We were proud of our kids and our home, having acquired so much at such an early age. At the time I was a guidance counselor at a local high school and Tina made her money online with a profitable coffee cup business. She designed the cups herself, and every morning her and I both would sit in the kitchen drinking coffee from a couple of them. They had all these funny sayings on them which Tina made up herself, like, "I will rise . . . but will never shine" and stuff like that.

"Weeeee!" my little boy, Tiki, shouted in glee as Tina pushed him and he soared higher and higher into the air upon the swing, way up into the clear June sky.

"Push me higher, Daddy!" our little girl, Sally, squealed. "I want to go up as high as Tiki!"

"Shut up!" Tiki said to her. "You're too little to go up this high!"

For some reason what Tiki said gnawed at me. During the time of my son's conception and Tina's subsequent pregnancy with him, I had been very neglectful of my wife. During that time I was involved in something very secret, consumed by compulsions and my dead taco studies which have haunted me all my life, and it took over all my free time. Tina became resentful and it began to occur to me that she might be having an affair. This suspicion was further aroused when Tiki was born and he didn't look anything like me. He wasn't a black kid or anything crazy like that, but he had an exceptionally big head for a male member of my family. My mother always told me that no male member of my family ever had a head nearly that big, and she encouraged me to distrust my wife. Tiki's head became bigger and bigger as the years went by. I never said anything to Tina about my suspicions, but always secretly wondered if Tiki was really my son. Tina always said Tiki's head was so big because he inherited my brains--a nice sentiment but one I found rather dubious.

"Why, of course you can, Mr. Bighead!" Tina said, as she seemed to look at me for a reaction.

I gave her none, really, and just sort of smiled.

Tina began making Tiki some cereal and as she poured the Froot Loops into a bowl she said, "You need to eat your Loops to nourish that big head of yours! You need to "feed your head" and all those brains you got from your Daddy!"

Suddenly feeling confrontational, I said, "I might have brains, honey, but my head was never as big as Tiki's when I was a kid. Heck, his head is almost bigger that mine already. Mom says no male member of my family ever had a head that big. Tiki's head is bigger than a goddam burrito!"

Tina didn't seem phased. "It all goes back to that bizarre obsession you have with Mexican food, doesn't it, Taco (I had aquired that nickname as a child because I never ate anything but tacos)? Your mother never wants to admit that you are a success and that you are smart. I honestly don't know what's wrong with her. You are never anything but nice to her and all she does is criticize you. And anyway, even if Tiki's head isn't big because of his brain, somebody has to start the family tradition of having a big head, don't they?"

I felt like I'd just been "schooled" and didn't know what to say, so I just responded with "Yeah, I suppose," and left it at that. But Tina continued to make "big headed" remarks about our son, almost as if taunting me with her infidelity, even going to the extreme of calling Tiki "Frankenboy" at times.

As I pushed Sally on the swing and my little girl urged me to push her higher than Tiki, I thought of how after Tiki was born, I managed my compulsions. I ceased to do that secret thing I cannot tell you about, put the need into restraint. Tina and I spent more and more time than ever together between the birth of the two kids. Sally had my bright, blue eyes and I was certain she was mine. Everyone was, even mother--it wasn't even an issue.

"Push me harder, mom!" Tiki grunted. The way Tiki said this, in a snarling, angry voice, made me think of something someone had told me once. "Push me harder, mom!" he said again as he flew up into the sky on the swing and I struggled to wrestle with my demons, hearing Tiki's snarling voice, trying to place the nuance it pecked at in the fog of memory inside my miserable mind. I pulled Sally harder, higher, and she giggled in excitement. She was up nearly as high as Tiki as I felt heat and redness in my innards, felt my body perspiring from underneath my clothes. We had all eaten tacos for dinner again, for the third day in a row; the smell wafted through the air still through the kitchen window and nearly drove me to drive down to the local Taco Shack for an encore.

