I Tried to Change My Life and It Cost Me Everything I Had

I met Daniela in the café in the building where we both worked. I went up to the accounting office on the seventh floor, she came down from the architecture studio on the twelfth, and for some reason we always ended up in the line at two-thirty. We started saying hello. Then sitting together. Then staying until the barista looked at us like he was ready to close.

I didn’t tell her anything about my previous life. Not about the room I shared with three guys in downtown Arequipa, not about the nights at Volcán nightclub, not about that orgy in a house in the Yanahuara neighborhood that had left my ass sore, five guys’ cum dripping down my thighs, and my head more confused than ever. I told Daniela I was an accountant, that I lived alone, and that I was tired of going around looking for what I couldn’t find. That last part wasn’t a lie.

—What you couldn’t find was a good woman? —she asked me one afternoon, half-joking, while she drew circles on the sugar packet on the table.

—Something like that —I answered.

I kissed her that night. And two weeks later I was in her bed, the light off, praying she wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t entirely sure how this worked. I was afraid of a lot of things. Of the size of my cock, above all. Not because it was small or big, but because some of the men I’d been with had laughed. Daniela didn’t laugh. She took it in her warm hand, stroked it slowly until she got me hard, and then she slid it into her wet cunt herself, riding me with a patience I had never known. I felt her cunt tighten around my cock, felt her small breasts brushing my chest as she rocked on me, and for the first time in years I came inside a woman without thinking about anything else. She collapsed on top of me, kissed my forehead, told me it was okay, and for the first time in years I felt like maybe I could live like this.

At six months, she asked me to move in. At eight, she told me she was pregnant. I knelt in the kitchen and kissed her belly even though it still didn’t show. I promised her I would be a good father. And I believed it, believed it with all my strength.

The problem was named Iván.

Iván was Daniela’s older brother. A cop, separated, with two kids he saw every fifteen days. He hated me from the very first lunch at his mother’s place, when he asked me which team I supported and I answered, with my best smile, that I wasn’t interested in soccer. I saw his jaw clench. I saw him look at his sister as if saying, “You got yourself into this?” From that day on, he looked for ways to make my life impossible.

He would show up unannounced. He’d stay for dinner. He’d make comments about the way I walked, about how I held my glass, about my voice when I laughed. Daniela told him to stop. Iván said it was brotherly affection. And I learned to keep my mouth shut, because I was going to lose any argument before it even started.

The day everything broke began with something stupid. I left in a rush for work and forgot my phone on the dining table. Midmorning, Iván came by to drop off a bag of fruit for his sister. My phone rang. And although Daniela swears she told him not to check it, Iván unlocked it —the code was the same as my bank account password, an obvious sequence— and read the message out loud.

Bruno. A name I had erased from my memory with all the strength I had. Bruno, the organizer of that party in Yanahuara, to whom, in a moment of delirium, I had given my number. “I miss your tight little ass, handsome. When are you coming back to suck my cock like that night?”

When I got home from work, my clothes were piled by the door and Daniela was crying on the sofa with one hand over her belly.

—Is it true? —she asked.

I lied to her. I told her someone had dialed the wrong number. I told her I had never been with a man. That I loved women, that I loved her, that the baby we were expecting was my whole world. I deleted the contact in front of her. I begged her not to answer any messages from that number. I swore on my dead mother that there was nothing to hide.

Iván watched me from the doorway with his arms crossed. He knew I was lying. And he smiled.

***

Three weeks passed in silence. Daniela spoke to me only when she had to. I slept on the sofa the first few nights; after that, little by little, I went back to the bed, but she no longer curled up against me. I stroked her belly and felt the baby move, and inside I promised myself I wasn’t going to fail again. That this time it would be different.

Until the phone rang on Thursday afternoon.

—Hello, handsome. Do you remember me?

The voice sounded like Bruno’s, but it wasn’t exactly the same. Deeper, maybe younger. I asked who was speaking.

—What do you mean who. Have you already forgotten the night in Yanahuara, with three cocks in your mouth at the same time? —he laughed.

I told him I had changed my life. I told him I had a woman, that I was going to have a child, that please don’t call me again. The voice on the other end softened.

—I get it, seriously. I just wanted to see you for a bit. I’ve got something for you.

—I don’t want anything.

—It’s a gift somebody gave me and I don’t need it. A few video games. The kind you like.

That’s where I should have hung up. That’s where I should have realized. At some point that night I had told Bruno that I liked FIFA and GTA, but I had never told anyone else in that crowd. Only someone who had been at the party could have known that. Or someone Bruno had told.

But I didn’t hang up. I said yes.

I’m just going to pick up the games. That’s all.

