The Game My Facilitator Proposed to Me That Night

Five years ago, in April, I was assigned to travel to Montevideo to take an intensive course on comprehensive risk management. It was a ten-month program taught by the University of the Republic, and the ministry I worked for in Bogotá considered it a priority for my career. I was thirty-two and had never been outside Colombia for more than fifteen days in a row.

The apartment they assigned me was in the Cordón neighborhood, on a narrow, tree-lined street. It belonged to a Uruguayan sociologist who was in Madrid doing a postdoc, so my government simply paid her rent in her absence. It was small but cozy, with a narrow balcony overlooking a bakery, and the smell of warm bread rose up every dawn like a blessing. The university was about twelve blocks away. I walked there and back every day, because I liked the movement of the street, the kiosks, the bars, the hurried people drinking mate without stopping walking.

The classes started late in the morning and ended at sunset. During the first week, I hardly spoke to anyone. My classmates were public servants from half the continent—Chileans, Peruvians, Paraguayans, two very serious Bolivians—and they all seemed to know one another already. I ate lunch alone in the campus cafeteria, reading on my phone, and at night I ate in my apartment while watching some series with the sound off.

On Thursday of that first week, as I was leaving class, a fine drizzle started to fall. I was walking down a side street when a dark blue Peugeot stopped beside me and the window rolled down.

—Matías, do you need a lift?

I looked at him. It was Andrés, the facilitator for the operational risk module. About forty years old, tall, thin, with a neat haircut that looked as if it had been done that very morning. In class he spoke with that low, precise voice of people used to being listened to without having to raise their tone.

—I don’t want to make you go all the way there —I replied.

—You’re not making me go anywhere. I live on the other side of the park; I go past there anyway. Get in.

I got in. The seat smelled of leather and a faint citrus perfume that wasn’t from a drugstore. Andrés drove slowly, asking me unimportant things: how I was adapting, whether I missed the food, whether I had someone to talk to. I told him I lived alone, that most days I didn’t exchange a single word with anyone after six in the evening, that the silence in the apartment sometimes felt hard to bear.

—Tomorrow’s Friday —he said when he pulled up in front of my building—. Do you mind if I come up for a while after class? I’ll bring everything. Just to unwind a bit. Okay?

I thought about it for three seconds. The idea of spending another Friday alone, in a foreign country, with a bottle of lukewarm water and the sound of traffic, depressed me. And I liked Andrés.

—Okay.

The next day, when I left class, I didn’t see him at the door. I thought he had changed his mind and started walking home with a strange mix of relief and disappointment. Half a block later I heard a short honk behind me. It was him.

—Sorry, I had to stop by my place to pick up the stuff —he said, opening the passenger door—. Get in.

On the back seat he had two cases of beer, a large bag of flavored potato chips, two bottles of red wine, and a black leather briefcase, wide and hard-lidded, like the ones my grandfather’s doctors used to carry when they visited patients at home. The briefcase caught my attention, but I didn’t ask.

We went up to the apartment. Andrés took off his jacket, rolled his shirt sleeves up to the elbows, and moved around the kitchen as if he knew it. I put on music, some bossa nova from an old playlist on my phone, and we opened the first bottle while he popped two beers.

We talked about everything and nothing. About his separation, three years earlier. About a trip he had taken to Cartagena when he was a student. About my mother, who called me every Sunday to ask if I was eating well. The music changed itself two or three times. The beers piled up on the coffee table in the living room. At some point, without even noticing, I was already drunk.

—I want to propose a game to you —Andrés said, crossing one leg over the other. He had that calm of someone who has already thought through everything he is going to say—. If you say no, nothing happens. But I want you to hear me out before deciding.

—Tell me.

—You don’t know me well. I don’t know you well either. What I’m going to propose isn’t for everyone, and that’s why I’m asking slowly. I like tying up the men I’m with. I like blindfolding them. I don’t hurt them, I don’t force them into anything. I just ask them to trust and let go, to open their ass for me and let me do what I want. If at any point you feel uncomfortable, you say a word and I stop dead. Okay?

