That Bike Ride with the Neighbour Down the Block

We had lived on the same block for as long as we could remember. His house was three doors down from mine, separated by a low brick wall we used to hop over barefoot as kids. Mauricio was almost my age, just six months older, and since we were twelve or thirteen we had shared the kind of secrets boys never say out loud.

When we were kids, we’d lock ourselves in the shed at the back of his house to “investigate.” That’s what we said when anyone asked. Investigate. Awkward groping over our clothes, attempts to tug each other’s shorts down, looks that lingered too long. Then we grew up, we both pretended to forget, and for years we greeted each other from the sidewalk like any other neighbours.

But we were both nineteen now, and something in the way he looked at me had twisted back into place.

It was a late-July afternoon, one of those days when the cold gets into the seams of your jacket and people go indoors early. I had gone out to buy bread at the corner store, and as I passed by Mauricio’s house I saw him taking out the bicycle. A black bike, old, with a loose chain, handed down from his older brother.

—Where are you going? —I asked, more to make conversation than out of curiosity.

—Down to the roundabout and back. I need to loosen up my legs —he said, and looked at me a second too long.

—Take me with you?

He smiled crookedly. Planted one foot on the pedal.

—Get on.

I sat sideways on the frame, like we used to when we were younger, my hands gripping his shoulders. He set off slowly, dodging potholes. The street was deserted. Not a dog, not a car, not a lit window.

The first few blocks were in silence. I could feel the heat of his back through his sweatshirt, the brush of his hip against my waist every time he turned a corner. I don’t know when I lowered one of my hands from his shoulder to his waist. I also don’t know when that hand slid lower, until it rested on one of his butt cheeks through his jogging pants.

He said nothing. Kept pedalling as if nothing were happening. That gave me courage.

I started squeezing him gently, first with my open palm, then with my fingers searching for the seam of the pants. I groped him without hiding it for an entire block, feeling his breathing go out of rhythm. I dug my fingers into the flesh of his ass, kneaded it like dough, and felt the waistband of his underwear perfectly through the jogging pants. When I ran my hand down the middle, pressing the crack of his ass with the edge of my palm, I heard a short gasp slip out of him that he couldn’t swallow in time.

Until suddenly, without warning, he braked.

—Get off —he said sharply.

I got off. He left one foot on the ground, his hands tight on the handlebars. He still wouldn’t look at me. A long, thick bulge was pressed hard against his leg under the jogging pants, pulling the fabric to one side. The head of his cock showed pale, swollen, with a dark wet spot right at the tip.

—Now you’ve got to let yourself be touched too.

I felt the blood drop straight to my feet, but not from fear. It was something else. A mix of shame and something beating somewhere else. I was hard too, trapped sideways inside my underwear, and just looking at his made my ass clench twice in a row, without permission.

—Alright, fine, but just a little —I answered, pretending not to care—. I didn’t even touch you that much.

—You touched me plenty.

I looked around. The block was dead. On our left there was a house with a side entrance left open, no fence, no wall, a narrow passage leading into a dark patio. Mauricio leaned the bicycle against the wall and gently pushed me by the shoulder inside.

I walked the three or four metres needed for the streetlamp’s light not to reach us. I felt his hand on the back of my neck, then on my back, then on my waist. He turned me around so I was facing the wall.

—Nobody can see us here, right? —I asked quietly.

—No.

I was wearing thin cotton pants, the kind used for working out, with an elastic waistband. It was almost an invitation. Mauricio slipped his hand inside without ceremony, and I felt his cold palm against the skin of my left butt cheek. I pressed myself against the wall so I wouldn’t tremble. With his other hand he yanked my jogging pants halfway down my thigh, then my underwear, leaving my ass bare in the middle of the passage. The July cold bit into my cheeks and made me flinch, but immediately his two warm hands were on me, squeezing me, parting me, measuring me with his palms.

His fingers began to roam over me slowly. He clearly had no idea what he was doing, but that clumsiness made it worse. He pulled my ass open with both hands, almost as if measuring me, and one of his fingers —the middle one, I think— stopped right in the center, resting against my hole. I felt the fingertip twist there, learning the fold, pressing little by little, searching for the opening.

