The White Slave of a Man Named Lamine

His parents named him Tobías because, for the time, they were fairly modern people who had traveled through Kenya and Tanzania. His mother became pregnant during that trip, and they always told the story as though the name carried something of that distant continent inside it.

Tobías had been an insatiable reader since childhood. He devoured children's stories first, then quickly moved on to more serious books. In the middle of adolescence, he stumbled upon a history book about the enslavement of Black people brought from Africa to the cotton and sugar-cane plantations of the Americas. The subject captivated him, and he kept looking for more. Later he found a historical novel set in those years that told of slaves assigned to domestic service, of the strange relationship they had with their owners, of how faithful and grateful they ended up becoming because they were not used as beasts of burden and slept in back rooms of their masters' houses.

He often thought that Black people, as a people, had never been compensated for all they had suffered. And one day, almost without meaning to, he imagined the situation reversed: white people enslaved by Black people. The idea lodged inside him, pulsing somewhere in a hidden corner. He had never seen a Black person in real life, only in photographs and drawings, because there wasn't a single one in his village, but he longed to see them someday.

The years passed. Tobías was already twenty-two when he saw a mulatto man for the first time, about forty, walking hand in hand with a woman along the main street. He was fascinated and had trouble looking away, but when he saw the man was accompanied, he ended up stepping aside. Later he learned that his name was Yunior and that he was Cuban. In the south, he had met a white woman who was clearly interested in him; she was willing to marry him, and his tourist visa was about to expire. Shortly after the wedding, the woman inherited a house in the north, in Tobías's village, and so she returned with her husband to the place where she had been born.

Not long afterward, Tobías saw another man walking those same streets. Unlike the first, this one was always alone, and he was Black, not mulatto. Very tall, very strong, with broad shoulders and enormous hands. He was forty-five years old and had emigrated later than people his age usually did, but to Tobías he seemed ageless, impossible to place. Seeing him always alone, he dared to hold his gaze a little longer than was proper and smile at him. He was certain of one thing: he wanted to get to know him.

After running into him several times on the same corner, he decided to say hello. The man's name was Lamine, and he replied with another hello and a broad, white smile. As far as he was concerned, the boy was merely curious and nothing more; he knew perfectly well there was no one else like him anywhere in the area. He thought it was all the boy's innocence, and it was. Tobías knew nothing about sex, and although Black men fascinated him, he had never formed a single mental image connected with desire.

But Tobías moved from hello to “Hi, how are you?”, and day after day they went a little further. Lamine didn't mind at all; on the contrary, he liked the boy. Before long they were sharing a soda or a beer in a bar on the square. Although he came from a Muslim family, Lamine was not observant and had no problem with alcohol. He understood Spanish perfectly, but spoke it somewhat brokenly, with poorly formed sentences, because he had never studied it.

Two months had not yet passed when Lamine invited him to keep drinking at his place, a rented studio on the outskirts. There the boy learned that Lamine had arrived in a small migrant boat and had moved to that village on Yunior's advice. They had become friends in the south: one day, when Yunior was leaving the detention center for a walk, he approached Lamine, mistakenly believing that he was leaving the center too, and asked him some random question. They hit it off immediately and stayed in touch even after the Cuban moved north. Some time later, Yunior called to tell him he had a job “off the books” near his village and that his wife was willing to rent him a studio in her name.

Tobías immediately noticed that the apartment was messy, neglected, and not very clean. He restrained himself during the first visit. But on the second, almost instinctively, he began picking things up. They had enough trust between them by then, so he told him directly: this couldn't go on, the place had to be tidied and cleaned. Lamine wasn't offended. He let out a deep laugh that reverberated through the small studio.

—I think you little girl —the man said, still laughing—. Little girls like those things.

—No… —Tobías replied, smiling too, his ears hot—. But a little order and cleanliness wouldn't hurt. Will you let me do it?

—Seriously? —Lamine shrugged—. Well, better. If you want to do it.

