What That Man Read to Me Changed Something in Me

I was leaving work late when I saw him. He was leaning against the doorway of an apartment building, in that posture some men have when they know exactly where they are and don’t need to prove it to anyone. A book in his left hand, his back against the dark wood, a light shirt open at the collar.

I looked at him. Not for long. Just enough for him to notice.

I kept walking. Adrenaline rose in my chest in that specific way I’ve recognized for years: a vibration with no name that the body understands without error. I thought about walking on. Going home, showering, eating dinner. I thought about all that for exactly thirty steps.

Then I stopped beside a closed kiosk under the pretense of checking my phone.

I retraced my steps.

He was still there. The book was open now. A small smile at the corner of his mouth, as if he knew I was going to come back.

I approached the glass door. He did the same from inside, with the calm of a man in no hurry.

—You’re a tech —he said before I could open my mouth. He pointed to the embroidered logo on my T-shirt.

—Fiber optics. Is there a problem in the building?

—In my apartment. The router’s been acting weird since yesterday. If you have a minute...

—I can take a look.

He opened the door. Closed it behind me.

***

His apartment was on the first floor, at the end of a short hallway with a marble floor. Sparse furniture, lots of light filtered through cream-colored linen blinds. Books everywhere: on shelves covering an entire wall, stacked on the floor beside the sofa, on the dining table. Among them, a softcover notebook with a name handwritten on it in black marker.

I went straight to the router. Checked it. The lights were blinking normally; the signal was perfect.

—It works fine —I said, looking at him.

—That’s what I figured. —He shrugged without the slightest trace of shame—. Happens when someone comes over to look at it.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

—And the book?

He picked it up. It was that notebook from the table, with the name on the cover: DIEGO R.

—Poetry. Mine. I’ve been writing for years, but I’ve never published anything properly.

—Why not?

—Because what I write doesn’t fit into any easy catalog. —He gestured toward the sofa—. Want to see?

I sat down. He settled beside me, close enough for me to feel the warmth of his arm without our skin touching. He smelled faintly of something citrusy, cologne or soap, hard to tell.

He opened the notebook at random and started to read in a low voice.

The first verses described a male body with a precision that wasn’t anatomy but concentrated desire: the line of the neck down to the shoulder, the tension of the thighs against a sheet, the specific weight of hands when they squeeze another man’s cock. It wasn’t pornography. It was something more unsettling than that. It was someone who had looked at another man with sustained attention for a long time and had decided to transcribe everything without apologizing for it.

I stayed silent when the poem ended.

—Are they all like that? —I asked.

—All of them. I’ve got three notebooks full.

—Keep going.

He read another. This one was more explicit. Two men in a dark room, one of them on his knees sucking the other’s cock, the exact description of how the tongue circled the head, how the semen ran down his chin when he finished. Diego read in the flat voice of someone who knows by heart what he’s saying, without underlining anything, without performing it. That made it more powerful than any emphasis.

When he finished, the silence lasted long enough that neither of us could pretend it was casual. I already had a hard dick straining against the fabric of my pants, and he made no pretense of not seeing it.

—It works —I said.

—What does?

—The poetry. It works.

—That’s what it’s for.

His hand fell onto my thigh. Flat, firm, without hesitation. It climbed a few centimeters until it brushed the bulge over my pants. I looked at it for a second. Then I covered it with my own and squeezed so he could feel how hard it was.

***

We kissed on the sofa first. He kissed slowly, with a concentration that made time thicken. He took me by the nape and pushed his tongue deep into my mouth, seeking mine with a calm insistence that made me moan against his teeth. I opened his shirt button by button. I buried my face in his neck, bit his shoulder, licked his collarbone.

He had a lean, wiry body, with a smooth chest and defined shoulders. Pale skin. A long scar on the left side that I didn’t ask about. I ran my tongue over the scar. Then I bit his nipple and he let out a low grunt while tightening his grip on my neck.

—Here —he said, and led me to the bedroom.

The room was dim. A floor lamp in the corner, with an orange paper shade, cast a warm light that made everything seem slower, denser. The bed was double, made up with a dark green quilt.

We took each other’s clothes off, unhurried but without delay. He unbuttoned my pants with his thumbs while looking me in the eyes. He pulled my pants and boxers down in one tug. My dick sprang hard against my stomach and he looked at it with hungry attention before taking it in his open palm, weighing it, squeezing the base with those long writer’s fingers.

—Pretty —he said, and ran his thumb over the tip, spreading the bead of pre-cum that had already gathered there.

I pulled down his jeans and what was underneath. He had a long cock, thick in the middle, slightly curved upward, with prominent veins and balls pressed tight against his body. I took it in my hand. It was hot and pulsed against my palm.

—Twenty-one, twenty-two —I said.

—Twenty-one —he corrected, with a smile that made it clear that number no longer surprised anyone.

