Young

“If you stay, you stop being the perfect student,” he said without touching me yet. I looked at the locked door. My legs did not move.

Every night I go down into the dungeons with bread and water. Last night, the woman chained to the pillar was waiting for me naked and with an order on her lips I couldn’t disobey.

I blush just thinking that you’re going to read this, but he ordered me to: I must tell, without hiding anything, how I learned to kneel and say thank you.

Pressed against the counter, they thought the house was empty. They didn’t count on her coming back early, or on what she had in store for anyone who dared to lie to her.

I went back to school that afternoon under the excuse of studying in the library, but neither of us was going to open a single book. We were there for them.

He was my best friend, my confidant. That night at the fair, between wine and laughter, his hand on my waist ignited something I had never felt for him.

It began as an academic interest in the brightest student in the group. What ended up happening in my office is still hard for me to put into words.

I let my guard down the moment he stepped into the stall. I hadn’t come looking for any of that, but his voice ordered me to kneel and I no longer knew how to say no.

I waited for the doors to close. Diego was already kissing his girlfriend openly, and her sister kept glancing at me, biting her lip, not knowing what to do with her hands.

We went up to hang the laundry under any pretext. Among the water tanks on the rooftop, I discovered she was as impatient as I was to stop pretending.

I recognized the basket of clothes that wasn’t mine, and before I could think, my hand was already buried in his things. What happened next changed me from the inside.

I heard him on the phone say, “This old lady is ready.” I should have been offended. Instead, I felt myself get soaked right there against the bar.

She’d go up to her room, open the closet, and change knowing we were watching from the street. I was the youngest in the group, but I was the first to go through her door.

I’d sworn her virginity was nonnegotiable. That morning, in the apartment a friend lent me, she showed me just how far she was willing to go.

I hid on the locker-room mezzanine with Bruno pressed against my back. Below, my mother and her friend were undressing among the workers, and I couldn’t look away.

It began with a twisted ankle on the court and ended many weeks later, one night when her house was empty and there was no longer any reason to hold back.

I went looking for Bryan, but it was Andrés who stopped me in the street, grabbed me without shame, and set a date for the next day. I already knew what would happen and did nothing to stop it.

I’d watched her for years in ways I shouldn’t have. That night, after catching her with another man, she got into my car not knowing I had secrets of my own.

We had arranged to exchange some photos. What neither of us said out loud was that this reunion had been waiting months to happen.

For years I told myself I was the typical straight guy. I was lying. My hand jobs were for the guys in the locker room, and it took me too long to admit it.