I Accompanied My Friend to His First Time with Another Man

I’ve known Ramiro for more than fifteen years. We joined the same company almost at the same time, shared adjoining desks, endless lunches, and enough confidences to consider ourselves more than just coworkers. That’s why, one afternoon when he went quiet longer than usual and told me he had to tell me something, I knew it was serious.

—I like men —he blurted out, without beating around the bush, staring at the coffee cooling in his hands.

The first thing I felt was a knot in my stomach. I’m fifty-three, a widower, and I never thought of myself as anything other than what I’d always been. For one absurd second, I thought that confession came with an intention toward me, and it must have shown on my face, because Ramiro let out a nervous laugh.

—It’s not about you, relax —he clarified at once—. There’s someone. Someone here, from the office.

Someone here. That threw me off even more.

He told me the rest little by little, like someone emptying stones out of a pocket. The guy was named Bruno, he was twenty-four, and he worked in the director’s area, two floors up. They had been in something for months that neither of them named: conversations that stretched on, messages at odd hours, a couple of secret meetings in which things had gone from words to hands. Kisses in the parking lot. Hasty caresses inside the car. Nothing more, until then.

—But Bruno wants to take it further —Ramiro said, lowering his voice even though nobody was near—. And so do I.

Ramiro is forty-seven, married, and takes care of himself. He’s no heartthrob, but he goes to the gym three times a week and keeps his body firm. I, on the other hand, am the opposite: big, hairless, carrying the weight the years and solitary dinners leave behind. I’m telling you this because it will matter later.

—And what do I have to do with it? —I asked, because I still didn’t understand why he was telling me.

That was when the real reason for the conversation came out. Bruno had invited him to his place on Friday. A whole night. And Ramiro needed an alibi for his wife, who has known me forever and would never suspect me. If he said he was going out with me, he could stay out without anyone asking questions.

—I just need you to take me and be there —he said—. In case Laura calls, in case I have to justify where I am. You’re my perfect story.

I told him I wasn’t going to get involved in anything, that it wasn’t my thing. He promised he wasn’t asking for that, just company and backup. I’m not sure why I said yes. Maybe because he was my friend. Maybe because, deep down, there was something in all of it that intrigued me more than I was willing to admit.

***

On Friday I picked him up a few blocks from his house, as we’d arranged. He got into the car smelling of cologne, wearing a shirt I’d never seen before, and I noticed his hands trembling slightly on his knees.

—Since when did you switch sides? —I teased him as I started the car.

—I didn’t switch from anywhere —he replied, looking out at the street—. One day I just started wanting it, and I couldn’t stop.

On the drive he told me more than I wanted to know, and at the same time I couldn’t stop listening. That they’d been seeking each other out for more than five months. That he’d already jerked him off a couple of times in impossible places. That tonight, at last, he was going to hand his body over completely, because Bruno was the one in charge. The top, he said, with a mixture of shyness and pride I didn’t know in him.

I nodded without saying anything. I didn’t know what face to make. Part of me wanted to turn around and go home. Another part, one I didn’t fully recognize, gripped the steering wheel with curiosity.

***

Bruno’s place was an apartment on the third floor, tidy and dimly lit. He opened the door wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt, barefoot. He was taller than I’d imagined, with a worked body and a smile that knew exactly what it was provoking.

He shook my hand with just the right amount of politeness. With Ramiro, he was different: he took him by the waist and gave him a long kiss in the doorway, not caring that I was standing there, not knowing where to look.

—Come in —he said, letting him go only slightly.

The living room had a two-seater sofa and, opposite it, an armchair where I sank down while they settled in. Bruno turned on the TV almost like a courtesy gesture toward me, to give me something to stare at, and then completely forgot I existed.

They started slowly. Bruno shoved Ramiro back against the sofa and kissed his neck, while running a hand over his chest and moving lower, unhurried. I stared at the screen without understanding a word of what was on, glancing every so often toward the sofa beside me like someone who doesn’t want to look and yet can’t help it.

I saw Bruno squeeze his ass over his pants. I saw Ramiro reach for the bulge outlined in his cotton shorts and stroke it in slow circles. The room filled with a thick silence, broken only by my friend’s ragged breathing and the occasional low moan that escaped against the other man’s mouth.

At some point I stopped pretending I was watching television.

***

Bruno stood up, yanked down his shorts, and sat back down with his legs open. What appeared left me breathless: even half-erect, it was thick and long, much more than my mind was prepared to see up close. I shifted in my chair, not knowing what to do with my own hands.

He took Ramiro by the nape with gentle firmness and guided him downward. My friend didn’t resist. He knelt between his legs as if he’d done it all his life and started to lick him first, slowly, running his tongue over him completely before taking him into his mouth.

And while he did, Bruno watched me.

Not covertly. He held my gaze over Ramiro’s head, with a half-smile, raising one eyebrow as if inviting me to something neither of them intended to say out loud. I kept looking away toward the screen and then back again. Over and over. Until I stopped fighting it.

The sounds my friend made were the most disturbing part of all. Guttural, wet, completely surrendered. I watched him choke a little and keep going, adjust and go back, with a devotion I’d never have imagined in the man I ate milanesas with every noon. His mouth was full and his eyes were closed, and for the first time I fully understood what he’d told me in the car. This wasn’t curiosity. It was pure desire.

Bruno started moving his hips. He held Ramiro’s head with both hands and set the rhythm himself, faster and faster, until his body went taut and a long growl rose from his chest. I saw Ramiro go still, swallow, wipe the corner of his mouth lightly with the back of his hand. And I saw Bruno look at me again, still breathless, as if to say without words that there was more than enough there for the two of us.

***

He stood up naked, without the slightest shame, and walked toward the bathroom passing right in front of my chair. He stopped for a second, looked down at me with that same smile, and kept going, swaying, leaving the image burned into my retina.

Ramiro pushed himself up from the floor. His cheeks were flushed and his lips swollen. He sat for a moment on the edge of the sofa, catching his breath, and only then seemed to remember I was there.

—Are you okay? —he asked me, and I almost laughed at how absurd the question was.

—I should be asking you that —I answered, with a voice rougher than I expected.

He smiled, still lost in it.

—Now we’re going to leave you alone for a while —he said, straightening his shirt—. He wants to take me to the bedroom. If anything, call me.

—And are you okay? —I insisted, because it was the only thing I could think to ask.

—I’m not the same as before —he replied, and by the way he said it I knew it was true—. Did you see him? He’s fucking hot.

I didn’t answer him. I didn’t know what to say. I’d only listened, I told him at last, and he gave a soft laugh before standing up.

Bruno came back from the bathroom, took him by the hand, and led him down the hallway. Before closing the bedroom door, he turned his head and gave me one last look, long, deliberate, one that made it perfectly clear that the door wasn’t left half-closed by accident.

I was left alone in the living room, in front of a television still talking to no one, listening to the first sounds beginning to seep through from the other side of the hall. And for the first time in a long while, I had no idea what I was going to do with everything I was feeling.

***