I am not going to describe in narcissistic detail what I look like, the size of my breasts, the colour and/or length of my hair, and all the other rubbish that the usual so-called “erotica” online is usually filled with. You can imagine whatever you want from these basic details:

I’m in my late thirties, moderately plump, and of medium height. I am single, bisexual, of mixed race, have a college degree, and work as an office manager. I love reading, goldfish, hard rock, and walking in the mountains. That’s all you need to know; my country, city, politics, bank balance, phone number, bra size, and other details are of no consequence and none of your business.

Right. Shall we begin?

**************************************************************************************************************

As I said, I’m single; I’m single by choice, because I can only tolerate people in small doses, and I’ve enough of them in the office without having to share my personal life with them as well. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have sexual needs; I have those, all right. In fact, I have a fairly strong sex drive, which I’ll be the first to admit sits oddly with my general misanthropy. However, after all the stress of work, I don’t usually have the inclination or energy to go looking for someone to sleep with. Not on working days, anyway.

My favourite time of day is the late evening. I drive home from work – I live in a fifth storey flat in a residential building – park in the downstairs car parking, where like all the residents I have a reserved place – and take the lift up to my flat. As soon as I’m inside, almost before I lock the door behind me, I take off my shoes, sighing with relief at having them off my feet after nine or ten hours. I start stripping off my clothes, piling them on the nearest chair as I get naked. I’m not a slob; I’ll put them away later. I just need to get showered before I do anything else.

Later, after I’m clean, I change into my favourite evening wear, an oversized T shirt without a bra and loose shorts, without panties except when I’m menstruating. Unlike the usual women in erotica, I’m a real person, so, yes, I do bleed from my vagina every month, strange as it may seem to some people. I feed the goldfish (they’re Shubunkins, in case you want to know, and, no, I do not keep them in a bowl. I have a large moulded aquarium with an inbuilt top filter, a tank heater and thermometer). I’m not much of a cook, and since I usually only ever cook for myself I don’t see the point of attempting anything fancy, so I make whatever I want and eat it directly in the kitchen, right out of the frying pan. And then, after washing up, the evening’s mine, to rest and do whatever else I want to do.

Can you understand now why evenings are my favourite part of the day?

I don’t watch television. In fact I don’t even have a television any longer. I got rid of it long ago on the grounds that I have better things to do with my mind than jam it full of consumerist propaganda tailored to the lowest common denominator. Instead, I usually read – a real book, paper and print; believe it or not, they still exist – until I’m ready for bed. I said to bed. Not necessarily to sleep.

I have slept naked, from my college days. This was a habit that was inadvertently instilled in me by my mum, who was a control freak and attempted to regulate every bit of my life. She wore nightdresses that reminded me of Mother Hubbard gowns, and insisted on my doing the same while I was still living at home, until I had become so totally used to them that I thought that they were in the normal manner of things.

Then I went to college, where I had a room in the student dormitory. And, of course, I had a roommate.

I will call her Mila. She was tall and pale and sophisticated, with aquiline features and eyes that seemed to look down at you from Olympian heights. Her clothes were inexpensive to look at, and if you saw them hanging from a hook – or tossed over the back of a chair – you wouldn’t have spared them a second look. But once she put them on, they somehow moulded themselves to her, like the clothes of a princess to the manner born.

I’ll admit it – I took one look at her and fell into a crush.

I still remember that first night in the dorm room. Mila had been watching as I unpacked my things – she had moved in several days before, and all her stuff was already stowed away – and casually asking me some questions about my past and interests. At last she shook her head sorrowfully.

“You poor thing,” she said.

I was surprised enough not to be offended. “What do you mean?”

“I just said what I meant. You poor thing. You haven’t really had much of a life, have you?”

I opened my mouth to answer – what, I still don’t know – when I stopped to think about it. I remembered my school, which I hated; the teachers who had no sympathy for a girl who preferred imagination to dry facts, the classmates who disliked her because she preferred books to films and gossip. I remembered the stifling atmosphere of home, where I was always made to feel as though every moment was a lapsed duty to my mother, a wasted moment when I should have been doing something for her.

My father? I never knew him. He died in a car accident on the highway while my mother was seven months pregnant with me. She never forgave him for it, and, because he wasn’t around for her to blame, she took it out on me.

“That’s what I mean,” Mila said, as though she could read my mind, could see through my eyes the dry parade of the years. “You’re repressed.”

“Maybe,” I replied, putting away the last of my clothes. I didn’t think it the right moment to mention that, repressed or not, I’d managed to earn a full scholarship to this college. Later I was glad that I’d held my tongue, for Mila, despite her high-and-mighty airs that first evening, was, as I was to discover, herself a superb student and helpful besides. “Well, I’m here now.”

“Yeah.” Mila grinned. “It’s college, you know. You don’t really have to still live as you used to. You can let yourself be you.”

