Chapter 4: Lucia

This happened was when I was a grad student. I was in love with a woman in a foreign country, but for various reasons (I had limited financial means to go see her, she couldn’t afford to come to the US, and we’d never really established a solid physical relationship due to her hang-ups) that relationship was to some extent on “hold.” Nevertheless I had remained faithful to her for a year and a half as I tried to concentrate on my studies. Finally, I got a fellowship to go do field studies in the country in question — joy! I was pretty stressed out, though, in the last semester before I was to head over there. My “girlfriend” was sending mixed messages: sometimes she would talk about how excited she was that I was going to spend almost a year with her; other times, she’d tell me that she didn’t think I was actually going to end up coming. I tried to reassure her by joking that even if I didn’t want to go, I couldn’t avoid it as all the paperwork was done and I’d already withdrawn from classes for the next semester. That didn’t seem to reassure her. International telephone calls back then were expensive, so we didn’t talk that often. She didn’t have email access either — it wasn’t yet widely available outside of university computer science departments in her country. So we sent long handwritten letters back and forth, and I spent a lot of time trying to read between the lines that she wrote (it didn’t help that I was still learning the language). I knew I loved her and wanted to be with her, but I felt very uncertain about what I was going to find when I finally got over there.

In any case, the stress of trying to manage a very-long-distance relationship was compounded by a difficult semester. I was dealing with a number of bureaucratic and other challenges, which I won’t go into detail about, and the net result was that I was a nervous wreck as the semester dragged on. I was TA’ing a course, and I used to spend a lot of time with my co-TA, a quirky woman with a quick wit whom I’d never thought of as anything but a friend. I’ll call her “Lucia.” Lucia and I commiserated about the university bureaucracy, the grade-grubbing students, the indifferent professor, everything. I assumed she was lesbian, as were (it seemed) at least half of the female students in our department. Despite being in her mid-20s, like me, she looked like nothing so much as a young teenaged boy with a poor fashion sense. She was of medium height, slight of build, had untidily cut short brown hair, lots of freckles, and sparkling eyes and she had, so far as I could tell, no breasts at all. At least I’d never been able to discern anything under the loose sweatshirts that she always wore. It had never occurred to me to even think about her as a woman; it wasn’t that she was unattractive, but she just never acted like she had the slightest interest in the opposite sex. And of course my own heart was otherwise occupied (and she was, of course, aware of this).

As the semester dragged on, though, we bonded pretty deeply over grading tests and papers. One night I took her out to dinner at a nice place, just to celebrate the approaching light at the end of the tunnel — we had perhaps only the big term paper and the final exam to deal with. We had a very good dinner over candlelight, and at some point she took my hands over the table and held them for a while. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, especially as our conversation about school stuff continued uninterrupted the whole time; it was as if our hands had minds of their own. Afterwards we went over to the apartment she shared with a roommate to drink wine and continue talking. Lucia said she felt cold and went into her room and changed into pajamas, which I thought was kind of funny. They were pink and the bottoms had “feet” and honestly, they just reinforced my impression that she looked like a kid. I did my best not to be obvious about looking, but I still couldn’t make out any breasts under the pajama top. We sat on the couch and talked for a few more hours, and eventually I pointed out that it was late and I should probably get back home. She suggested, much to my shock, that I just stay and sleep in her bed. Her exact words were: “We can cuddle, but that’s all.” She was always very plain-spoken: not someone who would beat around the bush about what she wanted.

I wasn’t averse to the idea. I’d felt terribly starved of any kind of physical contact, sexual or otherwise, over the past year and a half and cuddling sounded quite nice. And holding hands with her at dinner, as out-of-the-blue and equivocal as it had been, had awoken a spark of interest in me. So I agreed. We went into the room and Lucia turned off the lights before she got into bed. I stripped to just my underwear and got under the covers next to her. She put her arm on me and I reached out and embraced her and we were off. The “cuddling” began with her rubbing my bare back and I reciprocated, massaging her over her pajama top. She said that it felt nice to cuddle and I agreed. Eventually, I ventured to put my hand under her top and rub her back directly; she didn’t seem to mind this. I moved my hands up and down between her waist and her shoulders. I remember her skin felt curiously loose, as if she’d lost a lot of weight at some point. (I still don’t know if that was the case.) She wasn’t wearing any sort of undershirt or bra under the pajamas and I really wanted to try touching her chest, but I held back.

I had an erection and, while I was doing my best not to press it against her, she was holding me close enough that she almost certainly could tell. For my part, I could sense she was getting sexually excited: I sensed a telltale musky odor mixing with the fabric-softener scent of her pajamas, and she was breathing a little more heavily than usual. Eventually I slipped my hand under her pajama bottom and touched her bare butt. She did the same thing to me, and I figured that the resolution to “cuddle, but thats all” was probably null and void at this point. I helped her out of the bottoms; she raised her butt to facilitate it, so I assumed she was OK with it. Her pale thighs and a thick bush were visible in the dim light. At least her genitals didn’t look like those of a teenage boy!

It was then that I messed up; I put my head down there and started kissing. I like cunnilingus, and women I’d been with generally had liked it, sometimes a lot, when I did it, so I figured it was a good way to get started. But after a minute or so of exploratory licking, Lucia said in an uncomfortable voice, “don’t do that, that’s dirty.” I was pretty shocked. I’d never heard an adult woman say that, and she wasn’t dirty - she smelled and tasted nice, salty and excited. But I stopped instantly and moved back up. The mood was broken, though, and while I tried to stimulate her with my hand instead, she moved it away and we simply resumed gentle cuddling and fell asleep.

