What I Saw in the Pool House on My Son’s Birthday

May 15

I’m writing this diary because Beatriz, the psychologist assigned to us through the public health system to treat my son, Hugo, asked me to. She’s Argentine and has this habit of staring at you until you say something. She told my wife and me to write separately, without censoring ourselves, everything that crossed our minds. Especially anything concerning the boy. I’ve never kept a diary in my life, so forgive me if I go off on tangents.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Ricardo, I’m forty-five years old, and I live in the Tetuán neighborhood of Madrid. My wife and I have run a stationery shop since before we were married. I’ve been doing jiu-jitsu three times a week for a decade, I go running when I remember, and although I’m starting to develop a bit of a belly, I can still keep up with the youngsters at the gym.

My wife’s name is Cristina. She’s five years younger than me. Since her second pregnancy, she’s been getting rounder, and I’m no longer as attracted to her, although I still love her. We’ve grown somewhat distant, but that’s mostly the kid’s fault. The older one, obviously. The younger one doesn’t cause any trouble.

The older one is Hugo. As a child, he was a walking ray of sunshine: smiling, funny, always with a joke ready. He’s still like that, and I admit he’s a bit of a favorite of mine. He’s been doing artistic gymnastics since he was seven and is getting pretty strong. He gets good grades without studying, and I think that’s the problem: since university doesn’t demand anything from him, he finds his own amusements. He inherited his mother’s blond hair and my green eyes. He has a disarming smile. Until you discover what he hides behind it.

What happened last Saturday was the final straw. But I’ve been accumulating chapters for years. At eighteen, he disappeared for an entire night, and we went looking for him at a friend’s house, where he’d gone to sleep without telling us. At nineteen, he ended up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning, and his friends brought him in by taxi. We grounded him for a month, but since he was hungover the whole time, I don’t think he noticed. Then came the episode with the poppers he was “holding for a friend.” And countless others I’d rather not remember.

He’s not a bad kid. He has a good heart, helps out at the shop on weekends, and worries about his grandmother. But these things he does are killing us. That’s why we took him to the psychologist. Luckily, he got in through the public health system, because we can’t afford private care.

The younger one is Daniel. He’s nineteen and, so far, hasn’t given us any cause for concern. He’s quiet, polite, and a good student. He’s taken up dancing, attending an academy in the neighborhood where they teach funky and something else called—I don’t know—urban something. He doesn’t worry me.

But Saturday was Hugo’s birthday. He was turning twenty-one. My brother-in-law has a little house with a pool near Cercedilla and invited us to celebrate there. We all went: my brothers, Cristina’s sisters, both grandmothers, the cousins. Hugo asked to invite some friends from university and Bruno’s parents, since Bruno had been his best friend since they were kids. Tomás, Bruno’s father, drops by the stationery shop from time to time to chat, and his wife, Patricia, goes to yoga with Cristina. So we invited them. They’re both good people.

Hugo had been acting strangely from the moment we set foot in the house. We wanted him to spend time with his cousins, who were his age, and he kept disappearing every fifteen minutes. Once Daniel found him in the attic. Another time, his cousin Carla found him behind the pool house. Cristina and I exchanged weary looks.

He relaxed during lunch. He was charming, telling stories about university, imitating his math professor, laughing with his uncles. Everyone was delighted. After the second course, the youngsters jumped into the pool while we stayed behind the coffee, chatting. At some point Cristina asked me to go get the cake.

I went into the kitchen, stuck in the candles, lit them, and came out carrying the dish in both hands, shielding the flames from the wind. When I reached the garden, Hugo was nowhere to be seen. The little cousins started looking for him around the house, the candles went out one by one, and I was furious, trying to keep the cream from melting onto the cake. Cristina was hissing and calling on God to bring her son back.

“Maybe he’s hiding in the pool house,” I said, almost certain. “That kind of prank is very much his style.”

Cristina nodded. We all positioned ourselves around the pool house in a semicircle, the kids looking expectant. Patricia, Bruno’s mother, volunteered to fling the door open. I was going to count to three and launch into “Happy Birthday” the moment we saw him appear. I imagined the idiot’s startled face.

“Three, two, one…”

“Happy bir—!”