"Push me harder, mom," Tiki grunted again, and the way he was talking, the way those words seemed to come from deep within him and creepy-crawl through the hole of his mouth made me think of darkness and wetness and the dampness of the deep, dreary earth we all eventually rot in and it occurred to me that Tiki was talking as if he were trying to take a shit, as if the tacos he had just eaten were trying to crawl out of his ass. It is not in my nature to mock everything that Tina and I, as humans, have tried to build so as to live a prosperous, peaceful life. It is not in my nature to be a mischievous, clever rat-like creature living alone in his prision in the basement of a stone tower on an island no one has heard of. It is only my task to live with my dead taco compulsions; to struggle with them and give in to them only if I feel I can teach myself and humanity a lesson. Tiki said it one more time--

"Push me harder."

And I heard it plain as day, the voice I remembered from my secret life, when Tina and I were working on conceiving our first child. I heard the voice say to me--

"Push it in harder. Then pull it out slowly, relaxing your sphincter muscles. See? See? It feels just like you are shitting out dead tacos. Feel the colors? The red of the tomato, the green of the lettuce?"

"How did what feel?" she asked, being coy.

I lowered my eyelids at her and grinned playfully.

"Oh," she said, embarassed. "It felt like I was pooping out that taco salad I ate for dinner every time you pulled it out."

"Interesting," I said, and from then on I began to ponder the forbidden and the taboo concerning dead tacos, the brown of the meat. It is then that I began yet another struggle with my compulsions and my and Tina's relationship became exposed to the most rigorous of tests. I became aloof and unaffectionate and we became more distant from one another. All of these memories made my head feel big like a burrito and it all collided into a burst of an angry, angst-ridden eruption as I pushed Sally on the swing and said, "Hold on, pumpkin! We're gonna beat that burrito-headed sonnuvabitch!" And then I pushed Sally as hard as I could.

Tina looked at me in shock. "What did you say?" she asked.

I just looked at her dumbly, feeling my compulsions begin to overwhelm me, to almost seem to become the entirety of everything I am, and then we both heard Sally scream.

"Oh, look what you've done,Taco!" Tina chided as she rushed to our daughter. Sally had fallen out of the swing at a terribly tall height. She lied on the grass crying. She had awful scuffs on her knees, and one of her legs looked like it might actually be broken. My daughter looked up at me sadly, in terrible pain. Her face was red and tear-filled, but she was exceptionally silent.

"Daddy, I can't move my leg," Sally said.

Tiki was crying on the swing. "Daddy called me Burrito Head!" he was saying over and over. I just stood there, looking back and forth to both of them, feeling faint and confused. My blood was rushing through my veins; I knew I had to be decisive; I knew I had to be the man of the house and take charge of a bad situation, even though I was the cause of it all. At that moment I felt like I was always the cause of it all.

"I-I think I'll go into the house and get the car keys. We'll take her to the hospital," I said, and ran into the house. I stepped into the kitchen and I couldn't focus. I kept hearing Tiki's burrito-headed, grunting voice and in my mind I saw uncontrollable images of what it must have looked like when Tina conceived Tiki. I saw her being fucked mercilessly, doggy-style, in some cheap, dark motel room, by a bandito in a black mask. I saw her sucking the cock of a man with a large head and handsome face, as he grunted and said, "Suck it harder, suck it harder" until he exploded, a steaming gush of hot sauce in Tina's face, a drop for every freckle, as I commenced the rituals of my secret life, dealing with my dead taco compulsions, as I frantically walked into the bedroom even though I knew the car keys were in the kitchen! I walked into the bedroom, fishing through my dresser drawers like a madman until I found a large magic marker.

Even though I knew my beloved daughter, Sally, lied helpless upon the bright, green grass with a broken leg, crying for her daddy who was supposed to be a man, come to grips with the reality and deal with the pressure of taking her to the hospital, I couldn't help myself. In the bedroom, I held the red magic marker in my hands, twirling it between my fingers. With my head in a fog and my emotional state an absolute wreck, my soul felt like broken glass as I took off my pants, sat on the dresser and started to spread my legs, watching my penis get harder, awakening from its slumber inside the folded, shrunken pink skin of my loose, sweaty balls. My balls jiggled as I looked up at the bedroom ceiling fan, misty-eyed. The sunlight shone through the blinds and painted my contorted, grimacing face with a cascade of silvery, golden sunshine as I put a finger inside my anus, loosening it up, and then I started to stick the magic marker all the way up my ass as if to somehow pay homage to a The God Of Brown Taco Meat I had forsaken for far too long.

