THE STORY OF RAFA AND DANI 20 FOREPLAY

He was wearing a plain gray t-shirt, dark jeans, and immaculate white sneakers. Normal clothes. The kind of clothes a guy wears to go to the supermarket on a Saturday morning, to take his kids to school, to lead a life out there with a name and surname and a paycheck and neighbors who greet him in the hallway. He had sunglasses hooked to his t-shirt collar, even though it was eight in the evening and in Carabanchel in February, the sun hadn't been out since six. The sunglasses were his disguise. The accessory that said, I'm someone else, I'm not who you see, I'm not the family man, I'm not the working man, I'm not the nice neighbor from the fifth floor, I'm something else, I'm what I am when no one sees me, when I close the door, when I pay.

He smelled of expensive cologne. Not the kind from street markets or supermarket deodorant. Good cologne. The kind that comes in heavy bottles with French names you can't pronounce. The smell reached you before he did, like an advance guard, like an invisible army conquering the room before the general arrived. And behind the smell, the man. Occupying the space. Filling it. Devouring it. Because guys like him don't enter rooms, rooms enter them, folding around their body like gift wrap around an object too big for the package.

He didn't say hello.

He didn't say good evening.

He didn't say pleased to meet you.

He looked at you. From above. From that height that turned your five-foot-seven into a joke, a punchline, a garden gnome with a tank top and leather shorts. He looked at you like you look at a plate that's just been set in front of you at a restaurant where you've made a reservation three weeks in advance. With hunger. With expectation. With the absolute certainty that what's in front of you is yours because you've paid for it, and what you pay for, you own, and what you own, you consume.

Dani leaned on the doorframe. Arms crossed. Smiling like a master of ceremonies. Like a game show host. Like a guy who's set up the spectacle and now sits in the front row to enjoy it.

"He's new," Dani said. "Eighteen years old. Second time around. Clean as a whistle."

Javi didn't respond to Dani. Didn't look at him. Didn't address him. As if Dani were the waiter and you were the steak, and the customer doesn't talk to the waiter once the food is on the table.

He approached you. One step. Two. The distance between you shrinking like a countdown. You could smell him better now. The cologne mixed with something underneath, something animal, something that didn't come from a bottle but from inside, from the glands, from the contained sweat, from the testosterone accumulated over days or weeks of not releasing what needed to be released, of keeping inside what couldn't be let out at home, what didn't exist with his wife, what was buried under layers of normalcy and correctness and functional heterosexuality.

He grabbed your face with o...