What I Discovered When I Let Another Man In

I’m going to tell you, in broad strokes but without filters, how I discovered that I’m completely passive and that for me there’s no other way to have sex. I’m writing it because sometimes I read confessions out there and it’s hard to find voices like mine: men who feel no guilt at all about preferring to give themselves over, and who took, like I did, a long time to fully accept it.

Until I was twenty, I had only been with my own hands. I lived in a small town, in a fairly traditional family, and the only thing I was clear about was that I liked boys more than was allowed to say out loud. That’s why I started early with anal masturbation: first one finger in the shower, then two, later a long-handled brush well lubricated, and when I’d built up the courage I ordered my first toy online, in a package with no return address that I received trembling.

I got myself trained almost daily. It wasn’t an obsession; it was an intimate routine. I put on soft music, lit a candle, and took my time. I learned to read my own body: when it would take more, when I had to wait, how to breathe so the pleasure wouldn’t be cut off by pain. The only thing I was missing was knowing what it felt like to have a real man inside me.

That part came on a Saturday in March, a year and a half after graduation.

Matías had been my desk mate during the last two years of high school. He was the typical guy who flirted with everyone and whom I’d watch out of the corner of my eye when he got up to fetch his backpack. Nothing ever happened between us, but some look lingered in the air longer than necessary. When he texted me asking if I was in town, because he was coming for the weekend, I knew immediately what was going to happen. Not out of arrogance: I simply knew.

We met at a small bar near the river. He ordered beer, so did I, even though I don’t like it. We talked about school, the teachers, who had gotten married, who had left the country. By the third round Matías looked at me with his head a little tilted and asked if I lived alone. I told him yes. We paid without arguing and walked in silence the four blocks to my apartment.

As soon as I closed the door, he tossed his jacket onto a chair and backed me into the hallway wall. He wasn’t aggressive: he was decisive. He kissed me with a calm that didn’t match the urgency I could feel under his pants. Matías always knew what he wanted, and that night it turned out he wanted this too.

—Have you done it before? —he asked in my ear as he pulled down my zipper.

—With no one. Only by myself.

I said it shamelessly. He gave a low laugh and bit my earlobe.

—Then we’ll take it slow.

We did take it slow. I had decent lubricant in the nightstand drawer and one condition only: that he not cut me up inside. Matías prepared me with three fingers for what felt like an eternity while I squeezed the pillow face down, listening to my own breathing. When I finally felt the head of his cock pressing in, I held my breath. The difference from a toy is hard to explain: there’s heat, there’s trembling, there’s a human weight behind the push. It isn’t an object: it’s someone.

The first entry hurt. Just for a second, that second in which the body decides whether to close or open. Matías didn’t move forward. He stayed very still, one hand on my hip and the other on my nape, waiting. When I relaxed my shoulders, he pushed in a little more. And a little more. He came all the way out, went back in, came out again. I heard my own moans as if they were coming from someone else, and at the same time something in me was learning, registering every micro-adjustment.

After five minutes it no longer hurt. After ten, I told him not to stop. After fifteen I realized the pleasure wasn’t coming from my own hand squeezing me in front: it was coming from him, moving behind me. I finished with his chest pressed to my back, his chin on my shoulder, and a new sensation at the center of my body that felt unlike anything I had ever felt before.

We slept for a while. The next morning Matías left early, no drama. We promised to write; we didn’t. It wasn’t a love affair and it wasn’t a wound: it was a door.

***

After him, two strange years went by. I had the occasional digital encounter, some conversation that never became a date, lots of new toys. I bought a bigger one and learned to relax with it in any position. But it wasn’t enough anymore. I already knew the other thing existed, the real thing, and dildos had become a practice, not a solution.

I met Joaquín in a bookstore. I’m not going to tell you how, because I keep that beginning for us. We’ve been together for a year and seven months, and the first time he came to my place, after three weeks of seeing each other, I knew I was going to give myself over completely. Not in a theatrical way: I simply felt it.

The problem was that Joaquín was shy. Very shy. Shy in general, but especially shy in bed. The first few times we did almost everything except what I wanted most. He’d wait for a sign and I, out of cowardice or respect, wouldn’t dare give it to him in words. We fell asleep in each other’s arms, happy but only halfway.

One Friday night, after a dinner in which I drank a bit more wine than usual, I sat on his thighs with both hands on his face and told him.

—I want you to fuck me. Today. Without fear.

Joaquín went red all the way to his ears. Then he laughed, that nervous laugh he makes when he feels exposed. And then he stopped laughing.

—Are you sure? I’m bigger than any of your toys. I don’t want to hurt you.

That sentence sums it all up: him thinking about me before himself. I told him yes, that I had been preparing for this for years without knowing it. And he began.

Joaquín has a thick cock. Thicker than long, which for someone like me, who had only handled a medium-sized dildo, was a considerable change. The first time he put the tip in and took it out three times before going further. He used half the bottle of lubricant. Every centimeter was a pause. I asked him to go deeper and he told me no, not yet, wait.

—Trust me —he repeated, his voice a little broken.

It took him almost twenty minutes to get all the way inside. And when he did, I was crying. Not from pain: from something stranger, something I still can’t quite name. It was as if a part of me that had been secretly preparing for years had finally been given permission to exist in front of another person.

—Don’t stop —I begged him.

He didn’t stop. He moved gently, with his forehead pressed to the nape of my neck, one hand on my chest and the other entwined with mine over the pillow. He didn’t touch me in front. It wasn’t necessary. I came without anyone jerking me off, something I had nearly achieved with toys but never quite managed. He finished afterward, slowly, without stopping kissing my shoulder.

***

That night was a year and a half ago, and since then we’ve learned. We’ve learned together. Today there isn’t a session in which he doesn’t finish inside me and I don’t need to touch myself, except when we play at something else. We’ve tried positions, we’ve tried rhythms, we’ve tried staying still for a long time just to feel each other. Sometimes he prepares me for half an hour with his mouth and fingers before entering me; sometimes he does it in five minutes against the bathroom wall when we’re about to go out somewhere.

What changed isn’t what we do, but what I understood. I understood that being passive, for me, is not being less. I understood that giving your body is also a way of having all the power, because he moves for me, attentive to every gesture, and I am the center of his full attention as long as it lasts. Submission, in a couple, humbles no one: it binds.

Sometimes, when we’re facing each other on the sofa watching a movie, I think about what my life would have been if I had never opened that package with no return address at nineteen. If I had never answered Matías’s message. If I had never asked Joaquín, with two glasses of wine in me, to fuck me without fear. I’d probably still be touching myself alone, convinced that was the whole truth available to someone like me.

And it wasn’t. For me, now I know it, pleasure goes through one door only, and a man opened it. First one, then another. And this other one isn’t leaving. Not for now.

I’m writing it here because maybe someone will read it and recognize something. If you’re at the beginning of the road, I’d tell you not to rush, to practice alone, to know your own rhythm before asking anyone to enter you. And if you already have someone who looks at you with patience, trust them with your whole body. It’s absolutely worth it.