My Confession: That Night in the Dark Room
Years ago, I discovered three things about myself that ended up changing my life more than I realized at the time. The first was that I’m bisexual and have no qualms about admitting it. The second was that getting sex with men is much easier than with women, because men know what they want, when they want it, and where they want it, without the emotional choreography that usually surrounds anything else. The third was that if you go around declaring your bisexuality, you’ll get rejected by gay men and heterosexuals alike; to both camps, you’re not a curiosity, you’re a betrayal of their prejudices. With bisexual women the discourse is different, and I’ll leave that debate to them.
You learn to be cautious. It’s information you share with very few people, and even then you get surprises. Many men live this part of themselves in secret or, at the very least, discreetly. What I’m telling now, I’ve never told in full, not even to my closest friends.
Back then I was a nobody of nineteen, skinny, with hair down to my shoulders, a face that turned heads on the street, and the absolute certainty that the world owed me something fun every night. I devoted myself to exploring places that would make the neighbors in my building cross themselves, while they were probably fantasizing about worse things in private. One of those nights, on a Friday in June around eleven, I ended up going into a gay club on Reconquista Street, in the heart of the city’s nightlife district.
The place was a perfect cliché. Bluish dim light, electronic music pounding against black walls, televisions hanging in the corners playing porn videos where impossible models wielded equally impossible cocks, empty cages waiting for the go-gos who hadn’t shown up that night, tiny tables to leave room for the dance floor, drinks at robbery prices served by waiters who looked like undercover cops sizing up whom they could get money from next. And in the back, separated by a heavy curtain of worn velvet, the dark room. That was the real attraction of the place and the reason most of us came back. The tables pressed up against the curtain were usually all taken, because from there you could keep an eye on who went in and, if you liked, follow them inside.
That night, however, it was almost empty. There was me, the waiters watching like vultures, and one man. Just one man. But what a man.
He wore a tight black T-shirt and jeans that left no doubt about how many hours he spent under a barbell. Broad shoulders, arms like tree trunks, a narrow waist. He had the square jaw of a man who knows his jaw is square. This one is out of your league, I thought, leaning on the bar. Don’t get your hopes up. He won’t even look at you to tell you no. I assumed the rest of the club was inside the dark room, so with a warm beer in my hand I pushed aside the curtain and went in.
Futile hope. Inside, it was even emptier. I thought about finishing my beer slowly and heading somewhere else. Then the curtain moved again. It was him.
I was barely a yard from the threshold, still with my eyes adjusting to the absolute darkness. I didn’t think. I stretched out my arm and touched his left biceps to draw him in. What could happen? That he’d pull away? That he’d say no to me? It wouldn’t have been the first or the last time. But he reacted with a softness that undid me. A frank smile barely lit by the light slipping through the curtain, one large hand resting on my waist, and a second later we were kissing as if we’d spent months waiting for it.
His lips were thick, his saliva tasted like hot man. What kept me hardest, though, was his body. I ran my hands over the fabric and felt every worked fiber, every ridge, every vein. What would it feel like to run my tongue over one of these gym guys?, I thought. And how would a body like this fuck?
He kissed as if that was the only thing he was going to do that night, and he let himself be touched wherever I pleased. His breathing soon quickened, betraying him. I bit his arms through the fabric, kissed his neck, slid my tongue over his ear. When I tried to lift his T-shirt to get to his chest, I discovered he was wearing one of those men’s bodysuits that fasten at the crotch. How convenient. I lowered the zipper of his jeans to mid-thigh and covered that firm skin with kisses and soft bites while my fingers searched for the clasp. I found it, opened it, and in one motion his cock sprang free at the level of my nose. It smelled like concentrated desire, that smell you can’t mistake for anything else.
I didn’t hesitate. I took all of it into my mouth. The muscle-bound man, who until then had maintained admirable composure, groaned with that deep sound only men make when a mouth knows its trade. Liquid poured out in absurd amounts, salty and sweet at once, and I swallowed it while my hands roamed over his ass and I stroked his shaved balls with my fingertips. There was nothing in the world, at that moment, better than being on my knees before him in the darkness of that disreputable little room.
I stood up to kiss him again, so he could taste his own flavor on my tongue. That only turned him on more. I lifted his bodysuit to bare his chest, pulled my own jeans down to mid-thigh, and pressed myself against his body. His pecs under my tongue, my nipples against his. He opened my legs with his thigh, pushed me against the wall, and started rubbing his wet cock against mine as if he were already fucking me. I turned my back to him and ground my ass against him while I pressed my back to his chest. His hands squeezed my torso, then slid to my waist to set the pace. He still hadn’t entered me and I already felt fucked.
