My First Time with a Stranger by the River

It was Marcos who put the idea in my head. He was a broad-shouldered, cheerful guy I’d known since school, and that afternoon we were sitting in our usual bar when he told me he’d seen a man bathing naked in the river the night before. He’d caught him while walking along the bank: a tall, dark man with the body of someone who works with his hands, moving through the water without the slightest shame.

—He had an enormous cock —Marcos said, lowering his voice even though nobody was nearby—. I’m not exaggerating. A thick, long cock hanging between his legs like it weighed something. Like nothing I’ve ever seen in my fucking life.

I laughed, ordered another beer, and changed the subject. But while Marcos went on talking about other things, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. I didn’t understand exactly what I was feeling. A strange, uncomfortable curiosity, like when you see something you shouldn’t have seen and can’t stop remembering it.

It was seven in the evening when I said goodbye to Marcos. Eight when I got home. Nine when I decided to go out.

***

The river was twenty minutes away on foot, following the dirt track that ran along the eucalyptus trees. It was a secluded area, without lighting, where people from the village went during the day to fish or cool off. At night, nobody had any business there.

Or almost nobody.

I saw him before he saw me. He was in the water up to his hips, turned away from me, his wet torso shining under the moonlight. He was exactly as Marcos had described him: big, dark, with the broad shoulders of someone who carries weight all day. The river came up to his waist and I could see perfectly well that he wasn’t wearing anything.

I stood still among the trees, not knowing what I was doing there. Go home, I told myself. This is stupid. But I didn’t move. I kept watching for minutes I couldn’t have counted, until the man turned around.

Then he saw me.

He didn’t get scared. He just looked at me calmly from the water, with that kind of calm people have when they’re no longer afraid of anything. Then he went back to what he was doing, as if I weren’t there, as if it were perfectly normal for a stranger to show up and watch him bathe in the middle of the night.

I don’t know why I did what I did next. I suppose because I’d already come this far and it made no sense to turn back.

I took my clothes off.

***

The water was cold at first, and I went in slowly, using getting used to the temperature as an excuse. The man watched me out of the corner of his eye from a few meters away. I looked straight ahead, pretending this was something I did every night: bathing naked in the dark river beside a stranger.

—First time I’ve seen you around here —he said. His voice was deep, with no particular accent. A voice that asked for nothing, only observed.

—It’s my first time here too —I replied.

—And how did you hear about it?

I hesitated for a second.

—A friend. He told me someone bathed here at night.

The man smiled. It was a small smile, barely visible at the corner of his mouth.

—And what else did your friend tell you?

I didn’t answer. There was no need. We both knew what was behind the question.

His name was Diego. Or that’s what he told me. He lived ten minutes from there, in a small house he’d inherited from his father, and worked in construction. He was in his early thirties, though in the dark he looked older. He was the kind of man who doesn’t say more than necessary, who when he falls silent, does it for real and without discomfort.

We stood in the water for a few minutes without saying much. The river murmured softly around us. The moon was almost full and cast silver reflections over the surface. Little by little we moved closer without either of us saying it out loud.

When I saw his cock up close, I understood why Marcos hadn’t been able to shut up about it. It was semi-erect under the water, heavy, thick at the base, with the swollen head peeking out between the ripples. His balls hung taut and weighty, like two big eggs demanding their own space.

***

—Can I touch it? —I asked. I said it before I even thought about it, and after saying it I didn’t know where to put myself.

Diego looked at me for a few seconds, unhurried.

—Yes —he said simply—. Touch it as much as you want.

I touched it slowly, with my hand under the water, feeling its weight and thickness with my fingers. It was thick and long, more than I’d imagined. I closed my fist around the shaft and still couldn’t get all the way around it; my thumb and forefinger wouldn’t meet. The head rose above my hand, broad and hot even under the river’s cold water. It started getting hard between my fingers, throbbing, swelling, and I felt my breathing speed up in a way I couldn’t control.

I began moving my hand up and down slowly, learning how it felt. I lowered my other hand and weighed his balls, tugging them gently. Diego let out a low grunt, almost imperceptible, and didn’t move. He let me play. He let me discover his body with my fingers like someone feeling a fruit he’d never tasted before.

—This is the first time you’ve done this —Diego said. It wasn’t a question.

—Yes.

—Do you want to stop?

—No.

—Then take it out of the water. Take a good look at it.

I did as he said. We backed up until the river only covered us to the knees and his cock was exposed, shining, soaked, pointing toward me. I had never had another man’s cock so close to my face. The moon gave the dark skin of his glans a strange shine, and a sticky thread was already slipping from the tip. I grabbed it again with both hands, one over the other, and there was still too much above my grip.

