My Confession: I Sold Sex While I Was Dying Inside

I have a secret that only one person in the world knows, and I didn’t even tell them myself directly: they discovered it because of one of my careless mistakes.

It began during the final years of college. At the time, I had a girlfriend who—though I’ll change her name—was called Cristina. She was active, passionate, one of those people who live without visible brakes. We were together for almost two years, and with her I explored things I had never explored before in any sense. When we broke up, she told me she needed space, that things had reached a ceiling. I accepted it with more calm than I really felt. I told myself it was normal, that it would pass.

But it didn’t pass.

For the next few months I functioned on autopilot: classes, group projects, going out while putting on an expression that didn’t match what I felt inside. I stored the pain away somewhere I didn’t know how to open. That went on for three months.

Until that Friday night.

I went downtown with friends. The plan was to have dinner and end up at our usual bar. I ordered my first drink, and that was when I saw her: she was against the back wall, a guy’s hands around her waist and her mouth pressed to his. She looked completely happy. Not pretending, not halfway: completely. It was as if someone had shoved me inward from the center of my chest.

I didn’t think. I ordered another drink. Then another. I went out into the street without saying anything to anyone and walked without any clear destination. I reached an area downtown I knew about by hearsay: there was a gay bar on a side street, dimly lit, without a conspicuous sign. I went in because I didn’t care whether I was there or anywhere else. I ordered something at the bar and kept drinking.

I don’t really remember how the conversation began. A man in his early forties had been watching me from the other end of the bar for a while. He came over and asked whether I was alone. We talked about nothing for a while, and when he suggested going to his apartment, I said yes. Not because I wanted it. But because I needed something, anything, to fill the space she had left behind.

At the apartment, he didn’t waste any time. As soon as he closed the door, he shoved me against the wall in the entryway and thrust his tongue into my mouth, the taste of whisky and tobacco churning my stomach before we had even started. He unzipped my pants right there, pulled out my cock, and began jerking me off with one thick, rough hand while whispering in my ear about what he was going to do to me. I stared at the ceiling over his shoulder. He knelt down and took my dick into his mouth in one sudden movement, all the way to the back of his throat, sucking with a wet noise that echoed off the empty hallway walls. I got hard almost against my will, and he smiled when he noticed. He led me to the bedroom by the arm. He ordered me to get undressed and get on all fours on the bed. I did. He spread my ass cheeks with both hands and licked my ass with his whole tongue, long and insistently, until I felt my legs giving way. Then he spat, put on lubricant, and pushed his cock into me slowly but without stopping. It burned. He gripped my hips and began fucking me steadily, every thrust going all the way in, with the heavy breathing of an older man. His balls slammed against me again and again, and he kept saying things—“What an ass, what an ass you have, fuck”—that I didn’t want to hear. When he came, he did it inside me, with a hoarse moan, squeezing my hips so hard that the next day I found his fingerprints imprinted there. Then he made me turn over and put it back in my mouth, still soft and filthy, so I could clean it. He finished me off with his hand, spitting on my cock, until I came on his chest unwillingly, with a dry, sad spasm. The whole time, my head held only one image: her with the other man’s hands around her waist. When it was over, I dressed in silence and left. The moment I set foot in the street, I vomited against the wall of the building opposite. The alcohol, the empty stomach, and something I didn’t know how to name all came out together.

I was deeply affected over the following days. I didn’t exactly regret what I had done, but I didn’t feel good either. There was something about that state of “I don’t care about anything” that wouldn’t go away, an underlying current with nowhere to escape. And that was when I made a decision that took me years to tell anyone about.

***

I started discreetly: first through a forum I found almost by chance, then with a profile on a specialized platform. There was no plan. Just the idea that, if I was going to be with people I didn’t care about, I might as well get something out of it.

Expectations and reality collided pretty quickly.

Most of the clients were middle-aged men, some older. Married, most of them. They came looking for something they couldn’t ask for at home, or had stopped asking for because the answer was always no. One thing came up very frequently: anal sex. Many arrived with that fantasy tucked away for years, something they had wanted to ask their partner for but had never dared mention. So they came here. And I fulfilled it, in one sense or the other, depending on what each one needed: some wanted me to fuck them all the way while they clutched the headboard, others wanted to get on top and ride me until they came by themselves over my belly, others wanted me to fuck them standing up against the window with the curtain half open. I learned to put on a condom with one hand, to spit into my palm and lubricate my cock in two seconds, to know from the trembling of their thighs when they were about to come.