Patricia yanked on the handle, and we all fell silent, mouths hanging open, the candles on the verge of going out. There was Hugo, the little bastard, braced face-first against a utility cabinet, his swim trunks around his ankles and his pert ass sticking up, two pale, firm gymnast’s cheeks. Behind him was Tomás, Bruno’s father, his Hawaiian shirt open to reveal that hairy, sweaty chest, his Bermuda shorts down around his knees. He had Hugo gripped tightly by the hips and was thrusting all the way into him, a thick cock sliding in and out of my son’s ass with the ease of someone who had been doing it for months. The pool house smelled of sweat, lubricant, and those sweetish poppers I already knew from an earlier episode. His cock was slick and glistening, every thrust drawing a muffled moan from Hugo as he bit his lip and arched his back to take it deeper. And worst of all, they didn’t stop immediately. Tomás reacted a second too late, giving him two or three more thrusts, those hairy hips smacking against my boy’s ass with a wet, obscene slap, before realizing that half the family was watching him. When he finally pulled out in shock—and I saw the whole thing, a huge, thick, veiny cock, red as a ripe eggplant—three or four thick white jets spurted over my son’s lower back, heavy ropes of semen sticking to his skin and running down toward the cleft of his ass.

I dropped the cake. I splattered half the family and both grandmothers with cream. Patricia started whacking Hugo with an inflatable pool float while he tried to pull up his trunks, someone else’s cum still running down his back. Tomás tried to calm his wife with his hands raised, as if he were facing a robbery, his cock still half-hard and swinging out from beneath his Bermuda shorts. One grandmother’s blood pressure dropped, while the other prayed the Hail Mary and crossed herself. The aunts covered the little cousins’ eyes. Daniel took out his phone and stared at the screen as if none of it had anything to do with him. Bruno, clinging to his mother’s waist, sobbed:

“My dad, man… not my dad, for fuck’s sake.”

Cristina, who is a force to be reckoned with when she gets angry, went straight for Tomás, grabbed him by one ear like a child, and dragged him to the gate. She told him, in that low voice she uses when there’s no going back:

“The bus leaves in twenty minutes. Get out.”

Then she came back, hugged Patricia, offered to accompany her home, and before leaving, fixed me with a stare and said:

“I’m staying with her tonight. Take the children and talk to Hugo.”

She’s clever when she wants to be, that woman. She knows how to slip away from a mess.

I didn’t yell at Hugo. I didn’t smack the back of his head. What came out was a disappointed voice I barely recognized as my own. I told him to get in the car. I said goodbye to the family, apologizing a thousand times, although I knew they were good people and wouldn’t hold it against us. We drove the forty-five minutes back to Madrid in silence. Hugo stared out the window, aware of what had happened. Daniel played with his phone.

When we got home, the sun was still shining. I just wanted night to fall. Everyone went to their rooms. I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, turning over what I had just seen.

First: officially, this had been my son coming out. Cristina and I had suspected it for some time, just as we suspected the same of the younger one, but we preferred to wait for them to say it themselves. Second: Tomás had taken him with an ease that couldn’t be improvised. This wasn’t their first encounter. My son had done it before, and not just a few times. Third: they had done it without a condom.

Christina messaged me: “Talk to the boy.” God, Cristina. You talk to him—you’re the mother, after all.

I got up and knocked twice on his bedroom door.

“Come in,” a solemn voice answered from the other side.

He was lying on the bed without a shirt. His gymnastics showed: his pectorals were beginning to stand out, and a line of blond hair ran from his navel toward the waistband of his underwear. He made as if to put something on, out of respect, I suppose, but I told him there was no need. He sat on the edge of the bed, and I took the desk chair.

I looked him in the eyes and used a technique I learned years ago: keeping quiet and letting the discomfort fill the room.

“Dad, I’m so sorry,” he said. Two enormous tears rolled down his face, and he began to sob.

I sat beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. The anger left my body. Poor kid.

“To me it was a game,” he murmured. “Until I saw Bruno’s face. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“Son, you’re very young, and sometimes you don’t consider the consequences. For someone who’s so smart about everything else, you’re a reckless idiot when it comes to this stuff.”

“Dad, sometimes I can’t control myself.”

“How did we get here?” I asked him. “Because this can’t have been just today.” He shook his head. “Tomás manipulated you somehow…”

He looked at me with his green eyes and shook his head again.

