When I was eighteen years old, in 1990, I had a summer job working at a deli on Cheshire Bridge in Atlanta, Georgia. Every day, I would carve meat up for the hungry masses for eight hours a day - this was probably the beginning of my becoming a vegetarian.

Anyway, at the end of my shift, I would change out of my sweaty, sometimes bloody work clothes, throw on some shorts, and walk the two miles home to watch some TV or read a book - usually ending the evening with a rousing session of masturbation. My longtime girlfriend had started college in August, so my social and sexual life had found a new crimp.

I lived in the Virginia Highlands neighborhood at the time, and my trek took me through Midtown - the “gay” part of town. Almost every day, I was cruised by one man or another. Their approaches ran the gamut from the benign (“how ya doing there?”) to the lascivious. (One guy in a Yugo pulled up next to me and called me over - his cock was out and hard as a rock, simply massive, and he told me he wanted to break my ass with it. I often wonder what would have happened if I had gotten in instead of threatening to kick his ass before he sped away.)

One August afternoon, it had to be in the upper nineties. I was soaked with sweat, peeled off my shirt, and walked quickly through a residential neighborhood on the way home. I saw the familiar sight of a car passing me one way, turning around and going by the other, back and forth a couple of times. Finally, it pulled up to the curve a few feet in front of me, the automatic window on the passenger side rolling down with an audible buzz. I knew what was coming as I moved down the sidewalk.

“You need a ride,” asked the man inside. He was a big guy, overweight. He unbuckled his seatbelt as he leaned over to look out the open window. “It’s hot out here.”

I looked at him. He eyed me up and down. I was a letterman in wrestling and baseball back then; my body was taut even in the summer off-season. I opened my mouth with every intention of saying “no thanks, chief.” But that wasn’t what came out.

“Sure,” I said. He reached down and opened the door. It’s funny the things you remember setting things down on paper. The car was a big Buick Regency, old and white with traces of rust around the tire wells. He looked at me for a moment, still leaning into the passenger side with his arm over the seat. I only stared.

“Jump on in.” I looked for another second before I did. The air conditioner was cranking, and even as I slipped into the seat, the wave of cool brushed against my bare chest, breaking my skin out into gooseflesh. The man retreated into the driver’s side, leaving his arm around the seat long enough to draw it over my slick shoulders when he reached to put the car back in drive. I shivered. Then I reached over and closed the door.

He pulled away from the curb, and we drove in silence for a moment. Finally, he asked: “Where you headed?” It seemed my mouth was on autopilot, driven by some hormonal, adolescent need. Instead of guiding him to my apartment, I shrugged my shoulders.

“I just got off work. Don’t really have anything going on right now.”

“You want to come over to my place? Maybe watch a movie?”

I couldn’t look at him. I stared rigidly through the windshield at the stoplight we’d come to. Though I opened my mouth to answer, nothing came out. I only nodded.

“Cool,” the fat man said. I felt his eyes move over me. Felt them stop in my lap. The light turned green and he drove on. As we went, I remembered that he spoke. That I even answered now and again. Nothing sexual, just small talk that I don’t have the faintest recollection of - even his name. All I really remember hearing was my pulse in my ears, pounding, pounding. If I’d been standing up, my knees would have been shaking.

We finally arrived at his apartment building - it was anonymous, white - and went inside. I hadn’t seen him standing up before. The fat man was tall, as well. Maybe six-foot-three. I was five-nine, so he towered over me and probably weighed close to 275.

The air was close in the stairwell, hot and wet with humidity. The contrast from the freezing car was marked and I began to sweat again. I thought about leaving, of going home, but I didn’t. Even when we got to his door.

Inside, the apartment was a sauna. The windows in the living room had a western exposure, so the place had been soaking up the heat all afternoon. The man walked over to a box fan in the window and switched it on - the air it blew in was only mildly cooler as evening began. “No a/c,” he explained.

He switched on the television - it was a rerun of Cheers - then excused himself to the bathroom. I sat down on the couch and gawked at the TV. I wasn’t really watching the show; I just stared, the canned laughter at every joke filtering into my head like static. After some time, the fat man came out, chattering amiably about something or other. He’d changed clothes. Gotten out of them, anyway. He wore a pair of gym shorts and was as shirtless as I was. His large body was almost perfectly smooth.

Without meaning to, my eyes shifted down to his crotch. Under the thin, gray fabric, I could see his dick shift as he stepped forward. In the locker room, we would have given him shit for having a “chubber” - that time when your cock isn’t hard, but it’s leaning that way. He moved to the couch, reaching into the pocket of his shorts before he sat. I tried to keep my eyes on the TV as he extracted a condom and a small tube and laid them deliberately on the coffee table.

He sat close to me, feet flat on the floor with his legs well apart. His knee touched mine, and though every instinct in my body told me to move mine away, I didn’t. I could smell him faintly - sweat, some cologne underneath it. Maybe Polo, which I wore when I went on dates with women. We watched in silence for a few minutes. The fan was doing little to alleviate the heat, and coupled with my nervousness, I was sweating badly.