Then he pushed.

He didn’t prep me, didn’t ask, didn’t warn me. He shoved the finger in and it went in. It went in so far and so fast that the only explanation I can still come up with today is that my body was already expecting it. His knuckle dug into the entrance to my ass and I bit back a cry. It burned, yes, but it was a burn that spread inside me, climbed up my back, and made me grind my teeth against the brick.

I shoved myself half a step forward, pretending to be annoyed.

—I didn’t say to stick your finger in me —I muttered, unconvincingly, with my ass still speared open.

—Come on, let me have a little.

—Alright —I breathed out—. But then me on you.

—Yeah, yeah, then you.

I turned my back to him again. This time I didn’t wait for him to push me into place. I put both hands on the wall, spread my legs a little, and stuck my ass out, offering it to him myself, no more pretending. The finger went in again, easier than the first time, driven all the way in with a single movement, and right then I understood what was happening: Mauricio was fucking me with his finger, in silence, against the wall of someone else’s house, in the middle of winter, on a block with no witnesses. And I was letting him.

He started circling the finger, pulling it out to the first knuckle and driving it back in to the joint. After a while he slid in a second finger, tight alongside the first, and forced my hole open. I heard a short moan escape me, muffled against the bricks. The two fingers went in and out with a wet, slick sound that gave me away: inside, I was so wet it was making little slapping noises, an ass begging for more, and he was hearing it.

—Look at you —he said in my ear, his breath pasted to the back of my neck—. You’re wide open. You like it, asshole.

I didn’t answer. I pressed my lips together and bit my tongue. But inside my dropped underwear there was already a wet patch growing with every movement of his hand, and the tip of my own cock was leaking a transparent thread that hung down to my knee. I was trying to hold my breath, make no sound, not give him the satisfaction of knowing how much I liked it. I failed at all three.

I felt him pressing against my back with his whole body. His cock, hard as iron, probed between my cheeks over the pants. He rubbed it up and down, looking for the groove, until the head dug right against my opened hole, barely separated by the fabric of his jogging pants. He pushed from the waist, two, three times, miming the fucking without taking his dick out. I pressed my ass against his bulge and felt it pulse. Pulse. As if it had a heart inside those pants.

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cold bricks. For a second I forgot everything: who he was, who I was, the walls that separated us on the block, my mother asking whether I’d brought the bread.

When I felt he was about to finish in his pants, I forced myself to react.

—Stop —I said, yanking his hand away. The two fingers came out with a slap that made me squeeze my eyes shut—. My turn now.

Mauricio stepped back. He was breathing hard. I heard him swallow.

I turned him around so he was against the wall, the way I had been, and pulled his jogging pants down to his knees with both hands. His cock sprang free, hard, thick, bigger than I had imagined during all those years of glancing at him from the corner of my eye. It curved upward, the head purple and shiny with pre-cum. His balls hung tight, pulled up, hot.

I didn’t think. I closed my hand around it. He jerked involuntarily and the head spat out another thick drop that landed on my wrist. I started jerking him off slowly, pulling his foreskin back and forth, feeling the big vein underneath pulse against my palm. With my other hand I grabbed his balls and massaged them, squeezing gently. He let his head fall back against the wall and opened his mouth without making a sound.

I ran my fingers over the crack of his ass too, slowly, pretending I knew what I was doing, while I kept jerking him with the other hand.

The truth is I was doing it out of obligation. I didn’t want to touch him; I wanted him to keep touching me. I wanted him to turn me around and shove it in right there, against the wall, no more fuss. But I couldn’t say that.

I didn’t get to stick a finger in him. A car turned the corner and its headlights swept across the entrance to the patio. I snatched my hand back.

—Let’s go —I whispered—. Come on, they’re seeing us.

They weren’t seeing us. The car drove past and kept going down the avenue. But I needed an excuse not to do my part, not to come off as someone who wanted it too, not to give myself away completely in that dark corner. If I stayed thirty more seconds with his cock in my hand, I was going to suck it. I knew it. And I wouldn’t have been able to look at myself in the mirror when I got home.

