The Notebook Hidden in the Inheritance Drawer

I inherited the house of a distant uncle I had barely seen three times in my life. When the notary handed me the keys, he explained that it was furnished and that I could do whatever I wanted with it. It took me a week to work up the courage to go inside. It smelled closed up, of old wood and a masculine cologne that still lingered in the air in the closets.

My plan was to go through the furniture one by one and decide which pieces I would keep and which would go straight to the dumpster. I started with the master bedroom. An old oak desk, with four drawers on each side, caught my eye. The first three opened without effort. The last one got stuck halfway.

I pulled out the upper drawers to get a better angle. The bottom one gave way about ten centimeters and jammed. I reached my hand in behind it, feeling around blindly, and brushed the spine of a hardcover notebook wedged between the wood and the back panel of the piece. I pulled carefully. Out came a notebook of yellowed pages, handwritten in blue ink, with tight, steady handwriting.

I opened it that very night, seated in the armchair in the living room with a glass of wine in my hand. The first page said, in capitals: “The Story of My Secret Life with a Mature Man.” What follows is what that notebook told, copied exactly as I found it.

***

I don’t remember very well how I met Esteban. Almost eight years have passed, and the details of the beginning have faded from my memory. What I do remember is everything else: the skinny, almost dried-out body; the dark mustache streaked with gray; the long fingers; and that cock of his that, the first time, made me wonder whether I’d be able to take it.

To say we’re friends would be too little. To say we’re lovers would be too much. Esteban is the closest thing to a steady partner I’ve ever had. We don’t see each other often; sometimes months go by without us crossing paths, but every time we do he makes me see stars. He eats my ass with a skill I haven’t found in anyone else. He runs his tongue all over me, stopping exactly where he knows I’m going to tremble.

In general, I like chubby men. Esteban is the opposite: thin, wiry, with not an ounce of fat, and a thick mustache that makes my skin crawl when he kisses my thighs. He’s twenty years older than I am. His cock is thick, about eighteen long centimeters, and the first time I saw it I seriously wondered whether it was going to split me in two.

Our first encounter was two blocks from my house. He came in his car, a discreet gray sedan, and took me straight to the motel on the avenue. We went up to the room without talking much. He kicked off his shoes, loosened his shirt, and lay down on the bed with a calm I hadn’t seen in anyone before. He was in no hurry. That was the first lesson he taught me: that desire, when it cooks slowly, tastes different.

“Come here,” he said, patting the side of the mattress.

I lay down beside him. We talked about nonsense for ten minutes, as if we’d known each other all our lives. Then he turned toward me and started kissing me. Soft kisses, no tongue at first, almost chaste. He held the back of my neck with one hand and ran the other over my back on top of my T-shirt.

No one had ever kissed me like that.

When we finally undressed, his penis seemed normal to me, medium-sized. But as soon as I started jerking him off, it grew until it made me nervous. It thickened more than it lengthened. I was narrow to begin with, and I knew at that moment it was going to be hard for me. He kept going as if he hadn’t noticed my hesitation. He went down my neck, stopped at my ears, licked behind my earlobe, and kept going down.

He passed over my nipples and sucked them until they were swollen. He stroked my ass cheeks with his open hand, not squeezing, tracing with the pads of his fingers what he was going to do next. He came back up and kissed my mouth again. He went very slowly. I writhed with impatience. I wanted it already, once and for all. He, on the other hand, seemed determined to savor me centimeter by centimeter.

***

Then I was the one who got to work. I knelt between his legs and took his cock in both hands. It was enormous. I kissed it from the base to the head, slowly, trying to memorize its shape. I sucked his balls one by one, licked them, kissed them. I took them into my mouth carefully while looking up at his face from below.

I put his dick in my mouth as far as I could. I couldn’t fit it all. He pushed my head with his open palm, without violence, setting a rhythm. I tried to go lower, but I got to a point where I’d gag and had to come back halfway. I rubbed it across my face, pressed it against my cheek, sucked the head until it shone.

That cock — and I still think it today — is the most beautiful one I’ve ever had in my mouth.

Then he grabbed me by the waist and turned me over. He put me on my knees, with my face on the pillow and my ass in the air. I felt his beard in the curve of my lower back before I felt the tongue. And when he started eating my ass, I lost any ability to think.

He pushed his tongue inside me, deep, while holding my hips with both hands. I moaned into the pillow, clutching the sheets. I could feel his cock pressed against the mattress, dripping on me, and I writhed, wordlessly begging him to go on, please, now.

***

We stopped for a moment. He sat up, grabbed the lube from the bedside table, and smeared it on his cock, slowly, never taking his eyes off me. He put a good amount on me too, with two fingers, and spread it inside me. It hurt a little. It hurt good.

