Gay

He was the king of the pool and he knew it. When he called me to the locker room to laugh at me, I never imagined I’d be the one unable to stop looking at him.

I’d gone almost two months without hearing from him. Then the message came: “Tomorrow come to work wearing women’s underwear.” And I knew I wouldn’t be able to say no.

I saw him alone at the kitchen bar, apart from the group, glued to his phone. One look was enough to know that afternoon he wasn’t going to stay as macho as he thought.

We were alone in the weights room when he took off his shirt and told me to touch. I never imagined how far we’d go after closing the locker room door.

It was three in the morning when I felt his mouth searching for me in the dark, and I knew this time I’d be the one to guide him to the end.

I knew my parents were dominant. What I didn’t know was how far they’d go to give me the gift I asked for that morning.

We crossed the apartment threshold knowing we had two hours left, and he lunged at me before I could set the keys on the table.

The moment he heard the key turn in the lock, Nico knew his cousin’s arrival was going to change everything, even if neither of them said it out loud.

He challenged me to one last sprint with a condition neither of us intended to honor. But that night the pool was empty and nobody was watching us.

I was twenty, a virgin, and shut away among comic books. My father thought a trip to the countryside would make a man of me. He had no idea who would be waiting for me there.

I pretended to be asleep so I could watch him. What I saw in the other bed that night completely changed the course of that trip.

I’d been in the waiting room for more than two hours when he called my name. I never imagined that same afternoon would end with us alone in a gurney no one used anymore.

I saw him on the corner with the whistle between his teeth, warning the dealers. I couldn’t stop looking at him, and I knew I wouldn’t go home that dawn without him.

I went trembling into that dark apartment to wait for a man I had never seen. What happened that afternoon marked me for the rest of my life.

I waited naked beside the olive tree, my backpack at my feet and my phone in my hand, never imagining that cold night would leave me with two different tastes in my mouth.

I looked up from my phone and his eyes were already locked on mine from the other side of the parking lot. Not a single word was needed.

The hot water ran down my back and, for the first time in that captivity, I felt his calloused hands like a caress. I didn’t open my eyes. I had promised him.

I pulled down the jumpsuit zipper in the dim light, convinced I was alone. Then I felt the weight of a bony hand settling slowly on my knee.

At fifty-three, single and bored, Ramiro discovered that supply and demand also work at three in the afternoon, on the sofa in his living room.

He promised he’d only rub a little. I relaxed, I trusted him, and that was the mistake I should never have made that night in his bed.