Mauricio nodded, yanked his pants back up, and shoved his dick back into place with his hand under the elastic. We went back out to the passage, he grabbed the bike, and we rode back down the block slowly, now silent again. I was sitting sideways on the frame once more, my hands proper and careful on his shoulders, as if nothing had happened. As if I didn’t still have the imprint of his two fingers inside me. With every pothole, the seat slammed against my opened hole and forced me to clench my teeth: it was still throbbing inside me, as if the hollow were asking for something to fill it again.

When we got to my house, he stopped in front of the gate. He didn’t look at me. I got off and brushed the wall dust from my pants.

—Tomorrow —he said, looking at the handlebars.

—Tomorrow what.

—I’m going out on the bike again. In case you want to come.

—Alright.

I went inside without saying anything else. My mother shouted from the kitchen that dinner was ready. I told her I was going to the bathroom first and went up the three steps two at a time.

I locked the bathroom door. I yanked down my gym pants and underwear without looking. When I finally lowered my gaze, my underwear had a wet stain the size of a big coin, clear and shining under the yellow light of the tube. I hadn’t come. It had only leaked out of me, drop by drop, all the way back. My cock was still hard, stretched tight against my belly, still dripping. I grabbed it with two fingers and stroked once, twice, and on the third time I realized that if I kept touching it I was going to come right there, against the toilet, and after that I’d have nothing left for tomorrow.

I reached back with my other hand and touched my hole. It was still open, soft, a little slick. I slipped in my middle finger —my own— and it went in to the knuckle with no resistance. I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t moan out loud. I pulled it out and brought it to my nose: it smelled like him, like the sweat on his hand, like whatever had been left inside me. I lowered the toilet lid and sat down with my head in my hands.

My cheeks were burning. I thought about what had just happened and, in the very same second, two contradictory feelings crossed my mind. On one hand, enormous shame: if anyone found out that the neighbour down the block had shoved two fingers all the way into me against the wall of a patio and I’d stuck my ass out asking for more, that someone would call me a little faggot, and it would all be over.

On the other hand, an even bigger hard-on. A hard-on that nothing could bring down. My head was spinning. I wanted tomorrow to come. I wanted to sit on the bicycle frame again. I wanted Mauricio to brake once more, to push me against another wall, for him not to settle for one finger this time, or two. I wanted to feel his hard cock rubbing between my cheeks with no fabric of the jogging pants in the way. I wanted him to shove it in at once, even if it hurt, even if I couldn’t sit down afterwards.

I was the one who was going to go looking for him. I knew it as clearly as I knew my own name. I was going to go out to the front patio and wait for him to pass, I was going to make some gesture, some stupid provocation, whatever it took. And he was going to understand. And I was going to let him go one step further. Every step he wanted.

That night I didn’t eat dinner. I told my mother my head hurt and lay down with the lights off and my underwear still sticky inside my pants. I replayed every movement of Mauricio’s finger against that wall over and over. I jerked off under the sheet, slowly, biting my arm so I wouldn’t make a sound, and I put two of my own fingers into my ass at the same time. When I came, I came so hard that my orgasm reached all the way up to my chest, hot, in jets that wouldn’t stop. I wiped myself with my underwear and threw it under the bed. Then I fell asleep with my hand still clenched against my hole.

***

The next morning I opened the bedroom window just at the time he usually went out. I heard him whistling below, adjusting the bicycle chain, and I knew it was for me. That the whistle was a way of letting me know.

And I, pretending not to care, finished putting on my jacket without hurrying. As if he were the one who owed me something, not the other way around. Underneath everything I put on an old pair of underwear, one I wouldn’t mind staining.

I went down to the street. I waited for him leaning on the gate. He rode by slowly and smiled at me sideways, just like the day before.

—Another ride? —he asked.

—Alright —I said—. But today a little longer.

I climbed onto the frame. And before he even started pedalling, my hand was already where it shouldn’t have been, gripping his cock over his pants, feeling it swell under my palm in the middle of the street.