What Happened in the 8M Bathroom with a Stranger

I didn’t want to go to the march. I’d been putting it off for weeks, but that morning I woke up with a rage I didn’t know where to put, and I pulled on my lilac T-shirt without thinking much about it. Thirty-two years old, married for five, with a quiet feeling that something inside me had been asking for air for a long time.

Valencia was boiling. Avenida del Marqués del Turia was a sea of banners, drumming, and hoarse voices bouncing off the balconies. “Not one less!”, “We want them alive!” The sun was beating down hard for March. The air smelled of orange blossom, clean sweat, and the sweet smoke of incense being passed from hand to hand.

I went alone. I wasn’t carrying a banner. Just a clenched fist in my pocket and the need to shout something I couldn’t say at home.

I saw her near the Central Market. Short hair dyed a vivid violet, a tight white T-shirt with black letters clinging to her breasts from the heat, cargo pants, and a small piercing in her lower lip. She had to be twenty-five, no more. She moved through the crowd like she knew every gap, shouting in a hoarse voice that rose above the chorus.

We brushed against each other for the first time in Plaza del Ayuntamiento. An arm slipped over my shoulders without asking, a mouth came close to my ear to make herself heard over the noise.

—This is insane, right?! —she shouted.

I laughed, nervous. The contact was warm and natural, as if we’d been together all afternoon. Hips bumping as we walked, breasts brushing as we chanted, fingers intertwining “so we wouldn’t get lost in the crush.” Neither of us said our name. There was no need.

—Do you come to these things much? —she asked, her hot breath against my neck.

—No... this is the first time in years. I felt like shouting for a while.

—Then shout louder. Today anything goes.

We stayed pressed together, letting ourselves be carried by the purple river slowly moving toward the Parterre. Every brush of contact seemed to charge the air a little more. A hand lingering a second too long on my waist. Fingers sliding down my back as if by accident. I could feel my pulse in places I didn’t want to feel it.

This isn’t happening to me. This isn’t happening.

When the march jammed up in front of El Corte Inglés, we both felt the pressure on our bladders almost at the same time.

—I’m going to the bathroom for a second —I said quietly.

—I’ll come with you. I’m about to burst too.

We went into the women’s restroom on the ground floor. Cold white lights, the smell of citrus soap and disinfectant, the stalls wide and clean. The line was short and the few women waiting were in their own world, laughing among themselves. She chose the biggest one, the accessible stall. I followed without thinking. I locked the door.

I pulled down my jeans and my black lace panties, sat down, and let out a long, hot stream. The sound filled the space. I wiped myself calmly, pulled my clothes back up halfway, and stood.

She stared at me as she lowered her pants. When she sat down, I caught sight of a pubic mound with black hair trimmed into a small triangle, and a fine line dyed the same intense violet as her hair, running down from the mons Venus to just grazing her clit. I froze for a second. I’d never seen anything like it. I liked it. I liked the detail, the playful touch in the middle of all that seriousness.

She let go with force, never taking her eyes off me. The sound was intimate, almost obscene in the stall’s silence.

—I like that we’re here like this... no posing —she murmured as she finished.

I swallowed.

—I just came to pee.

She wiped herself slowly, stood without pulling her clothes up, and took a step toward me.

—You sure?

—Yes... I’m straight. I have a husband. I’m not looking for... this.

She came closer. Our bodies were an inch apart. I could feel her heat through the fabric.

—I’m straight too —she said with a half-smile—. But look where we are. We’ve spent all afternoon shouting against patriarchy, rubbing against each other nonstop, sweating together. This isn’t fucking some guy who uses you and leaves. This is sisterhood. It’s us giving each other what we deserve without asking anyone’s permission. Nobody will know. It’s our 8M secret.

Her smell wrapped around me. Soft perfume, warm arousal, the clean trace of piss, and that violet hair I couldn’t think clearly around. Outside, in the street, the distant echoes kept coming: “My body is mine!”, “My pleasure is mine!”

—Just let me touch you a little —she whispered, lowering her voice even more—. You don’t have to do anything. Just feel. If you don’t like it, you tell me to stop and I stop. But I think you’re going to like it.

I closed my eyes for a second. My pulse was beating between my legs like it had a life of its own.

—Just... a little —I said in a thread of a voice—. But I’m not... I’m not going to touch you.

She barely smiled.

—Deal.

***

It started with a slow kiss. Soft lips brushing lips, tongue exploring gently at first. Then she bit my lower lip delicately and sucked my tongue until a small moan I didn’t even know I had in me slipped out.

She lifted my lilac T-shirt, freed my breasts, and bent down slowly. Flat tongue circling my nipple, gentle sucks that turned more intense, controlled bites that made me arch my back against the cold wall of the stall.

—You’re trembling... —she murmured against my skin.

