He Called Me Tania, and for the First Time I Didn’t Correct Him

Tobías was twenty-seven and had a face that had gotten him into trouble all his life. Slim, with a narrow waist and delicate features, he wore his hair longer than most men dared. On the street, people mistook him for a girl more often than he cared to admit, and every time it happened, he felt that uncomfortable mixture of annoyance and something warmer he preferred not to examine.

He defined himself as heterosexual. He had lived alone for years, had a quiet job laying out catalogs, and a girlfriend, Carla, who lived a few blocks away and whom he saw on weekends. On paper, he was an ordinary man. But there were things Carla didn’t know, things he barely admitted to himself when he turned out the light.

That Tuesday morning, he woke at five with his body still hot and his head full of reproaches. The afternoon before had ended at Damián’s place, a coworker from the publishing house, reviewing proofs nobody was going to review. The wine, one joke too many, a hand that lingered too long on his knee. And then, everything else.

Damián had kissed him first, pushing him against the back of the sofa with one hand around his neck and the other opening his belt. Tobías could still remember the taste of wine in the other man’s mouth, the rough way he had pulled his pants down to his knees and taken out his cock, already hard, with a hoarse little laugh. “Well, look at that. You’ve been waiting for this.” Damián had knelt on the carpet and shoved it all the way down his throat without any preamble, sucking him with a skill that stole Tobías’s breath. He felt hot lips and a tongue wrapping around his glans, one finger pulsing against his perineum while the other hand squeezed his balls. In barely two minutes, he was already moaning with his head thrown back, biting his fist so he wouldn’t call a man’s name. He came in Damián’s mouth with a spasm that shook his entire back, and Damián swallowed every drop and licked his lips before rising to kiss him with his mouth still smeared with semen. “Now it’s your turn,” he had said, pressing his cock against Tobías’s lips. Tobías had sucked it awkwardly, his hands trembling, not really knowing what to do with his tongue, until Damián emptied himself against his palate with a long growl. Afterward, the proofs were forgotten on the table.

“Damn, you look good,” Damián had told him when Tobías came out of the shower wrapped in a towel.

“Don’t start,” he muttered, looking for his shirt.

“I’m serious. Look at yourself. You’ve got a better body than half the women I know. That waist, that back. That ass. All you’re missing is the dress.”

Tobías didn’t answer. He finished dressing in silence, gathered his things, and left, promising himself it would never happen again. I’m a man. I have a girlfriend. This is over. He thought it with the same firmness people use when thinking lies.

***

The morning bus was nearly empty. Tobías settled in the back, beside the window, wearing his headphones and staring blankly at the buildings sliding past. At the third stop, a man got on and remained standing right beside him, even though there were seats free everywhere.

He was older, in his late forties, strongly built and composed. He smelled of something clean and expensive. Tobías noticed when the man’s thigh pressed against his with the sway of the road, a pressure that might have been accidental at first and then clearly wasn’t. He glanced down for an instant and saw the bulge outlined beneath the fabric of the man’s trousers: a generous cock showing from the side, so thick it was impossible to pretend he hadn’t seen it. His mouth went dry.

He should have moved away. Instead, he stayed still, his heart pounding in his ears and his own cock traitorously waking inside his briefs. The man glanced at him, a restrained smile on his lips, and Tobías, instead of frowning, returned half a smile before he could stop himself.

It was all the confirmation the other man needed.

“My name is Renato,” he said quietly, taking the seat that had just become free. “Forgive my boldness. It’s just that you’re very handsome, and at my age I don’t beat around the bush anymore.”

“Tobías,” he replied, surprised by his own voice. “And thank you, I suppose.”

They talked about the weather, the traffic, and trivial things. Renato had a way of looking at him that wasn’t crude but attentive, as if every word Tobías said truly mattered to him. Beneath the coat folded over his lap, however, the man’s hand found Tobías’s thigh and squeezed it once, discreetly, possessively, in a gesture that sent a direct jolt to his groin. When the bus approached the park, Renato stood.

“I’m getting off here. It was a pleasure.”

“I’m getting off here too,” Tobías said, and when he stepped onto the sidewalk, he discovered, with a stab of something resembling luck, that they lived three streets apart.

“Well, neighbors, then.” Renato laughed, delighted. “That calls for a celebration. I’m buying you an ice cream; I won’t take no for an answer.”

***

They sat at a little table in the shade beside the park stand. Tobías ordered lemon; Renato ordered coffee. While they waited, the man watched him with a frankness that should have made him uncomfortable and yet made him feel strangely seen.

