What We Did in the Back Row of the Cinema

I had been single for two and a half years and, contrary to what people usually say, I wasn’t doing badly. Weekend adventures were enough for me, the silent breakfasts the next day didn’t weigh on me, and my bed was still the most comfortable place on the planet. Even so, one cold, boring January afternoon, while I waited for the bus, I opened Tinder again, almost out of habit.

When I updated my profile, I discovered something that surprised me: in the preferences, I could select women as well as men. The last time I had used the app, that option hadn’t existed—or I hadn’t seen it. I tapped the button without thinking too much and started swiping.

Several weeks went by with matches that led nowhere. Conversations that fizzled out after three messages, dates that never materialized, duplicate profiles. Until Renata appeared.

Brown-haired, long hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a smile straight out of an independent bookstore catalog. She was two years older than me and, according to her bio, worked in some kind of design that sounded much more interesting than it turned out to be. I liked her without expecting much. Ten minutes later, the match popped up.

We talked that same night until three in the morning. And the next night. And the one after that. Soon we had a routine: she texted me when she woke up, I answered her over coffee at work, and we started talking again at the end of the day. We shared songs, screenshots of books, pictures of ridiculous food. Nothing extraordinary, except that with her, everything seemed important to me.

—What if we stop messaging each other like teenagers and meet up? —she wrote one Saturday.

We arranged to meet at a café near the cathedral square. I arrived fifteen minutes early, walked around the block three times so I wouldn’t look anxious, and still ended up being the first to sit down. When she came in, wearing an oversized turtleneck sweater with her hair half tied back, I realized the photos hadn’t done her justice. She was prettier in person. And shorter. And she smelled like something I couldn’t identify, but that clung to me for the rest of the day.

We went out five times before anything happened. Walks in the park, an incredibly boring exhibition by a photographer she was a fan of, a dinner with too much red wine. On every one of those dates there were lingering looks, hands brushing when we passed the salt, goodbyes that stretched out beside the car door. But nothing more. I didn’t really know how to make the first move with a woman. She, I realized later, was waiting for me to do it.

One afternoon in February, she texted me:

—There’s a movie I’m dying to see. I’m going with whoever will come. Are you in?

It was the latest release by a South Korean director I had never heard of. I said yes before reading the synopsis. Then I looked it up: two and a half hours of slow drama about a woman returning to her hometown. Ideal for falling asleep. It didn’t matter. I would have said yes to anything she suggested.

***

We arranged to meet at seven at the cinema in the shopping mall. I arrived early again, this time wearing a dress I had agonized over choosing and perfume I hardly ever used. Underneath, I was wearing white cotton panties that I had already noticed were wet when I left home, just from thinking about her. When she appeared, with a denim jacket draped over her shoulders and the glasses she had worn on our first day, I felt my stomach clench in a way I hadn’t felt in years, and my pussy contracted on its own, with a low, insistent pulse.

We bought popcorn, two large sodas we never finished, and went inside. The theater was practically empty. Five or six people scattered around, an older couple in the front row, a guy alone in the center. Renata had bought tickets for the seats in the back, in the corner, almost pressed against the wall.

—Better view, fewer people nearby —she said, shrugging with that studied naturalness people have when they know exactly what they’re doing.

We sat down. The previews still had ten minutes to go. We talked quietly about trivial things: how cold it was outside, a coworker of hers who had had a fight with his girlfriend right in the middle of the office, the supporting actor whose face appeared on the marquee. Her arm rested on the shared armrest. Mine did too. We touched without touching, that tiny boundary of skin against skin that feels more intense than a hug.

When the lights went out, the theater fell into darkness. The screen cast a cold blue light across Renata’s face. My heart was already beating faster than the movie justified, and I felt my breasts pressed tightly against my bra, my nipples hard and showing through the fabric of my dress.

At first we pretended to watch what was happening on the screen. There were a couple of whispered comments about the protagonist’s clothes, a stifled laugh when a secondary character said something ridiculous. But between one comment and the next, Renata’s fingers had slipped between mine on the armrest. I couldn’t remember the exact moment we had gone from brushing against each other to holding hands. At some point, it had simply happened.

I lowered our entwined hands to my thigh. She followed. Her hand stayed there, on my thigh, over my dress, without moving, as though waiting for permission. I, who had spent five dates unable to make a move, felt brave that night. I released her hand and left mine loose on my leg, free. Then I placed my other hand on her thigh.

Her breathing changed. A short gasp, barely audible, went straight to my pussy.

***

I couldn’t say when I stopped watching the movie. Maybe it was when her fingers began drawing little circles over the fabric of my dress. Maybe when mine moved upward, millimeter by millimeter, until they found the edge of her skirt. My hand slipped underneath. Her skin was hot and soft, and when I brushed it with my fingertips, I felt her contract for a second, as if holding her breath.

