The Hand I Knew by Touch

The fantasy began as a whisper in my mind during the long, hollow weeks after Marcus left. It wasn’t just about anonymous sex, though that was the spark. It was about the obliteration of self. A breakup, even an amicable one, leaves you with too much identity—the ghost of ‘us’ clinging to ‘me.’ I wanted to be stripped of that. To be nothing but a mouth, a set of hands, a wet, willing hole. No history, no future, no name. Just sensation. The glory hole rumor was a gift, a perfect, depraved solution to a loneliness so profound it felt like grief.

I discovered it by accident, the way most people probably do—through whispered rumors and half-joking suggestions that carried more weight than anyone admitted. The coffee shop bathroom downtown, supposedly. Third stall from the left. A hole drilled clean through the divider, just large enough for… well. You know.

I’d been circling the idea for a month before I worked up the nerve. Friday night, I told my roommate I was meeting friends for drinks. Instead, I drove downtown with my heart hammering against my ribs, wearing a skirt with no panties because the idea of being that exposed, that ready, made me dizzy with a power that felt like its opposite. The coffee shop was nearly empty—a barista wiping down counters, one guy absorbed in his laptop, the soft hiss of the espresso machine the only sound. I ordered tea I didn’t want, my voice surprisingly steady, and headed toward the back, where the single-stall bathrooms waited.

The third door had a handwritten "Out of Order" sign that looked permanent, the paper yellowed at the edges. My hand shook as I pushed it open. Inside, the space was cleaner than expected—white tiles, harsh fluorescent light humming overhead, the antiseptic smell of industrial cleaner barely masking something earthier beneath. And there it was: a smooth-edged hole at waist height, dark and promising, like the eye of a storm.

I locked the door and leaned against it, trying to steady my breathing. This was it. The moment I’d been touching myself to for weeks, the fantasy I’d constructed to fill the silence of my apartment. I could still leave. Should probably leave. The thrill was already a live wire in my veins, a dangerous, buzzing current. Instead, I sank to my knees on the cold tile, the position sending a fresh wave of heat between my legs. The tile was unforgiving, and I shifted, the rough texture biting into my skin, a sharp counterpoint to the soft, aching emptiness inside me.

Minutes passed. Maybe ten. Maybe twenty. Doubt began to creep in, cold and rational. This was insane. Degrading. What was I doing here? I was about to push myself up, my knees protesting, when I heard the outer door open. My blood froze, then surged. Footsteps—confident, unhurried—crossed the tiled floor. The squeak of the adjacent stall’s door. The definitive click of the lock.

My pulse went frantic, a drumbeat in my throat. Through the hole, I could see movement—dark denim, the shift of someone’s weight. Then nothing. Just waiting. The silence was thicker now, charged.

"Touch yourself." A voice, murmured through the wall. Male, low, confident. It wasn’t a question. "I want to hear how wet you are for this. For a hole in a wall."

The command, so specific to the circumstance, sent liquid heat flooding through me. I hadn’t expected words, hadn’t anticipated being seen even indirectly, being known in this way. But my hand moved under my skirt without permission, fingers sliding through slick folds. The sound was obscene in the quiet, clinical space—wet, intimate, impossible to misinterpret. I did it again, louder, letting him hear the evidence of my depravity.

"Good girl," the voice said, a note of approval that made my clit throb. "Now show me. Let me see what you’ve done."

I withdrew my hand, glistening in the cruel fluorescent light, and held it up to the hole. A finger emerged from the darkness to meet mine—long, masculine, with a distinctive, pale scar running diagonally across the knuckles.

My heart didn’t just stop; it plummeted into my stomach, a cold, heavy stone.

I knew that scar. Had traced its raised line with my tongue dozens of times, felt it scraping across the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, watched those fingers disappear inside me while blue eyes, crinkled at the corners, held mine with filthy promise. I knew the story behind it: a slipped knife while dicing onions for a meal he never finished cooking for me, the frantic trip to urgent care, my nervous chatter in the waiting room.

Marcus.

My ex-boyfriend’s hand was reaching through a glory hole for me, and I was on my knees with my own juices still coating my fingers. The world tilted, the white tiles of the stall swimming. A violent cocktail of emotions erupted—shock, yes, but hot on its heels was a surge of raw, inexplicable hurt. He was here. In this city. He hadn’t just transferred to Seattle; he was here, in this bathroom, seeking anonymous sex. The mutual sadness of our goodbye curdled into something bitter in my throat. And beneath that, warring with it, a treacherous, instantaneous flare of pure, undiluted want, so powerful it stole my breath.

I stared at that scar, a landmark of our intimacy, now a brand of betrayal. My body went rigid. I couldn’t move. I should yank my hand back. I should stand up, unlock the door, and run. I should pound on the divider and scream his name, shatter this filthy fantasy with the wreckage of our past.

"Put them in your mouth," Marcus said, his voice a low, commanding vibration through the wall. He didn’t know. He had no idea. "Suck them clean. Taste how eager you are."

