Describing a sexual experience can be difficult and delicate in itself, but it’s even more challenging to go beyond that and show the ways in which individual sexual experiences can have a broader ripple effect – on the way you feel about yourself, your body, your relationship to others and the world. This week’s guest blog is about hearing audio porn for the first time, and touching yourself to something that feels truly intimate. But it’s also about so much more than that. Huge thanks to the author, YHD, whose writing absolutely took my breath away.
Touching yourself like you’re worth your own time
I was already half-sweaty before it started. The afternoon heat in Malang is its own kind of intimacy. You can’t escape it, you can only let it press on your skin until it feels like the city is “eating” you.
My hospital shift was over, my pale-green uniform still on, the name tag bent a little. I smelled like cleaning alcohol and my own tired breath. That smell, strange as it sounds, kept me real, not just some empty hand drifting through other people’s pain.
Sat at the bed’s edge, legs pulled in, thumb flicking the phone screen. There was an audio file someone had sent in a private group. They said it was “ethical audio porn.” I actually laughed at that. Ethical? Porn? In one sentence? But curiosity always beats my sarcasm, so I put on my earphones.
The voice started slow. A woman. Calm, confident, whispering things that weren’t even dirty yet, but I felt them anyway. She talked about how she wanted someone to listen with their whole body. And something inside me clicked. I had never realized how lonely it sounded, being spoken to like that, like a prayer but without the god part.
I touched myself, tentatively, because I still had that weird guilt shadow from years of being told that good women don’t do that. Which is hilarious because, come on, I work in a hospital. I’ve seen men faint from blood tests but act like sex is their battlefield.
Anyway, I started slow, matching the rhythm of her voice. My earphones slipped a little from sweat. I adjusted them and giggled, because the narrator said something about “losing control” at the exact second I almost lost an earbud. Timing like that deserves applause.
I started laughing. Not a fake one. Loud, rough, my body jolting with it. Hand squeezed tight between my thighs, face shoved into the pillow to kill the noise. It wasn’t funny, not really… it was absurd, true, and completely mine.
That laugh shifted something. Broke open a space in my head where shame had been curled up for years, just breathing slow. I remembered the last time I tried this. Four or five years back, right after marrying Fendy. The lights cut out halfway, and I actually felt like it was a sign. I literally said sorry to the ceiling.
The porn whisper curled into my ear, “You don’t need permission to feel good.” I breathed back, “Yeah. I know.”
Heat filled the room, thick air laced with lotion and a hint of jasmine. My phone buzzed. A text from a coworker: “Shift starts 5 tomorrow, ok?” I ignored it. I just pressed harder.
The woman’s breathing in my ears mixed with the sound of my own. It felt like I was two people then… the one listening and the one being heard. My legs started to shake, and I thought about all those patients I’d watched get better, yet they never really let themselves feel alive. How many of them had laughed mid-pain like I was laughing mid-orgasm? Probably none.
Then came the climax, and I nearly kicked the blanket off. No drama to it, nothing like the movies. My body jerked, unsure, unsteady. After, I started laughing… couldn’t stop. Belly ached from it. Lying there soaked in sweat, smiling like I’d cracked.
When my breath finally settled, I whispered, “Holy… crap…”
No reply, of course. But somehow, I felt answered. Maybe by myself.
Later, I found myself walking to the bathroom. I stopped and stood before the mirror, just looking. Face flushed, hair tangled. My reflection looked like someone I’d never seen but wanted to know.
I opened the cabinet, pulled out the old lube bottle Fendy bought before we married. Nearly dry, label cracking. Twisted the top off and sniffed. The smell rushed back… coconut, a hint of rubber, sharp and soft at once. Unexpected. Made my eyes burn.
Not sad, really. More like seeing an old part of me show up late. Like, oh. You’re still here.
Laughed again, softer now. “You’re absurd,” I told the mirror.
Then I remembered how the voice in the recording had said something about “touching yourself like you’re worth your own time.” I had always rushed through pleasure like it was a to-do list item between cooking rice and hanging laundry. But this time felt different. I wasn’t performing for anyone. I wasn’t hiding. I was listening.
When Fendy came home later that evening, I was in the kitchen making coffee. He asked why I looked flushed. I told him it was the stove heat. He smirked, kissed my neck, a little slap on my butt, said,
“You always pin it on the weather.”
I almost told him. Almost. But something in me decided to keep it. Not out of shame… more like… ownership. My small secret of laughter and sweat.
He sat, eyes on his phone, while I poured the cups. The scent hung thick, bitter and warm. I saw myself again in the kettle’s surface, bent and glossy. I grinned.
After he fell asleep, I put the earphones back. Same recording. Same voice. Only this time it felt closer, like someone whispering a shared joke.
Then it came… real and sudden: pleasure wasn’t something I had to earn. It wasn’t for being sweet, or calm, or beautiful. It was the proof that I existed beyond the uniform, beyond the tiredness, beyond what people thought a wife or a nurse should be.
I lay back, listening to the hum of Malang outside, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Then, before sleep took me, I laughed again. Softly. The same laugh that started it all. The kind that feels like forgiveness wearing a smile.