When the Chat Led Me to a Familiar Door

That chat room was my gateway into the gay world. I don’t know exactly when I stopped being a curious visitor and became a regular, but the transition happened without warning, almost without my noticing. There were rooms for every taste: trivia, pointless debates, straight guys bored by themselves at midnight. And then there was the gay room, which was the most active in the early hours, the one with a life of its own and an unspoken code that took me weeks to learn to read.

I went in for the first time full of doubts and ended up coming back every night.

I got dates, yes, but always with a mixture of desire and apprehension. The problem with chat was that you never knew who you were really talking to. Anyone could invent an identity, attach someone else’s photo, lie about his age or his intentions. I’d heard rumors about unpleasant situations, about men who went to a meeting and ended up in circumstances they hadn’t expected. So I established my own rules: always meet in public places first, always let someone know where I was going, and never, under any circumstances, go straight from zero to a stranger’s apartment without having seen him face-to-face first in some bar or plaza.

With time, I loosened those rules. Not because I forgot them, but because the trust chat inspired was deceptively comfortable.

***

One Wednesday night, with nothing particularly distinguishing it from the others, I started chatting with someone who called himself R_Mendoza. His picture was small and blurry, like all of them back in the days when modems made it impossible to share decent images. What it did convey was a posture: broad shoulders, a firm chin, that kind of confidence that is either real or completely manufactured, and that is attractive either way.

We exchanged messages for almost two hours.

He wrote well, without the chaotic abbreviations most people used. He said he was completely passive and looking for someone to fuck him hard without asking too many questions. I told him that was exactly what I liked, that I enjoyed finding a guy who would spread his legs and let himself be fucked thoroughly. We agreed to meet that very night on the corner opposite the kiosk on Palermo Street, near the neighborhood plaza.

I arrived on time. He arrived two minutes later.

The photo hadn’t lied. He was a man of about forty, perhaps a little older, with dark hair combed back and a brown leather jacket that suited him. He extended his hand with a firmness that relaxed me immediately. His name was Rodrigo.

“Better than I expected,” he said, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a compliment or an evaluation spoken aloud.

We walked for a few minutes while he talked about ordinary things: how cold it was getting that week, how work had him overwhelmed, how he hadn’t gone out in months. I listened and watched the streets. I began to notice something vague, like when a melody sounds familiar but you can’t identify it. A noise in the back of my memory.

We turned onto a narrow street lined with trees.

I know this street.

I said nothing. We kept walking. Rodrigo took his keys from his pocket when we reached a three-story exposed-brick building with a dark wooden door and a small brass plaque beside the intercom. And then I saw it with certainty: the building number, the second-floor balcony with its wrought-iron railing, the neglected little garden to the right of the entrance.

I had been there. More than twenty years earlier, but I had been there.

Rodrigo opened the door and invited me in with a natural gesture, unaware of what was going through my head.

***

It wasn’t the time to say anything. I knew that instinctively. So I tucked the recognition away somewhere in my chest and went on.

The apartment was tidy, with the austerity typical of spaces occupied by a single man who didn’t receive many visitors. Books stacked on a shelf, a coffee table with the remote control on top, a floor lamp switched on, casting a warm orange light over the living room. There was something peaceful about the place, something that lowered your defenses without you realizing it.

Rodrigo hung up his jacket and turned toward me.

There were no words. He grabbed me by the lapel of my jacket, pulled me close, and we kissed.

It was a direct kiss, with no hesitation. His tongue entered my mouth with the impatience of someone who’d been horny for a long time already, and I answered with mine, tasting the coffee and cigarette I’d smoked before leaving. I bit his lower lip and he let out a low growl. His hands grabbed my ass over my pants and squeezed hard, pressing me against his pelvis. I felt the hard bulge of his cock against mine, thick even through the fabric, and I gripped the back of his neck to deepen the kiss.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” I whispered, biting his earlobe before letting him go.

He took my hand and led me down the hall toward the bedroom.

The bed was large, with a dark-colored bedspread. We stopped beside it and I ripped his shirt open in one pull, sending two buttons bouncing across the wooden floor. Rodrigo gave a short, husky laugh and pulled my sweatshirt over my head. I licked his broad, dark-haired chest, bit one nipple until it hardened, and he tugged my hair with his right hand, forcing my head back.

“Take everything off,” he ordered.

I unbuckled my belt and let my pants fall. He did the same. When he lowered his briefs, I saw his entire cock for the first time: thick, dark, with a shiny glans and the skin already fully retracted. I wasn’t hiding anything either: mine was so hard it curved against my navel.

