The Christian singer was waiting for me without the cross

I met Damián at an awards show neither of us wanted to be at.

I sang reggaeton, he praised the Lord. Our stages were opposite worlds, and the press would never have imagined we could cross paths. But that night, in the theater’s back hallway, we were both looking for the same thing: a cigarette and a while without anyone asking us for photos.

He offered me a light without saying a word. He had long hands, slender fingers, the kind of hands that learn guitar before they learn how to speak. When he lifted his eyes from the lighter, I saw something in them I recognized at once. The same thing I’d spent years hiding behind bright signs and the models I paraded down red carpets.

—I’ve listened to you —he said, his voice rough, as if he hadn’t used it to speak in a while—. I don’t like what you sing, but I like your voice.

—And I don’t like your God —I shot back, because the way he was looking at me made me uneasy—. But the way you sing, I do like that.

He smiled for the first time. A small smile, almost embarrassed. And I knew, without him having to say anything else, that I was about to get myself into trouble I wouldn’t know how to get out of.

***

We started seeing each other in hotels outside the city. He booked under his manager’s name; I came in through the service entrance with my hood up. The first few times nothing happened. We just stayed up talking until dawn, sitting on the floor with a bottle of wine between us, telling each other things we’d never told anyone.

Damián told me about his childhood in a town where his father was a pastor. About how, as an adult, a choirmate kissed him in the sacristy and he cried for a whole week without understanding whether it was guilt or gratitude. About how he had learned to tame his voice so it wouldn’t tremble when he sang about the love between a man and a woman.

I told him about the years I’d spent making up girlfriends. About the Brazilian model who got paid to show up with me in videos. About how afraid I was that my own family would stop speaking to me if they found out.

—That’s why this is so hard for me —he told me one night, his head resting on my shoulder—. Because when I’m with you, I stop lying. And I’ve been living on lies for too long to know what to do with the truth.

The first time I kissed him was there, after that sentence. I leaned in without thinking and brushed his lips with mine, slowly, as if I were asking him something. He answered by opening his mouth and clinging to the back of my neck with a hand that trembled a little.

That night we still didn’t fuck. We kept kissing until day broke, and when I left I carried the taste of his mouth on my throat like a promise.

***

What came after was unlike anything I’d ever lived through.

Damián taught me how to wait. How to let desire build layer by layer before letting it loose. We’d spend hours undressing each other, pausing at every button, every zipper, every inch of skin that appeared. He licked my neck as if he were praying, with the same patience he used to pronounce every syllable of his songs.

The first time he fucked me was in a room overlooking the harbor. It was a moonless night —later I understood why he only made plans with me on nights like that— and the only light came from the red and green lights of the boats in the distance. He shoved me onto the bed and knelt between my legs, looking at me as if he wanted to memorize every part of me.

—I’ve been holding myself back for twenty-eight years —he told me. His voice was breaking—. If I ask your forgiveness in advance for everything I’m going to do to you, will you give it to me?

—Shut up —I answered—. Shut up and do it.

He pulled my pants down with his teeth. He ripped my briefs off in one tug and just stared at my cock, already hard, pressed against my belly, as if it were the first one he’d ever seen up close. Then he lowered his face and licked me from the inside of my knee up to my groin with sickening slowness, pausing to breathe against my skin, making me feel his hot breath before every new pass. He licked my balls one by one, took them into his mouth, sucked slowly until I could feel them throbbing. My hands were gripping the sheets and the first moans were already slipping out of me.

When he finally took my cock in his mouth, he didn’t start sucking right away. He took it all the way to the back of his throat and stayed there, motionless, feeling it pulse against his palate. His body trembled. He trembled, not me. Then he started moving with the same cadence he sang in: long, sustained, almost liturgical. He dragged his tongue up the shaft, lingered on the tip, swallowed me down to the root again. Saliva ran down his chin and soaked my balls and the sheets. He looked up at me from below with shining eyes, enjoying the way my face kept tightening.

—I’m going to come —I told him, gritting my teeth.

He pulled my cock out of his mouth all at once and pinched the base with two fingers, cutting my orgasm off dead. He looked at me and smiled.

—Not yet.

He went back to sucking me. He brought me to the edge again, and again, and again. Three times he left me right on the verge of blowing and three times he cut me off. I begged him in a low voice, with a broken voice, with words I didn’t even recognize as mine. The fourth time he stayed still with his mouth full and looked at me, waiting for permission. I shoved his head down and came with a shout into the back of his throat. I felt every spurt hit the back of his mouth and him swallowing without letting go, sucking the last drop like he was getting paid for it.

When he let me go, his lips were swollen and there was a white line at one corner of his mouth. He climbed over my body, kissed my mouth, and made me taste myself on his tongue. I was still shaking, and I was already getting hard again.

—Turn over —he whispered in my ear.

I turned over. He spread my ass with both hands and buried his face there, between my cheeks, without warning. He licked my hole with the same devotion he’d shown in everything up to then: slow, circles, pressure, his tongue inching its way in little by little. I clung to the pillow and pushed my ass into his mouth, shameless now. He slid in one finger, then two, curling them, searching for the spot that made me moan without control. When he found it, he kept pressing there while he sucked my balls from behind, and I felt my eyes rolling back inside my head.

—Put it in —I begged him—. Damián, please, put it in already.

He got into position on his knees behind me. He spat on his cock, ran his hand over it, and pressed it against my spread-open hole. He pushed the tip in and stopped. Pushed a little more. I was so wet from his spit and so open from his fingers that he went in almost all the way with the first thrust. A long groan slipped out of me, halfway between pain and something much bigger.

