That Arrogant Guy Dominated Me in the Locker Room

It was the first summer I’d come back to the village in more than a decade. As a kid, I used to spend the summer there with my grandparents, in a small house with whitewashed walls and a patio with a grapevine. When they died, my parents renovated the whole house and rented it out until I found myself out of work and out of excuses. I finished my design degree, did a master’s that was good for nothing, and in the end it was my mother who heard from the former tenants that the village was looking for a lifeguard for the municipal pool.

I wasn’t remotely thrilled. But I had to live somehow, so there I was, settling into a house I barely recognized, with half-opened boxes and the strange feeling of having returned to a place that no longer existed.

My name is Diego, I’m twenty-eight, five foot eleven, and about eighty kilos. I have a normal body, the kind you get from having played basketball and still having a bit of shoulder to you. I’m brown-haired, green-eyed —the only thing people usually praise me for— and I wear a short, neatly kept beard. I barely have any body hair. Just my legs and not much else; I keep the rest groomed because I don’t like it any other way, neither on me nor on whoever shares my bed.

As for the rest, I could say I’m bisexual. I’ve had two serious relationships, both with women, but since university I’ve never denied myself the odd guy who came on more than he should have. I was always the one calling the shots in bed. Only once did I let a huge guy convince me to switch roles, and the experience was so uncomfortable that I never wanted to repeat it. I was in charge. That was the rule, and I had never even questioned it.

***

On my fifth day at work, she showed up. Even though many years had passed, I recognized her instantly. Marina. A girl I’d had a teenage fling with that never went beyond a few kisses and some clumsy groping, but who was my first real contact with desire. She came in accompanied by five young guys who stayed a few meters away while she walked up to the booth.

“Diego! I had no idea you were back,” she said with that same kind smile she’d always had.

“I moved in less than a week ago,” I said. “As you can see, lifeguard duty.”

“Any job is a good job. I’m really glad to have you around. We should catch up sometime,” she added, in a tone I couldn’t tell whether it carried a double meaning.

“Sure, that’d be great.”

I got a little nervous remembering our past, especially because those five guys were staring straight at us while we talked, with sour looks on their faces. Marina explained that she worked for a local association and that those guys, all of them just nineteen, had just moved into a shared flat on their own. The town council had given them free pool passes for a year, and that afternoon she was escorting them to show them around the facilities.

“From today on, they’ll come by themselves whenever they want,” she said. “And they wanted to swim right away, so… here we are.”

“Then let them in. At this time, on a weekday, the pool is basically theirs.”

They headed toward the back, to an area with grass and a bit of shade. Marina took off her T-shirt and for a moment I looked at her again like I had when I was fifteen. But my attention didn’t last long, because the five guys started taking off their shirts at the same time.

They had young, toned bodies, the kind you get without ever setting foot in a gym. And among them one stood out. Tall, slim but defined, with black curly hair plastered to his forehead by water that seemed to be dripping from nowhere. There was something about him, the way he moved, that made me look away before I got hard inside the tiny lifeguard trunks they’d given me. Not the time, Diego, I told myself.

***

They jumped into the water laughing and shoving each other. During one of those jumps I noticed that the curly-haired one wasn’t wearing swim trunks, but white briefs that showed at the waistband of the tracksuit pants he still hadn’t taken off. When he came out of the water to jump back in, I walked over.

“Excuse me,” I said. “You can’t swim in clothes. Those are the pool rules.”

He looked at me as if he didn’t understand. Then, without saying a word, he flung himself backward into the water without taking his eyes off me, and as he did he grabbed his cock with both hands and shook it, with a mocking smile that said “fuck you” better than any words could.

I went over to Marina and told her what was happening while I heard laughter behind me.

“Nadim!” she shouted. “Get over here right now or you lose your pass for the whole year.”

This Nadim guy got out of the water and came walking over slowly, with no hurry at all, making a show of every step. That was when I could really look. The wet pants clung to his body in a way that was almost indecent, and he didn’t make the slightest move to pull them away. The whole outline of him was visible to one side, pressed flat against the fabric. My God, kids today sure come equipped, I thought, and immediately forced myself to look at his face.

“What, you don’t have the balls to tell me yourself and you’re going to snitch on her?” he spat, looking me dead in the eye, in perfect Spanish and with just enough swagger to leave me not knowing what to say.

“I already told you once,” I replied, more uncertain than I wanted to sound. “And you didn’t listen.”

