The Video Game Girl Fulfilled My Fantasy

It started as an experiment. A virtual reality headset my brother had given me for my twenty-second birthday, a social game that mimicked The Sims but with more detailed avatars, and a bunch of sleepless nights where I had nothing better to do than log in and wander that fake world pretending to be someone else.

My avatar had violet hair and green eyes. My real hair is brown and my eyes are brown. That was the first lie, and the most innocent.

What I hadn’t planned on was meeting Renata.

She showed up one ordinary night in one of the game’s central plazas, sitting on a virtual bench, wearing a black T-shirt that showed off a full sleeve of tattoos on her right arm. Her avatar had a pierced nose and two thick hoops in her ears. I went over because she caught my attention, and because at that hour — three in the morning — there were very few of us left online.

—Nice sleeve —I typed.

—Real —she answered—. Got it when I turned twenty-six.

That was the second sign. People who bother to clarify that a tattoo is real usually say a lot more real things with very little effort. We talked until daybreak. About her job in a tattoo studio in a coastal city in the south, mine at a pizzeria while I studied nursing, about music, old movies, about why neither of us was looking for anything serious in life. We made that part clear very early on. Neither of us was in the mood to fall in love.

—The only thing I care about —she told me at one point— is having a good time. If it gets complicated after that, I’m out.

I told her I felt the same way. And I meant it, really. My head was set on finishing my degree, saving money, not being another girl who got derailed by a romance. Renata fit exactly into that space I’d allowed myself: someone to talk to at night, someone who understood the rules.

What I didn’t expect was for the attraction to cross the screen.

***

We talked for five months by voice chat, every night, almost without missing a day. We started sending each other photos. Hers were shameless from the start: her in the bathroom mirror with wet hair, her in panties and an old T-shirt on her bed, her pointing out a fresh bruise from a difficult client at the studio. Mine were shyer at first, until they weren’t.

One night she sent me a voice note. Her voice came out low and rough, like she’d just woken up.

—Do you touch yourself thinking about me? —she asked.

I stared at my phone longer than I care to admit. The honest answer was yes. The coward’s answer was to change the subject. I did the second, but that night, when I turned off the light, I did the first too. And I knew that was no longer casual. That was something else.

Then the dirtier messages started, no beating around the bush. She told me she imagined my fingers moving slowly over my clit, that she wanted to know whether I moaned or stayed quiet when I was about to come, that if she ever had me in front of her she’d want to see me spreading my legs without anyone asking. I told her I’d probably have a hard time not sucking her mouth until she ran out of air, that I wanted to slide my tongue between her lips and feel her trembling, that I was dying to see her open for me. That brutality grew over the days, like the two of us were descending a stairwell without a handrail and there was no way back up anymore.

Two weeks later she told me she was coming to my city for a tattoo convention. Four days. Three nights.

—Do you want to meet me? —she wrote.

I said yes before I even thought about it.

***

She arrived on Thursday afternoon. I’d gotten off my shift at the pizzeria early, still stained with sauce, and had to rush home to shower. I changed three times. A long T-shirt seemed boring; a dress seemed like too much; jeans and a shirt seemed too neutral. In the end I went with a short black dress and sneakers, because if the night got weird I wanted to be able to walk fast.

We agreed to meet at a bar two blocks from the hotel where she was staying. When I walked in, she was sitting at the counter with her back to the door. I recognized her by the sleeve, by the haircut, by the way she rested her elbow. I stopped for a second in the doorway to look at her without her noticing. She was smaller than she looked in the photos. More real, too.

I sat down beside her and she turned without flinching.

—It’s you —she said, as if confirming something she already knew.

—It’s me.

We didn’t hug. We didn’t kiss on the cheek. She ordered another beer for herself and one for me, and we spent two hours talking like it was just another night in chat, except now I could see her neck when she laughed, the tiny mole under her lip, the hands speckled with dried ink. At one point she stretched out her arm and touched the back of my hand with one finger, slowly, as if testing whether I’d pull away.

I didn’t.

—Shall we go? —she asked.

***

The hotel was cheap but clean. The elevator smelled like disinfectant. We went up in silence. I’d never been with a woman. I hadn’t told her that in any of those five months of chatting. I didn’t tell her there either, in the fourth-floor hallway, while she looked for the key card in her bag. It seemed like information that would come out on its own.

