What Happened in the Bar Bathroom That Thursday Night

There are fantasies one carries for years without daring to confess them out loud. One of mine was exactly that: walking into the bathroom of some public place and having a man, without saying anything, without asking anything, fuck me against the wall as if I were something of his. I wasn’t looking for romance, I wasn’t looking for a name, not even a second time. I only wanted that exact minute in which a stranger decides you’re going to be the hole for his night.

I was thinking about it while I drove downtown, stuck in Thursday traffic like any other. I had arranged to meet a friend at a small bar on Echeverría Street, one of those places with warm lighting, three high tables, and a waiter who knows you by the third visit. It’s called Maderna and it fills up with people coming out late from nearby offices. I’d gone with the idea of having two beers and going home, but before I sat down I slipped into the bathroom because I’d been holding it since the subway.

The bathroom was in the basement, at the end of a narrow corridor that smelled of pine disinfectant. A single yellow bulb hung from the ceiling, and the walls had white tiles stained with rust around the faucet. There were two urinals side by side and a closed door leading to the toilet stall. There was no one there when I walked in. I stood in front of the urinal at the back, unzipped, and started peeing while staring at the tiles.

That was when I heard the door from the corridor. Slow footsteps, leather sole against ceramic. A man took position beside me, at the other urinal, leaving the smallest possible distance between us. I didn’t look. It’s an unwritten rule: in a public bathroom, you don’t look. I washed up, concentrated on finishing, and moved over to the sink, which was right in front of me.

While I soaped my hands, I looked up at the mirror. And there he was.

He was tall, I’d guess around five ten, gray-haired, with a short gray beard too and broad shoulders visible beneath his dark jacket. He must have been about fifty-five. What took my breath away wasn’t his face, which was calm and rather handsome, but the fact that he was facing me, his zipper completely down, his cock out, and one hand closed around it in a slow motion. He wasn’t looking at his reflection: he was looking at me, at the back of my neck, waiting for me to turn my head and realize exactly what was happening.

I turned off the tap. I dried my hands with the crumpled paper from the dispenser. My heart started pounding against my ribs as if it wanted to run away for me.

This doesn’t come around twice, Tomás. It’s now.

But the body beat the thought. I left. I crossed the corridor, went up two steps, and stayed in the bathroom doorway, holding the frame, breathing. My friend had texted me that he was arriving, there were three minutes left before he came through the bar’s front door. Inside, the stranger was still waiting. I knew it without needing to look.

I thought about all the times I’d imagined that scene in my bed, alone, with my hand tucked under my briefs. I thought about the boredom of going home once more without having done anything. I thought that I was thirty-two, with a fairly orderly life, a clean apartment, and a calendar full of pending things that didn’t include this. And precisely because of that, this was the only thing that mattered.

I texted my friend: Give me twenty minutes, something came up. I turned off the screen. Went back down the two steps.

The man was still there, in the same spot, in the same position, as if he knew I was going to come back. Less than a minute and a half had passed. I shut the corridor door behind me with the latch, heard the click, and walked over to where he was.

I didn’t say anything. Neither did he. I stood in front of him, looked him in the eyes —they were gray, almost the same color as his hair— and knelt on the cold floor. My pants sank into a damp stain I didn’t want to identify. I didn’t care.

I grabbed his cock with one hand. It was thick and hot, thicker than it was long, with a prominent vein running down the left side. I stuck out my tongue and ran the tip over the head, slowly, as if I were tasting it. He let out a short sigh, the first human sound in the whole scene, and that gave me permission to keep going.

I took him all the way into my mouth. I felt him press against my palate, then my throat, and I held back the gag by closing my eyes. I sucked him patiently, unhurriedly, licking his balls every so often, going back up again, salivating over everything. He rested one hand on my head, not to push but to guide. His fingers were long, rough. When I turned my head looking for a different angle, he let me, but as soon as I stopped for more than a second he pushed me a couple of centimeters so I’d get back into rhythm.

Ten minutes went by like that, I figure. Maybe less. Time in that position warps. My pants were tightening around my erection and I could tell he was close to coming: his breathing had grown heavy, the muscles in his abdomen trembled against my forehead every time he swallowed.

