My Roommate Taught Me How to Read Men on the Street

I arrived in the capital with two suitcases and a firm idea of changing my life. My family had been left behind, my town, my job at the print shop and, above all, that feeling that on every corner there was someone who knew my aunt. I needed air and I needed anonymity. I got the second in an apartment on the fourth floor of an old building, facing a small park. My roommate was a friend of a friend. His name was Mateo.

Mateo was five feet five, had cinnamon-colored skin, and let his beard grow on purpose to look older. As a child he had swum at the sports club in the city where he grew up, and it still showed: broad shoulders, a firm back, a small waist. He had very little body hair and liked to keep it that way. The first time I saw him come out of the bathroom with the towel low I discovered two things: that he was a man obsessed with hair removal, and that that apartment was going to teach me more about myself than all the years I’d spent hiding what I was.

Mateo was gay. So was I, though I still found it hard to say it out loud. He said it anywhere: in the supermarket line, at the bar, in the taxi on the way back. And he said it with a shamelessness that scared me and, at the same time, set me free.

—You’re going to have to learn how to look at men —he told me the second week, while we shared a beer in the kitchen—. Otherwise you’re going to end up alone in this city.

—I know how to look —I replied, offended.

—No, you don’t. You look like you have to ask permission.

That night my education began. Mateo boasted without shame about his conquests, and they were almost always men who were big where it counted. He liked them that way. He said it without nuance, without apologizing. “If it doesn’t fill my mouth, it’s useless to me,” he’d blurt out while pouring himself another drink. I nodded and laughed, pretending it was just another conversation for me, but inside I was taking notes. I wanted that too. I’d spent years imagining it. I wanted to kneel in front of a man with a thick cock and find out what it was like to have to open my mouth wider than I thought possible.

When he came back from the bar with one of those men, I had no doubt about what was happening on the other side of the wall. Mateo didn’t moan: he growled, he demanded. I stayed in my bed staring at the ceiling, my ear almost pressed against the wall, feeling myself harden without touching myself.

***

—You have one advantage —he told me another night, once we were comfortable with each other—. Yours show. That’s gold.

It was true. It had always been true. When it got cold, I’d get half-hard for no reason, and thin pants betrayed everything. As a teenager I pretended not to notice. In the city center I discovered that a lot of people did notice.

—Walk normally and watch people’s faces —Mateo would tell me on the boulevard, on Saturday afternoons—. Don’t look at the eyes: look at where the eyes go. When a guy drops his gaze to your bulge, he’s responding to something he can’t control. It doesn’t matter if he says he’s straight, if he has a girlfriend hanging off his arm, or if he looks like a seminarian. If he looked, he looked.

I started to notice. It was like learning a new language. We’d pass a man in a suit, obviously married, and I’d catch the half-second his eyes dropped before rising to my face. A group of college students would go by, and one of them would linger a quarter of a second longer than the others. A father with a stroller would pass, and sometimes, incredibly, the same thing would happen too.

—The next time you see someone linger —Mateo explained to me—, grab your package like you’re adjusting your boxer briefs. If he looks away and clenches his jaw, he’s a stiff. If he looks you in the eyes, there are two options: either he holds your gaze until you look away, or he blushes and plays dumb. What matters is that he looked at you again. That’s all.

The first time I did it was in a bakery. There was a man about forty-five, with a wedding ring and a blue shirt, waiting to be served. I felt his eyes drop. I adjusted my pants calmly, without taking my eyes off the counter, as if nothing were happening. When I looked up, he was already looking me in the eyes. He didn’t look away. He didn’t lower his gaze. He held it for the second a smile lasts, and then looked at his wallet. Nothing else happened. Nothing else was needed. I went out onto the street with my heart at one hundred and sixty and an erection almost shameful.

This is new, I thought as I walked toward the apartment. This is something I can do.

***

The neighbor came into my life without me looking for him.