The boy picked up the clothes scattered across the floor, returned everything to its place, washed the dirty dishes piled in the sink, swept, and mopped. It didn't take long. Lamine had hardly any belongings, and the furniture consisted of the four basic pieces found in any rental. When he finished, he stood in the middle of the living room, contemplating his work with a satisfaction he didn't know how to name.

—See? It's much better now —he said.

—Yes, thank you… thank you, really —Lamine replied, looking around as though he didn't recognize his own home.

—You don't have to thank me. I like cleaning, even if I'm not a little girl. —He paused, playing with the rag between his hands—. But I want to ask you something. Can I take a shower?

—Of course. Clean towel in bathroom cabinet.

The bathroom was so narrow he could barely fit inside. Tobías came out with the towel knotted around his waist and finished dressing in the living room, his skin still damp and his hair dripping onto his shoulders. He felt Lamine's gaze before he heard his voice.

—You good ass —the man said, without looking away—. Look like girl.

—Thank you —Tobías replied, and the heat suddenly rose into his face.

—You like me say that?

—Well… —The boy adjusted his towel, buying time—. You complimented my ass. That's why I thanked you.

Lamine laughed again, that deep laugh that seemed to rise from his chest, and did not insist. But something had been said in the air of the studio, something neither of them dared touch yet.

Tobías walked slowly home, feeling something different along the way, a warm mixture of pride and nerves. He was happy to have tidied and cleaned Lamine's studio. He didn't even know why it gave him such satisfaction, but he was already thinking of doing it again at the first opportunity. He wanted to help him in every way he could. “His people have suffered enough,” he told himself, as though that childish idea he had read in a book were now the justification for something far more intimate.

***

From that afternoon on, they began seeing each other almost always at the studio. Neither of them had enough money to spare on bars. And without really noticing it, Lamine grew accustomed to the boy cleaning his home, washing his clothes, and tidying every corner. He left things wherever they fell, without bothering with anything, because it was convenient and because he came home exhausted from work. To him it was natural; to Tobías, it was a kind of privilege he would not have known how to explain.

The boy almost always finished his chores with a shower, and his ass had stopped going unnoticed. Lamine was drawn to that white, hairless skin, those firm, round buttocks that contrasted with everything else. Every time he saw him come out of the bathroom with the towel around his waist, he followed him with his eyes without making any attempt to hide it.

—Every time you come out of shower, I see your ass —he remarked one afternoon, reclining on the sofa with a beer in his hand—. White buttocks, very good.

—Thank you, thank you —Tobías murmured, flushing as he picked up the mop so he would have something to do with his hands.

Lamine's compliments, always directed at the same part of his body, stayed with the boy. He repeated them to himself at night, without fully understanding why he liked remembering them so much. He realized, almost with embarrassment, that he liked being desirable to him. He often noticed those dark eyes lingering on him when he bent down to pick something up from the floor, and he began bending slowly, deliberately, pretending not to notice.

I only want to help him, he told himself. That's all.

But that wasn't all, and deep down he knew it. Almost without thinking, he bought himself new, tight-fitting underwear and began making sure his trousers outlined his buttocks nicely before leaving the house. He looked at himself from behind in the hall mirror, twisting his waist, calculating the effect. Then he would take his keys and walk toward the outlying studio with his heart beating a little faster.

He went more and more often. Each time he stayed longer. And every time he cleaned that stranger's apartment while Lamine watched him silently from the sofa, Tobías felt that he was slowly and willingly taking up a place he had spent years imagining without daring to name it. A place at that enormous man's feet. Nothing had happened between them yet. But both of them sensed it, in every sustained look, every whispered thank-you, every towel that fell a little lower than necessary.

That night, when he got home, Tobías undressed in front of the mirror and stood looking at himself for a long time. He thought of Lamine's enormous hands, his broken voice, the word “ass” spoken in that accent. For the first time in his life, he understood that what he felt was not pity, nor a child's curiosity, nor an idea taken from an old book. It was desire. And he knew, with a clarity that frightened and relieved him at the same time, that the next time he crossed the threshold of that studio, he would not be going there just to clean.