My Roommate Taught Me How to Read Men on the Street

I arrived in the capital with two suitcases and a fixed 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 a fourth-floor apartment in an old building, facing a small park. My roommate was a friend of a friend. His name was Mateo.

Mateo was five-foot-five, had cinnamon-colored skin, and deliberately kept his beard growing so he’d look older. As a kid he had swum at the sports club in the city where he grew up, and you could still tell: broad shoulders, a firm back, a small waist. He had little body hair and liked to keep it that way. The first time I saw him come out of the bathroom with his 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, although I still had trouble saying it out loud. He said it anywhere: in the supermarket line, at the bar, in the taxi ride home. 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 bragged without shame about his conquests, and they were almost always men who had huge dicks. He liked them that way. He said it without nuance, without apologizing. “If it doesn’t fill my mouth, it’s no use to me,” he’d toss off while pouring himself another drink. I nodded and laughed, pretending it was just another conversation to me, but inside I took 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 discover 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, demanded. “Jam it all the way in, you motherfucker,” I heard him one night; “Like that, harder, rip my ass open,” another. I’d lie in my bed staring at the ceiling, with my ear almost pressed to the wall, feeling my cock harden without touching it, feeling my balls tighten against the fabric of my briefs, feeling a drop of precome seep out and soak the cotton. I’d grab myself through the fabric, squeeze, and force myself not to cum so I could listen to the end, until the long, broken grunt with which Mateo emptied himself on some stranger who would leave before dawn.

***

“You’ve got an advantage,” he told me one night, once we were comfortable. “Your balls show. That’s gold.”

It was true. It had always been true. When it was cold, my cock would go 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 look at their faces,” Mateo would tell me on the boulevard, on Saturday afternoons. “Don’t watch the eyes: watch 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’s got a girlfriend hanging off his arm, or if he has the face of 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 coming back up to my face. A group of university guys would pass, 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, “grab your package like you’re adjusting your briefs. If he looks away and clenches his jaw, he’s dull. 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 of about forty-five, wearing a 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, like it was nothing. When I looked up, he was already looking me in the eyes. He didn’t look away. He didn’t drop his gaze. He held it for the second it takes a smile to happen, then looked at his wallet. Nothing else happened. It didn’t need to. I walked out onto the street with my heart at one hundred and sixty and an erection that was almost embarrassing.

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

***

The neighbor appeared in my life without my looking for him.

Before I moved in, he and Mateo had shared the apartment. When the one across the hall became empty, he moved there, but they were still friends. He came by two or three times a week, to watch soccer, drink beer, stay late. His name was Cristian. He was six-foot-four, hairy across the chest and forearms, and wore a size 12 or 13 shoe. I measured them mentally the first time he took them off: I slipped 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 that’s what he says. But let him look.”

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

And he noticed.

The first time he caught me was during a break in the broadcast. I was sitting on the floor, my back against the couch, and he was up there, reclined, beer in hand and his left leg hanging over the armrest. I turned my face to ask him something and my gaze made the trip. I saw him, looked at him, lifted my eyes, and ran straight into his. He’d been there, I don’t know how long. He didn’t look away. He smiled.

“Happens a lot,” he said, without malice. Like he was explaining the weather. “The bad part is nobody’s ever sucked it right.”

I felt my mouth go dry. Mateo, who was coming back from the kitchen with two more beers, didn’t hear the line but did catch the situation. He gave me a sideways smile and sat down at the far end of the couch without saying a word. Cristian didn’t even move.

“It’s the head,” he went on, addressing me, speaking in the same tone people use when talking about the game. “It’s not the thickness, it’s not the length. It’s that the head doesn’t fit in anybody’s mouth. They try and give up after ten minutes.”

“And that bothers you?” I asked, without thinking much.

“It pisses me off. Why the hell would I 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 couch. I had no idea what to say. The cock beneath my thin pants could no longer hide what I was thinking. And Cristian, with that naturalness of a guy who thinks he’s straight until something else shows up, noticed it.

“Your balls show too. Mateo already told me.”

“Mateo told you that?”

“Mateo tells me everything,” he replied, and he winked at my roommate, who was suppressing 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, even he seemed to be showing off.

“Told you,” he said. “He’s straight. But let him look. And sometimes he lets a little more.”

“You…?” I didn’t dare finish the question.

“No, not me. Once I got close, but no. I’m fond of him. And I don’t want to be the first one to confirm it. Let someone else try him.”

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

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

“What?”

“When you do it, don’t make me guess through the wall. Tell me.”

I nodded. I thought I was going to have a lot to tell him.

I went downstairs three days later. A Thursday night, under the pretext of returning a borrowed screw late. Cristian opened the door barefoot, wearing those same basketball shorts and no shirt. Hairy chest, dark nipples, flat stomach with a line of black hair disappearing into the waistband. He stepped aside without asking and closed the door behind me.

“I knew you were going to come down,” he said. “I just didn’t know which day.”

I didn’t answer. There was no need. I walked to the couch and sat down. He remained standing in front of me, with the TV off and a single lamp on in the corner. The fabric of the shorts hung heavy, and this time, up close, everything was visible: the bulge of the glans against the cotton, the length of the cock falling along his left thigh, the swollen sack of balls resting underneath. He wasn’t wearing briefs. You could see the exact shape.

“Look at it,” he said. “That’s why you came.”