Before I moved in, he and Mateo had shared the apartment. When the one across the hall became available, he moved, but they were still friends. He came two or three times a week, to watch football, drink beer, stay late. His name was Cristian. He was six foot four, hairy-chested and forearmed, and wore a size thirteen or fourteen shoe. I sized him up mentally the first time he took his shoes off: I slid my foot effortlessly into his abandoned sneaker and there was still room to spare. Cristian was Mateo’s friend, and judging by the way they spoke to each other, at some point they had been something more.

—Not with me, seriously —Mateo told me when I asked—. He’s straight. Or so he says. But let him look.

Cristian wore those basketball shorts that hang on men like ripe fruit. When he sat on the sofa with his legs apart, there was no way not to look. The fabric hung heavy on one side. I tried to keep up with the conversation, pretend I was watching the game, but my eyes kept drifting there on their own.

And he noticed.

The first time he caught me was during a pause in the broadcast. I was sitting on the floor, my back against the sofa, and he was above me, leaning back, beer in hand and his left leg draped over the armrest. I turned my face to ask him something and my eyes made the trip. I saw it, I looked, I lifted my eyes, and I met his. He’d been looking for who knows how long. He didn’t look away. He smiled.

—Happens a lot —he said, without malice. As if he were explaining the weather—. The bad thing is nobody has sucked it properly.

My mouth went dry. Mateo, who was coming back from the kitchen with two more beers, didn’t hear the line but did manage to read the situation. He gave me a crooked smile and sat at the other end of the sofa without saying a word. Cristian didn’t even move.

—It’s the head —he went on, addressing me, talking in the same tone you’d use to talk about the game—. It’s not the thickness, it’s not the length. It’s that nobody can fit the head in their mouth. They try and give up after ten minutes.

—And that bothers you? —I asked, without really thinking.

—It pisses me off. Why have it like this if they’re not going to suck it the way God intended?

Mateo burst out laughing from his side of the sofa. I was left not knowing what to answer. The cock, under my thin pants, could no longer hide what I was thinking. And Cristian, with that casualness of a guy who thinks he’s straight until something else presents itself, noticed it.

—You’ve got your balls showing too. Mateo already told me.

—Mateo told you that?

—Mateo tells me everything —he replied, and winked at my roommate, who was barely holding back another laugh.

***

That night, after Cristian left, I stayed in the kitchen with Mateo. It was two in the morning. We’d finished the last six-pack. He had put on short shorts and a tank top and, without meaning to, he too looked like he was showing off.

—Told you —he said flatly—. He’s straight. But he likes to be looked at. And sometimes he lets it go a little further.

—Have you…? —I didn’t dare finish the question.

—No, not me. I almost did once, but no. I’m fond of him. And I don’t want to be the first one to confirm it. Let somebody else try him out.

I laughed. My head was spinning a little from the alcohol, and a little more from the image I couldn’t shake: the head, the thickness, the idea of trying and giving up after ten minutes. I wasn’t going to give up. That I knew.

—Today I told you everything I know —Mateo went on—. The looks, the balls, the shorts, the feet, the questions guys ask each other in high school to end up doing the other thing. What you do with that is your problem. I only ask one thing.

—What?

—That when you do it, you don’t make me guess through the wall. Tell me about it.

I nodded. I thought I was going to have a lot to tell him. I thought about the bakery, the man in the blue shirt, the college students on the boulevard, Cristian sprawled on the sofa with the heavy fabric hanging on one side of his shorts. I thought about how, in a few weeks, I had gone from being the boy who apologized when he looked to the boy people looked at.

Mateo stood up, squeezed my shoulder with his warm hand, and went to his room. I stayed in the kitchen a while longer, with the extractor fan light on and my cock half-hard in my pants. I thought about going down to the apartment across the hall. I didn’t do it, not that night. But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to. And I knew that Cristian, that man who said he was straight and who had spent weeks showing me what he had with the casualness of someone expecting no answer, knew it too.

When I went to bed that night, I could hear his television through the back wall. The sound seeped through lightly, as if he were alone, without company, without anyone. The head, I thought. Nobody can fit the head in their mouth. But I’m going to fit it in mine.

And I fell asleep thinking about that, my hand still over my bulge and the smile of someone who already knew when he was going to go downstairs and ring the bell.