***

Then he grabbed my hair and made me stand up.

He put me with my back to him in one firm movement, not violent but leaving no choice. I understood immediately what was coming. I pulled my pants down to my ankles, pulled down my briefs, and placed both hands against the tiled wall. I stuck my ass out. The ceramic was ice-cold against my palms.

He slapped my ass. Just once, dry, hard, without warning. The blow rang against the tiles and left my skin burning. Before I could react he shoved two fingers into my mouth. I sucked them the way I’d sucked his cock, wetting them well, looking at the peeling tile across from me. He withdrew them with a wet sound and pressed them against my entrance.

One went in first. He moved it in circles, slowly, opening me up. Then the second, and by then I was breathing through my mouth, gripping the tile as if I were about to fall. When I thought he was going to put in a third, instead I felt the tip of his cock pressed against me, thick, hard, impatient. He pushed.

The shout came out of me before I could control it. It was short, sharp, and he covered my mouth with the palm of his huge hand. It smelled of tobacco and white soap. I turned the shout into a muffled moan against his fingers.

He held me like that for a few seconds, not moving, letting me adjust. I breathed against his hand. I felt every centimeter of him buried inside me, felt how he had opened me all the way. When he finally started moving, he did it with short, dry thrusts, gauging me. After a few thrusts the pain turned into something else: a deep pressure that climbed up my spine and made me shut my eyes.

—Mmm— escaped him for the first time, against my ear.

It was the only thing he said all night, and it wasn’t even a word.

He grabbed my hair with his other hand. He pulled back while fucking me harder and harder. I wanted to ask him to give it to me rougher, not to get tired, to stay there inside me until the end of the world, but his palm stayed over my mouth and all that came out of me were muffled sounds mixed with the dry slap of his balls against my ass.

***

Suddenly, a noise outside. The corridor latch, someone trying to open it. The two of us froze, mid-thrust, in place. The guy outside pushed twice, said something in a low voice to someone else —“must be occupied”— and the footsteps moved away toward the stairs.

But I didn’t want him to stop. I moved my ass back, slowly, searching for him. I rubbed his cock against my inner walls, squeezed him. He let out a breath against the back of my neck and understood that I didn’t give a damn if they heard us.

He started moving again. This time faster, less careful. I felt like he was going to break me and at the same time I wanted more. In those minutes I had become something other than myself. I was a surface. I was a hot hole that a stranger was taking advantage of. And that was exactly what I had imagined a thousand times.

Five minutes. Maybe a little more. His fingers tensed on my hip, his nails marked my skin, and suddenly I felt his pulse inside me, that hot throb I recognize even though I’d never expected it. He came without pulling out. I could feel each spurt as a different pulse. I heard a low growl against my neck, held in, almost animal.

Then, silence. His chest rose and fell against my back. His hand slowly eased the pressure on my mouth. He gave me a last kiss that wasn’t a kiss, some sort of soft bite on the shoulder, over the wrinkled fabric of my shirt.

He came out slowly. I didn’t move. I stayed pressed against the wall, with my pants at my ankles and my ass still open, until I heard the zipper going up, the belt, the rustle of his jacket as he adjusted it.

I bent down. Took the paper from the dispenser, folded it in half, and wiped his cock with the same slowness with which I had sucked it. He looked down at me, his gray eyes already calmer. He nodded once, as if thanking me or saying goodbye. Then he tucked his shirt back into his pants, ran his hand through his gray hair, and left the bathroom without a word.

I stayed alone for a long minute. Pulled up my briefs, my pants. Washed my hands. The face I saw in the mirror wasn’t exactly the same one that had come in: my cheeks were red, my lower lip swollen from biting it, and there was a new smile on my face that I couldn’t wipe away.

I went back up to the bar. My friend had just come in through the front door. He hugged me hello, complained about the cold, ordered two beers, and started telling me a work story I didn’t hear. I still felt his weight inside me, that sweet burning that would last until the next day.

Next Thursday I’m going back to Maderna at the same time. I’m not expecting luck: I’m waiting for some stranger, gray-haired or not, who understands what this one understood. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll have my two beers and go home. And if he does, you’ll know where to find me.