"Ah. Ah." I grunted just as Tiki did when he was on the swing. I pushed the marker all the way up my butt, remembering to loosen my sphincter like I did in the old days, right around the time Tiki was conceived. I pushed the fat, round marker all the way in, braced myself, then started to pull it back out slowly. It felt strange at first, then all a sudden I began to giggle because it felt just like it did when I pooped out dead tacos. Hee! Hee! I was so afraid that a little piece of brown, seasoned taco meat was going to actually fall out of my ass, but it didn't, just like they told me it wouldn't, and I gleefully shoved the marker back in for another go around, forgetting all about getting the car keys until--

All of a sudden Tina stood in the door way looking at me, and my heart raced as a rush of red horror ramsacked my soul and I sat before her, my legs spread, shoving the marker in and out my ass with a tortured, scared look on my face. I didn't know what to say, of course. My compulsions had simply gotten the best of me. I had never dealt with stress very well, Tina knew that, but she never in her wildest dreams thought that she would come face to face with such an unspeakable, absurd, and down-right bizarre situation.

Tina was in shock. She looked at me, speechless, and then, being a strong woman, came to grips with immediacy, figuring she'd deal with the rest later, and she said, "Where are the car keys,Taco? I'll drive Sally to the hospital myself. You obviously have priorities."

Feeling like I had to say something, anything, I allowed the first words to come into my mind to come out my mouth. "Well, you obviously had priorities when you conceived that burrito-headed bastard of yours! He ain't mine, Tina! You and I both know it, you wretched whore!" The words might as well had come out of my ass.

"Oh, is that what you think?" Tina said, looking at me coldly. "So you deal with it by sticking a magic marker up your butt? Or should I say your "taco stand"? Isn't that what you and your faggot lover used to call it back in college? You're pathetic. At least Tiki's dad was a real man who faced reality!"

"What reality?" I squealed, sticking the marker up my butt further, my heart shattered by Tina's words, her finally admitting."The reality of his cock in your mouth?!" I paused, then said, "The keys are in the kitchen! Don't expect me to be here when you get back!"

But of course, I would be there when she got back. I didn't have anywhere else to go at the time. My compulsions were gnawing at me, clawing at me and they forced me into my study. I walked inside it naked and with the marker still hanging out of my anus. In the study was an old envelope I had saved from my days in college. The envelope was hidden inside a secret compartment I'd made inside of an old "Intro To Guidance Counseling" textbook. Inside the envelope was a handful of pubic hairs, the fair hairs of Jim, my college room-mate. I sat at my desk chair and spread my legs, resting my feet upon the desk top, and with my hand pulled out the hairs, all wound into a loose, beautiful ball, and I put them up to my nose to sniff them, took in the musty, musky aroma as my mind went back to those wonderful days back in school, and how the smell of Jim's dead taco mortuary nearly drove me mad far too early in my then young life.

Neither Jim nor I had yet to touch a man there before. We were both still so unsure of our strange, seemingly unnatural sexual desires, knowing neither of our families would approve of them. But one day Jim came into our dorm room carrying a penis pump he'd received in the mail, grinning from ear to ear.

He said, "It's a peter pump, Taco, with which to make my dick bigger. Would you like to try it along with me?"

I was very nervous and so was he, but we both bravely undressed as our bare, hanging penises both dangled from between our legs in their splendid youth. Jim lied on the bed as he slowly became hard, so hard, and I was delighted to see how big his dick already was;I couldn't imagine what it would look like once we pumped it up! I placed the pump over his handsome, stiff cock, started to press on the trigger as the air flow hissed through the tube like a snake. But there was no suction!

"I think maybe your pubic hairs are preventing the tube from adhering to your crotch skin, Jim," I told him. "Would you like for me to shave your pubes?"

Jim nodded, seeming both scared and excited as I got a straight razor and slowly snipped away at Jim's light-brown, curly dick hairs, removed them ever so slowly, noticing how they looked like the rotten shavings of shredded lettuce I'd seen in tacos I'd left sitting around too long in the past. I started shaving them neatly and carefully from his balls, too, and painstakingly placed them into an envelope for safekeeping. The clear plastic penis pump tube then GRIPPED around Jim's cock like a vice, like a falcon swooping down upon its prey, such fierce, unrelenting talons! I pumped the air into the tube madly, watched Jim's dick become longer, fatter, more thick and beautiful, a brilliant shade of purple. I sucked upon it soon after, my first time sucking a cock, chewing and gnawing on this freshly pumped cock like a rabid dog.