“I’m going to tell you straight,” Renato said, stirring his ice cream. “What happened on the bus wasn’t accidental. I saw you and couldn’t help myself. There’s something about you. It’s not just that you’re handsome. It’s as if you’re wearing a costume that doesn’t fit.”

Tobías felt his face catch fire.

“I’m a man, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

“I know. And still.” Renato shrugged. “Don’t mind me. It’s an old man’s obsession. Tell me about yourself.”

But Tobías could no longer stop thinking about that sentence. A costume that doesn’t fit. It was almost exactly how he felt when he looked in the mirror some nights, when he pulled his hair back with both hands and stared at someone he didn’t quite recognize. When he slipped two saliva-slick fingers into his ass beneath the shower spray, biting his lips and coming against the tiles while thinking about things he would never have said aloud.

By the time they finished their ice cream, it had grown late in a way neither of them mentioned.

“Come home with me,” Renato said. “So you’ll know where I live. In case you ever want a real coffee.”

Tobías knew he should return to his apartment, answer Carla’s messages, and recover the good sense he had lost when he boarded the bus. Instead, he walked the three streets beside Renato, listening to him talk and laughing more than the conversation deserved.

***

Renato’s house was a single-story home, with a spacious, bright living room and a hallway that smelled of old wood. He had lived alone since the divorce, he explained; his daughter had gone abroad on a study exchange years earlier and had never really returned, because she had rebuilt her life there.

“Stay a minute,” he said. “I want to show you something. Don’t be frightened.”

He opened the door at the end of the hallway. It was a woman’s room, untouched, as though frozen in time. A canopied bed, a vanity with bottles covered in a fine layer of dust, photographs of a smiling girl in silver frames. Renato went to the wardrobe and opened it wide.

Dresses. Skirts. Silk blouses arranged in an orderly row of colors. He opened a drawer, and inside were delicate clothes, lace and satin, carefully folded lingerie that had never been used again: tiny panties, padded bras, stockings with garters, a black thong with a tiny bow that Renato lifted with two fingers and let fall.

“This is how Mara left it,” Renato murmured. “I haven’t touched anything in all these years. And I know it sounds absurd, but ever since I saw you on that bus, I haven’t been able to stop thinking that these would be your size.”

Tobías stood very still in the doorway, his cock once again growing traitorously inside his pants.

“They’re your daughter’s clothes,” he said, his voice lower than he intended. “This is crazy.”

“It is.” Renato didn’t move. “And yet you’re imagining it, aren’t you? I can see it on your face.”

And he was seeing it, because it was true. Tobías looked at the blue silk blouse hanging at the front and, for one dizzying instant, imagined it against his own skin, the cool fabric brushing his body and stiffening his nipples, the way it would fall over his narrow shoulders. He imagined himself in front of the vanity mirror wearing lace panties stretched tight over his hard cock, the tip poking above the elastic, biting his lip, being someone else. The idea surged through his body like an electric current, and he had to look away.

“No,” he said, more to himself than to the man. “I can’t. I’m a man, I have a girlfriend. I should go.”

“All right.” Renato closed the wardrobe gently. “I’m not going to ask you for anything you don’t want to give me. I’ll walk you to the door.”

***

They walked back down the hallway, Renato a few steps behind. At the entrance, just as Tobías was about to turn the doorknob, the man stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and slowly made him turn around.

It wasn’t rough. Quite the opposite. He wrapped his arms around Tobías as if he were something that might break, and stroked the nape of his neck with his fingertips, a slow touch that raised gooseflesh all over his back. Tobías felt every one of his arguments dissolve in his mouth.

“Renato, no,” he whispered, but he didn’t pull away. On the contrary, he let his own traitorous arms rise to the man’s shoulders. “Please. It’s late.”

“You’re beautiful,” Renato said against his ear, and the feminine word struck him in the center of his chest. “Tania. Tania suits you. Will you let me call you that?”

Tobías should have denied it. It was a name that wasn’t his, an idea that should have seemed ridiculous. Instead, he felt something inside him surrender, something that had been gritting its teeth for years, and he closed his eyes.

“Just for today,” he murmured.

And for the first time in his life, when someone called him by a woman’s name, he didn’t correct them.

Renato kissed him then, unhurriedly, one hand sinking into his long hair and the other sliding down the curve of his lower back until it came to rest, tenderly brazen, on the roundness of his ass. Tobías opened his mouth and returned the kiss with a hunger that frightened him, feeling the man’s hardness pressed against his hip—a huge cock, thick as a hot stone beneath the fabric—feeling, for once, exactly as Renato saw him. The man’s tongue entered his mouth slowly, thick and dominant, and Tobías sucked it as if he were thirsty.