He put me on my back and lifted my legs onto his shoulders. He pressed the head against my opening and pushed. It wouldn’t go in. It was too thick. I was hot as hell and wanted it inside me, but my body closed up by instinct. He applied more lube. This time he slid it in little by little.

First the head. He left it there, still, while he smiled at me with that crooked smile of his that still obsesses me. I caressed his balls with one hand and touched his flat stomach with the other. He pushed a little more. I let out a yell I’m sure was heard in the next room.

His smile widened. He liked seeing me like that.

“Almost there,” he murmured. “You’ve almost got all of it.”

One last push and I felt it all the way inside. He stayed still, letting my body get used to it. Then he started moving very slowly. He pulled it all the way out and shoved it back in with one thrust, to the hilt. I was screaming — this time in pleasure — and he knew it and laughed softly. I belonged to him. At that moment, without hesitation, I was his.

***

We changed positions. He took me to a chair in the room, sat down himself, and made me lower myself onto him. I rode him without really knowing how to move. I made circles with my hips, up and down, kissed him while he slapped my ass, the sound echoing in the empty room. I stroked his chest, bit his lip. I thanked him under my breath, over and over, as if I didn’t have enough breath left to say anything else.

Then he bent me over. On my knees on the carpet, hands planted on the floor, ass up. He stood behind me. He drove it all the way in, pulled it out completely, shoved it back in. It was brutal. I couldn’t handle that much.

“Hold on,” he told me. “Hold on a little longer.”

I held on as best I could, with my forehead pressed to the cold floorboards. At last, we moved to the floor. He sat down and I sat on his cock with my back to him, leaning against his chest. He wrapped his arms around my torso and started moving, lifting his hips, fucking me from below while I was full to the neck. He didn’t touch my cock. Not once.

And still I came.

Without touching myself, with his cock inside me, I felt the orgasm climb up my legs and explode in my belly. I screamed. I screamed to him that I was coming. He didn’t stop. He kept moving, holding me tighter, until I finished emptying myself onto the floor and into the air. When he pulled away, he left me face-down on the carpet. He stood up, jerked himself off twice, and came over my back. I felt the hot spurts run down my spine.

After that he got into the shower and I stayed there, on the floor, unable to get up. My legs wouldn’t respond. When I finally managed to stand, I rinsed off quickly, got dressed, and he drove me back to the corner by my house without either of us saying a word. There was no need.

***

We kept seeing each other until today. Years have gone by. Countless nights in motels, in my place, in his. We’ve done things I wouldn’t have dared ask for back then. A threesome with one of his friends who stayed the night and I’d repeat tomorrow morning if I could. Whole afternoons trying to fit his entire hand inside me — we never managed it, but we got to three fingers without bleeding, and I still aim for more.

He fucks me better than anyone who has ever been in my bed. His cock, which the first time felt like a punishment, I miss the minute two weeks go by without seeing him. He’s taught me to open up. He’s taught me to wait. He’s taught me that pain, in measured doses, is another form of pleasure.

He’s also the only one who has ever filled me from the inside. Feeling his semen pushed against my belly by his cock while we keep moving is something that can’t be explained in words. Now we do it without lube, just with his saliva, after he eats my ass for a long hour.

I love him. Not with the romantic word one uses for a partner, but with something older and dirtier. I know he does too, in his own way. We don’t say it. There’s no need.

I’m writing this because I know that sooner or later someone is going to read it. Maybe nobody will ever find it. Maybe someone who knows who I am will find it. It doesn’t matter. I don’t regret a single night, or a single slap, or a single time I had to bite the pillow not to scream louder.

I have more stories with him. The threesome. The night we almost got caught in a park at four in the morning. The day he came to pick me up from work and kissed me in the car with his tie still on. I’ll tell them in another notebook, if I have time.

***

That’s where the manuscript ended. What followed were blank pages and, further on, a shopping list forgotten between two sheets: bread, milk, two bottles of red wine, lube.

I searched the whole house for another notebook, a second volume, a continuation. I lifted mattresses, emptied closets, checked the rest of the desk drawers. I found nothing else. Only old receipts, family photos, and an envelope with yellowed letters tied up with string that I decided not to open.

I keep the notebook on my nightstand. I read it sometimes before sleeping, like someone reading a novel whose ending doesn’t belong to him. I think about Esteban — if that was his real name — and I wonder whether he’s still alive, whether he’s still fucking like that, whether he ever read another man with the same patience with which he read this stranger.

If I ever find the other notebook, I promise to publish it too.