When Marcos Let Me Kneel Before Him

I was always the kind of person who prefers to watch before speaking. In bars I sit with my back to the wall, in meetings I listen more than I say, and in new groups I wait weeks before asking someone a personal question. It’s not shyness, though a lot of people mistake it for that. It’s more a way of measuring the ground before stepping onto it.

That’s why what happened with Marcos surprised me so much.

We met in an urban photography workshop offered by the cultural center in my neighborhood. It was a Saturday morning, I arrived late — something that almost never happens to me — and the only free seat was next to a guy who, at that moment, was explaining to the instructor why black-and-white photography wasn’t a matter of nostalgia but of composition. He didn’t say it arrogantly. He said it like someone who had thought the matter through and was simply used to being right.

That was my first contact with Marcos.

He was tall, dark-skinned, with curly hair cut without much care, as if he paid little attention to it. He had big hands and talked with them constantly, gesturing to underline every point. When he smiled, a dimple appeared in his left cheek that it took me several weeks to stop noticing.

We started running into each other at the workshop on Saturdays and some Wednesdays. Then we added coffee after class, then whole afternoons wandering the old port or the old quarter with our cameras hanging from our shoulders. We shared tastes I didn’t expect to find in anyone from my city: 1940s film noir, modal jazz, certain books people usually call difficult without ever having read them. The friendship grew without either of us deliberately seeking it out, which is the only way friendships are really worth anything.

I found him attractive. That was a fact I registered from the start and learned to leave alone, in some mental drawer where I keep things that have no practical outlet. Marcos had a girlfriend during the first few months. After October, he didn’t. He didn’t mention it much, but the change was visible: more free time, more afternoons at his apartment, more room for me to show up with a bottle of wine and stay talking late into the night.

We had been friends for almost eight months when I started to feel something hard to ignore. It wasn’t just attraction — I had that from the beginning — but something more like the certainty that there was something between us neither of us was naming. I could have been wrong. I was probably wrong. But it was a feeling difficult to shake.

***

It happened on an afternoon in November. We were in his apartment, sitting in front of his computer, going over the photos we’d taken that weekend at the flea market. They were good images: afternoon light, people with faces full of history, that kind of composition that stands on its own.

At some point during the review, a photo I’d taken without giving it much importance appeared on the screen: two men in their fifties, sitting on a bench, one with his arm resting naturally across the other’s shoulders. There was nothing explicit in the image. It was simply a photo of two people who know each other well.

Marcos kept looking at it longer than he normally spent on a photo.

—This is good —he said, quietly.

—Thanks. I took it without thinking too much.

—There’s something about them. Like they’ve been together a long time.

I nodded. And before I could stop myself, I heard my own voice:

—Have you ever wondered what it would be like?

Marcos took a second.

—What would be like what.

—Being with another man.

The silence that followed was different from the usual one. Marcos didn’t look away from the screen.

—Why are you asking me that.

—Because of the face you made looking at the photo.

—I didn’t make any face.

—You made a face, Marcos.

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. It was a gesture I knew well: he did it when he was processing something he didn’t yet know how to handle.

—I never really thought about it —he said at last.

—But you did think about it.

—I didn’t say that.

—You didn’t deny it.

He looked at me for the first time since we’d started talking about the subject. He had an expression that was hard to classify.

—Have you been with another man? —he asked.

—Yes.

—And you’re gay.

—I don’t define myself that way. I’ve been with men, I’ve been with women. I don’t put a label on it.

—What is it like.

The question came without detours, with the kind of curiosity that appears when someone has been wanting to ask it for a while.

—What is it like being with another man.

—Yes.

I took a moment before answering.

—More direct, maybe. Less ambiguity. There’s something about it that makes it different, though not as different as people imagine from the outside.

—What do you like most?

The precision of the question surprised me.

—Giving. I think what I like most is giving someone pleasure.

Marcos nodded slowly, looking at the screen. In the photo, the two men on the bench remained seated, oblivious to the whole conversation.

—Are you a top? —he asked, in a somewhat lower voice.

—Usually, yes. Though not always.

—Why not always.

—Because sometimes I do things that don’t quite fit that category.

—Like what things.

I looked straight at him.

—Like giving someone oral sex.

Marcos didn’t answer. Color rose to his face and he looked away toward any other point in the room. The silence that followed was different from the one before: heavier, more self-aware.

I glanced sideways and saw what I hadn’t dared to look for before. There was something in the fabric of his pants that hadn’t been there ten minutes earlier.

I felt my own pulse speed up.

—Marcos.

—What.

—Would you like me to do that to you.

He breathed slowly, deeply, like someone taking in air before saying something he knows he won’t be able to take back.

—I don’t know what to say to that.

—You don’t have to say anything. It’s a question. If the answer is no, we leave it here and keep reviewing the photos.

—And if it’s not no.

—Then other things happen.

He ran a hand through his hair. His eyes were fixed on the screen, but he hadn’t been looking at the photos for a while.

—I don’t know if it’s a good idea —he murmured.

—Why.

—Because we’re friends.

—Exactly. That’s why there’s no risk.

I got up from the sofa unhurriedly and walked over until I was standing in front of him. Marcos looked up. His expression wasn’t rejection. It was something more like the hesitation of someone who knows he’s going to say yes and still hasn’t fully accepted it.

—If at any point you want me to stop, you say so and I stop —I told him.

