I know what you're thinking. It was the time you took me to your parents' church. Or perhaps when you introduced me to my first big client. Or just the way you used to constantly bother me about smoking. Ha. Bitch, you wish I paid attention to all of your lectures, your ugly men in suits, and your Jesuses. But the way you changed my life had nothing to do with any of those things.
It was that weekend in Phoenix. The big convention where you were the keynote speaker, and I was your "niece." You spent half the plane ride down there talking about homophobia and the heteronormative behavior we would have to assume, how the men we met would either condemn or fetishize us if we didn’t, but the truth is, hiding was kind of hot back then.
We spent the first day listening to speeches in the big dining room with fake gold chandeliers, sneaking touches under the table, and exchanging looks. You had on a black dress with a slit, exposing your perfect calves, and I was wearing a youthful, knee-high, faux-velvet red thing. I spent the entirety of the second speech surreptitiously looking down your v-neck. At nineteen, being horribly oppressed by the patriarchy got me so wet.
When I looked at the program and saw that there were still three speakers to go, I knew I couldn't wait. I rocked forward in my chair, pressed my crotch against the hard wooden surface, spread my black boots apart so I could lean in close to you, and whispered, "I gotta pee."
Your eyes didn't move from the stage. "Then go pee."
I tilted my head so my hair would brush against your bare arm and make you shiver. "You know I can't use public bathrooms. Let's just go back to our room."
You gave me a sideways look. My squeamishness with public bathrooms had been the dictating factor in all our dates so far, forcing us to have short dinners and leave bars early. It was the reason I had worked freelance for so long; I could never pee in an office on a toilet where dozens of other people had rubbed their asses. It was just disgusting.
But you wanted to talk to the last speaker about a project, so we couldn't cut out early just because of my bladder.
"I'll take you to the bathroom," you said. "And we'll analyze you, overcome your phobia, and piss – in time to get back and meet Neil."
I doubted I could pee in the regular bathroom, but at that point, I would do anything for a change of scenery. So as the speaker finished and the crowd clapped, I followed you through the back doors of the dining room and to the women's restroom across the hall.
The facility was nice, by public bathroom standards, with a sitting area and a sparkling, clean floor. You led me into the handicapped stall, put a paper seat cover over the toilet, and said, "Go."
"You're watching?" I said as I lifted my dress. "Kinky."
"It is not," you said with a chuckle. You had grown up with three sisters, and you were probably constantly watching people pee. You probably pissed in packs.
I felt like gagging as I sat down on the toilet seat, but I stared at the skin on the inside of your elbow until the feeling passed. To my amazement, I did go. I cleaned myself off and stood up. "Want a turn?"
You eyed me curiously. "You're not wearing underwear."
I smiled. "I never do."
"You always do."
You were right. I had two dresser drawers full of sexy thongs, frilly panties, cotton underwear, cartoon-adorned boy shorts, sheer stockings, and shiny garters, and I loved to show them off. But sometimes a girl would get me going so hard that I didn't want there to be anything between us. You were one of those girls.
I stood on my toes and looked into your eyes. "I never do when I'm in love."
It wasn't the word I'd intended to say. I meant lust, or sex, or almost-love, or even let-me-move-in-my-rent-just-went-up. But I said “love,” and it was the first time I said it, and you looked shocked.
You were such a damn professional, even in the toilet. Every expression was subdued. A smile was a quirk at the side of your mouth, a shock was a slight raise of your eyebrows, an "I love you" was a paper seat-cover over a toilet.
You took a step closer to me and put your hands on my hips, forcing me to back against the metal stall divider. Before I could think about how many germs were living on that divider and throw up everywhere, your mouth was on my collarbone, licking and kissing, warm and wet.
"Ears, ears," I muttered, and you chuckled as you licked the curve of my ear and bit down on my earlobe.
"I know what you're thinking," I said through urgent gasps. "You're going to fuck me in the bathroom, and then some day, after you leave me, you're going to come back for another conference and have a nice memory of me every time you pee."
"Shhhh," you said, moving your mouth over mine.
Your hand slid between my legs, pushing my dress up over my thigh, exposing everything. I loved the look of my trimmed pubic hair in the harsh fluorescent lighting, a shade darker than the hair on my head, soft and curly from being free of panties all night. It was so wrong, to be naked in public from the waist down, and the bad-girl aspect of it all made me wet. I didn't know what you had in mind, but something was coming, and my pussy tingled, moist, bucking up toward your hand, wanting.
You ran your finger gently down the length of me, as if measuring the surface, and you whispered, "Open up," against my mouth. You dipped in right at my wet, hot center, coated your finger, and dragged it up, smearing my juices all along me.
"Oh, fuck," I moaned.
You moved your hand down and dipped again, getting your finger even wetter this time, sticky and soaked to the second knuckle. Then you brought it up, up, until you found my clit, hard and desperate for contact. I moaned loudly, and if anyone had come into the bathroom, there'd be no question as to what we were doing.
You rubbed it up and down, your touch just gentle enough to drive me crazy. I lifted my pelvis, but you pulled back, maintaining the maddeningly light pressure. Your wet finger rubbed a circle, and I choked out, "Please!"
You pulled your finger back, and I gasped out a sob at the loss, but in an instant you pushed inside me, deep and hard.
"More," I gasped, and you added your index finger. I pushed down against it, wanting more, wanting to get fucked hard, but you were much too patient. You dragged your fingers out, danced them on the edge of me, like playing a piano, then plunged them in again, this time adding a third finger.
"Oh fuck, please," I moaned, begging now, so close that the room was blurry – a watercolor of your dark skin and the white tile walls. You tilted your hand so the pad of your thumb was pressed against my clit as your fingers strummed the bundle of nerves inside me. I grabbed your wrist and bucked against your hand hard, until there was nothing in the world but your hand, my pussy, and an explosion of light behind my eyes. I scrambled to hold onto you, moaning so deep it sounded like crying, and you held me as I came down, leaving me panting and sticky against the probable alphabet of hepatitis on the wall behind me.
"Hey," I said, reaching out to caress your breast through your black silk dress.
"Later," you said, your sparkling eyes a promise.
That night changed my life. Not because you convinced Neil to send some work my way, which became my first big account. Not because later, wrapped in sweaty sheets in the dark, you whispered that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me. It's because now, a lifetime after we broke up, I use public bathrooms.
I work in the largest firm on the West Coast, with twenty-two stalls on each of the seventeen floors. And when I leave my corner office, lock myself in a stall, and close my eyes, I can still feel your lips on my chest and your hand between my legs. I lean my head against the wall and my whole body tingles, remembering you, how you touched me, how you loved me. The toilets are antique-style, with elevated, ivory-colored tanks. There are plastic seat covers instead of paper, and they dispose of themselves automatically. Instead of tile, the floors are a creamy beige marble, like all the ballrooms where we never danced. I close my eyes and remember moaning against your lips as you pushed inside me. And none of my employees say anything when they see me, this little old lady, strolling out of the bathroom, smiling and soaking wet.
Originally published August, 2008