The Stranger Who Wrote to Me at the Funeral Home

Funeral homes are peculiar places. The social farewell to the dead brings in a tide of visitors, of meetings and reunions between people who barely know each other and who carry little or no sorrow. That’s why you hear some crying in their hallways, yes, but also a lot of laughter. Hugs of comfort sometimes, and pure joy at seeing one another again many others.

So when you have to keep a friend company whose elderly relative has just died, and the outcome has as much sorrow as relief at no longer having to watch him suffer, you arrive in a lighter mood than the occasion suggests.

“Hi, Carla, beautiful,” Mateo said, hugging his friend at the door of the room where the family was crowded together.

“Thanks for coming,” she replied, burying herself in the embrace. “I was exhausted from receiving people I don’t know whether I should know or not.”

“Well, here I am, for whatever you need.”

He greeted Carla’s mother, offered his condolences, and soon went back out into the corridor with his friend. They exchanged a couple of words before more family appeared down the hall, people she had to attend to.

“Stay around here, okay?” she asked him. “In a little while I’ll get overwhelmed again and I’ll need a friendly shoulder.”

Mateo sat down in an armchair off to one side, in a corner, and to kill time he opened the app. Without any real purpose, just to gossip. The place was in the middle of nowhere, thirty kilometers south of Seville, so anyone appearing within a kilometer was also inside. He got a kick out of imagining who might be connected among so many black ties.

Many profiles with no photo, no text, nothing. And Mateo liked men, not shadows. “Versatile, 31,” a bare torso and an image that went from chin to knees, with a mane falling over his shoulders. He pinged him. “Macho dom,” suit, tie, and no face. Not that one. Faces of three or four young guys. A couple more pings. Instinctively he looked up, searching for any of those faces among the little clusters by the doorways, but of course he didn’t recognize anyone.

A ping back. From Versatile 31.

“Hi.” “Very sad?” “Just visiting, to be polite.” “Same here, haha.” “What are you into?” “I love seeing so many well-dressed men,” Mateo wrote, and glanced sideways again in case he caught someone typing. There were some, of course, but the place was large: lots of hallway, lots of seats, lots of rooms.

“I could use a good rubbing to let off some of this stress.” “Yeah? Don’t say.” “I’m telling you. And in the photos you don’t look bad at all.” “You’re not bad either. Any more photos?”

They swapped hotter pictures, revealing more parts. Two ordinary bodies, two excited and bored guys in the middle of a wake.

Carla came out of the room and Mateo had to put his phone away to spend a while with her, half annoyed at himself for getting carried away with fantasies.

“Want to go outside?” she suggested. “It’s cold, but I could use some air.”

“But you don’t smoke,” he said, puzzled.

“That’s just an expression. Means I don’t have to listen to stupid comments, you know.”

They went out chatting about nothing. It was pitch dark and the surroundings were black, lit only dimly by the windows. There were few people outside, and those were either genuinely smoking or speaking in low voices, far from the noise thundering inside.

In a corner, sitting on a bench, there was a man with a cigarette in his hand and his gaze fixed on his phone. Mateo suspected it: although they hadn’t exchanged any face pics, that half-length mane could fit. He pretended to listen to Carla without taking his eyes off the guy. The situation was hot, and he felt his heartbeat shoot up all at once.

The other man raised his head to take a drag and looked around. Their eyes met. Mateo held the gaze, not looking away, measuring whether that contact lasted longer than is acceptable between men who don’t know each other. It lasted. The stranger let the smoke out slowly between his parted lips, never stopping watching him from a distance. Mateo had to turn back toward his friend so she wouldn’t get suspicious, and could only glance sideways just as she suggested going back inside. The other was still there, insistent.

***

“What are you doing out here all alone?” Mateo wrote as soon as he could return to his corner, on the promise of rescuing Carla from her relatives in a little while. He waited for the reply to confirm whether he’d guessed right.

“Waiting to see if you’d answer.” “Well it’s cold, it’s better inside.” “Inside where?”

Mateo thought about it for a second, sketching a half-smile. “Inside some warm, cozy place.” “When desire gets hard, even the dead aren’t respected?” “Haha, there’s plenty of that here. But there are also plenty of living ones.” “Yes, I’m sure there’s plenty of hot blood.” “As long as it gets pumped to the right place, we’re not doing too badly.” “That’s what I seemed to see, that we’re not doing too badly.” “Then we could check, don’t you think?”

“I’d love to, but there’s a lot of commotion. Hard to find a discreet place.” “At the end of the hallway, past room 8, there are some bathrooms.” “Have you studied the layout?” “It’s always better to have a strategy planned.” “In times of war, every hole is a trench.” “Yes, but some more than others.” “So what do you say, can you slip away for a bit?” “You’ve got me at a thousand. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out, I’m horny.” “It won’t take long. The good stuff, if it’s brief…” “What are you into?” “Everything, totally versatile, I adapt.” “Same here, though today I’m hungry.” “We’ll see.” “Go into the disabled one, just past the first door, on the left.” “What if someone comes in?” “Have you seen any disabled people around here? And there are bathrooms everywhere. If they try to open it, they’ll think it’s occupied and look for another.” “Okay, give me five minutes.”