We agreed to meet on a corner downtown, two blocks from the square. When I arrived, the man waiting for me wasn’t Bruno. He was much more solid, with a thick beard and a black T-shirt stretched tight over his chest. He held out his hand and smiled at me with a familiarity that didn’t fit.

—It’s been a while since we saw each other —he said.

I went along with it, because my memory of that night was blurry: I had drunk, I had snorted some white stuff someone offered me, the lights were red and the faces blurred together. I assumed he was someone who had been there and I didn’t remember well.

We walked to a hotel on Jirón Junín. The room smelled of cheap disinfectant and old sheets. He locked the door and grabbed my neck before I could say anything.

—I’ve been thinking about this fucking mouth for days.

What happened after is what I don’t want to remember but remember every second of. It wasn’t affectionate. It wasn’t even savage in the way you expect from someone who wants you. It was a demonstration. He shoved me against the wall, yanked my pants and underwear down in one pull, and stood staring at my half-hard cock and naked ass like he was inspecting merchandise. He opened his fly without taking his pants off. His cock sprang out hard, thick, with the foreskin already pulled back and a drop of fluid gleaming at the tip. He grabbed the back of my neck with a force that made my knees bend and pushed my head down.

—Open your mouth. Stick out your tongue. Like that, just like you learned that night.

I obeyed. I stuck out my tongue and let the tip rest there, feeling the heat of his glans, the salty taste of pre-cum. He pushed it into me slowly, so I could feel it enter centimeter by centimeter, the warm skin sliding over my tongue, the smell of man rising up my nose. When the glans touched the back of my palate, he rammed it in all at once, down my throat. I choked. Tears filled my eyes. A string of saliva ran down my chin.

—Like that, like that, swallow it all.

His cock wasn’t the biggest I’d ever had, but he knew exactly how to use it. He started fucking my mouth with both hands gripping my head, thrusting all the way in, not giving me time to breathe. I felt his balls slam against my chin with every thrust, the pubic hair scraping my nose when he forced my face down against his pelvis. He held me there, with his cock buried in my throat, until I started convulsing and gagging; then he yanked it out, a thick rope of spit and phlegm hanging from my lips, and gave me two or three seconds to cough before shoving it back in.

—This is what you are. This is what you are —he repeated, nearly out of breath—. A little ass for me to piss cum into. Nothing else.

I cried, drooled on his cock, and felt mine betrayingly harden against the cold wall. He saw it and laughed.

—Look at that, getting hard, faggot. Say you like it.

—I like it —I murmured with my mouth full.

—Louder.

He pulled his cock out just long enough for me to say it. I spat on his glans and told him I liked it, that I wanted all of it, and he shoved it back into my throat while laughing.

Then he dragged me by the hair to the bed. He threw me face down on the mattress, with my face crushed into sheets that smelled of other people’s sweat and my pants bunched around my ankles. He spread my ass cheeks with both hands, no care at all, and spat on my hole. I felt the warm thread run down my anus and along the crease. He spat on his hand too, lubed his cock, and without any more preparation rammed it into me in one hard stroke, balls deep.

I screamed. I really screamed, an animal scream that came up from my guts, and he covered my mouth with his broad, rough palm.

—Shut up, faggot. You’re going to make them come to the door.

He had shoved it in dry, without lubricant, without a condom, and I felt something tear inside me, a burning that climbed like fire from my ass to the pit of my stomach. He didn’t move for a few seconds, letting me feel all of his cock buried in me, stretching me, and then he started fucking me with long, brutal thrusts that made my forehead slam into the headboard. The bed creaked. The headboard hit the wall with a dull rhythm that kept time with his strokes. Every time he pulled almost all the way out to slam back in, he ripped a broken moan from me.

—What a tight ass, motherfucker. Looks like nobody’s fucked it in a long time.

He grabbed my hips and lifted my ass, forcing me to kneel with my face still on the mattress. From that position he drove into me deeper, faster, spitting on my back, smacking my ass so hard it left my skin burning. I felt his balls slam against my perineum with every thrust, felt my own cock hard and dripping between my legs without him touching it.

—Tell me you’re my whore.

—I’m your whore —I answered with my mouth against the sheet.

—Louder.

—I’m your whore!

—That’s it, that’s it, learn.

He yanked it out, flipped me onto my back, lifted my legs and rested them on his shoulders, and shoved it back in, now looking me in the eyes. I could see his face reddened, sweat running down his temples, his mouth open with his teeth clenched. He rammed me with his whole pelvis, folding me in half, and each thrust tore a moan from me that sounded like begging and pleasure at the same time. He grabbed my cock with his right hand and started jerking me off at the same rhythm he was fucking me.