We lay down on the bed. We started with our hands, with mouths on neck and shoulders, with that exploration that is half curiosity and half deliberate postponement. He ran his open palms down my back, from top to bottom, until his fingers dug into my ass and pulled my cheeks apart just a little, a preview of intent. I squeezed his ass cheeks while he moaned against my neck and ran one finger through the crease, feeling how he clenched when I brushed him for the first time.

I lowered his head to my cock and he understood without me having to ask for anything. He took it into his mouth all at once, to the hilt, and I felt his throat tighten around the head. He started sucking it slowly, cheeks hollowed, alternating depth, pulling it all the way out to lick my balls one by one, suck them, leave them shiny with saliva, and then swallow my cock back down to the base. I grabbed his hair. Not to force him: to have something to hold on to while he sucked me with a technique that made it very clear poetry was not his only talent.

—Damn —I muttered—. How you suck.

He let my cock go with a wet pop and smiled, lips shining.

—I write what I do.

Then he turned me over.

He started with his tongue on the lower part of my back, moving down the crease of my ass with slow kisses, biting one cheek and then the other. He spread my cheeks with both hands and drove his tongue into my hole without preamble. There, in wide circles, unhurried. Then he concentrated the pressure, working the center point, pushing the tip of his tongue inside, penetrating me with it as far as it would go. I spread my legs wider. I lifted my ass toward his face. The sound I made was not planned.

—Good? —he asked, and slipped a saliva-wet finger inside me.

—Keep going.

He kept going. One finger, then two, scissoring them, searching for my prostate with his fingertips until he found it and made me jerk against the mattress. He spit on my entrance and went back to licking, alternating tongue and fingers until I was already pushing my ass back like an animal, looking for more.

***

When I fucked him, it was slowly. He turned over so he was on his back and looked at me while I entered him. I lifted his legs, rested them on my shoulders, and pushed the head of my cock against his ass, lubricated with saliva and the cream I’d taken from the nightstand drawer. It went in little by little, centimeter by centimeter, and he opened around my cock with a long moan that started deep and ended high. He never took his eyes off me. That held me in a way I hadn’t expected.

I moved slowly at first, pulling almost all the way out and then pushing back in until my balls slapped against his ass. He adjusted the angle with his hips, searching for the exact position. When he found it, the sound he made was different from before: lower, more final.

—There —he said—. Right there. Don’t move from that angle.

I took his shoulders. Increased the pace. Every thrust tore a short moan from him, almost like a hiccup, and his cock bounced hard against his belly with each push, leaking pre-cum over his navel. He moved his body to meet mine with that freedom people have when they know what they want and have already decided to take it. He asked for more with the pressure of his legs, with his hands pulling me toward him, with his heels dug into my lower back.

—More —he said—. Harder. Break me.

I gave him more. I grabbed one leg and spread it as far as I could, turning his hip to enter at a new angle, and I started fucking him hard, every thrust to the hilt, making the bed creak against the wall. His mouth was open and no voice came out, just a rough exhale escaping him with every hit of my cock against his prostate.

I started jerking him off while I kept moving, my palm wrapped around his cock, squeezing at the base and loosening at the tip. He threw his head back. He marked my ass with his fingers, hard, scratching me, leaving red lines I’d see later in the mirror. Sometimes he closed his eyes and sometimes he looked at me with an intensity that was hard to hold without looking away.

—You’re going to make me come —he murmured—. If you keep this up I’ll finish without touching myself.

That was exactly what I needed to avoid. I had plans for when I got home that night, and coming home empty wasn’t part of the plan. I learned the trick a long time ago: ease off at the exact right moment, divert the focus to something neutral, let the wave pass without breaking. I did it. I moaned hard so the difference wouldn’t show. I pumped four or five more times, slowly, pulling almost all the way out and sliding back in with surgical care, and I stopped with my cock buried to the hilt, breathing hard.

—Wait a second —I said.

He nodded. He believed me.

***

I asked him to lie on his back.

I slid out of him slowly, with a wet sound, and saw his hole open and pink, stretched by my cock, closing back up slowly. I sat between his legs. Took his cock in my hand and brought it to my mouth.

I worked slowly. The head first, with my tongue flat, learning the shape. I circled the crown with the tip of my tongue, found the frenulum, pressed there until he jolted. Then wider, lower, swallowing centimeter by centimeter of that long, curved cock until the tip touched the back of my throat. He put one hand in my hair, not to guide me, just to have something to brace himself on. The orange lamp in the corner cast his shadow on the wall: my head rising and falling between his spread thighs.

—God —he said, very low—. God, what a mouth.