“It’s all my fault, Dad,” he sobbed against my shoulder.

“I need you to tell me how it started.”

He sniffed. He stayed silent for a moment, choosing where to begin.

“A few months ago I went to Bruno’s house and had to wait for him because his dentist appointment had run long. Tomás was alone, in his underwear, watching football. You could see the bulge through the fabric, Dad—thick, pressed against his thigh. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. He asked if I wanted to sit down, and I sat beside him on the sofa. Dad, I really can’t control myself. I felt something… I knew it was dangerous, that he might get angry with me… but I brushed his leg with mine, and he didn’t move it away.”

“Right,” I said. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to sound understanding.

“Then I moved closer. I put my hand on his leg.” I removed mine from his shoulder without realizing it. “And he didn’t move. I slid my hand up his thigh, very slowly, and put it inside his underwear. Dad, I felt his… his dick?”

“Better say… there wasn’t an elegant word for this—penis. Cock, son. Cock.”

“His cock, Dad. It was really hard. Very, very hard, thick and swollen. There was a clear drop at the tip, running down over his glans.”

“I see, son.” I didn’t know how to continue the conversation.

“I just can’t control myself. I grabbed it with both hands, and it was so big I couldn’t get all the way around it. I started moving the skin up and down, very slowly at first. He spread his legs farther apart and threw his head back. I pulled his underwear down to his knees and saw the whole thing, Dad, the whole thing, with those big balls hanging beneath it, and I couldn’t control myself and started… masturbating him?”

“Yes, masturbating him. Giving him a hand job.”

“I gave him a long hand job, Dad. I spit on it so it would slide better, and he stared right at me, as if daring me to keep going. I got really turned on. My mouth started watering. I put it in my mouth. I started… sucking him?”

“Just say sucking, yes. Sucking his cock.”

“I sucked him, Dad. I sucked the whole thing. Up and down, until it hit the back of my throat and made me gag. He grabbed the back of my head and pushed me to take it deeper. He moaned a lot and said filthy things, and in the end he warned me and came…” He paused, thinking. “Ejaculated.”

“Came.”

“Came, Dad. He came in jets inside my mouth. So much that I couldn’t swallow fast enough, and it ran down my chin.”

“In your mouth?” He nodded. “And you swallowed it?”

“All of it, Dad. Every last drop. I cleaned his cock with my tongue. I wasn’t thinking.”

“What about diseases?”

“I looked it up. Nothing happens from swallowing it.”

“No?” He shook his head. “And after that?”

“We started meeting in secret. When Patricia went to yoga with Mom, or when Bruno had practice. Sometimes we went to one of those hourly hotels on Gran Vía. But it was complicated.”

“Son, the way he fucked you today… that wasn’t the first time.”

“No. We’ve done it a few times, Dad. Lots of times. He’s usually very careful. First he puts me face down on the bed and spreads my cheeks with his hands. He licks my… ass?”

“Yes, son, your ass.”

“He licks my ass, Dad. With his whole tongue, circling around and pushing it inside me. I get so turned on; it feels… He covers everything with saliva. Then he puts on cream and slips in one finger, then two, until I’m opened up. When he goes in, he goes slowly, very slowly, all the way in. Then he starts fucking me hard. He pulls all the way out and drives it back in. He says he’s never tried an ass so tight. That he envies how well I take that cock of his without complaining. He makes me come without touching me, Dad. Just with his cock inside me.”

He wiped away the last tear. Getting it off his chest seemed to ease his conscience. Being a father is sometimes very difficult. The questions are impossible.

“Son, you have to be completely honest with me. Have you been with other men?”

He shrugged.

“You have to be very careful.”

“I’m always careful, Dad. But with Tomás it was different. He and his wife weren’t doing anything anymore. He only saw me.”

“Okay. In a monogamous relationship, if there’s trust, you can choose not to use protection. Even so…”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful. Have you learned today’s lesson?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“You know you can tell me everything, right? Everything, everything. I won’t judge you. But you can’t get yourself into these messes.”

“Of course, Dad.”

We hugged, I kissed him on the forehead, and left him in his room with his guilty conscience. As I went out, I remembered Daniel. I knocked on his door.

“What is it, Dad?” he asked, already uncomfortable before I’d said anything.

“You saw something today… out of the ordinary. I wanted to talk to you about it. Do you know what you saw?”