He sank into me as if he were entering a temple where he had never been welcome. He stayed still for a moment, breathing against my nape, his whole cock inside me. Then he started fucking me. At first slowly, pulling back until just the tip remained and then driving back in to the hilt, with Gregorian precision. I dug my fingers into his forearms and bit his shoulder so I wouldn’t scream. With every thrust I felt his balls slap against mine, sweat dripping from his chest onto my back, his rough voice murmuring things in my ear.

—Like that —he panted—. Like that, hold it for me like that, not yet.

He grabbed my hips and lifted my ass, and started fucking me harder, faster, with dry thrusts that made the bed creak. He stood at the foot of the mattress, dragged me to the edge, spread my legs, and rammed back into me from standing, looking me in the eyes, burying himself to the hilt until I could see the vein in his throat throbbing. He spat in my mouth. I swallowed. He spat again. I licked the spit off his lips.

—Come inside me —I begged—. Come inside me.

He sped up. I watched his face come apart, that choir-boy face of his set on fucking like an animal. He squeezed my cock with his hand and jerked me in time with his thrusts. We came almost together. I felt the hot stream filling me from the inside at the same time I emptied myself between his fingers, splattering both our bellies. He stayed inside me for a long while, not pulling out, trembling, letting the last drops fall.

When he finally came out, I turned around and hugged him. He cried a little. I wiped away the tears he had left on my neck with his tongue, and he let out a soft laugh.

—I should confess —he said.

—You should marry me —I said, and we both laughed, but neither of us was really laughing.

***

I understood the full moon thing much later. At first I thought it was one of his eccentricities, some stupid superstition he’d learned from his grandmother. He canceled outdoor concerts on nights when the calendar marked a full moon. If he had to sing, he did it in closed theaters, with no windows, no terraces. He never slept with me on those nights. He said he had to be alone, that it was a matter of prayer, that I shouldn’t ask.

I didn’t ask. In that relationship there were a lot of things you didn’t ask.

It was Sergio Méndez who started asking.

Sergio wrote for a magazine that lived off exposing other people’s misery. He had given me a hostile interview two years earlier, and I’d avoided him ever since. But one day he showed up at the door of my recording studio with a smile I didn’t like at all.

—I have some photos —he said—. Of you and the Christian singer. In the Portico Hotel elevator, three weeks ago. Just so we’re clear, I have them safe and sound.

I felt the blood drain to my feet. I didn’t answer. I waited.

—I want to talk to both of you —he went on—. Tonight. At his apartment. I imagine you know the address.

***

Damián opened the door with his face drawn. Sergio was already sitting on the sofa, his recorder on and lying on the glass coffee table beside a folder.

—Gentlemen —he began, with a cheap-comedy tone—. I don’t want to ruin your lives. I want to be your friend. Your friends charge.

He asked for an absurd amount. Damián listened without moving, hands folded in his lap, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor. I opened my mouth to argue and he cut me off with a gesture.

—I need to think —he said—. Give me ten minutes. Sergio, do you want a drink?

Sergio smiled, satisfied. He ordered whiskey. Damián went to the kitchen to pour it. When he came back, he handed him the glass and walked slowly toward the living room window. The sky was clear and the moon was high, round, perfectly white.

Before I could understand what he was doing, he yanked the curtains open in one violent motion.

The light hit him like a slap.

I can’t tell you everything that happened after that. I know Damián’s body changed shape without seeming to hurt him. I know his clothes tore because there was no longer a man underneath. I know the sound that came out of him was not a howl but a question. And I know Sergio screamed once before the animal was on top of him.

I didn’t move. I stayed still on the sofa, hands on my knees, watching as the being who was my lover tore apart the man who had come to destroy us. When it was over, the living room smelled of blood and something older, a smell of forest that should never have been in a city apartment.

The wolf looked at me. It had Damián’s eyes.

I went up to him slowly. I put my hand on his back, where the fur was darker. I spoke to him softly, told him I was there, not to be scared, that he was going to be okay. He bowed his head, pressed his muzzle to my chest, and stayed like that, breathing against me, until the moon finished crossing the sky and started changing him back.

When he became a man again, he was naked, stained with things I don’t want to name, crying like a child. I held him without saying anything. I put him in the shower. I washed him. I put him in bed and lay down with him and sang softly to him in a language that wasn’t his and that he didn’t understand, until he fell asleep.

***

We cleaned up together. It wasn’t easy. It also wasn’t as hard as it should have been.

No one came looking for Sergio. He lived alone, had no close family, and the few colleagues who asked about him were satisfied with the theory that he had gone to Brazil chasing a story. We broke his recorder. We burned the photos. The folder too.

Damián and I kept seeing each other. Moonless nights, especially. Sometimes, on full-moon nights, I go with him to the shelter he has in the woods, two hours from the city. I leave him locked in a cabin with the door reinforced. I sit outside with a thermos of coffee and wait for dawn.

I’m not afraid of him. I know he would never hurt me. And even if he did —even if one random night the thing living inside him chose me instead of some stranger with a recorder—, I couldn’t leave anymore. I’ve got too much of him inside me. And he’s got too much of me inside him.

Sometimes, when he sings on television, I watch him lower his voice at the end of a song and I know that shade, that soft fall of the last note, is for me. It’s our secret inside another secret, hidden in plain sight. And for me, who learned to live on lies, that small truth is enough for me never to lie to myself again.