The Day My Father Wanted to Make Me a Man

My name is Esteban, and I’m what many would call a freak. Twenty years old, a virgin, shut away in an attic that smelled of old paper and comic books stacked to the ceiling. If my sheets could talk, they wouldn’t have the words to describe the nights I spent trying to soothe the anxiety that burned inside me and never quite went away.

My brothers and my father knew nothing, and I doubted they ever would. The scandal that would erupt if I confessed what I really liked would have been impossible to contain. My father, Gustavo, was a retired military man who still wore his uniform like a second skin, armor against a world he no longer understood. His gaze was a minefield, and I learned very early not to step on it.

One night everything changed. I slipped silently down to the kitchen, drawn by the emptiness of the small hours, and found them arguing. I pressed myself against the wall and became a shadow.

—Leave him alone, Gustavo. Esteban is harmless —pleaded my mother’s sweet, tired voice, Adriana.

—No, Adriana, no! He’s useless. Worthless —my father growled, loaded with contempt. Every word was a lash—. He spends his days locked away. That’s not a man.

—You don’t have to be so harsh. Maybe he just needs to move through the stages of life.

—Stages he should already have moved through. Enough. Tomorrow I’m taking him with me. I’ll shape him, even if I have to break him to do it.

A cold sweat soaked my back. My hands trembled. I went up to my room curled in on myself, wondering what kind of madness my father had planned. A boarding school? A labor farm? The night was a sleepless torment.

At dawn, a thick silence filled the house. I went down determined to face my fate with a courage I didn’t feel.

—Esteban —my father’s voice rang out like a sharp gunshot—. We need to talk.

—Okay, Dad —I mumbled, sinking into a dining-room chair.

—Wait for me in my office —he ordered, without taking his eyes off the newspaper, taking a slow sip of his coffee.

The air in his office smelled of old leather, tobacco, and dust. The shelves were full of manuals and medals. My eyes fell on the framed photos: a young Gustavo, bare-chested on some beach, a sculpted physique that looked like it had been ripped from a magazine. A wave of heat climbed my neck and I looked away, ashamed of myself.

He came in and sat down heavily in front of me. He scrutinized me from head to toe, from my shoes to my messy hair.

—Look at you, boy. You’re so thin that if I sent you to carry a bucket of water you’d collapse. And pale, nearly invisible —his remark made me shrink, because it was true—. Look at me when I’m talking to you!

I lifted my head slowly. His steel-gray eyes pierced straight through me.

—Put on something decent and get in the car. We’re going to make a man out of you.

I swallowed hard. In my room I dressed in panic: loose dress pants, a plaid shirt, and a bow tie. I was the very image of the pathetic freak. As I came downstairs, my mother hugged me. Her eyes were full of tears. She said nothing, only covered her mouth with her hand and fled down the hallway. That gesture broke my heart.

The ride in the old pickup was an oppressive silence. We left the suburbs, then the city, and headed into fields and barren plains. Fear was a tight knot in my throat.

—Stop touching yourself at night —he said suddenly, without looking at me—. Look at what that’s doing to you. You’re a wreck.

My face burned. He knew. He knew my most intimate secrets, the furtive nights of pleasure in the dark.

—You need to be with someone, like a real man —he went on, and his words struck the rarefied air in the car.

***

Finally we stopped at a wide, dusty farm with several worn wooden ranch buildings. One of them was spilling out ranch music at full blast. It didn’t look abandoned.

When I got out of the car I noticed, with shameful fixation, the pronounced bulge beneath my father’s tight military pants. It was as uncomfortable as it was arousing, and I hated myself for noticing.

He spoke with two broad-shouldered men at the entrance, who kept looking at me with mocking smiles. One of them signaled, and they opened the door to where the music was coming from.

The inside was a blast of cigarette smoke, cheap beer, and sweat. It was a crude brothel, full of men and women from the countryside, none of them anywhere near my age. My father ordered two drinks, came over, and put his arm, heavy as an anvil, over my shoulders. He turned me toward a small platform.

—Choose —he ordered, his voice a low buzz in my ear.

Lined up there were several women who sized me up with shameless hunger. One bit her lip. Another adjusted her neckline. None of them stirred anything in me. Only shame and panic. I lowered my gaze and, without meaning to, found myself looking again at my father’s crotch, where the military fabric seemed about to give way.

The seconds stretched. He started listing the names and “attributes” of each woman with the crudity of an auctioneer. Humiliation was a burning liquid in my veins. Laughter spread through the place. My eyelids grew hot, tears threatening to spill over. Then my father burst out laughing too.

—What a disgrace of a son! —he exclaimed, squeezing me tighter against his side—. Just this once, I’m going to let you try Tito first.

My confusion was total. Tito?

From among the crowd, one of the men my father had spoken to at the door came toward us. He was mature, around forty-five, with stubble and a plaid shirt that barely contained his broad, hairy torso. His small, shrewd eyes ran over me from head to toe, and a slow smile spread across his face.

That was when I understood everything. A torrent of sensations hit me: surprise, shame, and a forbidden, sharp desire rising from the deepest part of me. My father didn’t just know it, he accepted it, in the most twisted possible way.