Meanwhile, some anonymous mouth had swallowed my cock in the dark. I never knew who it was, but he worked at it with dedication. At the same time I sensed others approaching my muscle hunk. That’s it, I thought, it was nice while it lasted. But to my surprise he came back to my mouth, my hands, my body. We started turning away other hands, other cocks, other bodies edging in cautiously. We wanted to be alone. He whispered in my ear that he had a room three blocks away. Running, because it was already late.
***
The hotel was almost a nightmare. Narrow corridors, carpet stained by better times, a lingering pine disinfectant smell. But it had what we needed: a bed with patched but freshly washed sheets, a bathroom that smelled like it had just been mopped, and the typical pink soap bars that gave away the place’s usual clientele. On the way there, we never stopped kissing or touching each other. In a dimly lit alley, I pulled his cock out again and sucked him off with my back against a wall. He nearly came right then and there. He had to tug me away gently so he wouldn’t finish at that moment.
Once in the room, the clothes disappeared as if by magic. We tangled ourselves into a glorious sixty-nine. He on top, me below, and for the first time in my life I understood what it feels like to have the weight of an aroused male body on top of yours. A man who only wants to devour you, who only wants to fuck you, who only wants to unload his semen somewhere inside you, who doesn’t think about tomorrow because tomorrow doesn’t exist. He devoured my cock with hunger and squeezed my balls with a force that bordered on pain. That night I discovered that just the right amount of pain turned me on more than any soft caress. While he sucked me, with his other hand he began to open me with one finger, slowly.
I was in heaven. His hips swayed over my face with a languid rhythm, his cock going in and out of my mouth, and I kissed his thighs, kneaded his ass, ran my tongue over his balls. He was fucking me with his mouth while at the same time opening my ass with his fingers, and we were both sweating as if we’d been running for an hour.
We rolled. I rode him. I wanted to fuck him from above while I stroked that chest, while I kissed his mouth, while his big hands held my waist. His condom-covered cock went in without resistance. I moaned without trying to hide it. I made every face I’d been saving up. He asked me in that hoarse voice, in my ear, if I felt very much like a whore on top of him. It was the first time a guy had spoken to me in the feminine while fucking me and, to my surprise, it sparked something inside me I hadn’t known was there.
“I feel like a filthy whore, daddy,” I answered. “Do you like your whore? Do you like how your whore sucked your cock? Fuck me, fuck your whore, fill me, give me everything, make me moan like the whore I am. Give it to me hard, I want to feel your balls slapping against my ass. Like that, daddy, like that.”
He was fucking me with a force that left me breathless. He used those thighs I’d covered in kisses to drive his cock all the way in, gripping my waist with both hands to set the rhythm. Every so often he let go to jerk me off, but I begged him with the dirtiest voice I could manage not to stop, to keep fucking me, that I wanted to feel him growing inside me, that I wanted him to finish inside. I pinched his nipples, dug my nails into his pecs. We were insane.
When he sped up, I knew he was close. I got off him, yanked the condom off, and took his cock in my mouth in time. One, two, three, four, five, up to nine long, thick spurts. He filled my mouth with warm, salty semen. I savored it calmly while I jerked myself off without rushing, not wanting to finish yet, wanting that moment to last. I swallowed it in little gulps. When he got his breath back, he went down without being asked and started sucking me with a desperation that surprised me. I came in his mouth a few seconds later. He climbed up to kiss me and let me taste my own flavor mixed with his.
We held each other, soaked in sweat, saliva, everything. Our breathing took a while to settle. Then, without speaking, we went back to sixty-nine. This time he came faster, on top of me, while he fucked me with his mouth again. As soon as he was done, I turned him over, put on another condom, and fucked him myself. I grabbed his waist and drove in with everything I had. His moans were deep, loud, unsentimental. We were both sweating as if we were fighting. When I came, it was so much that the condom overflowed. I smeared what was left over his ass and kissed it until sleep defeated us.
We covered ourselves with the patched sheet and dozed off wrapped around each other, him turned away from me, his ass pressed against me. I still managed to throw an arm over his chest and feel that his heart was still pounding hard. For a third time, before dawn, we tangled into a sixty-nine and filled each other’s mouths at the same time. After that I couldn’t take any more. I was wrecked.
***
I left the almost horrifying hotel with the first gray light of dawn, when only delivery guys, street sweepers, people out all night like me, and the occasional cabbie hunting for late partygoers cross the street. I didn’t know whether I’d see him again. Most likely not: at nineteen, novelty matters more than consistency, and I still had a very long list of novelties ahead of me. I didn’t care all that much, either. I felt safe, almost arrogant, convinced I could repeat that feat as many times as I wanted.
I walked slowly toward the avenue, feeling the cool air against my face, my neck aching, my thighs heavy, a smile impossible to erase. I was living a secret life, and that made me feel alive, important, in possession of something that belonged to no one else. Many years later, I still think that that dawn was one of the most intensely mine things I’ve ever lived through, and that’s why, I suppose, I’m writing it today: so it exists somewhere that isn’t only my head.