The words hit me like a slap. He’d always been bossy in bed, but this was different—darker, impersonal, the kind of command you’d give a faceless body. A flash of anger, white-hot, joined the chaos. He was reducing someone—me—to this. And yet, my body, traitorous and steeped in memory, reacted. My lips parted. For a second, I hovered on the precipice of revelation or flight.

Then the anger melted, twisted by the surreal, devastating heat of the situation. He was here. He was here. The man I’d missed with an ache that lived in my bones was on the other side of this wall, his cock undoubtedly hard, his voice the same. The universe hadn’t just served him up; it had offered him to me in the exact, perverse scenario I’d craved. Anonymous. Faceless. Powerless.

The decision wasn’t rational. It was a gravitational pull. A surrender to a deeper, more complicated hunger than simple thrill. I wanted him. I wanted this version of him—the one who thought I was a stranger, the one who was free with his dirtiest commands. I wanted to take what I’d missed from the shadows, where no one, not even him, could see my face.

Slowly, deliberately, I brought my wet fingers to my lips and sucked them into my mouth, my eyes locked on his scarred knuckles. I tasted myself, salt-sweet, and the familiar, faint scent of his soap—sandalwood and cedar—wafted through the hole. I watched that hand disappear back into the darkness.

When it returned, it was holding something: a thick, perfect cock I knew as well as my own reflection. The pierced head, a silver barbell I’d chosen for him, the prominent vein that pulsed when he was close, the way it curved slightly to the left—I’d memorized every detail during our two years together. My mouth actually watered.

"Suck it," he commanded. "Slow. Use your tongue on the piercing. Show me you know what to do with it."

The order, tailored to the metal I’d gifted him, was a knife-twist of intimacy. I should have stopped this. Should have said something, revealed myself, run away. Instead, I leaned forward, the cold wall against my forehead, and took him into my mouth. The familiar weight and heat of him, the taste of clean skin and pre-come, the metal cool against my tongue—it was a homecoming in a house of ill repute. A sob threatened to rise in my throat; I swallowed it down, channeling it into the suction of my lips.

"That’s perfect," he groaned, his hips giving a slight, involuntary thrust. "Just like—"

He cut off, but I knew what he’d almost said. Just like her. Just like me. Because whoever was sucking him now was doing it exactly the way I had, with the same rhythm, the same attention to that sensitive spot just under the head, the same hollowing of my cheeks he loved. I’d trained this mouth on him, shaped its expertise to his preferences, and now I was anonymous pleasure on my knees in a public bathroom. The knowledge was a complex fire—humiliation, pride, a devastating sense of ownership.

"You have no idea who’s making you feel this good, do you?" he murmured, his voice thick. "All you know is this cock. That’s all you need to know."

His words, now perfectly aligned with the anonymity of the act, sent a fresh shock of arousal through me. He was playing the game, and I was playing it better, because my anonymity was a lie layered over profound knowledge. I took him deeper, relaxing my throat the way he’d spent months coaching me to do, feeling him nudge the back of my throat as my nose pressed against the rough paint of the wall.

"Fuck, your mouth," he breathed, a hand braced against the divider, making it tremble. "You’re going to make me come if you keep that up."

I pulled back just enough to speak, keeping my voice low, a husky parody of a stranger’s. "Not yet. I want to taste you, but not yet."

His hand came through the hole again, those scarred knuckles brushing my cheek with a tenderness that was at odds with the setting. "What do you want, then?"

"To be fucked," I whispered, the words leaving me in a rush. "Hard. Against this wall."

There was a pause, then the sound of him moving—the shuffle of feet, the jingle of a belt. The divider creaked as he tested its stability, pushing against it. "Stand up," he said. "Bend over. Show me what’s mine to use."

I rose on shaking legs, the blood rushing from my head. The physical logistics were awkward, real. My shoes scraped on the tile as I turned. I hiked my skirt up around my waist, the cheap fabric crumpling, and bent forward to grip the cold porcelain of the toilet seat. The position was obscene—completely vulnerable, totally anonymous. I couldn’t see him, could only hear his sharp intake of breath and feel the cool air on my exposed skin.

Then, two fingers entered me without warning, crooking upward to find my G-spot with a practiced, devastating precision that made my legs tremble.

"So wet for a stranger," he murmured, his voice right against the hole. The fingers scissored, stretching me. "You like not knowing who’s about to own this cunt? Who’s going to fill it up?"

I whimpered as he added a third finger, the stretch a perfect, familiar burn. The answer was a tangled knot—I loved the idea of not knowing, but I knew. I knew it was him, knew the specific callus on his middle finger, knew the way he’d always played my body like an instrument he’d mastered.

"Answer me," he demanded, fingers stilling inside me, a delicious threat.

"Yes," I gasped, pressing my forehead against the toilet seat. "I love not knowing. Love being used like this. Just a hole."

His fingers withdrew, leaving me empty and clenching at the air. They were replaced by the thick, blunt head of his cock, teasing my entrance, the piercing a cool promise against my heated flesh. "Good. Because I’m going to fuck you like the desperate, anonymous slut you are, and you’re going to take every inch and thank the wall for it."