Then in our excitement, Jim and I began to wrestle one another naked in the bed, giggling, and at one point I had him turn over on his stomach; his bare ass was in plain view and the smell of his dead taco mortuary was so strong it scared me; so pungent and foul but yet so rich with the earthy, rotten smell of the dead brown meat from the tacos we had eaten earlier in the dormitory cafeteria that I felt compelled to sniff it. . . but then quickly turned him back over, sucking his cock some more, looking into his eyes as I did so and said, "I don't think I'm quite ready to sniff the dead tacos your ancestors had for dinner." It was one of the most precious moments of my life.

So now, many years later and being married to a woman, when I get into a fight with Tina, or if life is stressing me out, I flee into the study, pull out Jim's pubes from that old musty envelope hidden the textbook. Tears always flow from my eyes as I dip my fingers into the envelope, sniffing Jim's pubes, nibbling on a couple like they are shredded taco lettuce while stroking myself, and this time I even had the added pleasure of the magic marker. But unfortunately I was careless that night, so delirious from the calling of the brown taco meat mortuary, the magnetic compulsions that seemed to be coming from nowhere and yet from everywhere, grabbing me and pulling me south of the existential border with an invisible touch. I was careless, so inebriated with sweet, romantic nostalgia, that I left the Guidance Counselor book on my study desk, wide open, and Tina came in to find Jim's pubes after taking our daughter to the hospital. As if I wasn't already in enough trouble.

I was forced to fuck her that night, to prove I still loved her and that I could get an erection still from a woman, that I was still a man. Her and I had had problems with this when we first met. She was always fighting with me over Jim and over who I wanted most. I fucked her on that dark night, first as I lied atop her, my bare chest rubbing against her bare bosom; my mouth upon her neck as I felt the breath from her mouth blow against my ear as she cooed with every thrust of my penis it revolted me; the smell of her breath; the stale smell of the wine and the carrots she'd been eating. I turned her over so as not to have to look at her face, but in futility I began to cry because turning her over like a fish, of course, left me with the sight of her ever-fattening ass, and as I stuck my dick inside her, placing my hands tentatively upon both her abundant ass cheeks, gripping them as I shoved my dick in and out, I cried. I cried in pain and disgust, not smelling the scent of dead tacos that emitted from Tina's asshole but what smelled like a factory full of sewing machines; and fabric; and needles; pricks and pins. Little bitches punched in wearing way too much perfume; they made dresses for the dead people right before they crawled into Jim's fucking taco stand, not hers, and it took me forever to cum that night with so many sounds and words and nightmarish visions of splendor dancing through my head. I heard that wretched grunting from earlier of Tiki--

"Higher. I want to go higher."

Then that particular voice was countered by a more friendly, mischievous one that I fondly remembered. It said--

"Push it in harder. Then pull it out slowly, relaxing your sphincter muscles. See? See? It feels just like you are shitting out dead tacos."

A couple days later at the high school school it all started coming together and started to make a little more sense. The mortuary was about to make itself manifest, and I would have my horrible, yet sublime, first taste of buttsniffing. The stage had been set; in a very short time I had almost completely lost attraction to my wife, and my abstinence from the things I truly desired (a man's taco stand in my face) began to drive my mind toward more and more mystical, morbid thinking. All that was needed was a trigger to set me off on a course of full-blown obsession. This occurred through the help of a very strange man. He was the father of one of my students whom I'd asked to come and see me because his child, though obviously intelligent, was consistently doing poorly in his History class. He just didn't seem to have much respect for his dead ancestors, figured studying about the past was a waste of time. He was a bright kid, though--I could tell from the few instances I had spoken with him in the past -- so I scheduled a meeting with his parents to see what they were like; how they felt about the matter and how we all might better motivate their 16-year old troubled son, Jeremy.

Having no clue what he was talking about, I decided to humor him, looked at the boy and said, "Is this true, Jeremy? Do you get your history lessons from your father's mortuary?"