I didn’t really understand what she was talking about until later that night, when we were about to go to bed. I was about to retire to the bathroom with my Mother Hubbard nightgown to change when Mila, without a word, began to strip right in the room, in front of me. Within moments, she was totally naked.

“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.

One day, about two months after my arrival in the college, there was a storm. It had been oppressively, airlessly hot all day, with a peculiar yellow sheen in the sky. By late afternoon towers of black clouds were marching across from the south west, driven by a sweeping wind that whirled dust and dead leaves before it.

“It’s going to be bad tonight,” one of my classmates said. “Better cancel any plans you have for this evening and stay indoors.”

I hadn’t any plans for the evening; I never did. Still, I found myself hurrying back to the dorm after the last class, hunched over with my books held protectively against my breasts, the wind at my back pushing me along. Lightning flickered constantly in the distance and the thunder was like a god’s grumbling.

Mila was already back when I entered the room. She looked up from taking off her socks. “I was getting a bit worried about you,” she said. “Wouldn’t want you to be caught out there, not in what’s coming.”

Before I could reply, there was a terrific crash overhead. It wasn’t like thunder I’d ever heard. It was as though the sky was being broken apart by a giant with a mallet.

I think I exclaimed. I know I winced and clapped my hands over my ears.

Mila grinned. “Not used to the storms in these parts, are you? This is just the start.”

“Just the start? What do you mean?”

As though in reply, there was another terrific explosion of thunder, and the lights flickered. “I got food,” Mila said, pointing to a large brown paper packet on the little side table. “And a couple of beers as well. We aren’t going out again tonight.”

The food – I can still taste it – was cheap, greasy Chinese takeout, the beer beginning to lose its chill, but good and bitter; but it was cosy in the room, and the two of us sat side by side on my bed, eating and drinking. Mila joked throughout, but I was mostly silent. By now the wind was slashing rain across the window and the thunder was continuous and so loud I fancied I could feel the walls shake, and maybe she thought that was what I was silent about. But it wasn’t that. I was acutely conscious of her shoulder pressed against mine, the slide of her forearm over mine as she reached for a bottle, and when her bare toes brushed my shin I felt a shiver like an electric shock through my body.

“It’s going to go on like this all night, and more likely than not tomorrow,” Mila said. “Lucky it’s the weekend, isn’t it? We can sleep in late if we want to.”

“You’ll have things to do,” I mumbled around a mouthful of Hakka noodles. “Friends to see, places to go.”

“Nowhere,” she said. “I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that we’ll be sleeping in late tomorrow.” Before I could ask what she meant by that, she got up and fetched a small bright orange box from her table and put it on the bed. It was an emergency light. “We’d better keep this ready,” she said cheerfully.

“Do you think we’ll need it?” I took one more swig from my beer bottle, belched suddenly, and giggled.

“There, look. She can laugh!” Mila grinned. “Do you know, Juliana, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you do anything more than smile? You should do it more, you look delightful.” At that moment there was an especially loud bang of thunder that I swear made the beer bottles rattle on the table, and the lights went out.

“What did I tell you? One sec.” I heard her move around and the emergency light came on, a wan white blur in the darkness. “No study tonight, not with this thing for light. You can barely make out the books. Oh, well, we need a break anyway. Or at least I do.”

I did too, and the unaccustomed taste of the beer – it was only the third or fourth time ever that I’d drunk some – was making me feel a bit discombobulated. I actually thought of that word, discombobulated, and giggled again.

“We should have more blackouts, if it’s going to make you laugh.” Mila stripped off her clothes, which she did totally unself-consciously as usual, and dropped them over the back of a chair. “Might as well get ready for bed, I suppose.”

Silently, I began to take off my clothes. Despite the storm now raging in full fury outside the windows, I was feeling hot, and, after taking off my bra, I went to the window in the hope that wind leaking around the edges of the straining panes would cool my breasts. In the darkness, and since our room was on the second floor, I had no fear of being seen.

The thunder was louder than ever, masking the sound of Mila’s bare feet as she came up behind me. I didn’t realise she was there until her breath tickled my ear. “It’s so loud,” she said. “You won’t have to hold your breath and stifle your moans when you finger yourself tonight.”

I felt as though my heart had stopped. “Huh?” I managed eventually.

“Oh, Juliana.” She put a hand on my shoulder and swung me around. “Did you really imagine I couldn’t hear you masturbate every night? It’s only a small room, you know.”

I could feel my face grow burning hot. “I didn’t mean…”

“Of course you did.” She smiled, and her finger traced the line of my jaw. “Why, look, she’s blushing! Did you really imagine that it was something to be ashamed of, or that I wasn’t doing it as well?”

“You were?”

“There isn’t an echo in here, is there?” Mila’s finger was still stroking my face. “Poor dear Juliana, you really need to be helped to set yourself free, don’t you? I should have known when I saw that nightgown.”