—It’s... it’s a lot.

—It’s still not much.

She slid her hand under my panties. Fingers brushed the trimmed hair, found my swollen clit, and began slow, precise circles, like she knew exactly where and how. I gasped. I grabbed her shoulders, not caring how hard.

—You’re soaked... do you feel it?

—Yes...

She slid two fingers inside me slowly, curled them, fucked me with a steady but deep rhythm while her thumb kept drawing circles.

—Tell me to stop whenever you want.

—No... don’t stop.

She turned me gently but firmly. She put me facing the wall, pulled my jeans and panties down to mid-thigh. She knelt behind me. She spread my ass cheeks with her hands and started licking. First my ass, warm tongue circling the hole in slow loops. Then she moved down to my cunt, sucked my lips with contained hunger, pushed her tongue inside while three fingers went back in and out, the pace building.

—Fuck... you taste so good...

I pushed back without meaning to. I put my arm over my mouth to smother the moans. I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t recognize the woman letting all of that happen to her in a mall bathroom, with a door separating her from the rest of the world by two centimeters of melamine.

She stood up. Pressed herself against my back. I felt her cunt with that violet line brushing my ass. She drove four fingers into me at once and fucked me with measured but relentless force.

—Come when you want... but come hard.

The orgasm came like a slow wave that suddenly turned violent. I felt wet heat running down my thighs, contractions that buckled my knees, a long moan I tried to muffle against my forearm and that still escaped somewhere.

She didn’t stop. She turned me again, sat me on the edge of the sink, spread my legs as wide as they’d go, and dove back into my cunt with her mouth. Flat tongue. Long sucks on my clit. Fingers going in and out without pause. The second orgasm came almost without warning, one wave after another, fluids dripping down her wrists and onto the tiles.

I was panting. My whole body was shaking, my cunt red and swollen, my gaze lost in the ceiling of white lights.

She straightened up. Her face was shining. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at me with a smile that was anything but innocent.

—Now, as payment for everything I’ve given you... you’re going to lick me. That’s not a request. That’s only fair.

—I... never...

—Doesn’t matter. Open your mouth and follow your instinct.

She sat on the sink and opened her legs. She grabbed my hair gently but firmly and pulled me down. I dropped to my knees on the cold tile. Her cunt was a foot from my face. Natural black hair framing swollen lips, and that thin violet line running like an arrow toward the center. I liked it so much a sigh slipped out of me.

I brought my mouth closer. I licked the violet line from top to bottom first, tasting the strange contrast of dyed hair and the wet heat underneath. Then I sucked her clit slowly, not really knowing if I was doing it right.

—Harder... suck...

I obeyed. I sucked harder, slid my tongue between her lips and hair, drank the hot juices that filled my mouth. She moaned softly and rocked her hips against my face.

—Like that... put it inside... lick the hole...

I pushed my tongue in as deep as I could. I fucked her with it while I kept licking her clit nonstop, fascinated by that violet line brushing my nose every time I breathed.

She came with a rough moan and a yank on my hair that forced me to stay where I was. A hot spurt flooded my mouth and face, ran down my chin and neck. I swallowed what I could. I kept licking until she let me go.

***

She stood up. She pulled her clothes back on with the same calm she’d used to take them off. She combed her violet fringe back with her fingers in front of the mirror and looked at me over her shoulder.

—Happy 8M.

There was no goodbye kiss. No names. Just a long look and a half-smile.

We left without saying anything else. At the bathroom door we split apart without looking at each other. She disappeared into the violet tide of the shopping center corridor, vanishing among the lilac T-shirts in seconds. I stood still for a moment, my cunt still throbbing, my mouth full of someone else’s taste, my face sticky, the memory of that violet line seared somewhere inside me where there’d been nothing before.

I washed my face, dried myself with paper, ran my fingers through my hair. I looked at the woman in the mirror. It was me, but also someone else. That other woman held my gaze without blinking.

I went back out. I joined the chorus of slogans again. “Sisters, drunk, we want to get home!”, “My body is mine!” I walked with the march to the end, shouting louder than before, laughing with strangers, letting the afternoon sun dry what was still wet inside me.

That night I had dinner with my husband. I told him about the banners, the drumming, the grandmother in a wheelchair with a sign that said “I’ve been at this for fifty years.” I told him everything except the bathroom. I laughed when it was time to laugh, nodded when it was time to nod, and halfway through dinner I excused myself to go to the bathroom, pulled down my panties, and saw that I still had violet marks in my pubic hair. I looked at them for a long time.

No one noticed anything. No one knew a thing. Only I know what I learned that afternoon under the white lights on the ground floor. And sometimes, when I pass the doors of that shopping center with my grocery list in my pocket, I look toward the restroom sign and smile to myself.