There were bisexual men who had never confessed it to anyone. Men who had spent decades living a life that didn’t quite fit what they felt inside. They came on my cock with their eyes closed, gripping my thighs as if they were afraid of falling. Lonely men who paid as much for the time as for what came afterward: for the chance to suck a young cock slowly, without haste, feeling it grow in their mouths until it filled them completely, and then swallow the cum without turning their faces away.

I learned to read them quickly. Some came straight to the point, lowering their pants before I had even closed the door and pushing me down by the shoulders so I would kneel. Others needed to talk first. There was one, a man around fifty who always wore an impeccably pressed suit, who spent twenty minutes talking to me about his children every time he came before anything happened. Then he would calmly remove his tie, ask me to take my clothes off slowly in front of him, and end up asking me to fuck him, on all fours on the carpet, while he gripped his cock and came with his face buried against the floor. He never gave me his real name. I never gave him mine either.

Some were kind, even considerate. Others weren’t. There were encounters I fulfilled on autopilot, getting hard by pure reflex while thinking about anything else, letting them suck me, letting them fuck me, letting them come on my nipples or in my face without even feeling the hot semen running down me. Fantasies I satisfied without wanting to: playing submissive for one, dominant for another, spitting into the next man’s mouth, whispering dirty things in the ear of the one after that. Bodies I pressed myself against as if I were rehearsing the same repeated scene. The money didn’t make everything easier, but it gave the impression that there was a clear boundary: this begins here and ends there. For someone who at that moment didn’t know where the boundary of anything else lay, that had a certain practical value.

I told myself it was temporary. That I would stop when the semester ended. I didn’t stop as soon as I had thought I would.

With women it was different, though less frequent as well. Most were older and wanted discretion. Some were separated and wanted something without a story, opening their legs on the bed with a glass of wine still in hand and asking me to eat their pussy until they came twice before fucking them. With them, the work more closely resembled what I had known before: sucking tits, sliding in two fingers, searching for the clitoris with my tongue until they clutched the sheets, fucking them from behind while watching their asses move beneath my hands. But with that layer of distance that changes everything: the knowledge that it’s a transaction, not a connection.

I had learned to function with that distance. It had become almost automatic.

Until she came.

***

She was young. About my age, or perhaps a little younger. She told me her name was Verónica, although I’m not sure it was her real name. She arrived with a small backpack and a turtleneck sweater, even though it was hot outside. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me, not quite knowing what to do with her hands: she put them on her knees, crossed them, then put them back on her knees.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said, looking at the floor.

She wasn’t referring only to coming to see me.

I sat beside her, but left some distance between us. I asked her how she was feeling.

“Nervous,” she said.

“That’s normal.”

We talked for quite a while before I moved closer. She told me she had wanted to have her first time for a long time, but whenever she got close to someone, her nerves completely paralyzed her. She dated guys, and when the moment came, she shut down, grew rigid. She had thought of coming here as a way to do it in a space where the other person wouldn’t have expectations about what came afterward: whether there would be a second time, whether he would become her partner, what any of it meant. That burden was what paralyzed her.

It was strange logic and completely understandable at the same time.

I told her we would go at whatever pace she set. That if she wanted to stop at any point, we would stop. She nodded, and I noticed some of the tension leave her shoulders.

We started slowly. Kisses first, without any hurry. At first she kept her mouth slightly open, a little stiff, not quite knowing how to respond. But she found the rhythm on her own. I stroked her neck, her back, and waited for her to be the one to move closer. And she did: a small movement forward, almost imperceptible, but it was hers. I slowly lifted her turtleneck, giving her time to stop me, until I pulled it over her head. Underneath, she wore a simple white bra. I kissed her shoulder, her collarbone, moving down to the edge of the fabric. I unclasped it with one hand and let the bra fall to the floor. Her tits were small, her nipples very pink and erect from the cold or her nerves—I couldn’t tell which. I kissed them one by one, sucking them with my flat tongue, and she let out a small moan that seemed to surprise her as much as anyone.

When I asked whether I could continue, she nodded silently. I knelt in front of her and asked once more whether she was all right.

“Yes,” she said, very softly.

