another story I may find the courage to tell someday.