What Happened with My Best Friend in That Fishing Cabin

I’m going to tell you about something I lived through a long time ago, when I still thought I knew myself well and knew exactly what I liked.

I was in my thirties. I was married, had a steady job, and that comfortable routine some people call happiness and others simply call habit. From my school friends, I had only two or three left, the ones who survive moves, children, and marriages. The closest of them all was Mariano. We’d known each other since we were sixteen, when we chased the same girls along the promenade and passed cigarettes back and forth with equal lack of elegance.

What really brought us together were the fishing nights. We’d spend hours stretched out on the sand, facing the black sea, waiting for a bite that often never came. In those timeless hours there were no forbidden topics: we talked about women, failures, each one’s first time, how we jerked off when we were kids. Between us, there were no secrets. Or so I thought.

On a long holiday weekend we decided to go far away. More than two hundred kilometers north, to a rough coast where they said the fishing was brutal. We rented a tiny wooden cabin, one of six or seven identical ones that stood facing the sea and filled up in summer. It had two single beds, a tiny bathroom, a shower that spit out lukewarm water, and a kitchen attached to the living room where we could have fried fish if luck had been on our side.

There was also an old fourteen-inch TV and, in the only room with a table, a black VCR covered in dust. Before leaving, we’d stopped by a neighborhood video shop and taken out a dozen movies. Some action, others of what we then called “adult” films, bought with the guy at the counter giving us a conspiratorial smile.

The weather wrecked the plan. We managed to fish for real for three days. The rest was wind, rain, and a low sky that seemed to push us back inside the cabin. We cast the sinker out and it came back forty meters later, dragged by the current. We gave in to talking, to mate, to beer with barbecue under the little roof, and to the rented movies.

The second day was the worst. Wind shaking the wooden walls, cold creeping through the cracks, and the two of us stretched out on the beds with the wood stove lit, choosing which tape to put on. Mariano pulled one from the box and laughed.

—This one was especially recommended to me —he said, shaking it in the air.

The cover was wet, as if the case had slept outside. We put it on anyway. It turned out to be one of those movies that felt like a tasting menu: seventy minutes in which everything imaginable showed up, lesbian scenes, heterosexual couples, two girls with a transvestite, two guys in a sauna, an older blonde giving private lessons to two young men. A compendium, almost a manual.

—They brought a bit of everything just in case, huh? —I commented.

—So nobody gets bored —he replied, shrugging.

At fifteen minutes, the same thing was happening to both of us below the pants. It was impossible to hide, and frankly there was nobody to hide it from. Without saying a word, almost at the same time, we took them out from under our clothes and started jerking off, each on his own bed, watching the screen. Out of the corner of our eyes we spied on each other. We commented on anything at all to pretend it was normal.

—Look at the face she’s making —he said.

—She’s acting, but she’s acting well —I answered.

We came almost in silence, almost at the same time, both of us panting softly. I looked at the ceiling and tried not to think about what had just happened. We stopped the movie, washed our hands, made mate, talked about the local news channel repeating the same story three times a day. We went out for a walk despite the cold. The sea was still rough, as if it knew something.

Back in the cabin, after a light stew and a couple of cigarettes smoked on the porch, we picked up the movie again. We paused it where we’d left off and, without agreeing to it, the two of us ended up in our underwear. The wood stove was practically begging to be put out and instead we fed it another log.

On the screen appeared the same blonde from the afternoon, sucking off a guy who looked like he was about ready to retire from it. Mariano laughed, then fell silent for a good while.

—Hey —he said, without looking at me—. What if you jerk me off and I jerk you off?

I didn’t answer. Neither yes nor no. I stayed quiet, like when someone says something impossible and you wait for them to take it back.

—Come on —he insisted—. We pull the beds together, nobody’s going to find out.

I still didn’t answer. I got up. He got up. We pushed the two beds together until they met in the middle of the room and formed one. We lay down side by side, on our sides, looking at each other without looking at each other.

He reached over and grabbed my cock without warning. It was like a lash. I don’t know how else to describe it. A cold and hot current at the same time, running all the way up to my nape and making me harder than I’d ever been. I reached over and found his: similar to mine, a little shorter, but thicker, and wet at the tip.

—Feels so good —he murmured, sighing, moving his hips slowly.

—Yeah —I said, almost voicelessly—. Really fucking good.

We stayed like that for a good while, in an uncomfortable position that nonetheless we didn’t want to change, as if moving might break the spell and force us to accept what was happening. Then I let go of his cock and rolled over on the bed until I was inverted, my feet at the height of his head and vice versa. I stretched my hand between his legs and took his cock again, and he did the same. By then we’d taken off our underwear without even noticing.

The hands went up and down with a rhythm that no longer worried about anything. The movie kept playing on the TV, but neither of us was watching it.

—I’m about to come —he said, arching his back.

I didn’t know what to do. My hand kept moving. I felt the first hot wave in my palm, then the second. I exploded a few seconds later, almost not understanding where so much came from. We were both a mess, belly, hands, thighs, the blanket, which fortunately was no longer our problem because we were leaving the next day. We looked at each other for a second and burst out laughing like two kids.