As soon as the door closed, she turned and looked at me.

—Are you sure? —she asked.

—Yes.

—If you want to stop, we stop.

—I don’t want to stop.

She came closer by one step. She put her hand on my waist, over the dress, and pulled me a little toward her. She smelled like woody perfume and something softer underneath, like skin. When she kissed me, she did it unhurriedly, with her lips just slightly parted, letting me decide how much I wanted. I opened my mouth first. I ran my hand over the back of her neck, touched the thick hoop in her ear, felt the cold of the metal against my fingers. She smiled against my mouth.

—Easy —she said softly—. We’ve got time.

She said it like a warning and like a promise.

***

She sat me on the edge of the bed. She knelt between my legs and took off my sneakers, one and then the other, never taking her eyes off me. Then she placed her hands on my knees and gently spread them apart. My dress rode up to mid-thigh. I was breathing through my mouth because through my nose I wasn’t getting enough air.

—Lift your arms —she asked.

I lifted my arms. She pulled my dress off over my head. I was left in a black bra and panties, my prettiest ones, the ones I’d chosen knowing exactly what was going to happen and pretending I didn’t. Renata gave a low laugh, a deep sound that came from her chest.

—You thought about me when you dressed —she said.

—Yes.

—Good.

She took off her own shirt, no theatrics, like someone undressing for bed. She had more tattoos than I’d seen in the photos: an olive branch climbing up the left side of her torso, a phrase in fine letters crossing beneath her right breast. I didn’t ask what it said. I didn’t ask her anything else that night either.

She kissed me again, deeper now, slowly pushing me back until I was lying on the mattress. She kissed my neck, under my ear, in the hollow above my collarbone. She lowered my bra without unfastening it, moved it aside, and ran her tongue slowly over my nipple while holding my other breast in her hand. I closed my eyes. I felt something tighten low in my body, in a precise spot I couldn’t point to.

—Look at me —she said.

I opened my eyes. She was looking at me from below, her mouth still pressed to my skin.

—I want to see your face when you come —she said.

She slipped my panties down with two fingers, without any rush. She stayed there for a moment, looking at me like she was reading me. Then she kissed the inside of my thigh, slowly, first one and then the other, and stayed close, breathing me in, still not touching me. My hands were on the sheets, holding on to something that wasn’t going to save me from anything.

When she finally ran her tongue over me, it was one long stroke, bottom to top, and I let out a sound I didn’t recognize as my own. I dropped my head onto the pillow. She settled in better, put my legs over her shoulders, held my hips with both hands. She wasn’t in a hurry. Nothing she did that night was hurried.

First she opened me with her tongue, working my clit until my whole body went taut; then she went back down, wet and precise, licking the lips of my cunt as if she wanted to memorize every fold. I moved against her mouth without realizing it, chasing more pressure, more friction, more of that tongue that had my thighs shaking. Renata lifted her head just a little and slid two fingers into me slowly, sinking them into my pussy with obscene calm. She finger-fucked me while she kept sucking me, alternating the motion of her tongue with that firm push inside that made my back arch.

—Not yet —she told me at one point, lifting her face for only a second—. I want more.

I didn’t answer because I couldn’t. I touched her hair. I squeezed a little with my fingers without meaning to and she laughed against my skin and that almost finished me.

I held on as long as I could. When I came, it was long and silent, nothing like the movies, no screams. It was trembling, a bite into my lip, a breath I struggled to get back under control. Renata kept moving her fingers inside me until she wrung out the last spasm, then she came up my body, kissed my mouth still wet, showed me my own taste without asking permission. I grabbed her face and pulled her back in, as if it pissed me off that she’d move away even an inch.

—Are you okay? —she asked.

—Yes.

—Do you want more?

I nodded because my voice wouldn’t come out.