“Nadim, don’t be rude and apologize to Diego,” Marina cut in sharply.

“No fucking way. You’re both insane.”

“Either you apologize or you lose the pool and the gym. Your call.”

He snorted. For a second, his jaw tightened.

“Fine. Sorry. I didn’t bring swim trunks, that’s why I got in like this,” he said, gesturing to his pants, while droplets ran down his chest, over his stomach, and disappeared into the waistband of the briefs he wore high, almost at his navel.

And I stood there, transfixed, following the path of those droplets, to the point that I didn’t hear Marina asking me something. When I came back from my little trip, Nadim was looking at me with a smile that said he’d noticed everything. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

“The rules don’t allow swimming in clothes,” I managed to say. “I’m going to check lost and found, see if there’s a pair of trunks that’ll fit you.”

“I’ll wait for you in the locker room, then. Thanks,” he replied, with the sweetest of smiles.

That sudden kindness made no sense to me at all. And in the lost-and-found box I only found a child’s swimsuit, size eleven-twelve, with shark drawings on it. I took it anyway and headed to the locker room, already knowing in advance that this was going to end badly.

***

He was standing there, beside a wooden bench, waiting for me.

“So, did you bring me a swimsuit or not?” he said lazily.

“This is the only thing I found. You can try it on, though I don’t think it’ll fit you. I don’t have anything else.”

He laughed without barely moving his face. One of those laughs that freeze you solid, pure contempt.

“You really think I’m going to put on those kids’ trunks?” he said. “Do you really think this fits in there?”

And before I could answer, he pulled down his pants and briefs at the same time. I was speechless. It was big even at rest, thick, ringed with a patch of black hair, lying over everything else with insolent ease. The tip, circumcised, left the glans exposed, and I noticed my mouth drying up against my will.

“Honestly, no,” I admitted, faltering. “But I already told you I don’t have anything else.”

He held my gaze a second longer than necessary. Then he bent down, pulled his pants back up, and deprived me of continuing to look at something that, without my really understanding why, had me hypnotized.

He came closer slowly, with that confident air that was far too adult for his nineteen years. I couldn’t understand how a kid that skinny could project so much self-assurance. He had it all: the curly hair, the almost black, deep eyes, the long lashes, those thick lips, especially the lower one. A barely there shadow of a beard framed his face and gave him an air of not belonging anywhere. When he reached my side, he stood so close he almost brushed against me, and lowered his voice until it became a whisper by my ear.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “Today you had Marina to force me to obey you. But she’s not coming back with us. So from now on you’re on your own, and nobody tells me what to do.”

I couldn’t even breathe. I was completely still, my heart pounding in my throat.

“I’m going out to swim with my friends like this, in my pants,” he went on. “And you’re going to go where Marina is and tell her everything’s fine, that you’re allowing me to do it. Is that clear?”

I didn’t answer. Then he grabbed my hair, not roughly, and moved my head forward and back, forcing me to nod.

“I said, is that clear?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I murmured, and my own voice sounded чуждо, submissive, unrecognizable.

Before letting go, he dropped his gaze to my crotch. And in that instant I became aware of the erection that had been pressing up under my tight trunks for a while now. I didn’t know how it had gotten there. I didn’t know when I’d stopped being the one in charge. But it was obvious he’d noticed, because his smile widened, slow and triumphant.

He bumped my shoulder with his as he walked past and headed for the exit. Before crossing the door, he turned around.

“If you disrespect me in front of my mates again,” he said, without raising his voice, “you’ll regret it. And I think deep down you’d like that.”

I heard him laugh as he walked away down the hallway.

***

The world came crashing down on me. I still couldn’t fully process what had just happened with that kid who thought he owned the world, or —far worse— what had happened inside me. I sat on the bench for a while, trying to relax, trying to calm down the bulge that was still giving me away. What the fuck is wrong with you, Diego? I kept asking myself. I had no answer.

I took a deep breath and got up to leave. But when I reached the door I saw, lying on the floor, Nadim’s white briefs, still wet, the ones he’d taken off to show me what he was hiding. I stood there looking at them for seconds that felt eternal.

And then, without thinking too much about it, I bent down, picked them up, and tucked them into the pocket of my swim trunks. I didn’t yet know whether I was going to give them back to him or use them for something very different. What I did know, as I headed back toward the pool to tell Marina everything was under control, was that this summer was not going to be anywhere near as boring as I’d expected.