When I started driving a taxi, I had the late evening shift, from seven in the evening until eight in the morning. On that shift, you had to take people out to dinner, to the movies, to nightclubs, and when that was over, you had to go to Chinatown to find customers. One night, a Black man who had just dropped off his prostitutes asked me to take him to a neighborhood on the outskirts of town. We were chatting animatedly, and then I asked him, “Is it true that Black men have bigger penises?” I don’t know how I came up with the idea, but I blurted it out. He told me, “Well, with Black men it’s the same as with white men, some have bigger ones, some have thicker ones, and some have both bigger and thicker ones.” In short, he didn’t clarify anything for me. When we arrived at our destination, he wanted to pay by card, but my card reader was broken, so he told me to park and come up to his place because he had money there. And that’s what we did.

The taxi driver parked the car with slightly sweaty hands. His heart pounded against his ribs as he climbed the stairs behind his passenger, a tall, dark-skinned man who went by the name of Marcus. Each step echoed in the quiet of the building on the outskirts of town, a modest apartment block where the hallway lights flickered indifferently.

“Don’t worry about the noise,” Marcus said over his shoulder, pulling out a bunch of keys. “Roberto always plays it loud. He’s ... how to put it ... a film buff.” The taxi driver didn’t know whether to laugh or feel apprehension. The truth was, he’d spent the whole night with a mixture of curiosity and barely contained excitement ever since he’d started that conversation about anatomy in the car. The question he’d blurted out, impulsively, about racial stereotypes had earned him an evasive but polite answer. And now, here he was, following a stranger home at three in the morning because his card reader had decided to die that very night. Marcus opened the door, and the sound enveloped them like a wave. Female moans amplified by the speakers, the characteristic thumping of furniture against the wall that only adult films produce, and amidst all that noise, the squeak of a leather armchair as it swiveled.

“Roberto, damn it!” Marcus shouted, slamming the door. “That blasting again? We have a visitor.” The taxi driver blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the living room. The apartment was small but tidy, with action movie posters on the walls and an open-plan kitchen that smelled of fresh coffee. But his attention was inevitably drawn to the living room, where the flat-screen TV was showing an explicit scene: a blonde woman being simultaneously penetrated by two dark-skinned men, both endowed with an anatomy that made the taxi driver’s lips involuntarily lick.

“I said I was coming up to collect the fare...” the taxi driver muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.

“And you’re going to collect,” Marcus replied with a lazy smile, taking off his jacket. But relax, man. I don’t bite. Well, not without permission.

The chair swiveled completely, revealing Roberto. He was younger than Marcus, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, with an athletic build hinted at beneath a tight T-shirt. His afro formed a perfect crown around a face with delicate yet masculine features. But what captured the taxi driver’s attention was what peeked out from under the T-shirt, or rather, what spilled out from the edge of his open sweatpants.

The taxi driver felt the air leave his lungs. Roberto hadn’t been “jerking off” anyway. He was holding in one hand a member that defied gravity and human proportion. Twenty-three or twenty-four centimeters long, maybe more, with a thickness that made Roberto’s hand, large as it was, look small when he grasped it. The tip glistened with the natural lubrication of arousal, and the veins mapped out a map of desire beneath the dark, satiny skin. “Damn, Marcus,” Roberto said shamelessly, moving his hand in a slow, almost exhibitionist caress. “You’ve brought a fan. Look at those eyes.” The taxi driver realized he’d been staring, his mouth slightly open, feeling an intense heat rise up his neck to his cheeks. It was a mixture of embarrassment and pure, animal fascination. He’d never seen anything like it in person. The stories, the rumors, the videos—nothing could prepare you for the physical reality of such a ... presence.