“Well,” I said, made suddenly bold by the beer, “what do you want me to do?”

She smiled slowly. “Let’s see.” Her hands moved from my face to my shoulders. “Tell me what you think about when you masturbate.”

“Well, you know…”

“No, I don’t know. I want you to tell me.”

Perhaps I should have said something different, but the beer was still at work. “You.”

“Nice and honest. I like it.” She was still holding me by the shoulders. “Do you want to know what I think about?”

“What?” I whispered. My throat felt dry. I thought she was about to tell me about all the boyfriends she’d undoubtedly had sex with, that she probably slept with the occasional night she spent away from the dorm. “What do you think about?”

She bit her lip and glanced down at my breasts. “Umm…I think about how beautiful those two are. And I think about how you’ve seen my vagina every night, but I’m yet to see yours.”

My voice was a squeak. “You think they’re beautiful?”

“Of course they are. Kissable. As is your mouth.” She leaned forward and I felt her lips on mine. Her tongue pressed into my mouth, sending electric shocks coursing up to the roots of my hair and down to the tips of my toes. “Kiss me.”

I kissed her. I was sloppy, like a young girl with her first crush, but Mila didn’t seem to mind. Her hands, sliding off my shoulders, found my breasts. She cupped them, stroking my nipples. We kissed again.

“Let me kiss these now,” she said, sitting down at the foot of my bed and drawing me by the hand to stand before her. Her tongue, like a clever little animal, crawled and slipped down the bulge of my left breast and circled my areola. I stood like a statue, literally unable to move, as she licked under the swell of the breast, moved across my sternum, before doing the same to the other breast. I could barely make myself breathe as her tongue licked over my right areola before her mouth settled, at last, on my nipple.

I wish I could describe to you exactly how it felt when she sucked on my nipple. It wasn’t the first time ever that I had had my breasts kissed, and I’ve had many lovers, both men and women, who have kissed them since then, and some of them were undoubtedly more expert and sophisticated by far than Mila. But not one of them made me feel the thrill that she felt at that moment as she licked, sucked, and finally gently nibbled on my nipple. Then her head moved across my chest and she did it again.

I think I almost fainted in the sensations washing over me. I found myself with my head thrown back as far as it would go, my hands clenched in her hair, while she supported me with one arm across the small of my back. My mouth was open and I was crying out, little moans lost among the crash of thunder and the howling of wind-driven rain.

“They taste wonderful,” she said at last, when I had managed to collect myself a little. “I’ll bet the rest of you does, too.” Her mouth moved down my belly in little butterfly kisses, before circling and settling on my navel. I felt her tongue poke into it, which made me wriggle. “Now,” she said, her fingers hooked into the waistband of my panties, which were soaked with a mix of sweat and my juices. “We have an obstacle here. What shall we do with it?”

“Take it off,” I said. The thunder had suddenly stopped for a moment, and my voice sounded very loud, startling myself. “Take it off, please.”

“Are you sure?” She pulled the waistband a little further, then let it go, and then pulled it again. “Are you certain? I’ll see her, you know.”

“Her?”

“Her. Your vagina. You’re sure you want to let me see her, after keeping her hidden for so long?” She bent forward and drew a deep breath. “She smells wonderful. No wonder you keep her hidden. So.” She looked up at me, her eyes full of mischief. “Shall I, or shall I not, take this off?”

I felt my hips moving, as though that could possibly shake the damp panties off my body. “Take it off!” I repeated. “Please take it off.”

She did so with excruciating slowness. Her hands moved around me, slipping under the panties to cup my bottom, and then eased the back down. Sliding back along my sides, she eased the fabric away, all the while looking up into my eyes. Last of all she came back to the front and slowly lowered the garment off me, the last of it sticking to my wet membranes until peeled away like the skin of some exotic fruit.

Ever since then, one of the high points of having sex for me is having my lover take off my panties the first time we make love. The slower and more sensual he or she is, the better the sex is afterwards. The act of letting my lover see my vulva for the first time is itself intensely erotic for me. And all this began on that evening with Mila, in the room lit only by an emergency lamp while the rain and wind lashed about outside and the thunder cracked the sky.

Mila didn’t actually look at my vulva at first. She slid the panties down my thighs, still slowly and sensually over my knees and down my shins, lifting one foot and then the other to ease it off, her fingernail sliding deliciously down the length of each sole, just enough to curl my toes with the tickle. Then she kissed my knees, quick kisses on one knee and then the other, her kisses trailing up my thighs, left-thigh-right-thigh-left-thigh, before at last arriving at my groin.

“Why, Juliana,” she said. “Why did you keep her covered up? She’s beautiful!”