I lifted my hand and yanked his shorts down. They fell to the floor around his ankles. The cock sprang out, thick and half-hard, with a wide purple head like a clenched fist. It hung heavy, not pointing anywhere yet, but it was already obvious why it didn’t fit in anybody’s mouth. The crown was disproportionately large compared to the shaft, swollen, shining at the tip with a thick drop already beading at the meatus. Below, his balls hung in a smooth shaved sack, two big, separate eggs.

“Fuck,” I murmured.

“Open,” he ordered.

I knelt on the rug. I took his cock in my right hand and was surprised by its weight. I couldn’t close my fingers around the shaft: I was two centimeters short of touching thumb to forefinger. I started below, with my tongue. I licked his balls one by one, took them into my mouth one at a time, slowly sucked the shaved skin while feeling the cock rise against my forehead. When it was fully hard, it stood straight and heavy, pointing at the ceiling, and I realized its real size: almost twenty-two centimeters long, thick as my wrist, with a head so wide I was afraid to look at it head-on.

“You’ve felt it,” he said. “Now open.”

I opened my mouth. I brought it to my lips. The head touched first, and I felt what the others had felt: it was too much. It stretched one corner of my mouth just by resting there. I pushed anyway. Barely, the crown went in, and there I paused for a moment, jaw slack, eyes starting to water. Cristian put a hand on the back of my neck. He didn’t squeeze. He just left it there, heavy.

“Slowly,” he said. “Breathe through your nose. Don’t bite it.”

I breathed. I salivated. Spit began to dribble down my chin, thick, and with it the head went in a little farther. I felt the rim of the crown pass my tongue and slip toward the back. I lowered it another centimeter, then another, and my throat closed. I pulled back coughing, a string of saliva hanging from my mouth to the glans. It gleamed all over, soaked, even more purple.

“Again,” he said. “Don’t be scared.”

I went back to it. This time with both hands at the base, spitting over the shaft so it would slide. I took it in and out, fast at first, setting a rhythm over the first ten centimeters, sucking hard on the way out, pressing my lips against the crown each time. Cristian started growling above me. He wasn’t saying words: he was breathing through his nose, clenching his jaw, his hairy thighs tensing beside my face.

“Like that, like that, suck it like that, you bastard,” he suddenly blurted out, and his voice came out deeper, rougher, with none of the straight-guy calm he’d used with me on the couch upstairs. “Take it deeper.”

I took it deeper. I opened my throat, relaxed my jaw as much as I could, and pushed my face against his belly. The head forced its way in. I gagged, tears filled my eyes, and still I held on for the three seconds it took for the glans to pass. Once it did, I felt it settle in my throat, the whole shaft sinking in until my nose touched the curly hair at the base. Almost twenty-two centimeters of cock buried to the root. Nobody had ever sucked him that way before. He knew it the very instant.

“Holy shit,” he gasped. “Holy shit, don’t move, stay right there.”

I stayed. My eyes were watering, my nose was running, spit was dripping down my neck, and he had my nape trapped with both hands now, moving my head slowly without pulling the cock out of my throat. I could feel the pulse of his cock against my tongue. I could feel it swelling more. When he let go, I pulled back to catch my breath, and he took advantage of it to grab the shaft in his fist and smack my face with the wet, heavy head, against my cheeks, my lips, the tongue I was sticking out for him.

“This is what you wanted, right?” he murmured. “You came down here to get your mouth wrecked.”

“Yes,” I told him, and I didn’t care about anything anymore. “Yes, give it all to me.”

He shoved it back in. This time, really fucking my mouth. He held my head with both hands and used it like a sheath, thrusting all the way to the back, pulling out to the crown, going in again. I pressed my hands against the backs of his thighs, felt the taut muscle, the rough hair, and let him do it. With every thrust my nose bumped into his belly. With every withdrawal he forced air into my mouth and I choked on my own saliva. Beneath me, my own cock was hard as a rock inside my pants, wet with precome, throbbing on its own.

“Now, now,” he gasped, and I felt his whole body tense. “Swallow it, don’t take it out, swallow the whole thing, bastard.”

He drove it all the way in and came. The first spurts shot straight into my throat, hot, thick, so many that I gagged and couldn’t swallow in time. He pulled the cock out as far as my mouth and kept cumming there, filling me with thick semen that leaked from the corners of my mouth and ran down my chin to my chest. Five, six, seven spurts. His cock twitched between my lips with each one. When he finished, he left it resting on my tongue, still hard, still huge, and looked down at me with glassy eyes.

“Swallow it,” he ordered.

I swallowed. I felt the semen go down my throat thick, salty, heavy, and with it the taste of all of him. I let his cock go with my lips and licked underneath it, cleaning it, collecting what had stayed on the crown. He was breathing hard, one hand braced on the back of the couch and the other in my hair.

“Nobody,” he said, when he could talk. “Nobody had ever sucked me that deep. Nobody.”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stood up. My cock was still hard, uncomfortable, wanting its turn too. Cristian noticed. He looked at my bulge for a second, then at my face, and lowered his hand to squeeze me over the fabric. He didn’t take it out. He just squeezed, weighed it in his hand, and laughed through his nose.

“Next time,” he said. “Next time it’s my turn to give something back. I don’t know what. But something.”

I climbed the stairs to the apartment with shaky legs, my chin still sticky, and his taste burning my throat. Mateo was on the couch with the light on, waiting for me, as if he knew. He looked up, looked at my face, and smiled slowly.

“Tell me,” he said.

And I told him.

When I went to bed that morning, I heard his television through the back wall. The sound seeped through lightly, as if he were there alone, with no company, with no one. The head, I thought. The head didn’t fit in anybody’s mouth. But it fit in mine.

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