Gay

Ten minutes off, a soccer video game, and a ridiculous bet were enough to unravel everything Bruno thought he knew about his friend in one afternoon.

We were late to the academy every morning, but we never skipped that ritual between the sheets. Today, for the first time in weeks, he was the one spreading my legs.

When the officiant asked whether anyone had something to say, the groom raised his hand. Not to say yes, but to confess what he had been holding in for months.

I’d sworn we were only going to watch. But when that stranger put his hand on Eduardo’s shoulder, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay still either.

I thought I was imagining it, until I found a number written on the wrapper of the wet wipe he handed me when I got off the plane.

I’m thirty-four and I never doubted what I was. Until that seed started growing inside me, silent and persistent, and I could no longer ignore it.

The carriage was empty that late at night. When that man sat almost across from me and started looking at me without hiding it, I knew the ride would be different.

I felt his large body pressing against my back whenever the train braked, and when he whispered, “We’re getting off at the next stop,” I knew I wouldn’t be able to say no.

I showed up at that party in my swimwear thinking it would be just another day with my boyfriend. I had no idea I’d end up on my knees, showing another man what he was missing.

It was 9:30 a.m., a half-corrected Excel sheet, and suddenly his naked boyfriend’s body was brushing the back of his neck. Working was going to be impossible.

I’d been at the company three weeks when he leaned over the table and told me I had something that caught the eye. That afternoon I followed him.

When that man put his hands on my back, I knew it was no longer about the fever or the exhaustion from the trip, but about something I had been avoiding for years.

I learned his schedule, the sound of his boots, the exact moment he took off his shirt because of the heat. What I didn’t know was how far that obsession would take me.

He knew he was going to lose before they even started. But giving in right away gave him nothing: the pleasure was in resisting, in forcing the other to wrench victory from him with bites under the full moon.

I’d spent three weeks swallowing dust and loneliness when the driver looked at me fixedly, without smiling, and said: “Come, my house.” It wasn’t an invitation: it was an order, and I followed him.

I'd imagined this day for two years. I never knew a suited man in his fifties, his gaze fixed on mine, would decide what my first time would be like.

The phone rang and it was him, offering me a session that same afternoon. From his tone, I knew we weren’t going to talk only about massages.

For years I told myself I was the typical straight guy. I was lying. My hand jobs were for the guys in the locker room, and it took me too long to admit it.

I was nineteen and impossibly horny. He noticed it the moment he opened his apartment door, and there was no way to hide what we both wanted.

I agreed to go up to a room with twelve mattresses on the floor, never imagining that by morning I’d leave with more than one man marked on my skin.