“What’s wrong?” she asked me, raising those eyebrows like leaping gazelles. “Haven’t you ever seen someone naked before?”
I swallowed. “I…aren’t you going to put on something to sleep in?”
She laughed. “Of course not. I always sleep naked. You’d better get used to it.” Her eyes widened as she took in the object draped over my arm. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to sleep in that! It’s…it’s a bloody tent.”
“I’ve always slept in it,” I replied defensively.
She was staring at it with horrified fascination. “It would strangle me,” she said. “It’s an offence against human rights, that’s what it is. Do you really enjoy sleeping in it?”
“I always have.” It sounded silly even to my own ears the second time around.
“Well,” she said, sitting on her bed, leaning back on her elbows with her legs apart, “why don’t you try doing without it?”
It was one of those moments that change lives. To this day I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d merely turned towards the bathroom with the Mother Hubbard draped over my arm. Instead, I looked at her – really looked, for the first time since she had taken her clothes off.
She was amazingly, achingly beautiful.
Imagine her body, in the light of the one table lamp that was burning – like a marble statue, the light shining on the tops of her breasts, outlining the discs of her areolae, her nipples jutting like little bullets into the air. The plain of her belly, with the deep well of her navel a pit of shadow, more shadow covering the triangle between her slim, muscular thighs. She raised a hand, and her fingers were like birds flying through the night.
“We’ll be living together in this room, you know,” she said. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about if there is nothing left to hide.”
I looked at her for what seemed a very long time but must have been only twenty or thirty seconds. There was a metallic taste in my mouth and my heart was hammering. I could barely feel my lips moving, forming words.
“All right,” my mouth said.
I didn’t know until I’d said it that I was going to say it. I probably was going to say something like “Well, maybe sometime else,” and walk off to change into the Mother Hubbard in the tiny bathroom. But at that instant I had a mental image of my mum, and the look in her eyes that always proclaimed “I gave birth to you, so you’re my property, and you’ll do what I tell you.” Part of me suddenly decided I didn’t have to anymore.
My body – I can still remember it clearly – took over control from what remained of my conscious will. My arm straightened, and dropped the Mother Hubbard to the floor; I never wore it again, and a week later I threw it away. My hands went to the bottom of my T shirt, pulled it up and off my torso. My tracksuit bottom followed, and there I was in my bra and panties and nothing else. My very conventional, boring, white bra and panties, not that it mattered.
Mila watched it all with the faintest smile on her face. “You’re planning to keep those on?” she asked eventually.
“I’m…I’m not sure.”
“It’s fine, you know. I’m not asking you to do anything, Juliana. Do whatever makes you feel happy.” She swung her feet on her bed and turned to fluff up her pillow. In the lamplight her breasts gleamed like pearl.
I still don’t remember taking my bra off. My breasts were suddenly bare; for a moment I considered taking off my panties as well, but didn’t quite dare. Instead I raised my hands to my head, to tie up my hair.
I was conscious of Mila’s eyes on me. I didn’t quite dare look at her as I climbed into bed, pulled a sheet over me, and turned off the light.
There was a long silence. “Good night, Mila,” I said eventually.
“Good night.”
*********************
I don’t know whether she fell asleep at once. I certainly didn’t. I was acutely conscious of her lying just a few metres away, completely naked; unlike me, she hadn’t even drawn a sheet over herself. I could imagine those breasts of hers, rising and falling with every breath. I could even imagine the shadowed valley between those athletic thighs, open to the night. My heart was pounding, and I began to feel a tightness in my lower belly and between my own legs.
I was, of course, not all that innocent. I’d had sex (more about that another time) and I was familiar with masturbation. I had never before though been turned on at the thought of a naked woman, and I had never even thought of masturbating in the same room as someone else. The very thought would have been mortifying normally. But my hands were still outside the control of my mind; they slipped between my legs, rubbing the fabric of my panties, which were, to my surprise, soaking wet. One of my hands crawled under the waistband of the panties, through the rough patch of my pubic hair, and my fingers slipped into the damp moist valley there.
I’m sure I sighed. I may even have moaned softly, as my fingers got to work, slipping and sliding into the depths of my vagina in between emerging to touch my clitoris. They didn’t have the freedom of movement that would have been ideal, because of the panties, but there was nothing to be done about that; I didn’t dare raise my hips and legs to take them off in case Mila was awake and noticed. I was even terrified that my heavy breathing, and the soft sound of my fingers moving in and out of my vagina, would wake her. But I couldn’t make myself stop, even though my conscious mind wanted to. Finally, I came to a shuddering orgasm, and this time I’m sure I moaned. But there was no sound from the other bed, though I held my breath to listen; just the softest noise of breathing.
Eventually, I fell asleep.
*********************
The next few days went by in a whirl of settling in and starting classes. Outside our room I rarely saw Mila. We were in different classes, and she had, not surprisingly, a gaggle of friends, while I had none. But she never brought those friends back to our room.
Once, I asked her why.
She shrugged. “It’s our private space, yours and mine. I’m not interested in bringing anyone from outside into it. Besides, they’re only friends.”
I didn’t ask what I was supposed to be.
I got used to seeing her stripping naked every night, which she always did without the slightest bit of self-consciousness. After that first evening, I became used to taking off all my clothes in front of her as well, except for my panties. I kept them on, just as I did the sheet I pulled over me.
Often, in those nights, I would lie masturbating in the darkness, biting my lip to keep from moaning out loud at the darts of pleasure sparking out from between my legs. Finally, I would fall asleep, my limbs tangled in the sheets, my panties down around my knees, until in the small hours of the morning I would awake and pull them back up again.
I don’t really remember exactly what I was thinking of every one of those nights while my busy, busy fingers slipped in and out of my vagina and danced over my clitoris. I suppose I must have had some kind of fantasy playing in my head, but all I remember being conscious of is the naked young woman in the next bed, about the mounds of her breasts, the cleft between her thighs that she made no attempt to conceal, the soft sound of her breathing. I think I imagined what it might feel to be kissed by that red mouth of hers, how her lips might feel on mine. But I never thought it would really happen, oh no. That was just in the realm of fantasy.