—Come for me, faggot. Come with my cock inside you.

I couldn’t hold it. I came in his hand, on my own belly, on my chest, thick hot jets splashing up to my chin. I felt the orgasm squeeze my ass around his cock, and he groaned, “That’s it, that’s it, squeeze me, motherfucker,” and sped up. A few seconds later he pulled out, grabbed me by the hair, and threw me back to my knees on the floor.

—Open your mouth and don’t move.

He jerked off twice in front of my face, his cock wet with my ass, and came in long streams that painted my tongue, my lips, my cheeks, my eyebrows. One jet hit my right eye and burned. Another landed warm and thick on my chin and dripped down to my chest. He forced me to swallow what I had in my mouth, pinching my jaw with two fingers until I showed him with my clean tongue.

When he finished, I was kneeling on the floor, trembling, his cum on my face and mine drying on my stomach.

—And the gift? —I asked, my voice broken.

He laughed. He pulled up his pants, grabbed the cell phone from the nightstand, ran his fingers through his hair.

—I forgot it at my place. Next time I’ll bring it. Your ass is way too good not to repeat.

I got out of there without saying another word, my ass burning, my underwear sticky, the taste of cum still in my throat. On the bus back, watching the avenue lights through the window, I knew something didn’t add up. The guy had looked at his phone twice before I went into the room. There had been a camera pointed at the TV, turned on, now that I thought about it. The angle was no accident.

But I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t afford to believe it.

***

When I got home, my things were in the living room again. This time not by the door. Neatly stacked in the middle of the floor, as if someone had had time to fold the clothes. Daniela was sitting on the sofa, her huge belly under her nightgown and her eyes swollen. Iván was standing behind the sofa, one hand on the back of it and his phone in the other. He showed me the screen.

There I was. On my knees. Mouth open. That guy’s cock down my throat. Crying. Swallowing. In another frame, face down, ass in the air and a cock buried to the balls. In another, my face soaked in cum and my tongue hanging out.

—You’re leaving now —Iván said. That was all he had to say.

Daniela didn’t look at me. She didn’t yell. She didn’t hit me. She didn’t ask me anything. She just stood up slowly, went to the bedroom, and closed the door. And I stood there, frozen, my backpack in my hand and my whole life in four plastic bags I wouldn’t be able to carry alone.

Iván came close enough that his face was inches from mine.

—If you call her again, if you look for her again, if you show up near my nephew again —he said “my nephew” slowly, marking every syllable—, I swear I’ll send the video to the whole building where you work. And to your mother. And to your uncles down south. Do you understand me?

I nodded. I went down in the elevator with two bags. The third stayed behind.

***

That night I slept on a bench in Plaza de Armas, my backpack as a pillow and my jacket over my face so nobody would recognize me. I cried like I hadn’t cried since I was a kid. Not for me. For the baby. For the kitchen promise, when I had kissed her belly.

The next morning I walked to the boarding house where I had lived three years earlier, on a steep street in the Cercado. Don Aurelio, the owner, recognized me and told me he didn’t have a free room but I could store my things in the back room. I thanked him and walked to the building where I worked. I got there at ten. At the front desk the head of personnel was waiting for me with a white envelope in his hand.

—Your family called —was all he told me when I asked why.

I never found out whether it was Daniela or Iván. I want to believe it was Iván. I want to believe that she, at some point, while I was coming down the building stairs with my dismissal envelope in my hand, was still defending me.

That same night, through a mutual acquaintance, I got the news. Daniela had lost the baby. Early morning. Hemorrhage. Stress, the doctors said.

I sat on the floor of the boarding house storage room, among my bags, and couldn’t breathe for a long time.

***

I took a bus north. I didn’t have a clear destination, I just needed to get out of Arequipa, out of the streets where I might run into her, out of the bars where I knew Bruno would show up sooner or later. I arrived in a city in the highlands I’m not going to name. I rented a room. I spent a week not getting out of bed, eating whatever the hostel owner could pass me through the crack under the door.

I’m still here. It’s been seven months. I got a part-time job at a bookstore. Sometimes, on Saturday nights, I go to a bar next to the market. There’s a man who looks at me from the counter, a guy in his forties, big hands, a bulge under his jeans. I look back at him, stare at his crotch without hiding it, and I know that sooner or later I’m going to end up in his room with my knees on the floor and his cock in my mouth, because that’s what I am, and because pretending to be anything else cost me everything I had.

Fate, if it exists, didn’t want me to change. It wanted me to keep being what they came looking for from me that night in Yanahuara. And after everything, I don’t have the strength left to fight it anymore.