We got out of the water. Diego took his clothes from the ground and spread a T-shirt over the dry grass. I knelt down, and for what followed the only sounds were the river behind us and my own ragged breathing. I took him into my mouth awkwardly at first, trying to understand how to do it, how to hold him, how to breathe. The head barely fit; I had to open my jaw as wide as possible to take it all in. I sucked slowly, pulling back with a wet sound, then swallowing him again as far as I could. On the second try I gagged and had to pull away coughing, with a strand of saliva hanging between my lips and his glans.

—Easy —Diego said, his voice rough—. Breathe through your nose. No rush.

I tried again. I ran my tongue along the whole length, from base to tip, following the thick vein that ran down the top. I licked his balls one by one, taking them into my mouth, feeling how they tightened against my tongue. I went back up and took him again, this time more slowly, letting my throat get used to it. I started sucking him with an awkward but steady rhythm, using my hand at the base for what wouldn’t fit. I could feel him swelling even more between my lips, throbbing.

Diego didn’t force me, didn’t move my head, didn’t do anything but stay still and let me go at my own pace. He only breathed hard through his nose, hands open at his sides, looking down at me with a calm that made me even hotter. My own cock was hard between my legs, leaking, without me having touched it.

It went on for a good while. My jaw started to ache, saliva dripped down my chin and chest, my knees got muddy against the damp earth. And I didn’t want to stop. Every time I pulled back to breathe, I took him deeper than before.

When Diego pulled me to my feet and turned me around, I wasn’t nervous in the same way anymore. Or maybe I was, but it was a different kind of nervousness, without fear.

—Have you done this before? —he asked quietly, one hand resting on my hip.

—No —I admitted.

There was a long pause. I felt his wet cock pressed against the cleft of my ass, hot, throbbing between my cheeks.

—We need to take it slow —he said. And at that moment I understood he was not a man who hurt anyone on purpose.

***

He guided me to the nearest tree trunk and made me brace my hands against the bark. He knelt behind me. I felt his hands spreading my ass cheeks and then, without warning, his hot tongue sliding over my hole. I shuddered all over. No one had ever touched me there. Diego licked patiently, coating me with saliva, pressing the tip of his tongue against the tight muscle, softening me up. Then he slipped in a finger. Very slowly. He moved it in circles until he felt me give, and added another. He spat more saliva and kept opening me with both fingers, pulling them out and pushing them back in calmly, until I started letting out groans I didn’t even recognize as my own.

When he stood up and pressed the head of his cock against my hole, I was already so open and so wet that he almost fit. Almost.

I’m not going to pretend it didn’t hurt. It hurt quite a lot. The tip entered me with a dry burn despite the saliva, and with just that I already felt like I was splitting in two. A whimper escaped me and I dug my nails into the tree bark. Diego stopped dead, without pulling out, with only the glans inside, waiting for me to breathe.

—Hold on —he whispered—. Let your ass get used to it. Don’t move.

I took a deep breath. When the burn eased a little, he pushed in another couple of centimeters. I tightened again, felt once more that he wouldn’t fit, and he stopped again. It was like that for what felt like forever: a short push, a long pause, another push a little deeper. I wrapped myself around the tree trunk and breathed deeply whenever I needed to. I could feel that enormous cock filling me from the inside, millimeter by millimeter, opening up a space I didn’t know I had.

When I finally felt his balls against my ass, I knew he was all the way in. All the length, all the thickness, all of Diego inside me. I stayed still for a second, trying to take it in, with that strange sensation of being completely full.

—Good —he murmured, his hands gripping my hips—. Now yes.

He started moving. At first slowly, with short thrusts, pulling out only a little and then sinking back in. I kept breathing hard against the bark. Little by little the movements became longer, more deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out and drove back in to the hilt, with a wet sound each time. The pain faded. Not entirely, but enough for something else to exist. Something I didn’t know how to name, and didn’t try to name then because words would have ruined everything.

At some point I started moving too, finding the rhythm, pushing my ass back to take him in. The sharp blows of his hips against my cheeks echoed in the forest’s silence. Moans escaped me that I couldn’t hold back. Diego bent over me, pressed his chest to my back, bit my neck without strength, and whispered in my ear that it was okay, that I was doing well, that I should hold on a little longer. He reached a hand around front and grabbed my cock, which was hard and dripping, and started jerking me off to the same rhythm as he was fucking me.

I came first, with a strangled cry against the tree, shooting thick ropes of semen over the bark and over his hand. My ass clenched hard around his cock, and I felt that finally set him off too. Diego drove in to the hilt with a brutal thrust, stayed there motionless, and I felt him come inside me, his cock throbbing in waves as he poured hot cum against my walls. There were many spurts. I felt every one of them.

When he was done, I was still standing with my hands pressed to the rough bark of the tree. Diego withdrew slowly and waited. I felt the hot semen running down my thigh. Neither of us spoke for a long while. The river sounded the same as before. The moon was still in the same place. As if nothing had changed, even though everything had changed.