Then she turned me carefully, laid me face down on the bed, and kissed my back, my waist, my ass over my panties, before pulling them down just enough to leave me exposed. She spread my cheeks with the palm of her hand and licked between my legs again, slower this time, with an almost cruel patience. I buried my face in the pillow so I wouldn’t make so much noise, but I still moaned when she slipped a finger into my ass, first just the tip, then a little more, testing, opening me with a slow stretch while she kept stroking my clit with her tongue. The mix of pressure front and back left me hanging by a thread. Renata murmured things against my skin, dirty and low, telling me I was soaked, that I was being too good, that she wanted to feel me lose control completely.

—Tell me you want me to fuck you —she said in my ear.

—I want you to fuck me —I answered at last, my voice broken.

She rose a little, took off the rest of her clothes without taking her eyes off me, and rested one hand on my back to keep me still. Then she settled behind me again. I felt the tip of her dildo or her cock against my entrance — hot, firm, wet — and she stopped right before going in, so I would understand how much control she had over me. She took me by the waist and entered me little by little, centimeter by centimeter, until she filled my cunt in such a precise way it tore a deep moan out of me. I stayed there breathing hard, body open, while she only moved slightly, testing the rhythm, letting me get used to her thickness.

—Like that —she said—. Yes. Don’t clench up.

Then she really started fucking me. Slow thrusts at first, then harder, making our hips slam against the sheets with a wet, rough sound that bounced off the walls of the room. I clung to the mattress with my fingers curled, feeling her take me all the way in, feeling each thrust rub me inside in a place that made white spots flash in my vision. Renata held me by the waist and changed the angle twice, once with one of my legs lifted and then with both knees apart, to get deeper into me. Every time she did it, she ripped a new curse out of me.

—Look how I open you —she murmured—. Look how you let me in.

At the end she turned me over, laid me on my back, and put my legs over her shoulders to keep penetrating me from above, harder, deeper, pounding that same spot until I shuddered again. I dug my hands into her back, then her chest, feeling the sweat, the tattoos, the tension in her muscles. I kept repeating her name like a way of holding myself together. She kissed my lips, my jaw, my neck, and whispered in my ear to come again, that she wanted to see me falling apart.

And I came again. This time with sound, with longer spasms, with my legs trembling and my cunt squeezing her cock while she kept going in and out until she left me empty of air. Renata stayed still for a second, buried inside me, breathing hard, and then started moving again, faster, dirtier, until I felt her tense over my body. She came against my stomach, soaking my skin, and held my gaze as she finished, as if she wanted me to see every second of her face coming undone.

Afterward she collapsed beside me. We both lay there gasping, sticky, smelling of sex and sweat, saying nothing for a long while. The silence was no longer awkward; it was what was left of the fight we had just won against our own bodies.

***

At four in the morning we were both awake, smoking a cigarette each at the fourth-floor window. The city below was empty. She had only put her black shirt back on. I had put my bra on and nothing else.

—Is this your first time with a woman? —she asked, not looking at me, staring out at the street.

—Yes.

—I figured.

—Why?

—The way you looked at me in the bar. Like you were afraid I’d disappear.

I stayed quiet. She was right. I’d been looking at her hands all night with the feeling that at any moment reality would break and I’d be alone again in front of the headset screen, talking to an avatar with violet hair.

—Easy —she said, handing me the cigarette—. I’m not leaving yet.

—And after?

She shrugged. Blew smoke into the night.

—After I’ll leave too. But not yet.

I knew what that meant. We’d agreed on it from the start. Something casual, something with no promises, something that ended when it ended. What I didn’t know was that it would hurt anyway, casual or not.

***

She stayed three nights. We slept together all three. She taught me things I didn’t know could be done and that I’m not going to tell here because some of them I still want only for myself. On the last morning, she helped me gather my clothes, left me one of her shirts as a gift, and kissed me on the forehead before closing the hotel room door.

I never saw her again. We talked for a couple more months by chat, then less and less, then nothing. She fulfilled her role in my life, as I did in hers, and left as quickly as she’d arrived. One of the golden rules of these relationships is not to fall in love. I broke it in silence, without ever telling her, and I’m never going to say it.

What I did learn that week — besides everything else I learned that week — is that you can’t use the word “casual” as a shield. Sometimes desire between women isn’t in a hurry, but it also has no reverse. When a woman looks at you the way Renata looked at me from below, you’re no longer the same one who walked into the bar.

And that, headset or no headset, doesn’t fade.