We looked at each other for a second, sizing each other up. Then he knelt on the rug without asking permission, grabbed my cock with one hand, and took it into his mouth in a single movement, all the way down, without gagging or hesitation. I closed my eyes and muttered, “Goddamn.” He sucked like someone who hadn’t fucked in weeks and needed to make up for it: his tongue wrapped around the glans, his lips sliding down to the base, his throat tightening around the tip every time he took me deep.

I grabbed his head with both hands and began moving his face at the rhythm I wanted, fucking his mouth slowly but deeply. He let me drool over his chin, eyes half-closed, looking up at me with a filthy devotion that made me even hotter. His tongue worked the underside of my glans, that precise spot where the skin joins, where a well-placed lick drives you crazy. I felt my orgasm about to escape too soon and pulled his hair back to separate him.

“Stop, stop. On the mattress.”

I laid him on his back and spread his legs at once. His cock slapped against his belly, hard, with a thick drop of pre-cum hanging from the tip. I licked it from top to bottom, took it fully into my mouth, and sucked his balls one by one while jerking his shaft. Rodrigo moaned louder and louder, clutching the sheets, his hips trying to rise on their own.

“Turn around,” I told him.

We settled into sixty-nine, with him on top and his ass right over my face. I spread his cheeks with both hands and saw for the first time what was in front of me: a tight, pink, completely shaved asshole. I licked it from one end to the other and his whole body shuddered, my cock still in his mouth. I licked him again, more slowly and broadly, pressing my tongue against the hole until I felt it beginning to give. Rodrigo stopped sucking to moan against my glans, a long, deep moan that vibrated through my entire cock.

“I’m not stopping, I’m not stopping,” he gasped, and took me down his throat again.

I ate his ass for quite a while. I pushed my tongue in as far as I could, then one finger wet with saliva, then two. I felt him opening inside, relaxing as I persisted. When I curled my fingers forward and touched his prostate, he jerked and a little stream of pre-cum escaped onto my tongue.

“Please,” he said in a broken voice. “Fuck me already.”

I turned him over onto his back. I put a pillow beneath his hips to raise his ass to just the right angle. I spat into my hand, lubricated my cock thoroughly, and with the other hand rubbed saliva over his hole. I set the tip against his asshole and pushed slowly, without rushing. The glans went in first, with that initial resistance that always drives me crazy, and he grunted through clenched teeth. I waited a second. Then I pushed another centimeter, and another, until I felt my balls touch his ass.

“All the way in,” I whispered in his ear. “I’ve got it all the way in.”

“Move,” he replied. “Fuck me hard.”

I began fucking him slowly, with long thrusts that withdrew almost to the tip and then went back in to the hilt. Rodrigo gripped my shoulders, his legs spread and raised, and synchronized his hips with mine. His ass squeezed my cock every time I pulled out, as if he didn’t want to let it go. I looked at his face: his mouth was open, his eyes closed, a red flush on his cheeks running down to his chest.

“Harder,” he begged. “Don’t hold back.”

I grabbed his legs behind the knees, pushed them toward his chest, and started fucking him for real. The sound of my balls slapping his ass filled the room. His moans became short, broken cries, each one accompanying a thrust. His cock bounced hard against his belly, dripping pre-cum, and every time I slammed into him he cried, “That’s it, that’s it, that’s it,” like a litany.

I changed positions. I put him on his side, one leg raised, and entered him from behind again. From that angle the penetration was deeper and slower, hitting his prostate with every thrust. Rodrigo grabbed his cock and began jerking himself in time with the way I fucked him.

“Don’t come yet,” I told him, knocking his hand away.

I pulled out, knelt down, and turned him over again. I lay beside him, panting, letting the urge to come subside. I didn’t want to finish like that. Not yet.

Rodrigo turned toward me. His eyes were dark and bright, and there was something different in his gaze: not just desire, but also a question he hadn’t yet put into words.

I began caressing him. I ran my hand over his torso, moved slowly downward, and when I took his cock I noticed how hard it was, throbbing in my palm. I stroked him calmly, squeezing the base, playing with the glans with my thumb. He moaned softly, eyes half-closed, and without taking his gaze off me he turned toward my side of the mattress. He took my hand and placed it over his cock again, guiding the rhythm. Then he sat up and looked at me.

I settled onto my stomach, slightly raising my hips. I said nothing. I didn’t need to.

