The Swimmer Who Dominated Me in the Club Showers

That Thursday in summer it was raining hard over Valencia, and rain has one good thing: it empties the pools. I arrived at the Malva-rosa sports center a little after seven, with the locker room all to myself and the water in the pool smooth as a mirror. I had just turned thirty-eight and my body still delivered: a swimmer all my life, broad shoulders, skin weathered by sun and chlorine. I wore my hair shaved at the sides and long braids that stuck to my back when I got out of the water.

I did three thousand meters flat out. Sets of freestyle hundreds, breaststroke fifties, my legs burning on the last laps. I finished wrecked and with that strange adrenaline effort leaves behind, a mix of exhaustion and wanting more. I yanked off my trunks in the locker and went into the communal showers with my towel over my shoulder, thinking only about the hot water.

I wasn’t alone.

At the far end of the row of white tiles, under the steam, there was another man. Young, much taller than me, his dark back shining under the spray. His name was Idriss, though I learned that later. Senegalese, twenty-four years old, he swam for the university. He had the body one imagines when one thinks of the word “athlete”: defined pecs, a flat hard stomach, the long legs of someone who spends his life pushing water.

I opened the shower next to him and let the water run down the nape of my neck. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, not even trying very hard to hide it. He wasn’t trying to hide either. When he turned to reach for the soap, I dropped my gaze a second too long and he noticed. He smiled. A slow smile, unhurried, of someone who knows exactly the effect he’s having.

—I’ve seen you swim —he said, with a soft French accent that dragged the r’s—. You swim well. And now I see you get hard fast too.

There was no point denying the obvious.

My body had answered before I did. I took a step closer, still under my spray, and he took another toward me. Steam wrapped everything, the sound of the water drowned out any other noise. When I lifted my hand and laid it on his wet chest, I felt his heart beating fast under my palm.

I knelt on the tiled floor, water running down my back. I took him in both hands and started slowly, with my tongue, tasting chlorine and the salty taste of his skin. He threw his head back and let the air out through his mouth. He grabbed my braids, not violently, but guiding me, setting the pace he wanted, deep and measured.

That was when I noticed we were no longer alone.

In the row of showers across from us, several men had stayed behind. Two guys in their early twenties, an older man with gray beard stubble, the lifeguard on duty still with the whistle hanging around his neck. None of them said a word. They stood still under their sprays, watching, and some were touching themselves slowly. Water ran, steam rose to the ceiling, and no one made any move to shift or leave.

Knowing they were watching us lit me up in a way I hadn’t expected. I’m not one of those who look for an audience, but there, kneeling on the wet floor with their eyes fixed on us, I felt something electric running down my spine.

Idriss pulled me to my feet by the wrists, gently. He turned me against the cold tile wall, spread my legs with his knee, and took his time. His fingers, first one, then two, wet and patient, opened me up while he spoke in my ear in that low French of his.

—Look how they’re looking at you —he murmured—. They love seeing you like this.

I didn’t answer him. I planted both hands on the wall, arched my back, and pushed back, searching for him. When he entered me, he did it slowly, centimeter by centimeter, giving me time to get used to him. It burned and it hurt and it was exactly what I wanted. I stayed motionless for a moment, my forehead against the tiles, until my body yielded and I took him all the way in.

He started moving with long, firm thrusts. Water splashed everywhere, my wet braids stuck to my face, and I moaned while glancing at the ones watching us. One of the guys had come a couple of steps closer, not daring to get any nearer, his eyes fixed on us. The one with the beard was breathing hard. The pleasure of knowing I was being watched mixed with the pleasure of Idriss driving into me, and the two fed each other.

—Like that —I asked him, and he understood.

He held me by the hips with both hands and sped up. Every thrust pressed my belly against the wall, his hot breath on my nape, his thighs slamming against mine. I didn’t touch myself. No need. My body tightened all at once, fingers dug into the grout between the tiles, and I came on my own, with a shiver that shot up from my legs. I heard someone across from us groan when they saw it.

Idriss pulled out for a moment, panting, and motioned toward the wooden bench in the middle of the showers. He sat down with his legs open and pulled me over. I straddled him, facing away, and lowered myself slowly until I felt him inside me again. From there I controlled the pace. I went up and down staring at the ceiling, his hands spread over my chest, his lips seeking my shoulder and the nape of my neck.

One of the guys finally came over. He didn’t say anything; he stood in front of us, and I, without thinking, leaned toward him. The whole scene became something else: the heat of the steam, the water still falling from the open showers, the loose moans from those watching, Idriss’s body driving up into me from below. For an instant I no longer knew where I ended and where everything else began.

***

We changed position without speaking, reading each other with our hands. He laid me down on the wet floor, opened my legs, and entered me again while looking me in the eyes. That’s the part I remember most: not the force, but the way he held my gaze while he moved, slowly at first, deeply after, as if there weren’t anyone else in the entire room. He brushed a lock of hair from my face with a tenderness that didn’t fit with everything else, and kept going.

The circle of men had tightened a little more around us. Some could no longer hold back. The lifeguard, still with the whistle around his neck, was the first; then the bearded man. The sound of all of them at once, the water, the steam, was too much for me. I came a second time, this time over my own stomach, with a cry that escaped me without permission.

Idriss lifted me off the floor as if I weighed nothing. He held me against the wall, my legs around his waist, my arms crossed behind his neck, and finished like that, wrapped around me, his forehead pressed to mine. When he couldn’t hold back anymore, he set me down, got me on my knees in front of him, and came all over my face and chest, panting, eyes closed. I swallowed what I could; the rest mixed with the water still pouring over me.

Little by little, the others drifted back to their showers. No one made comments, no one went looking for anything more. Just sidelong glances, the occasional smile, the sound of the water becoming once again the only sound in the locker room. Idriss and I stayed a long while under the hot spray, him behind me, his arms around my chest, saying nothing. No need.

We left the showers after ten, with the locker room already empty. Before he went, he grabbed my forearm and wrote his number on it with a marker he took out of his bag, the ink resisting the water.

—Whenever you want another session —he said, and smiled again, that slow smile—. You know where to find me.

I went out into the street under the rain, my hair wet and my body still vibrating. I hadn’t felt that awake in months. I stood for a moment under the bus stop awning, looking at the numbers written on my arm, and laughed to myself, unable to help it.

I still smell chlorine and steam when I close my eyes.

It was, by far, the best rainy afternoon of my life.