Mateo wasn’t much for cruising, but this was pretty close. And everything piled on top of it: the desire, the hotness of the stranger, the hotness of the funeral home itself, with death lurking while two living men were about to surrender to the most alive activity there is.

He went into the disabled bathroom, huge, with bars beside the toilet, an automatic faucet sink, and a large square mirror above it, tilted so you could see yourself even if you stood below the sink line. He had discovered it earlier, when the men’s room was occupied and that door had been left ajar. A discovery that now came in handy. He had time to swipe a wet wipe over his crotch, just in case, and then he cracked the door open, leaving only a sliver, ready to pretend he was washing his hands if someone unexpected walked in.

***

The access door to the bathrooms was heard opening and closing. For a second, the noise of the wake spilled in, and then the silence shut all the way around them. A hand slid the door open and the guy with the half-length hair slipped inside, closing it behind him.

They didn’t exchange a word. Why talk, when bodies know how to say everything. With their mouths pressed together, they started groping each other. Mateo slipped his hands under the other man’s T-shirt; the other pushed his into Mateo’s pants and squeezed his ass against him so their crotches would grind together, each one with his erection. The stranger tasted of tobacco and desire, smelled of sweat and expensive cologne. He turned nothing down: kneaded Mateo’s buttocks while tugging at a pair of pants that weren’t very tight. Mateo undid his belt, eager.

“Why don’t you fuck me?” he whispered in his ear before biting his earlobe.

“It’ll be a pleasure,” the stranger replied. “Turn around, let me inspect that trench I’m going to get into.”

Mateo turned, still with his pants around his ankles. He tried to kick them off, but with his shoes on it was impossible, so he took them off in a hurry. He handed the other man a little bottle of lubricant and a condom he had in his pocket.

“Fuck, you really are prepared,” the stranger muttered, already crouching to get his mouth between his buttocks, which four hands tried to spread as much as possible to make it easy.

“You never know,” Mateo managed to answer before swallowing the moan caused by the other man’s tongue slicking up his hole. He grabbed onto the bar meant for disabled users, which that night served other purposes. “Put it in me. I can’t take it anymore.”

The stranger put on the condom and poured on a stream of cold lubricant that made Mateo shiver for a second. But feeling the head of the cock searching for his entrance always perks you up, so he pushed his hips back to take it. Good thing it wasn’t too thick, because in the rush it would have hurt. It slid all the way in with a gentle push.

Mateo let go of the bar and turned toward the wall, bracing himself facing the mirror.

“Where are you going?” the other man asked.

“I want to see in the reflection how you fuck me.”

“Okay, be careful, don’t smash yourself against the wall.”

“You give it everything you’ve got. I’m going to come in no time, you just keep doing your thing.”

Mateo glanced at himself in the tilted mirror: a man with his pants down, a light T-shirt and his jacket still on, fucking him from behind, slamming against his buttocks with every thrust of his hips. He let one hand drop from the wall, took hold of his own cock, and after barely a couple of strokes, came against the tile and the floor like he hadn’t in a long time. He really needed that. Even so he kept enjoying the stranger’s thrusts, who without warning gripped his hip, sank in all the way with a gasp, and emptied himself inside him.

They stayed still for a moment, catching their breath.

“Be careful when you go out, there may be some mess left,” Mateo murmured. “Always ready, but not always prepared.”

“So what,” the other man laughed, still inside him. “That was great. A proper quickie.”

“It was to die for.”

“Fuck, what a perfectly timed comment.”

With his cock still half-hard, the other man pulled out. Mateo took toilet paper and wiped himself clean, and with another handful he cleaned up his cum from the floor. The other man had already taken off the condom and was drying himself too, tossing the paper into the bin. They looked at each other. Mateo was about to steal another kiss, but held back.

The other man didn’t. Still with his pants down, he grabbed him by the nape and planted a proper kiss on him. They broke apart as they straightened their clothes.

“Did you like it?” the stranger asked.

“A lot.”

“We could do it again another day, with no dead people involved, right?”

“I’d love that.”

“We’ll message each other on the app.”

“Okay.”

They washed their hands at the same time in the same sink. They looked at each other again. Still with wet fingers, this time it was Mateo who grabbed him by the nape and gave him another fierce kiss.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Adrián. You’re Mateo, right? If that’s what you’re called.”

“That’s me.”

“I was left wanting to eat your cock.”

“And I yours, your ass.”

“We have to do it again.”

“Done.”

Adrián left first. Mateo locked the door from inside, finished cleaning up the floor, and leaned against the wall, still sweaty. He wet his hair a little, looked at himself one last time in the mirror, and got ready to go back to Carla.

This really was a wake to die for, he thought.