He didn’t answer. He kept looking at me, and in that silence there was a clear enough answer.

I knelt down.

***

I unbuttoned his pants slowly, without any rush. I looked at him once more to confirm it was still where I needed it to be. His hands were resting on his thighs and his breathing was just a little faster than before.

I lowered the zipper. Pulled the fabric apart. Marcos lifted his hips without my asking, just a little, almost without noticing, and that involuntary movement told me everything I needed to know.

I pulled down his underwear. He finished taking it off himself with a gesture that mixed impatience and embarrassment in equal parts, as if he didn’t want the impatience to show.

He was hard. More than I expected. I took him in one hand and felt him firm, hot, trembling slightly under my palm. His head was swollen, shiny, the skin taut and the base solid between my fingers. I heard the brief sound he made on inhaling when I closed my hand more firmly and started moving it up and down, slowly, gauging his size and sensitivity with the pads of my fingers.

I moved the fabric aside enough to make room and leaned in. First I tasted him with the tip of my tongue, just a brush around the rim of the head, drawing out the moisture already there and mixing it with my own. Marcos let out a small, contained moan, and his hands clenched on his thighs. I licked the head again, this time with more pressure, tracing the slit and the contour, making his breathing turn more irregular almost at once.

—Fuck —he murmured, so softly it sounded more like a confession than a complaint.

I smiled against his skin and took him into my mouth carefully, taking him only as far as my throat allowed without forcing anything. The sensation was immediate: hot, heavy, with a living pulse that could be felt even on my tongue. I began to move my head in a slow cadence, letting saliva slide down the shaft, using one hand to accompany the motion and the other to hold the base, squeezing just enough for him to feel the pressure at the most sensitive point.

Marcos arched his back against the chair. He parted his lips to breathe better, and that attempt at control was slipping away through his face, his neck, his tense shoulders that had nowhere to release it. I ran my tongue under the head, where the skin is thinner and the response becomes almost electric, and his whole body reacted, with a shiver that ran from his hips to the nape of his neck.

I took my hand away and left it free so I could go up and down more deeply. He parted his legs slightly, opening without noticing, giving me better access. I gripped his thigh with the other hand and started working him with a firmer rhythm, taking him in and out of my mouth with precise, wet, noisy movements, without the slightest shame. Every time I went down, I felt the tension in his abdomen; every time I came up, the air scraped his throat with a fresh gasp.

His hips began to move, first slowly, testing it, then with more determination. I yielded to the rhythm just enough to follow him, without losing control. There was a brutal beauty in that: the way a big, strong body, apparently so sure of itself, started to come apart from something as simple and as specific as a mouth determined not to let go.

—Look at me —I asked, my voice thick from having him half in my mouth still.

He opened his eyes and found me between his legs. His face was flushed, his jaw clenched, his chest rising and falling with restrained violence. He held my gaze for only an instant, but it was enough for something inside him to loosen. I circled the base with my hand and sucked the tip with a dirtier insistence, alternating tongue and lips, letting the wet sound fill the room.

—Don’t stop —he said, and this time the order came out broken, urgent.

I kept going. I worked his cock with my mouth in a deeper cadence, taking it to the limit of what I could without gagging, releasing it just enough to take him again. I stroked his testicles with my fingers, weighing them gently, and that drew out another, more open moan. His nails dug into the armrest, his knuckles white. The excitement had stripped away almost all his composure; what was left was only desire, raw and awkward, pushing him toward the edge.

—Like that, like that... —he murmured, as if talking to himself.

I matched his rhythm when he began to push against my mouth. It wasn’t rough, but it was hungry, and it made it clear he was no longer thinking about anything except immediate pleasure. I wrapped my arm around his thigh to support him better, adjusted my angle, and kept going, with my tongue firm against the sensitive skin and my hand squeezing just enough to keep the pressure when I eased back a few inches.

I felt him tense.

—Wait —he said, his voice hoarse—. Wait, because...

But I didn’t wait, or I waited just enough. I kept my mouth on him, now slower, tighter, sucking more deeply, and then his breathing broke completely. His abdomen contracted, his hips gave an involuntary jerk, and from his throat came a rough, broken moan, utterly abandoned.

He came in long, hot waves, his whole body trembling under my hands. I felt the first pulse on my tongue and then another, and another, while I kept licking, swallowing what I could, cleaning away the rest with short movements so his climax wouldn’t slip away too quickly. I held him through the whole thing, slowly, letting him breathe, letting him empty himself without taking my mouth off him until the trembling began to subside.

When I finally pulled away, my face was wet and my mouth had that salty, thick, unmistakable taste. Marcos was still leaning back, eyes closed, as if gravity had shifted.

***

When I looked up, Marcos was watching me.

He had an expression I hadn’t seen before: something between disbelief and a new kind of calm, like the one that appears after letting go of something you’d been carrying for a long time without realizing it.

—Are you okay? —I asked him.

—Yes —he replied. And after a moment, more convinced—: Yes.

He settled himself slowly. I sat down beside him on the sofa. Neither of us said anything for a while.

On the screen, the photos were still there. The two men on the bench, motionless, looking in different directions as if the world belonged to them alone.

—Would you do it again? —I asked, eventually.

Marcos took his time answering. But this time the silence was different: there was no doubt in it, only his own rhythm.

—Maybe —he said, quietly.

And a smile slipped out of me that I didn’t try to hide.