“Dad, I’m nineteen. I’m not a child. They were”—he lowered his voice—“having sex. That’s how guys do it.”

“Of course you’re not a child. Then everything’s fine. Do you masturbate yet?”

“Dad! Get out!”

I left, relieved that I didn’t have to continue the conversation. I had fulfilled my paternal duty. Cristina wrote to say she was staying to make dinner for Patricia. I lay naked on the bed, with the window open in the heat.

So many things went through my head that I couldn’t sleep. My son was now fully sexually active. Although it felt strange to me, I thought it was fine. I had always wanted to be a progressive father. What I couldn’t get out of my mind was the image of that man, Tomás, tall and broad, somewhat taller than me, with that hairy chest pressed against Hugo’s hairless back. The way he held him against the cabinet while penetrating him so easily. I kept seeing, over and over, Tomás’s cock coming out of my son’s ass at the moment Patricia opened the door: thick, veiny, red, smeared with everything. I remembered the thickness of the jets of semen that had landed on his lower back, four heavy white ropes, so long that one reached almost to his neck. It was no small member.

I remembered the way he kissed Hugo’s neck, the excitement Hugo must have been feeling, that expression of pleasure, mouth open and eyes half-closed, a second before we opened the door. I wondered what it would feel like to be penetrated like that. I had never tried it, either giving or receiving. Cristina had never let me put it in her ass. She didn’t suck me, either. For years, all I’d done was jerk off alone in the bathroom while she slept.

I caressed my body. The belly was slight; most of it was muscle with a few beers accumulated on top. Stronger than Tomás, for sure. The hair on my chest, black and evenly distributed, better arranged than his. My arms, definitely thicker. And finally, almost without meaning to, I touched my cock. That one too was surely bigger than his. It was already half-hard from turning over the scene in the pool house. I started stroking it slowly, with a dry hand, feeling it grow completely hard, feeling my glans swell and a thick drop of pre-cum bead at the tip, which I used to lubricate the head.

I imagined the whole scene again. But now I saw it in slow motion, in detail. I saw Tomás’s cock sliding in and out of my son’s ass, the skin of the glans forcing its way through that tight ring, his balls smacking against Hugo’s buttocks. I heard the splashing, the carnal sound of two bodies soaked in sweat. I saw my son’s face, that of a happy little slut, biting his lip, pushing his ass backward and asking for more. A moan escaped me, and I covered my mouth with my free hand so I wouldn’t wake Daniel on the other side of the hall.

I started jerking off faster. I spat into my palm and kept going, my cock hard as a rock, pulsing in my fist, thick and veiny. I thought about Tomás’s cock, about the way he pulled it shiny from my son’s ass, about the huge load he sprayed over him. I thought about Hugo sucking him on that sofa, swallowing the whole load without protest. I thought about Tomás licking Hugo’s ass, spreading his cheeks with his hands, pushing his tongue all the way inside. And then, without meaning to, I began imagining myself. Myself in Tomás’s place. Myself with my hands on young hips, gripping them tightly. Myself driving my cock all the way into a tight little ass that opened for me without resistance. I felt a jolt rise from the tips of my toes.

The cum hit me all at once, without warning. I arched over the mattress, my cock exploding in my hand, and began shooting semen over my own belly, across my chest, up to my collarbone. Four, five, six spurts—more than in a long time, thicker than in a long time. I lay still, breathing hard, my hand sticky and my chest spattered with my own cum, staring at the ceiling. The room smelled of sweat and semen.

It took me a while to come to terms with the emotion that kept me awake. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t shame. It was envy.

***

We decided not to punish Hugo. We understood that he had learned his lesson, although we took preventive measures. The following Monday I took him to the doctor, we told the truth without sugarcoating it, and they prescribed injectable PrEP, the kind that lasts six months. That made me much more relaxed.

“Dad, does this mean I can fuck however I want now?”

“Have sex.”

“Does this mean I can have sex however I want now?”

“No. You’re only going to have sex when I tell you to.”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s not an excuse to do stupid things. And you have to tell me everything.”

We left the health center, and I bought him a kebab to eat outside. I felt much more at ease afterward. But he’s not getting off that easily. We have to modify this behavior. I hope this diary helps me understand myself better. And, above all, Hugo.