***

Tito took my hand with a firmness that admitted no resistance. His skin was rough and hot. He almost dragged me down a hallway and opened the door to a small room. The air smelled of cheap bleach, sex, and polished wood. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, casting long shadows.

Without a word, he started undressing. With each button he opened on his shirt, more of his dark, thick body hair was revealed. I was paralyzed, but my body betrayed me. I felt my cock throb and harden against my tight pants. Fear mixed with a brutal, new excitement. Seeing that man, knowing my father had arranged everything, was an explosive cocktail.

He came closer and his large, rough hands started unbuttoning my shirt. His breath smelled of tobacco and whiskey.

—Your old man says you need to be taught —he murmured, with a husky, low voice—. That you’ve got a tool hidden away, but you don’t know how to use it.

His hand found the zipper of my pants and pulled it down. Cold air hit my exposed skin. His eyes widened when he saw what I had, and genuine surprise crossed his face.

—Fuck, boy —he whistled, wrapping his fingers around me in an expert grip that made me gasp. It wasn’t the shaky, familiar hand of my nights alone. This was different. Real. Overwhelming.

He gently pushed me toward the unmade bed. The mattress creaked under my weight. Tito positioned himself over me, his warm, masculine weight anchoring me to reality. His rough beard brushed my neck, and his smell, of hard work and man, flooded my senses.

—Your dad wants you to be a man —he said against my skin, while his hands explored my thin torso—. But here and now, all that matters is what you want to feel.

And what I wanted, for the first time in my life, was crystal clear.

Tito knelt between my legs. The world narrowed to his mouth. At first it was only the tip of his tongue, a wet, warm brush. A violent shiver ran down my spine like an electric shock. It was like flipping a switch: my body, which had been hesitant until then, took over and hardened completely. It felt as if all my blood had rushed to that one point.

He took me in both hands, with the concentration of someone savoring something long awaited. Then he opened his mouth and started taking me in all the way, with a patience and skill that left me breathless. He sucked, he drew me in, he worked his tongue. I lost control. My hands tangled in his thick hair and, without thinking, I started moving. It was incredible, wet, warm, constant. He made guttural sounds and every vibration came straight through me.

I couldn’t take it anymore. With an impulse I hadn’t known I had, I shoved him onto the bed. He fell onto his back with a grunt and stayed there, face up, his thick, hairy legs lifted and spread, offering himself completely.

Without hesitation I threw myself on him with my tongue. The taste was salty, earthy, masculine. I kissed him, licked him, explored him with a fury that surprised even me. Tito moaned and arched his back.

—Jesus, boy! You do it better than your father.

Hearing those words was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Knowing my father had been there before, that I might be surpassing him at something, was a powerful aphrodisiac. I kept devouring him until we were both panting.

Then I positioned my cock, swollen and throbbing, against his opening. I barely pressed and the head sank in. Tito shuddered with a stifled cry.

—That’s it! I love it, like that!

The sensation was indescribable, like sinking into a soft, tight oven, a warm, living pressure that enveloped me. It was so different from anything my hand or my imagination could have recreated. I began to push slowly, millimeter by millimeter, feeling his insides adapt to me. He moaned without stopping.

—You’re filling me up! You’re a beast!

When I finally got all the way in, we were both covered in sweat. Then we started moving for real. It wasn’t just sex: it was a revelation, a ritual of dominance and surrender. For what felt like hours the world disappeared. There were only his moans, the slap of our skin, and the burning sensation of his insides. I came with a roar, an explosion that left me emptied out and shaking.

***

I came out of the room with my hair a mess, my legs like jelly, and my clothes thrown on in a hurry. As I crossed the doorway I found my father. He was sitting in a chair, right in front of it. He had been there, listening to everything. On his face, for the first time in my life, I saw neither contempt nor disappointment. I saw something that looked like approval. Maybe even a flash of envy.

—Dad, I’m a man! —I yelled, lifting my arms in a triumphant gesture that rose from my gut.

—And he does it better than you —Tito added from the doorway, still naked and shining with sweat.

My father let out a rough, genuine laugh, but his eyes fixed on me said something else. There was a burning urgency in them. Without another word, he shoved Tito back into the room and slammed the door shut. I stood there in the stinking hallway, listening to Tito’s gasps mix with my father’s deep grunts. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been real. I, the virgin freak, had just been with a man. And I had done well.

The ride back was electrifying silence. My father drove, focused on the empty road, surrounded by cornfields whispering in the evening light. Until, suddenly, he braked hard in the middle of nowhere.

—Get out —he ordered, his voice flat.

My heart lurched. I obeyed, my legs still trembling. He got out too, walked around the front of the vehicle, and stopped in front of me. In the half-light, his face was a mask of shadows.

—I can’t stop thinking —he said, lower than usual— that maybe you’ve got a bigger one than I do.

The statement left me breathless. It was something so strange, so intimate, that I didn’t know what to answer.

—Show it to me.

With hands that barely obeyed me, I unbuttoned myself. He looked at it for a long second and then, without saying anything, got back into the car and started it. Something had broken forever between us, and something new, dangerous, and tempting had just been born. That night, for the first time, I wasn’t the freak locked away in his attic. I was a man who finally knew what he wanted. And I wasn’t going to hide it again.