The Retiree in the Big House Was Waiting for Me Every Afternoon

I started crossing Don Augusto’s garden the summer I found myself out of work. His big house stood at the end of the dirt road, surrounded by old vineyards he insisted on tending alone, despite his age and the size of those hands of his, which were no longer suited to delicate pruning. I offered to help almost out of boredom. What I didn’t tell him, or anyone else, was the real reason I came back every afternoon.

Don Augusto was an enormous retiree. Not fat in the neglected sense, but solid, like those men who fill a room just by breathing. He had white hair that was always a little tousled, a thick mustache hiding thin lips, and forearms that strained the sleeves of the buttoned cardigan he wore even in the heat. Every time he lifted a crate of grapes as if it weighed nothing, I felt something I took weeks to dare name.

—You don’t come for the vines, kid —he said one afternoon, never taking his eyes off the vine he was checking.

I didn’t know what to answer. I stood there with the watering can in my hand, feeling the heat climb up my face.

—It’s all right —he added, and for the first time he turned his head to look straight at me—. Some people admire a man. I was the same at your age.

Some people admire a man. That phrase kept turning over in my head for days. I repeated it while I dug, while I carried sacks, while I watched him wipe sweat from his neck with an enormous handkerchief. I began arriving earlier and leaving later, inventing tasks that weren’t needed just so I could stay a little closer to that colossal body and that calm that seemed never to be broken by anything.

***

The one who dared before I did was Marisol. I brought her over one afternoon because she, too, was drifting that summer, and because she bragged that nothing scared her. She laughed when I told her what Don Augusto was like, until she saw him appear in the kitchen doorway, filling the whole frame with that hard, naked belly beneath the open cardigan.

The smile vanished from her face at once. And two hours later she was no longer laughing: she was trembling.

I watched them from the armchair in the living room because he asked me to, with a tilt of his chin, as if granting permission. Marisol was on top of him, perched over that powerful body, holding herself up on his broad shoulders while Don Augusto lifted and lowered her with one hand braced at her waist. She kissed his white mustache, his flushed cheeks, his double chin, as if possessed. When she finally let herself fall to one side, exhausted, her legs were still open and her breathing was shattered.

—She held out like a champion —he said, running the back of his hand across his forehead—. See that, kid? See how you treat someone who gives themselves over?

Marisol curled up on the sofa and fell asleep almost instantly. I was still nailed to the armchair, unable to move.

—Come here —Don Augusto said, patting his thigh.

***

I got up as if a body stronger than mine had ordered me to. He was still seated in the brown armchair, his trousers and underwear dropped to his ankles, with the least bit of shame. His leg was three times the size of mine, muscular, with calves cut from a whole life in the fields. His belly, large and firm, rose and fell with every deep breath, and resting atop it were two round pectorals crowned by broad pink nipples.

I sat on his lap. My body, thin to the point of gauntness, seemed even smaller on top of his.

—You’ve been a good boy, waiting your turn —he murmured, and held my waist with a calloused hand that almost encompassed me entirely.

His voice was deep, slow, the kind that doesn’t need to be raised for you to obey. I rested one hand on his shoulder and with the other began to caress him. He let me, reclined, his arms resting on the armrests like a king receiving what was his due. I leaned in and kissed his thin lips, the ones hidden beneath the mustache, once, twice, three times. He didn’t pull away.

—That’s it —he said, and nothing more.

What I felt for that man was admiration I didn’t entirely understand. It wasn’t just desire. It was something like wanting to be him: to have his size, his calm, his way of never asking permission to take up space in the world. My chest against his was the difference between a branch and a trunk.

***

I slid down to the floor and knelt between his legs. From below he looked even bigger, a warm mountain that smelled of earth and old tobacco. I started slowly, with my mouth, while my hands moved up and down his enormous thighs, feeling that strength that let itself be touched without shifting a single inch.

—Ooh, kid… what a mouth you’ve got —he said, eyes half-closed—. Better than anyone’s.

He wasn’t saying it to flatter me. He said it as a statement of fact, with that indifference of his that made me try twice as hard. I wanted to deserve that phrase. I wanted that huge retiree to know that no one else had ever served him with such devotion.

I could feel him breathing above me, swelling his belly and chest toward the ceiling with every breath. It was impressive to watch him move, all that volume rising and falling without a single crease, without a single hint of softness. I looked up for a moment and found him watching me, imperturbable, his arms still, letting himself be pleasured like someone accepting tribute.

I pulled away just enough to kiss his thigh, his belly, his hip, tracing the warm skin with my tongue. I went back. Kept going. I felt him tense slowly, every muscle tightening like a rope, until suddenly that entire mass shook and he emptied himself over me with a deep grunt that rumbled in my chest.

—Good boy —he said afterward, his voice still rough.

I cleaned his belly without being asked, slowly, almost gratefully. He let me while he caught his breath, wearing that expression of absolute calm I envied more than anything else.

***

I thought that was the end of it. But Don Augusto wasn’t the kind to be satisfied with little. He sat up in the armchair, still solid, still ready, and looked me over from head to toe like someone assessing a tool.

—Turn around —he said.

I turned my back, determined to take the initiative myself, to prove I knew what I was doing. It lasted a second. As soon as he understood what I meant to do, he let out a deep laugh and grabbed me from under the thighs with both hands.

—Stay still. I’ve got this.

And he had me. He lifted me up and brought me down with the same ease with which he had earlier raised the grape crates, as if I weighed nothing, as if my whole body were merely a small object in his enormous hands. There was nothing I could do except let him, and letting him was exactly what I liked most.

—Do you feel it, kid? —he asked in my ear, with that booming voice—. Do you feel the difference between doing and letting yourself be done to?

I felt it. I felt it with every thrust, in the quiet strength of a man who had spent his whole life knowing what he wanted. I came without touching myself, just from feeling him, just from catching a sidelong glimpse of those tense forearms holding me up in the air. And he, far from stopping, kept going, full, tireless, for a long while that felt eternal and brief at the same time.

Then I understood what Marisol had felt hours earlier. I understood why she was trembling. I turned my head to look at him and stayed caught on the image: that white-haired, mustached retiree, serene as a resting bull, moving me at will without changing his expression.

***

When he finished, he let me down carefully onto the rug, beside the sofa where Marisol kept sleeping, oblivious to everything. Don Augusto hauled up his trousers unhurriedly, smoothed his mustache, and went on looking out the window toward the vineyards the afternoon sun had tinted copper.

—Tomorrow we’ve got to stake the lower row —he said, as if nothing had happened—. If you feel like coming.

—I’ll come —I answered, still on the floor.

No more had to be said. We both knew I would return every afternoon, and that the vineyard work would always be the excuse. I dressed slowly, my legs still shaking, while he lit a cigarette by the window and the smoke rose straight up in the still air of the living room.

That aimless summer became the clearest one of my life. Not because of the grapes, which that year came out small and sour. But because I learned, at the feet of that immense man, that admiring someone can also be a form of surrender, and that there are desires one doesn’t choose: they simply cross the garden, knock on the door of a big house, and sit down to wait for an older gentleman to say, “Come here, kid.”