Now, I’ve seen my vulva many times – in the mirror and in photos taken by lovers, in an illustration by an artist (about which I’ll talk some other time) as well as simply bending over and taking a look – and there’s nothing special about it. It was, at that moment, even further from special, because it was covered by a heavy fuzz of pubic hair. At that time – the turn of the century – waxing or shaving one’s pubic hair wasn’t as common as it is now; Mila was the first girl I’d ever seen with hers totally removed. So, no, my vulva wasn’t beautiful. But she said it in such a way that I believed it.

“She’s so beautiful,” she went on. “I’ll bet she tastes as good as she looks.” Darting forward her head like a sparrow, she planted a kiss on my labia. Her tongue, that clever little animal, played up and down my cleft, from the top to the point where it turned away between my thighs. I shivered and moaned.

“That feels good, doesn’t it?” Mila said. “It’s going to feel much better. Here, lie back on the bed.”

I no longer had any willpower of my own. I lay back on the bed.

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered. The thunder had again receded, and my whisper sounded very loud. “I’ve never had sex with a woman before.”

“You don’t have to do a thing. Just let me do whatever I want to do to you, and enjoy it.” I felt her hands on my thighs, insistently pressing my legs apart, until my vulva was entirely exposed. Her fingers spread open my outer labia, and I felt myself open like a flower. I had never felt so naked.

“I won’t hurt you,” she said.

And she didn’t. I felt her spit a few drops of saliva on my vulva, and then she began to lick up and down my cleft, from just below my clitoris to where it ended at my perineum. I moaned and wriggled and lifted my hips in a desperate bid to get my clitoris to the tip of that clever, clever tongue.

“Not yet, my darling,” Mila stopped licking long enough to say. “Have patience.”

Patience? My fingers were clutching the sheets as frantically as though they would tear through the fabric, my head thrown back and my eyes clenched tight. I felt her lift my legs over her shoulders as she began kissing again, all over my inner thighs, and then she licked, licked over my outer labia and my perineum before her tongue dipped – just dipped – into my vagina and out again.

And then it happened, her tongue brushing my clitoris, flitting lightly over the tip of it and back again. An electric shock seemed to go through my entire body, from the joining place of my legs to every part of me. I cried out aloud, sure that this couldn’t last. But she flicked her tongue across my clit, and the shock of pleasure came again, and again, and again.

I could feel my entire pelvic region tense up, building up to a climax, like a great wave approaching from the sea. I could feel my uterus clenching, my vagina and my perineal muscles tightening. The wave built and built, towering until it touched the sky, and then it broke in a crashing orgasm so intense that I was thrashing all over the bed and crying out in ecstasy.

And yet Mila was not done. I felt her fingers sliding into my vagina just as her tongue again found my clitoris. Again the wave was building out to sea, rushing upon my body where it waited, spreadeagled, on the beach, a naked little young woman, helpless and awaiting her fate. And again it happened, and again.

I had long since lost count of the orgasms I’d had before Mila finally got up from between my legs, slid up my sweat-soaked body, and kissed me on the mouth. I could taste and smell myself on her lips and tongue.

“You were great,” she murmured. “It felt great to be giving you such pleasure.”

“I…I want to do it to you,” I said. “Show me what to do.”

So she did. In the years since then I’ve probably had sex with fifty women, and I’ve done a lot of things that I never did with Mila the whole while we were together. But if none of the women I’ve fucked had any reason to complain about my performance in bed, it was due to Mila.

I still remember her smooth, hairless vulva, the inner labia demurely folded within the thick bulge of her outer lips, and how she unfolded like a bud as my fingers spread her apart. I remember her gasp of pleasure as my fumbling tongue found her clit. I remember how her vagina felt to my finger, the ridged moistness of it clenching down as her perineal muscles spasmed. And most of all – oh, most of all! – I remember how she bucked and twisted as she orgasmed, and in the throes of ecstasy, how she cried out my name.

Later I would be introduced to more things by Mila. I would be taught to bring her to orgasm on my knee. I will perhaps tell another time of that, or of how she initiated me to tribadism, how our vaginal lips kissed and slipped and rubbed each other as our mouths had, until we both came together, shuddering and clutching at each other’s legs. But that first night, that first night, was the most magical of all, and will remain forever etched in my memory.

Afterwards we lay tangled together in bed, our naked limbs twined, our exhausted bodies pressed together, listening to the rain outside. “You won’t need to sleep in your panties again,” Mila said.

“I won’t,” I replied.

“Ever again?” she asked. “Really?”

“Ever again,” I said.

And I never have, except those few days every month when my uterine lining strips off and bleeds through my vagina.

“I have a feeling you mean it,” Mila said.

She was right about that, and about the other feeling she’d had as well.

We really did sleep late the next morning, just as she’d said.

*********************

So that’s the story of how I learnt to sleep naked. Next time I’ll talk about other things, if you want.

It’s all up to you.