I looked at him. I felt the blood rushing to my face. Not from embarrassment, but from a mixture of fear and curiosity I had never felt so clearly before. I had never been with a man. I had thought about it, on some nights, with my hand inside my boxer briefs and my cock hard, thinking about other cocks, but I had never sought it out. And now this calm, clean man was opening a door for me that I hadn’t known I wanted to open.

—What’s the word? —I asked.

—Whatever you want.

—Cartagena.

He smiled.

—Cartagena, then.

***

He opened the briefcase on the table. The first thing he took out was a pair of handcuffs lined with black velvet, soft, heavy. He put them on my wrists carefully, adjusting them so they wouldn’t pinch. Then a blindfold, also velvet, which covered my eyes until I was left in a clean darkness, with no seepage at all.

—Come —he said, taking my elbow gently.

I walked blind. Three steps, four, a short turn. I felt the edge of the bed against the backs of my legs. Andrés guided the chain of the handcuffs to something metallic—the iron bedpost—and hooked it with a sharp click. Then he pushed me gently and I fell sitting, then backward, and my arms stayed raised above my head, held fast.

—Easy, Matías —he said quietly, very close to my ear—. If you want me to stop, say Cartagena. Just that.

—I’m fine.

And I was. I was scared, yes, but it was a new kind of fear, the sort that comes mixed with a desire one doesn’t fully recognize. My heart was beating fast, hard, and yet I didn’t want to leave. I could feel my cock swelling on its own against the fabric of my briefs, getting there before my head did.

He took my shoes off first. Then he loosened my belt and pulled down my pants. Then the boxer briefs, slowly, and I felt the cool apartment air hit my cock, already erect, resting against my stomach. Andrés made a low, appreciative sound, something between a click of the tongue and a sigh.

—Look at how hard you are, and I haven’t even touched you —he said.

I felt his fingers circle the base of my cock, squeeze just a little, slide up to the head and back. Once. Then he let go, as if reminding me who was in charge. He left me in my shirt, open. He spread my legs and I noticed he was tying my ankles to the foot of the bed with something softer, a strip of silk perhaps, I never knew. I was left like an X across the bedspread, blind, bound, with my cock standing against my navel, and at the same time, for the first time in a long while, completely present.

Andrés made me smell something sweet, a cologne or an oil, I couldn’t tell. Then I felt his hands climbing my calves, my thighs, stopping at every inch as if he were memorizing the path. His palms were warm. He had put on cream, a thick cream that smelled of almonds. He went down the groin, deliberately avoided the cock—which jerked, looking for him—and stroked my balls with the pad of his thumb, rolling them slowly in his palm.

—Not yet —he murmured.

Then he came up to my mouth. I felt his tongue part my lips, slip in, pull out. He kissed me as if he were teaching me something. And when I was already breathless, he went down my neck, my sternum, stopped at one nipple and bit it just enough to make a gasp escape me. He took care of the other nipple with his hand. I felt my cock, on its own, drip a warm drop onto the skin of my stomach.

Then he went all the way down. His mouth wrapped around the head without warning, wet, hot, snug, and I pulled at the handcuffs on instinct. He took me halfway in, came back up, took me to the base, and I felt his throat tightening around my tip. He sucked with hunger, without rushing, pulling my cock out of his mouth with a wet sound only to sink back down again. He ran a flat tongue underneath me, from the balls to the tip, and then spat once onto the head, using his own saliva to jerk me off while he licked my balls one by one.

—Andrés —I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, and he answered with a purr that vibrated against my skin.

When he sensed I was about to come in his mouth, he eased off. He let go of my cock with a noisy kiss at the tip and left me throbbing in the air, halfway there.

—Turn over —he said, freeing one ankle, then the other, helping me roll.

I ended up facedown, my wrists still fastened to the bedpost, my sore cock crushed against the coverlet. He tied my ankles again, apart. I felt his weight on the mattress, his knee near my hip.