I unbuttoned her pants and calmly lowered them along with her panties, and she lifted her hips to help me without looking me in the eyes. I slowly opened her legs. Her pussy was almost hairless, her lips pressed tight with tension, and there was already a little moisture shining between them. I kissed the insides of her thighs, first one, then the other, moving upward little by little until I felt her breath catch. When I ran my tongue over her clitoris for the first time, her whole body jerked. I placed my hands on her hips to calm her and did it again, more slowly this time, drawing circles with the tip of my tongue. It was the first time anyone had touched her like that. I could tell by the way she closed her eyes, by the way her breathing changed rhythm, becoming slower and deeper at the same time. I spread her pussy lips with two fingers and ran my whole tongue from bottom to top, pausing at the top to suck her clitoris between my lips as if it were a small fruit. She began moving her hips without realizing it, seeking more contact. I slid one finger inside her very slowly, feeling her tighten around it and then relax again. I added a second, searching upward, while continuing to eat her pussy without lifting my mouth. Her body responded on its own; no one had to force anything. It took her a while to figure out where to put her hands—she ended up gripping my hair with both of them, not hard but without letting go—how to breathe, how to stop holding herself back. When she came, she made almost no noise: she simply exhaled long and suddenly, squeezed her thighs against my face, and stayed still for several seconds, her eyes still closed and her legs trembling.

Afterward I guided her hand toward me and calmly explained what worked best: how to close her fingers, how much pressure to use, where to squeeze harder. She followed the instructions with a concentration that was somehow moving: attentive, present, learning. She jerked me off that way for quite a while, staring at my cock as if she were memorizing something. When she put me in her mouth, she went slowly, testing it first with her lips, placing little kisses on the head before opening wider. Then she grew more confident: her tongue circling it, sucking the tip, moving gradually down to the middle. She quickly learned how to do it without her teeth, how to breathe through her nose, how to use her hand at the same time. For a first time, she did well. Better than well, actually. When she raised her eyes and looked at me with my cock in her mouth, I had to gently pull her face away so I wouldn’t come too soon.

Penetration was very slow. I laid her on her back, opened her legs, and ran the head of my cock over her wet pussy several times without putting it in yet, so she could get used to the contact. I used lubricant, more than necessary, and went centimeter by centimeter, stopping whenever her breathing changed. At first I felt the obstacle, that minimal resistance she felt too because she closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. I stayed still, holding my weight on my arms, letting her body decide. I pushed again, gently, a little farther, and entered all the way. She let out her breath suddenly. At one point I paused completely and asked whether she wanted to continue.

“Yes,” she said. “Keep going.”

I began moving very slowly, barely sliding in and out, letting her feel every centimeter. She wrapped her arms around my back and pulled me against her chest, as if she needed to feel my weight on top of her. I kissed her neck while continuing to thrust gently, gradually finding a rhythm that didn’t discomfort her. We changed positions once: she lay on her side, one leg over my hip, and I penetrated her that way, deeper, watching her little tit move with every thrust. Her pussy was tight and hot, squeezing me in a way that forced me to stop every few seconds so I wouldn’t come. I ran my hand over her clitoris while fucking her, and she moaned for the first time with her mouth open, a small, unfiltered sound. It wasn’t the best fuck of my life. But it was the most honest one I remember from that entire period. There was no autopilot. We were two people present in the same room, doing something real. When I felt I was about to come, I pulled out and finished on her belly with two or three strokes of my hand, leaving two white threads across her skin. She watched, curious, without looking away. I cleaned her belly with a towel, and she stared at the ceiling for a moment, slowly let out her breath, and said:

“Thank you. Really. For the way you did it.”

I don’t usually keep memories from that period. I kept that one.

***

I didn’t last much longer after that. Not because of any dramatic revelation or moment of crisis: one day I simply realized that the pain wasn’t the same anymore. Almost ten months had passed since I saw her in that bar. I no longer looked for her in strangers’ faces. I no longer imagined what she might be doing at that moment.

So I stopped. Without ceremony, without any official closure.

I don’t tell it as something to be proud of, nor as something to be ashamed of. I tell it as what it was: something I did at a time when I didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling, and continued until I no longer needed it. Of everything from that time, I take away something I never expected to learn: that behind every encounter in which someone pays, there is a story that began long before the transaction. That bodies tell what mouths do not. And that tenderness can appear in the most unexpected places, even if only once, even if only briefly.

I learned that too during that period.