Gay

Octavio strutted naked around the pool like it was a trophy, never suspecting his wife and her friend already had a plan for that afternoon.

I felt his body trembling against mine on the bench along the seafront. What he confessed that night changed everything, and there was no turning back.

At fifty-one, after many women, I wrote to a stranger on a gay website not knowing that message would force me to accept what I had always denied.

When I felt his erection pressed against my ass, I knew I wasn’t going to move. And I knew, too, that at the next station, we were both getting off.

It was eleven in the morning, the place was empty, and my partner was asleep. When I saw him come through the door, I knew that Sunday wasn’t going to be like any other.

I only wanted to get home. But his honey-colored eyes and that half-smile of a boy who knows what he wants made me change course in the middle of the station.

In the school showers I always looked on the sly. That afternoon, on my way back from training, Mateo asked me the question I’d been waiting for for years.

My mind told me never to go back. My body remembered those lips and wouldn’t let me sleep. On the third day I dialed his number.

For years I practiced with my fingers and toys, but none of it prepared me for the first time I felt another man breathing on my neck and pushing in patiently.

Andrés was always the strong brother, the one who brought food home and slept with his girlfriends. Until one night of withdrawal he came looking for me in the dark.

I only meant to tell him to turn the porn volume down. I never imagined that argument would end with the two of us on his bed, with nothing between us.

I was alone at home, opened the app, and a Romanian trucker replied with a photo that got me out of bed and into his trailer.

I reached the entrance not knowing if I’d have the courage to go up. My name is Esteban, I’m 48, and upstairs a couple I only knew by messages was waiting for me.

I slept in his bed when I was scared. The night I found him crying because of me, I knew what I felt for my brother was beyond turning back.

I went upstairs with a glass of cold water and found him naked on the ladder. I cleared my throat to let him know I was there, but he turned slowly.

At four in the morning, alone in the bakery, he discovered that the divorce had awakened not his usual desires, but new ones, with a neighbor’s name.

I went over just to watch the final. When the whistle blew, a hand sank into my ass and I knew the real plan was starting then and there.

He crossed the city with nothing but his desire. When the door opened, he knew that man wasn’t going to ask permission for anything that happened.

Baltasar smelled the tension the second the boy asked for a lift. He wasn’t after small talk: he wanted the same thing Baltasar did, and they both knew it without saying a word.

I thought it was just dinner with old friends. I had no idea the secret my husband had kept since school would end with the three of us in the same bed.