I got dressed with hands that were still shaking a little. Diego dressed too, calmly, without hurry, without looking at me in a way that made me feel watched.

—I live nearby —he said—. If you want to come.

I thought about it. I knew I shouldn’t. That the sensible thing was to thank him, turn around, and go home pretending that night had never happened. But I’d made enough sensible decisions that day already, and all of them had brought me here.

—All right —I said.

***

Diego’s house was exactly what I imagined: small, clean in the functional way of someone who has lived alone for years, with bare walls except for a few calendars and a shelf with tools lined up in meticulous order. It smelled of wood and soap.

He offered me water. I sat on his bed because there was nowhere else to sit, and Diego sat beside me. We talked little, about unimportant things: his job on the building site, how the village didn’t have much going for it in summer, that the river was fuller than in other years. It was easy to talk to him when nothing was at stake. He had that way of listening that only a few people have: without interrupting, without preparing the answer while you’re still speaking.

At midnight he fell asleep first. I took longer. I was lying there with my eyes open, staring at the ceiling, listening to his even breathing and trying to sort out what I was feeling. It wasn’t guilt exactly. Or maybe it was a little at first, but it dissolved quickly. It was more like amazement. At myself, at what I was capable of doing when curiosity weighs more than fear.

I slept deeply when I finally let go.

***

I woke feeling the heat of his body behind mine. Diego was awake. I felt his hand on my hip and his breath on my neck. His cock was hard again, resting against me without insistence, just letting itself be there between my cheeks, thick, hot, marking the cleft of my ass.

—Are you okay? —he asked quietly.

—Yes —I answered. And it was true, or at least truer than the night before.

What happened after was slower than the first time. Diego reached for a jar of cream on the bedside table and spread it generously over his cock, leaving it shiny. He ran his fingers over my hole, still sore from the night before, and lubed me up too, sliding one finger all the way in calmly, softening me again. Then he lifted my top leg, held me by the waist, and pushed his cock in from behind while I was lying on my side. It went in easier this time, though the stretch was still brutal. I moaned softly into the pillow when I felt his balls press against my thighs.

He started fucking me like that, in silence, almost not moving. Long, deep thrusts that shook my whole body every time he sank in to the hilt. With more natural light coming through the window. With less urgency and more awareness of what he was doing. I could see his hand on my belly, holding me against him. I could see my own hard cock on the sheets, leaking pre-cum onto the white cotton.

Diego rolled me onto my back without pulling out. He lifted my legs and rested them on his shoulders. From that angle he drove even deeper, and I could see his face while he fucked me: brows drawn in concentration, jaw clenched, chest muscles tight with each thrust. He grabbed my cock with his right hand and started jerking me off to his rhythm, looking me in the eyes. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

I came over my own belly in long ropes, clenching my ass hard around his cock. Diego kept thrusting for a few more seconds, faster and harder each time, until he sank in one last time and filled me for the second time with hot cum. I felt him throbbing inside me, releasing, and this time it was different. There was no pain. Only the dense weight of having him all the way inside and feeling him finish.

It hurt less. I felt much more. When we were done, I lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling of his room, with the light of early morning drawing stripes across the wall, and thought that the world was exactly the same as before and at the same time completely different.

I got up, dressed, and told him I was leaving. Diego nodded from the bed, without drama, without asking for explanations or giving any. I liked that more than I should have.

—Take care —he said.

—You too —I replied.

***

I stepped out into the village’s fresh morning air and walked home slowly, my body tired and my head curiously silent. There was no way to pretend it hadn’t happened. I also wasn’t very sure what to do with it, for the time being.

The following weeks were strange. Diego started sending me messages. At first they were simple: meet at the river, remember that night. But then their tone started to change. He threatened to tell people what we’d done, that in a small village those things spread fast and reached every corner.

The first few times I gave him what he asked for. When fear is bigger than pride, you give in. But there comes a point when those two things reverse, and when I got there I made a decision.

I left the village. It wasn’t only because of Diego: there were other reasons that had built up for a long time, things that didn’t fit, conversations that never ended well. But Diego was the final push. Sometimes the most uncomfortable situations end up being the reason you needed to do what you should have done long before.

In the city nobody knew me. Nobody knew anything about any river or any summer night. I was able to start from zero, with everything that implies: the new loneliness, the job that takes time to come, the doubts of the first few months about whether I’d done the right thing by leaving. And also the freedom to be, for the first time, exactly who I wanted to be without anyone looking at me or measuring me.

I never saw Diego again. I didn’t look for him, and he didn’t insist anymore either. I suppose each of us found what we were looking for that night by the river, even if those things were very different. I found something I didn’t expect to find and it took me time to know how to carry. But I found it, and there’s no going back from that.