Renato’s hand slipped beneath his shirt and traveled up his stomach and ribs until it caught one of his nipples and twisted it slightly. Tobías moaned against his mouth and felt his knees give way.

“Look at you, Tania,” Renato murmured, pulling back an inch to look into his eyes. “You’re getting hard already, aren’t you? Let me see.”

His hand lowered to the bulge in Tobías’s pants and squeezed it firmly, gauging it, stroking it through the fabric.

“What a pretty little cock you have. Small, tight, perfect for a girl like you.”

The word pierced his entire body. Tobías hid his face against the man’s neck, burning with shame and arousal at the same time, while Renato opened his belt with one hand and slipped his palm inside his briefs. Hot fingers wrapped around his cock and began masturbating him with calculated slowness, drawing the foreskin back to reveal the swollen glans, squeezing the sticky fluid already staining it at the tip.

“You’re getting my whole hand wet,” he whispered in his ear, a smile in his voice. “Just look at you dripping. And I haven’t even touched your little ass yet.”

“Renato…” Tobías gasped, clinging to him. “I’m going to…”

“No, not yet.” The man squeezed the base with two fingers, cutting off his orgasm cold. “Hold on a little longer. I want to taste you first.”

And without another word, Renato dropped to his knees in the foyer. Tobías looked down, hardly believing it, and saw the older man pull his pants and briefs down to his thighs, then pause to admire his erect, red, trembling cock near his lips.

“Beautiful,” he repeated, and took it into his mouth all the way to the root.

Tobías knocked the back of his head against the door with a muffled moan. Renato sucked him with obscene calm, his tongue curling around the glans, his throat opening effortlessly each time he lowered himself, one hand kneading his balls while the other squeezed one cheek of his ass and spread it slightly, just enough for the cool hallway air to brush his clenched hole. Tobías had never felt so exposed or so seen in his life, and he loved it.

“Oh God, don’t stop,” he murmured, burying his fingers in the man’s gray hair. “Please, don’t stop.”

Renato didn’t stop. He sped up. The blowjob became deep, wet, and noisy, an obscene slurping that filled the foyer, while one of the man’s fingers—slick with saliva from both their mouths—began brushing his asshole, tracing circles over the tight entrance without going in, barely teasing it. The combination was too much. Tobías felt the orgasm rise from his feet with a violence he had never experienced.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he gasped. “Not in your mouth, wait…”

But Renato tightened his mouth around him even more, his hand clamped around Tobías’s buttock like a vise, and Tobías surrendered. He came with a strangled cry, in long, thick spurts, and Renato swallowed it all, every last drop, sucking his sensitive glans until Tobías had to gently push him away by the shoulders.

“Enough,” he whispered, trembling. “Enough, please.”

Renato released him with a small kiss on the tip and stood, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. The smile he gave him was proud and possessive. He pulled Tobías’s briefs up, straightened his pants, and fastened his belt as though buttoning a coat around a little girl.

“What about you?” Tobías asked, looking at the still-enormous bulge beneath the man’s pants. “Don’t you want to…?”

“Another day.” Renato caressed his cheek. “When you come back and put on what’s in that wardrobe, you’ll suck me on your knees, wearing the panties and a bow in your hair. And afterward I’ll fuck you in the canopied bed, slowly, until you forget your own name. But that’s for Tania. Today was just about giving you this.”

It was Tobías who finally pulled away, panting, his forehead resting against the other man’s chest and his legs still trembling.

“Now I really have to go,” he said, his voice rasping. “I mean it. But…”

“But,” Renato repeated, smiling, without pressuring him.

“Another day. I promise.”

The man nodded, tucked a lock of hair behind Tobías’s ear with a delicacy he felt in his stomach, and opened the door. As he stepped out into the street, now deep into the night, Renato gave him a playful smack on the ass that made him smile despite himself.

“Take care, Tania. The house will be here whenever you want to come back.”

Tobías walked the three streets to his apartment with his heart racing, his briefs still sticky, and the certainty that something had opened inside him that he would no longer know how to close. He could still feel the brush of imaginary silk against his skin, the new name buzzing in his ears, the man’s mouth on his cock like a memory that warmed his cheeks, the promise hanging between them like a key.

In his pocket, his phone vibrated with a message from Carla. Tobías looked at it without opening it and kept walking, thinking, for the first time without guilt, about the blue blouse waiting in that wardrobe, the lace panties that would press against his cock next time, and the man’s tongue waiting for him on the other side of that door.