Rodrigo hesitated for a moment, as if the gesture had taken him by surprise. Then I felt his hands settle on my ass, slowly spreading my cheeks. He leaned down and ran his tongue over my hole, awkward at first, gaining confidence as he went. I bit my forearm to keep from moaning too loudly. I had never felt a tongue as hungry as his, as if he were discovering something for the first time and didn’t want to stop.

He licked and sucked my ass until he left it dripping wet. Then I heard the sound of saliva in his palm and felt him preparing his cock. He placed the tip against my asshole and pushed with clumsy but firm determination. It went in all at once, faster than even he expected, and we both gasped at the same time. His cock was thick, and I felt it stretching me inside, marking every inch.

“My God,” he murmured, motionless, his cock buried to the base. “You’re so tight.”

“Move,” I said, my voice pressed into the mattress. “Fuck me.”

He started slowly, with short, cautious thrusts, learning the movement. By the third or fourth push he found the rhythm. He dug his hands into my hips and began fucking me with a force that grew with every thrust, discovering the pleasure of being on the other side. I raised my ass to take him better, to let him go deeper. His balls struck me with every drive, and I felt them drawing tighter, felt him getting closer to the end.

Three more brutal thrusts, and he let out a long, uncontrolled roar. I felt his cock throb inside me, a hot pulse discharging in waves, and then the weight of his body collapsing over me, his hands gripping my sides. He stayed there for a while, inside me, panting against my neck, until his cock softened and slipped out on its own with a wet sound. A warm thread of semen dribbled between my cheeks and down my thigh.

I was still hard. I rolled over, grabbed my cock, and jerked myself with both hands while looking him in the eye. He settled beside me, still panting, and watched me without looking away. Thirty seconds was enough: I let out a grunt, arched my back, and came in thick spurts that splashed over my stomach and chest. Rodrigo leaned over and licked the semen from my navel without hesitation, then kissed me on the mouth so I could taste it.

We stayed like that without speaking while our breathing returned to normal. The hallway lamp let a slit of light in through the half-open door.

“First time,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“Being active. I’d never done it before. No one had ever managed it. —He paused briefly.— Thank you.”

I told him the honor was mine. And it was.

***

We showered separately. When I came out of the bathroom with the towel he’d lent me, Rodrigo was in the kitchen making two cups of coffee. I sat across from him at the little table and watched him move through the space with the familiarity of someone who had lived in that same place for many years.

And then I said it.

“I have to confess something. I’ve been in this apartment before.”

Rodrigo turned slowly, both cups in his hands.

“What?”

“A long time ago. More than twenty years ago. —I searched for the exact words.— I came here with my uncle to do some electrical work. He was an electrician. The man who lived here back then called them to replace the electrical panel, and I came to help.”

Rodrigo blinked. Then he frowned. Then he laughed.

He laughed for quite a while, shaking his head as he set the cups on the table. It was genuine laughter, the kind that comes out without permission and can’t be stopped once it starts.

“That was my father,” he finally said. “I inherited the apartment four years ago when he died.”

We laughed together. It was a strange and perfect moment at the same time: two strangers in a kitchen at midnight, still carrying the heat of the encounter, laughing at a coincidence neither of us could have invented even if we’d tried.

We talked for nearly another hour. About his job at a property-management company, about the years I’d spent living outside the neighborhood, about chat and the absurd rituals it imposed on anyone who wanted to use it with any degree of seriousness. He told me he’d lived alone for a long time and wasn’t looking for anything that involved complications. He said it without drama, like someone stating a geographic fact.

When I said goodbye at the door, I said “see you soon” without thinking too much about what it meant.

***

There was no soon.

I tried to reconnect a few days later. I sent him a message through the chat, and his reply took two days. When it arrived, it was clear and to the point: “At this point in my life, I’m not sure I want to keep exploring that side of myself. It has nothing to do with you. I’d rather leave it there.”

I didn’t reply. There wasn’t much to add to something like that.

I kept using chat for a while longer, but something had changed in the way I did it. I no longer sat in front of the screen with the same anxious expectation as before. I began looking for encounters differently: going out, paying attention to the signs that had always been there in bars, in plazas, in glances that lasted a second longer than necessary and only needed to be answered properly.

It was slower than chat, more uncertain, but also more honest. The first time I took someone home that way—a young man I’d met at the counter of a record store while we argued over an album we both wanted to buy—I realized I preferred it. Not the efficiency of chat, but the tension beforehand, the not knowing exactly where each conversation would lead.

Rodrigo remained in that night, in that apartment I had already visited without knowing I would return. Some encounters don’t need a continuation to be complete in themselves. That was one of them.