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.

My every nerve ending seemed alive. I felt the fabric of the couch against my back, my legs. His knee against mine. My eyes kept flicking down to the condom package, to the tube of ointment. It was as wrinkled as a toothpaste tube closer to empty than full, and bore a label I’d never seen before: “KY Lubricating Jelly.” Indeed, my eyes didn’t heed any of my requests to watch Sam and Diane. I’d see their antics for a second or two, then they’d move down to the coffee table again. Then to the fat man’s crotch. The bulge under his shorts was growing more pronounced.

“Do you like pornos?” he asked. I’d seen a lot. My dad had a collection that he was certain I didn’t know about. I, of course, knew it like the back of my hand. My hand did a lot of work with them, in fact. Terrible stories, bad music, and very often, Ron Jeremy banging some nubile chick in over her head. I loved porn.

“Yeah, man.” He reached to the coffee table and picked up the remote control. He pressed a button, and the screen went blue. He pressed another, and the movie came on, shot in grainy video. The set-up was like just about every other skin flick I’d seen. A paperboy (who was probably in his late 20s) shows up at a house and knocks on the door. A man answers it and brings him inside. It took a few moments to understand what was missing - there was no bored housewife.

Instead, two older guys were hanging out around the house. The paperboy was below his quota. He just had to sell five more subscriptions to win the big prize. The two men in the house could do that for him. All he had to do was work with them.

The reluctant paperboy agreed (though he’s never done anything like this before). Finally, my eyes stopped moving around as I was sucked into the movie. For the first time, that paperboy sure seemed to know what he was doing. The fat man put his arm around me as I watched. My eyes never left the screen as the paperboy worked the two guys’ giant dicks. I smelled his sweat, and my heart started beating faster in a weird mix of fear and excitement. My own cock began to expand. It felt warm, hot.

On the screen, one of the men pushed the paperboy down and started fucking him. He moaned in pleasure, shouting “yes! Fuck me!” My girlfriend had complained once that I was too quiet during sex. I barely made a sound beyond the hitch in my throat when I came. The paperboy would get no such complaint, and neither would the guys having their way with him. They called him a whore and a sissy, and it seemed to get him off.

“You like to fool around?” asked the fat man. He’d started softly rubbing my sweat-covered shoulder. At his question, adrenaline dumped into my stomach, a cocktail of terror and desire. I watched the boy being fucked on screen, the other man’s huge shaft in his mouth. The fat man’s shorts had created a tent as his cock strained against them, a small, wet stain at the tip - precum. Unbelievably, I answered.

“Yeah,” I whispered. The remote was still in his hand. Very calmly, he turned the television off. The only sound outside her breathing was the fan, and beneath it, the VCR still running. The paperboy was invisible now, but I knew what was happening to him.

The fat man slid toward me, pushing my head up with the arm he had around me. He leaned in, kissing me on the mouth while his other hand pressed down on my sweating stomach at the navel. His tongue tasted of cigarettes when he pushed it into my mouth, and I remember a momentary feeling of distance from myself as I felt the stubble on his face touch mine. Girls were smoother, their kisses less demanding.

He slid his hand up my torso, gathering sweat, pinching my nipple before pulling away from the kiss. I was breathing hard now, my hands resting by my side and shaking slightly. He squeezed my peck, then grabbed my far hand and put it on him so we were facing each other. I’d never had my hands on a man’s body before - not like this anyway - and I didn’t know what to do. Once I was touching him, he moved his hand back to my face and ran his wet fingers over my lips.

Instinct took over and I opened my mouth, sucking on two of his fingers and tasting my own sweat. He started moving them in and out while he pulled me closer to him with the arm around me. Our bodies were touching now, my sweat-covered torso rubbing against his. He put a third finger in my mouth and I sucked harder. He responded by increasing the pace of his fingers, sticking them deeper into my mouth.

At last, the fat man pulled them out and pulled me to him. He brought my face to his chest, pulling me toward his nipple. I licked it, again, then opened my mouth and sucked on it hungrily. My hand was still idle on his belly, and he put his own on top of it, moving it down. He laid it on top of his cock, and I could feel the hardness through his shorts. Then he closed my hand over the large head. I could feel the oily slickness of the precum through the fabric, and I started rubbing his dick. He moaned and took his hand away, reaching over me to rub my back with both hands.

He stroked my back up and down a couple of times before he grabbed my waist and pulled up, guiding me. My feet were still on the floor, and I knew what he wanted. I stopped sucking on his nipples long enough to climb onto the couch on all fours.