He entered me in one smooth, deep thrust, filling me completely, the piercing dragging against my inner walls in a way that made my knees buckle and a choked cry tear from my throat. I’d forgotten—no, I’d made myself forget—how perfectly we fit together, how his size had always bordered on too much in the very best way, stretching me to a sweet, burning limit. He set a brutal pace immediately, his hips snapping against mine with a force that drove me into the toilet seat, the sound of skin meeting skin, of his body impacting the divider, echoing off the tiles like a frantic, secret music.

"Touch yourself," he ordered, his breath coming in harsh gusts. "I want to feel you come around my cock. Make a mess for me."

I reached between my legs, my fingers finding my swollen clit in sync with his thrusts. The angle was perfect—he was hitting that deep, tender spot with every plunge, the combination of internal fullness and external friction building a climax fast and hard, a storm gathering in my belly. I was already close, my body remembering its ancient, specific dialogue with his even as my mind reeled from the glorious, terrible fiction of our anonymity.

"That’s it," he encouraged, feeling the first flutters of my tightening around him. "Come for me, pretty stranger. Come on this anonymous cock. Let go for no one."

The dirty talk, so specifically crafted for the glory hole, was the final key. It shattered my last pretense of control. My orgasm crashed through me with a violence that stole my vision, turning the white stall into a blur of light. I bit down on my own arm to keep from screaming his name, the pain a sharp counterpoint to the waves of pleasure convulsing through me, my body clamping down on him in rhythmic pulses. He groaned, a raw, gut-deep sound, and followed immediately, burying himself to the hilt as he came in hot, urgent pulses that I felt in the deepest part of me, a claiming I’d thought I’d never feel again.

We stayed like that, frozen in the aftermath—him still sheathed inside me, me bent over and exposed, both of us breathing in ragged, syncopated gasps. The only sounds were our breathing and the distant, tinny music from the coffee shop. Then, slowly, he withdrew, the loss of him a profound, physical ache. I heard the soft rustle of his clothes, the click of his belt buckle.

For a long moment, there was only silence from the other side. Then, his voice, softer now, stripped of its commanding edge. "Thank you," he said. "That was… incredible."

I straightened slowly, my muscles protesting, suddenly hyper-aware of my state—mascara likely smudged, hair a tangled mess, his come already beginning to trace a warm path down my inner thigh. I leaned against the wall, my cheek against the cool surface near the hole. "Yeah," I managed, my voice hoarse but still disguised. "It was."

Another pause, heavier this time. I heard him shift his weight. "Can I… would you want to do this again? Same time next week?"

The question hung in the air, a fragile bridge between two worlds—the anonymous and the intimately known. I thought about his hands, his voice, the feel of him. I thought about the risk, the sheer insanity of continuing this. I thought about the alternative—walking away now, forever, with this as our final, bizarre epitaph. The loneliness that had driven me here yawned wide again. But it was different now. It had a shape. His shape.

"I’ll be here," I said finally, the decision settling in my bones. "Same time next week."

"Good," he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice, a familiar sound that made my chest hurt. "I’ll bring condoms next time." A beat. "And maybe… maybe we’ll talk a little more. Through the wall."

"Maybe," I echoed.

He left first. I heard the stall door open and close, his footsteps recede, the outer bathroom door sighing shut. I waited, counting my breaths in the sudden, stark silence. One minute. Five. The fluorescent light buzzed like an insect. From beyond the bathroom door, I heard the barista call out a name for a pick-up order, a mundane sound that made the last ten minutes feel like a hallucination.

Finally, I unlocked my door and stepped out, avoiding my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I went to the other sink, as far from my stall as possible, and turned on the cold water. I cleaned up with shaking hands, wet paper towels wiping away the physical evidence from my thighs, my stomach. I finger-combed my hair, reapplied lipstick from my purse with hands that wouldn’t quite steady. Only then did I let myself look in the mirror.

The woman who looked back was flushed, her eyes brilliantly alive, a faint redness on her cheek where the stubble on his knuckles had brushed her. She looked thoroughly, beautifully fucked. And she had been—by her ex-boyfriend, through a bathroom wall, while he whispered secrets to a stranger.

The scar on his hand—I’d noticed it our first night together, not from a cooking accident, but from a childhood fall from a tree he’d been too proud to cry about. I’d kissed it then, a silent promise to kiss all his old wounds. Now it was the thing that had given him away, the detail that had turned a fantasy of anonymity into a collision of past and present, a secret I now carried alone.

I drove home in a daze, the taste of him still a phantom memory on my tongue, the feel of his release a warm, fading ghost on my skin. Next Friday loomed, a dark star on the horizon. Maybe I’d wear the red lipstick he loved. Maybe, through that hole, I’d let a piece of myself slip—a turn of phrase, a laugh he might recognize. Maybe we’d keep building this impossible, parallel world until the wall between us, in every sense, became too thin to bear.

But for now, I had the memory of his hands, known only by touch in the dark. For now, that was enough.