I went lower. As far as I could, until my nose touched his pubic hair and his balls bumped my chin. I gagged a couple of times; I ignored it and kept going, swallowing saliva around his cock, tightening my throat against the head. I licked his balls one by one and ran my tongue over the perineum to the hole, still stretched open. I slipped my tongue in there for a moment, feeling him tremble all over, and went back up to his cock.

I jerked him with my hand at the same time as I held him with my mouth, twisting my wrist on every pull, saliva dripping down my fingers until his balls were soaked. The pace picked up on its own. He moved his hips very slightly, almost shyly, as if he didn’t want to seem impatient. I could see him in the half-light: his hair mussed against the pillow, eyes closed, mouth parted, a sheen of sweat on his chest.

—I’m going to come in your mouth —he warned, voice broken—. If you don’t want it, get off.

I didn’t get off. I sped up. I squeezed his balls with my free hand, feeling them already hard and shriveled against his body, ready to unload.

When I felt him tense, I didn’t pull away.

He came with a choked sound, his thighs clamped against the sides of my head, hips lifted off the bed, his cock throbbing against my palate while thick warm jets of semen filled my mouth one after another. Five, six heavy spurts. I swallowed it all, without letting go, holding on through the last contraction, squeezing with my lips tight around the head so not a drop escaped. I waited until he was completely done. Then I looked up, lips shining and mouth still barely open so he could see that it was empty.

He was looking at me with that face people make when they’re not quite sure what just happened.

—You swallowed it —he said. More observation than question.

—Problem?

—None. Just didn’t expect that.

—What did you expect?

—I don’t know. —A pause—. Something worse.

***

We got dressed without saying much. He offered me water. I accepted. We sat on the sofa with the closed notebook on the table and talked about nothing in particular: the neighborhood, whether it was worth keeping poetry printed on paper, the rain that had been threatening since noon and still hadn’t decided to fall.

Before I left, Diego tore a page from the end of the notebook and gave it to me.

—In case the router acts up again.

It was his number, with his name written underneath.

—Camilo —I said, though he hadn’t asked.

He smiled.

—That’s what I figured.

I went out into the street. The air had that smell of wet earth that announces a storm. I walked at a normal pace, with the little note folded in my T-shirt pocket, thinking I’d have to get home in a reasonably presentable state and that, of all the possible detours on a Tuesday afternoon, this had been the one I least expected and the one that would take up the most space in my head.

***

I went back two weeks later. This time there was no router excuse.

I rang the bell. He opened the door. Neither of us said anything during the first few minutes; there was no need. He took me straight to the bedroom, pressed me against the wall, got me down on my knees and shoved his cock into my mouth before I could say hello. I sucked him off on my knees, my hands braced on his thighs, while he held my head with both hands and set the pace, fucking my mouth with short, precise thrusts until saliva dripped down my chin.

—To the mattress —he said, pulling his cock out of my mouth.

On that second visit it was him who fucked me. I let him because I wanted to, because I’d read it in his poems with a precision I already knew by heart, and because there was something about the idea of being, for an hour, the body he’d been writing about that I couldn’t let go without trying it at least once.

He laid me face down first. He spread my ass cheeks with both hands and ate my hole for a long while, with the same patient tongue he used to read his verses, until I was pushing my hips against his face and asking him for it with words I didn’t know I’d say. Then he turned me over. He lifted my legs, put on a condom, coated his hands with lube, and opened me with two fingers first, then three, searching for my prostate with the same exactness with which he placed a word in a verse.

When he put his cock in, he took his time. He went slowly, centimeter by centimeter, watching my face to read how much I could take and when. His cock was thick and curved and I felt it inside me like it was rewriting me from the inside, adjusting every line. He started moving with long thrusts, all the way in, resting his weight on my legs bent against my chest. Each hit against my prostate tore a new moan from me. He grabbed my cock with his right hand and started jerking me off in time with his hips, unhurried, with the same attention to my body that had something of the same concentration he used when reading his own verses.

—Come for me —he asked, his voice low against my ear—. I want to see you.

I couldn’t hold out much longer. I came with his cock buried to the hilt, semen spurting up to my chest and neck, clenching my ass around him in spasms that made him groan and lose his calm for the first time. He sped up. Fucked me harder, his hands dug into my thighs, until he buried himself to the hilt with a final thrust and came inside me, inside the condom, his body trembling over mine. Then he stayed still, propped on his elbows, looking at me with something more than satisfaction and less than tenderness, while I could still feel his cock throbbing inside me and his heart pounding against mine.

I didn’t go a third time. Not because that second afternoon left me with a bad taste in my mouth: on the contrary, it left me with something I still can’t quite name. But because in the weeks that followed something settled into place in me differently, as if those two visits to the first-floor apartment had opened a door I didn’t know was closed and that now, opened, changed the perspective on everything on the other side.

I still think about the poems sometimes. About the way Diego read in that flat voice, without emphasis, as if describing desire were simply another way of naming it.

Maybe it is.