—What a ass you’ve got, fuck —he said, almost to himself—. What a virgin ass you’ve got.

His hands opened my cheeks and his breath reached me warm, straight to the hole. I had never imagined something like that would turn me on. But his tongue, when it went in, tore a sound from me I didn’t recognize. Something between a moan and a protest that died halfway. Andrés laughed softly, his mouth still pressed there.

—See? Told you so.

His tongue worked patiently. He circled the rim of my ass first, in circles, wetting it, and then pushed inside, hard, pointed, fucking me with his mouth as if it were a small hot cock. He pulled away to spit on the hole and went back to licking, now sucking the edges, biting the skin inside my cheeks just enough to sting. Then he put on more cream, cold this time, and slid his middle finger in to the knuckle in one firm stroke. I yelled into the pillow.

—Relax —he said—. Push against my finger, don’t close up on it.

I obeyed. The finger went in further. Then it came out, another one went in with it, and I felt him opening me from the inside, patiently, looking for something. When he found what he was looking for—a spot I hadn’t known I had—my cock jerked against the bedspread on its own and I let out a long, guttural moan I had never made in my life.

—There it is —he murmured—. That’s it.

He was in no hurry. When he stopped, it was only to start again in a different way. I couldn’t move, and against everything I had imagined, that relaxed me: I didn’t have to do anything, didn’t have to decide anything, didn’t have to hold anything up. I only had to open myself and let those fingers fuck me, deeper each time, deeper and deeper.

***

Between tongue, fingers, and cream, at some point, I felt something different. Something hard, thin, smooth, silicone. It went in without effort and made me close my eyes behind the blindfold. It didn’t hurt. It was a new presence, filling something I hadn’t known was empty. Andrés moved it slowly, in and out, and all the while he kept talking to me in a low voice, words that were not quite sentences, sounds of approval.

—Look how it swallows it —he said—. Look how the ass swallows it.

Then it was something thicker. That did hurt, at first. A dull, deep pain that made me draw a sharp breath through my nose and clench my fists above my head. Andrés stayed still, with the toy halfway in, and ran his free hand down my back, long, to the nape of my neck, calming me.

—Breathe. Let the air out. Push, don’t close up.

He waited. When my breathing returned to its rhythm, he started moving again, with the same stubborn patience as before. He pushed another centimeter, and another, until the base pressed against my cheeks. He left it there, buried. Then he started fucking me with it, slowly, and I could feel my own ass opening and closing around the silicone, squeezing it, sucking it as it came out. He wasn’t trying to conquer me. He was trying to accompany me.

He slipped his other hand under my hip and grabbed my cock, now soaked with the liquid that was dripping on its own. He started jerking me off at the same rhythm he was fucking me with the toy, and I lost all coordination: moaning into the pillow, moving my ass back seeking more, forward seeking his fist.

—If you want, Cartagena —he said.

—No.

He asked again minutes later, with the toy inside me to the hilt and his fist tightening on the head of my cock. Again I told him no.

He yanked the object out slowly, and I felt the immediate emptiness, my ass open and throbbing in the air, looking for something to swallow. He applied cream again, smearing me shamelessly with two fingers, and let me rest for a second. I felt him moving over the bed, settling behind me, his bare skin—warm, not hairy, firm—pressing against mine. I felt his cock—thick, hot, much heavier than I had imagined—slide between my cheeks two or three times, not entering, gliding on the cream, resting against the hole and pulling back, as if announcing itself.

—Last time I’m asking.

—Go on.

—Say it properly. Tell me what you want.

I swallowed. My mouth was dry and my face was burning.

—Fuck me —I said—. Put it in me.

He laughed softly, satisfied, and pressed the tip against my ass. He pushed slowly. Very slowly. I felt the head, broad, forcing its way in, opening me in another way—a way no toy had reached—and there was a moment, at the beginning, when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take it, when my body instinctively closed up against the intruder. Andrés stopped, with only the head inside, breathing hard against my nape.

—Breathe with me. One. Two.