I moved higher. Slowly. Watching the screen. Pretending that the conversation between two characters in a Korean kitchen was the most interesting thing in the world. I brushed the inside of her thigh with my knuckles, higher and higher, until I felt the wet heat coming from between her legs even through the fabric. I reached the edge of her panties. There I stopped, waiting for her to give me a sign. With my fingertip, I traced the line of the elastic against her groin. She trembled.

Renata parted her legs slightly. Just a little. Enough for me to understand that I could continue.

Meanwhile, her fingers had found my bare thigh and were moving upward along the inside, with that same calculated calm. When they reached my crotch over my dress, she pressed lightly, just enough to make me press my lips together and feel my panties stick to my soaked pussy.

—Here? —she whispered without looking at me, her mouth almost brushing my ear.

—Here —I answered, my voice trembling.

I started over the fabric. I traced her shape with my fingers, feeling the heat through the cotton, the moisture already beginning to show in a dark stain that grew with every stroke. She shifted a millimeter forward in her seat, giving me more room, and I took advantage of it, slipping my middle finger between her legs over her panties and pressing her clitoris through the fabric. A silent gasp escaped her. I moved the fabric aside with two fingers and found her already drenched, so wet that I felt the thread of moisture running down toward her asshole.

My fingers slid over her folds with an ease that surprised me. She was open, swollen, her pussy lips thick and hot. I began at the top, over her clitoris, making slow circles and feeling my fingertip glide through her own juices. She bit the inside of her cheek. I caught it out of the corner of my eye and almost laughed from the sheer tension that had built up. I lowered my fingers to her entrance, barely brushed it, and went back up to her clitoris, pressing a little harder this time. Renata let her head fall back against the seat and spread her legs farther.

Her hand, meanwhile, had found its way beneath my dress. She pulled my panties aside with a single sideways tug, with a skill that gave away the fact that she had done this before—in other cinemas, with other women, in other lives. Her fingers ran over my pussy from top to bottom, gathering my wetness and spreading it everywhere, soaking my clitoris, my groin, the slit all the way to my ass, until I was one single exposed nerve. She pinched my clitoris between her index finger and thumb with calculated gentleness, and I felt my feet curl inside my shoes.

The guy alone in the center laughed at something. We both froze for a second, our fingers still in place but not withdrawing, as if the scene on the screen had stolen our attention. It hadn’t stolen anything. I had her spread open against my hand, and she had me spread open against hers, and we were both holding our breath in case the guy turned around. He didn’t. When I confirmed that no one was looking at us, I started moving again, faster.

Renata pushed one finger inside my pussy. Just one, all the way in, without warning. I bit the sleeve of my sweater to keep quiet. I felt her finger settle inside me, felt my walls tighten around it reflexively, felt her draw it out slowly and push it back in, this time with two fingers. The cinema filled for a moment with the sound of a sad piano, and I silently thanked that South Korean director whose name I would never remember for choosing a soundtrack that covered the wet noise of her fingers sliding in and out of my pussy.

I pushed two fingers inside her at once. She clutched my wrist for a second, as if she wanted to stop me, but then relaxed and pushed my hand farther in, asking for more. I began moving them slowly, curling them inward, searching for that spot that takes time to appear and, when it does, can’t be mistaken for anything else. I found it on the third thrust. I knew because she tilted her head toward me and buried it in my shoulder, because her nails dug into the fabric of my dress at my hip, and because her pussy began squeezing my fingers in short, rhythmic contractions.

—Don’t stop, fuck, don’t stop —she said into my ear without a voice, just hot air against my neck.

I didn’t stop. I added a third finger. She opened her mouth against my shoulder so she wouldn’t scream, and I felt her bite through the fabric. I brushed her clitoris with my thumb every time I pushed my fingers in to the knuckles. Fuck me, fuck me like that, faster, she was saying without saying it, with the rhythm of her hips pushing against my hand.

***

What came next was a blind choreography. Each of us trying to concentrate on the other without losing control of herself. I asked her with my eyes to ease up, to go slower, because I was about to moan in a movie theater and that wouldn’t look good in any version of my biography. She obeyed, stroking my clitoris with soft, almost slow circles until the crest passed. Then I was the one speeding up, the one burying my fingers deep inside her, searching for that spot within and squeezing her clitoris from the outside with my thumb until she was the one begging with her eyes for me to stop for a second. We took turns, without agreeing to it, as if we had been fucking each other like this for years, in the dark, among strangers.

Renata brought her free hand to her own blouse, undid two buttons with one hand, and guided mine beneath her bra. I grabbed an entire breast, soft and hot, her nipple rock-hard against my palm. I pinched it. She had to bite her lips and draw her feet up so she wouldn’t cry out. I twisted her nipple again, more slowly, and felt her pussy suddenly clamp down on my fingers, as if her entire body had rushed ahead of her orgasm.

