In this raw and unflinching collection of gay erotic short stories, Manuel García strips desire down to its essentials: skin, sweat, challenge, and silence. These are tales of real men—virile, grounded, often rough—who speak more with glances than words. Their encounters emerge from conflict, proximity, and tension that crackles like electricity under the skin. This is not fantasy. This is carnal truth.
The title story, A Strange Competition between Men, begins with an online ad—cryptic, provocative, and impossible to ignore. The promise? A challenge for those willing to cast off inhibition and confront themselves and others, man to man. The protagonist, driven by curiosity and something darker, responds. Days later, he finds himself in a dimly lit circular room, among dozens of men—strangers, competitors, mirrors. What follows is not a game. It is a ritual, a test, an unraveling of boundaries.
The air smelled of sweat and cologne, tension and anticipation. We stood in a perfect circle, fifty men breathing as one, eyes darting, jaws tight. When the man in the center spoke, his voice cut through the silence like a blade: “Are you ready to get involved?” No one laughed. No one moved. We were already too deep.
A Strange Competition between Men is a book that leaves traces—on the body, on the breath, in the imagination. The stories throb with physicality and unspoken power, lingering like a look that lasted too long. Desire, here, is not asked for. It is claimed.
