The worn-out faggot

He had lived for years in a house that didn't belong to him. He had bought it in the middle of his honeymoon, with the mortgage in his name and his wife's signature beside it, and ever since he had done nothing but pay for it, maintain it, and get lost inside it. He was forty years old, had a navy blue suit that was a little tight, a tie he took off as soon as he came through the door, and a marriage that had stopped being a thing and had become a formality. They had slept in separate beds for three years. Some nights they looked at each other in the hallway, saying nothing, like two tenants who had gone into the wrong apartment.

He had never been a special man. He did not have his father's class or the ambition of people who succeed. He was a normal man, one of those who exist so that houses don't fall down, so that bills get paid on time and curtains are drawn when it gets dark. He worked in an office he went to out of habit, not pleasure, and returned to a house where the last thing you heard was the sound of his wife watching television in the living room. Sometimes, in the car, with the radio off, he would stare at the highway and think: is this all? Is this what I get?

The question lasted until a November night, when his computer froze and he took it to be repaired at a shop that sold men's underwear, notebooks, and some weird gadgets he didn't know what they were. There he saw him for the first time.

The intern was twenty years old, and he had more than enough of everything. Light brown hair, hair combed to one side and that good-boy face that hid a bastard's smile. He wore a tight white T-shirt, jeans so snug you could see even his religion, and a huge ass that didn't fit in his pants. Carlos watched him fix his computer and realized he had not seen a young body up close in years. The kid, with feigned patience, explained that the hard drive was dead and that it was going to cost him a fortune. Carlos said yes to everything with a dry mouth.

The intern overcharged him, charged him knowing he was overcharging him, and when Carlos gave him the card, the kid took his hand and squeezed it a little, without doing anything else, like someone testing to see what happens. Carlos did not sleep that night.

They began seeing each other at the shop, with excuses neither of them bought. Carlos bought notebooks he didn't need, white briefs he didn't use, a lip balm that did him no good, just to cross the door and see that kid in the tight jeans and white T-shirt stained with sweat. The intern, who had seen him coming since day one, let him spend. And one day, just like that, while Carlos was paying at the register, he leaned close to his ear and said quietly:

"Come to my house tonight. I'm going to take off that suit that doesn't fit you."

Carlos went. He parked the car two streets away, in case a neighbor saw him, and climbed the stairs with his heart in his mouth. When he opened the door,...