The next morning we got up, a little on the late side, as if nothing had happened. Lucia’s roommate Tammy was sitting in the living room watching TV and looked not a little surprised to see me emerging from Lucia’s bedroom, but she didn’t say anything. Tammy was a rather obese woman with who was studying in a different department. She and I had never had much to talk about on the other occasions I’d been over (just for dinner) earlier in the semester; she seemed a little odd to me. She spent a lot of time in her room on the phone, and when she was out and about she was always complaining about some man or another rejecting her. I’d noticed she always tended to wear rather skimpy clothing around the house. She had a nice face, but it was rather hard for me to see beyond her not-very-interesting personality and her huge body. She’d wear way-too-short shorts and tops that left nothing to the imagination, exposing her belly fat rolls and the tops of, proportionally speaking, relatively small breasts. I could see through the fabric that she had big brown areolae and large nipples.

That morning we ate breakfast and I took my leave, but a few days later, on a Saturday, I found myself over at Lucia’s again. We sat up on the bed in her room and eventually she asked me, quite straightforwardly, if I would massage her back. I agreed and suggested, just as straightforwardly — why beat around the bush? — that she take off her sweatshirt. She pulled it off and, as she had nothing on underneath, I was — just like that — looking at her naked chest for the first time. I am not exaggerating when I say she had the smallest breasts I have every seen on an adult woman. They were barely more than the buds you see on a girl in the first stages of puberty. They weren’t really breasts at all, properly speaking; just large nipples with a little swelling around them. And her skin was loose — even though she was quite skinny, she had little rolls in her belly — much nicer than Tammy’s of course, but it was kind of unexpected.

I got behind her and began massaging her shoulders and back. She made contented noises, and I let the noises guide me as to what felt best for her. Eventually I started venturing around the front. I touched her belly, but when that didn’t elicit any real reaction I moved my hands up until they were cupping her “breasts.” I stroked them and circled the nipples with my fingers. I could feel them stiffening and Lucia was quite obviously enjoying being touched like this; she leaned back onto me, with her head almost touching my shoulder; her eyes were closed and she was murmuring “mmmm ... mmmmm...” I kept doing that, uncertain how to proceed — she was still wearing jeans. Eventually she said “I’m getting hot” — I wasn’t sure if she meant sexually or temperature-wise. She unzipped and pulled off her jeans, then leaned back against me wearing only panties. I took that as an invitation and slowly, teasingly, put my right hand down on her mons pubis, massaging it gently. She spread her legs a little and I touched her over her panties. I could feel her bush through the fabric. I continued to fondle her breasts with my left hand, and slipped my right under the waistband of her panties. She was wet down there and I could faintly smell her excitement. I found her clitoris with my index finger and carefully stroked it, trying to gauge how sensitive she was. It didn’t seem to bother her too much so I increased the pressure and frequency. We went on like that for what seemed like an eternity; my hands were getting a little tired! But I could tell she was getting there; her breathing was becoming shallower and shallower and her chest was getting a little red. I was concentrating so hard on stimulating her that I wasn’t erect myself, but I was definitely aroused by the sights, sounds, scents and feeling, especially her uniquely tiny breasts.

Eventually she had a very obvious, but mostly silent orgasm, she shuddered hard and pressed her thighs together, trapping my finger; when it was over she pulled my hands away from her genitals and breasts and put her clothes back on. I had, it’s worth noting, not even undressed. She showed no sign of wanting to do anything more, and eventually I just rolled with it. We resumed our conversation almost as if nothing had happened. Later I took a shower in her bathroom and brought myself to a quick orgasm to relieve the frustration I felt.

A couple of days later Lucia invited me over for dinner. I brought a liter bottle of cheap wine, and she cooked a simple but tasty meal for me and Tammy. Afterwards — we’d consumed the whole bottle between the three of us — we sat down to watch some TV. Lucia and I were sitting on the couch and Tammy was in the big recliner chair she occupied exclusively. At some point Lucia and I began to — there’s no better word for it — make out on the couch. I swear we were like two horny and inexperienced teens. All my “experience” was out the window at this point as Lucia had made it clear she didn’t like me going down on her and evidently wasn’t all that interested in penetration either. And as for Lucia’s experience, I had a strong suspicion that I was her first real sexual partner. This evening we had begun by holding hands, then had kissed a bit, and then she simply stood up and planted herself in front of me on the couch; I spread my legs so that she could lean back onto me. I could see that Tammy was watching us with evident interest; in fact no one was really watching the TV any more.

I expected Lucia, with all her hangups would quickly want to stop or at least retire to her bedroom to continue in private, but to my astonishment she didn’t seem to be at all shy about being touched in front of her roommate. It’s true that her eyes were closed again, as she leaned her head back on to my shoulder, but surely she hadn’t forgotten that Tammy was there? As I slipped my hands under Lucia’s blouse and touched her belly, my eyes met Tammy’s. She had a kind of crooked smile, as if she were encouraging me to see how far I could take it. I started to touch Lucia’s nipples and she made the same “mmmm ... mmmmm...” noises as she had before. At this point there wasn’t really any plausible deniability about what we were doing; I was feeling Lucia up, and she was wallowing in the pleasure of it, right in front of Tammy. Lucia’s blouse was cramping my style a bit and I really wanted to lift it off her, but I was certain that would end the fun; there was no way that Lucia would allow herself to be exposed like that. But Tammy kind of seized the moment. In a no-nonsense voice, she said “You kids should take some of that off, it’s getting hot in here!” I’ll note here that Tammy couldn’t have been more than a few years older than we were, perhaps in her late 20’s where we were 23 or 24; I think she just liked talking to us that way.