—I’ve never come like that, I swear —he told me, out of breath.

—Me neither, not even when I was with Lucía, and trust me, with that girl I ended up in all sorts of places —I answered, still laughing.

Five or ten minutes passed in silence, listening to the rain beating the roof again. Then Mariano sat up.

—We need to shower —he said—. We’re like two pigs.

—Too bad about the load —I joked—. So many unborn kids.

He laughed, got up, and went into the bathroom. I heard the water run. A little while later he called me. I hesitated three seconds, then went. The bathroom wasn’t for two, but we both got in. There was barely room to turn around. We soaped each other up slowly, hands sliding over places that no longer had an excuse. Our cocks went hard again as if they hadn’t rested at all.

He started jerking me off under the water, slowly. His other hand touched my ass, open, measuring. I gently moved his hand away.

—Not there —I told him—. I’ve got an old health issue in that area.

—All right —he answered, and didn’t insist.

We kept it at touching, at cocks, balls, hips. We got out of the shower wrapped in towels, left a giant puddle in the cabin hallway, and went back to the improvised bed.

We settled into the same position as before, that kind of incomplete sixty-nine, each one at the height of the other’s sex. This time the jerking off was softer, more controlled, almost as if we were negotiating something in silence. And then he turned a little more and, without warning, put his cock in my mouth.

What I felt at that moment is still hard to name. It wasn’t just pleasure. It was surprise, it was shame, it was a new heat that wasn’t in my catalog. His mouth worked with a precision that left me on the edge with every suck. Four or five and I was already silently begging him to stop so I wouldn’t finish too soon.

His cock was inches from my face. I resisted. I looked at it, smelled the soap on it, felt it throbbing under the light of the little lamp, but something pinned me to the pillow. Mariano let go of mine, lifted himself a little and said:

—Come on, suck it. Nobody here’s going to judge you. I promise it doesn’t taste like anything weird. And if you like having it done to you, why not return the favor?

He left the sentence hanging and put his cock back in my mouth. This time the sucking was fiercer, more determined. As if he were convincing me with physical arguments.

A few eternal seconds passed. I thought: if what he does to me feels this good, what do I lose by trying? Without opening my eyes all the way, I stretched my neck and sucked him. The head first, slowly, as if it were an experiment. The smell of soap, the warm clean texture, the firmness different from what I’d expected. It didn’t seem horrible to me. To be honest, at first it seemed like almost nothing: it seemed like a new sensation, without much moral weight.

I started to understand the rhythm. I felt the head going in and out between my lips, I heard his groans against my own cock, and that made me hotter than the sucking itself. The feeling of him enjoying me while I could barely bring myself to move.

—I’m about to come, old man —I warned him, thinking he’d pull away.

He didn’t pull away at all. He pressed his hand at the base of my cock, wrapping his fingers around my balls, and kept sucking with brutal suction. The first spurt made my whole body lift. The rest came on its own. I let him finish in his mouth for a long time. Long, by my standards. Then he stayed still, licking slowly.

Almost immediately I felt his cock hitting my palate. He hadn’t warned me. It wasn’t necessary anyway. He held my nape with a firm hand and his cock went in and out while he came. I let the shots go straight down my throat, helping with my hand so I wouldn’t choke, not really knowing what one is supposed to do in that case. When I felt him relax, I let myself fall back on my stomach.

He kept going. He licked slowly, uncovered the head, grabbed my balls with a delicacy I would never have attributed to the Mariano from the promenade, the one who laughed loud and drove borrowed cars badly. I was at the edge of exhaustion. I let him do it. I closed my eyes and listened to the sea outside, like background music asking for nothing.

We fell asleep like that, without settling ourselves much. Like two animals spent after a fight or a hunt.

***

Morning came in through the window with a gray light, the kind that tells you the day is going to stay ugly. I felt something warm and wet between my legs before opening my eyes. It was Mariano. He was below, focused, sucking me slowly, rediscovering every inch as if the night hadn’t been enough.

He realized I was awake. Without saying anything, he climbed on top of me and brought his cock, hard as iron, up to the level of my face. This time I didn’t hesitate. I latched onto it without thinking twice, with a hunger that surprised even me.

His hands traveled over my balls, over my perineum; his fingers brushed my asshole without going in, respecting what I’d told him the night before. I spread my legs so he’d be comfortable. At times I forgot where I was and at times I remembered too well.

We ended up coming almost at the same time. The smell of sex, of cum, of sweat, of the dampness of the old cabin, was thick in that small room where morning was already lighting up an inhospitable sea that still wouldn’t let us fish.

We stayed in bed a while longer, without talking. There were no confessions, no “what was that,” no plans. We got up, made coffee, looked out the window. We talked about fishing as if nothing had happened, about the friends who hadn’t come, about the calendar for the coming year.

We went back home the next day. Mariano and I stayed friends for many more years. We never spoke again about that week. There was no need. When I sit in some random kitchen and see an old cassette case in some corner, or taste a bitter mate with the smell of dampness, I remember the wooden cabin, the rough sea, and that exhausted man in a movie who should never have gotten wet.