Renata came first. I felt it because her body went rigid beside me, because her hand closed around my wrist with a force she hadn’t shown in five whole dates, because her pussy clenched around my fingers in hard spasms, one after another, and because something warm and wet streamed over my wrist and soaked my forearm. She pressed her lips together, closed her eyes, and let out a sound—a muffled, guttural moan, the sound of a whore coming—that, between the cinema’s soundtrack and my own breathing, seemed to me the most intimate noise I had ever heard. I kept moving my fingers inside her throughout her orgasm, feeling each contraction grab my knuckles and pull them inward.

When she finished, I didn’t withdraw my fingers. I stayed inside her, feeling her relax in little waves, feeling her pussy pulse slowly around my fingers. And then she, still trembling, increased the pace inside me. Her fingers moved faster, never leaving my clitoris, with a thumb that knew exactly where and how much pressure to use. She drove two fingers deep into my pussy and curled them upward, and with the thumb of her other hand—because she had taken her hand off my breast to attend to me better—she worked my clitoris in quick, tight, unbearable circles.

I held out as long as I could. I felt the orgasm rising from the soles of my feet, my thighs tensing, my entire lower belly contracting. It hit me all at once. When I came, my face was buried in her neck, biting the fabric of her sweater so I wouldn’t moan at full volume, my legs taut as guitar strings, my feet braced against the cinema floor, my other hand gripping the edge of the seat with white knuckles. I felt myself come over her fingers, felt the hot gush soak her hand and run down her wrist just as it had happened to me. It lasted longer than I expected. Maybe ten seconds, maybe twenty, of contractions so strong they squeezed her fingers inside me and begged her not to move. When I returned to the theater, the characters in the movie were crying at a kitchen table, and I had no idea why.

***

We stayed still. Both of us breathing deeply, trying to return to a normal pulse. Renata slowly pulled her fingers from my pussy, brought her hand to her mouth, and licked her fingertips without pretending otherwise, one by one, watching me from the corner of her eye as she did it, her lips shining with my own wetness. I watched her, not daring to do the same at first, and let out a nervous laugh that nearly gave us away. Then, emboldened, I brought my own fingers, soaked with her, to my mouth and licked them clean, tasting salt and iron and woman, and she bit her lip from sheer arousal.

We cleaned up as best we could with the popcorn napkins. I saw the dark stain between Renata’s legs on her skirt, and felt mine soaked through against the seat, sticking to my thighs. We straightened our dress and skirt. We pulled up our soaked panties. When the movie had gone on another twenty minutes, she rested her head on my shoulder and I stroked her hair, pretending we were two ordinary girlfriends on an ordinary date, with the smell of pussy and sweat still clinging to our fingers.

We waited for the lights to come on. We waited for the older couple in the front row, the guy alone in the center, and the other three people to leave. When it was just us, we stood up. Renata’s seat was wet, with a shiny ring visible from a distance. I saw it and didn’t know whether I felt like laughing or hiding. We didn’t do anything about it, either.

We walked through the shopping-mall corridor without saying a word. The neon from the stores that were still open shone on our faces. She took my hand for a second when we stepped into the parking lot. She said nothing, and neither did I. It was the kind of silence that felt like a conversation.

She drove me home. She said goodbye with a long kiss by the car door, a hungry kiss with tongues, and her hand slipped beneath my dress again for a second, stroking my pussy over my soaked panties and pressing my clitoris through the fabric. She bit my lower lip, pulled away, smiled, and left. I went upstairs with my panties stuck to my pussy, took them off in the elevator, and finished myself with my hand twice more before falling asleep, thinking about how she tasted and how I had tasted in her mouth.

***

The next day we met for breakfast. I had slept terribly, replaying the night scene by scene, with a mixture of pride, vertigo, and a sadness I couldn’t explain. She arrived looking as though she hadn’t slept either.

—We need to talk about yesterday —she said before ordering coffee.

And we talked. We were both thinking the same thing, though neither of us had said it until then. That we had moved too fast. That we had skipped over the five dates before it with a single night at the cinema. That being turned on had clouded our judgment and there was nowhere for this to go, because she was moving away in three months and I wasn’t willing to start something only to watch it end.

It was hard for me to accept. Harder than I expected. While she spoke with the serenity of someone who had made the decision before sitting down, I discovered, in horror, that I had fallen in love after five dates and one session at the cinema. I nodded a lot, said almost nothing, and paid the bill so I wouldn’t have to keep looking into her eyes.

We saw each other twice more, as friends. The third time she didn’t show up, and I understood that it was over. I have nothing bad to say about her. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman, with that rare mixture of shyness and boldness that only women who have made a lot of mistakes learn. I hope she’s happy. Even if it isn’t with me.

Sometimes, when I walk past that cinema, I still think about the back row. About her fingers inside me. About mine inside her. About the taste of her pussy in my mouth and the sound of her orgasm muffled against my shoulder. And about the South Korean movie whose title I never bothered to learn.