I breathed. He pushed another centimeter. He waited. He pushed again. It took him almost a minute to be fully inside me, and when I felt his balls press against mine, slick with cream and sweat, I understood for the first time what it was to have a man inside you all the way. I was full. I was wide open. My thighs trembled, tied to the bed.

—There —he whispered—. All the way in.

He let me get used to it, without moving, with the hard cock throbbing inside me. I felt every pulse like a warning.

Then he began. Slow. Deep. He pulled almost all the way out and drove back in to the base, with a firm thrust that made me slide a few centimeters over the coverlet. Each thrust a little firmer than the last, each withdrawal a little longer. The bed creaked. The bedpost thumped against the wall in a rising rhythm. I breathed with my mouth open against the pillow, fists clenched above my head, saliva wetting my cheek.

—Like that, like that —I told him, no longer recognizing my own voice—. Deeper.

—More? —he panted, and sped up.

He started fucking me hard, for real, his hips crashing against my ass in a sound that was wet and dry at once, the cream frothing at the edge of the hole. He grabbed my hips with both hands, digging his fingers in, and rammed his cock all the way into me over and over, each stroke a little more brutal, a little deeper. Every time he hit inside me he tore a moan from me against my will. My cock, flattened against the coverlet, leaked without anyone touching it, leaving a hot stain under my belly.

At some point I stopped thinking. At some point the difference between pleasure and surrender vanished, and I was nothing more than that body given over, that ass opening again and again to take him, that mouth moaning broken words against the fabric.

—I’m going to come inside you —Andrés said, his voice tight—. I’m going to fill your ass.

—Yes.

—Say it.

—Fill me. Come inside. All of it.

He increased the pace, brutal, for a few more seconds, and then I felt it. His climax was long, silent, warm. He sank all the way in and stayed there, shuddering only slightly, and I felt the hot spurts of his come firing inside me, one, two, three, four, each one accompanied by a low growl against my nape. He collapsed over my back and stayed there for a while, breathing, his cheek against my neck, his cock still inside me, slowly softening.

Neither of us said anything. The music in the living room, which I had forgotten about, was still playing softly in the other room.

When he finally came out, I felt him slide out with a liquid sound, and I also felt a thick thread of his semen beginning to run down my perineum, warm, dense, wetting my balls. Andrés looked down at me from above—I knew that later, because I heard him sigh—and with his thumb he gathered the spill and pushed it back in, as if he didn’t want to lose a drop.

Then he lowered his mouth. I felt his tongue there, cleaning my ass out full of his own come, licking, swallowing. He tore one last moan from me that no longer had any strength. He slipped a hand underneath, grabbed my cock—still hard, soaked—and gave me two, three, four firm strokes, and I came against the coverlet with a long spasm that shook me from head to toe, my cum shooting out in thick spurts I didn’t even see.

He freed me with the same calm with which he had tied me up. First the ankles, then the wrists, and last the blindfold. The light bothered me. Andrés looked at me without smiling, with a new seriousness, and ran a hand through my hair slowly, like someone laying down a promise.

—Sleep —he said.

And I slept.

***

When I woke up, Andrés was already gone. The bed smelled of him and almonds and semen and something else I didn’t want to name. I was naked from the waist down, my shirt wrinkled under my back, and between my legs there was the thick wetness he had left inside me, still leaking, soaking the inside of my thighs.

I sat up slowly. My shoulders hurt, my thighs hurt, my ass was open, my jaw ached from how tightly I had held it. On the nightstand there was a note folded in half.

I opened it.

“Come back to class on Monday as if nothing had happened. If at any point you want it to happen again, you know how to find me.”

I put it in the pocket of my shirt.

Then, without thinking too much, I brought my fingers to my own ass, still open, still warm, and sank them into myself, pulling them out glossy and thick with his come mixed with the cream. I looked at them. I smelled them. And, for the first time in my life, without disgust and without guilt, I put them in my mouth and licked them slowly, one by one, swallowing what he had left inside me.

That was my first confession. The one I never told anyone, until today.