Jeremey nodded his head timidly and a smell in the room began to fill the air which I began to identify as tacos. My two office guests were covered with orange grease and seasoned taco meat and Jeremy's dad was most certainly full of it--he was obviously schizo and had no place being in custody of a child.

"Well," I began, "Mr. Turner, I'm not certain what you mean by this mortuary of yours, but here at Hartridge High we have a certain, state-approved way of doing our learning: we have textbooks; we hold class; give out homework and take tests and I'm sorry to say your son is not-- I suddenly noticed Mr. Turner getting up from his chair, turning his back toward me. "Shut the hell up, teacher and take a trip to the mortuary, where the dead dwell and my son learns from the past," he said. It was then that I saw his bare ass in front of me, to my shock and horror. It was a skinny, pinkish, relatively smooth and hairless ass: and as Mr Turner began to bend over and spread his ass cheeks before me I saw the tiny brown hole, his butthole, and it put a spell on me, gripped me with some sort of strange, captivating force. It seemed to draw me near it as Jeremy looked on and whispered spookily, "There's dead ancestors in there . . . in that dirty butt of his you'll find all the dead taco meat you could ever hunger for."

"Oh there is, is there?" I responded, not quite sure what I was feeling inside me. All I knew was that I had to stick my nose in there and smell, to see if it was all real. Tentatively and not quite believing what I was doing, I got on my hands and knees upon my desk as Mr. Turner eased his spread asshole up to my nose and I began to take a long whiff--my lungs felt light as a feather and my brain began to buzz with the sensation of cold milk being poured over it, the sensation of pure knowledge. I couldn't explain it but I felt like I was learning so much about the past with every sniff of this strange man's butthole; his taco salad had all the ingredients of a delicious feast served up to supply the most exquisite sort of enlightenment.

Jeremy stormed out of the room as if he knew exactly what his father was talking about. This is when his dad started screaming at the top of his lungs, ramming his asshole against my nose like he wanted to break it; grinding his cold, damp asscheeks against my face as the office seemed to shake and rock. A couple pictures fell from from the wall, including one of my wife. I knew the noise would bring in some of my associates to see what was going on--and if they saw me with my face in this man's asshole I would be fired for sure-- but I was so consumed by the smell; the smell of this man's asshole possessed me! It took away my will. It was like the tight grip of billions of people, from all times and places, grabbing my wrist and pleading, "Please don't go. Stay long enough to know us so you can tell the others we are here. The best Mexican restaurant in town is inside of us all"

"Oh God! I've got a mortuary full of dead tacos in my butt!" Mr. Turner screamed. "Talk to the lettuce, teacher, and tell me I'm not crazy; commune with the tomatos and tell me you can't feel their love. The only other person to smell the taco meat inside me is the boy, and no one will believe him. And if he told them I let him smell it they'd lock me up!" Mr. Turner was crying, in hysterics, obviously in severe mental anguish. Finally, he fell to the floor and that was about the time the school principal walked in. Mr. Biddle looked at pants-less Mr. Turner on the floor as the crazed man said to him, "Please tell the others I've got dead tacos in my butt . . they live in the mortuary with all my dead ancestors." Then the principal looked at me; I returned his gaze dumbly, with greasy taco meat all over my face and you can probably guess the rest. Mr. Turner was put into a mental institution. Jeremy in a foster home. And me? Well, I was fired, of course, and due to my newly-triggered psychosis was unable to work at most places so, in an act of charity, I think, more than anything, an old friend of the family's, Mr. Campbell, manager of a nearby Taco Heaven franchise, hired me in as an assistant. It was the sort of job normally reserved for high school students but it kept me away from my increasingly bitchy wife and being around tacos all the time might help me figure out exactly what is wrong with me and what my dead ancestors were trying to say as they lurked within the ingredients within those hard, crunchy shells.

The other day at Taco Heaven, Mr. Campbell took the day off and left me in charge. I was standing behind the counter when Ernie, the UPS man, walked with the daily shipment of taco shells and ingredients. Ernie was a big, muscular guy with a blonde flat-top, big muscular arms. He didn't have much of an ass to speak of, but he wore those brown shorts with his sexy brown uniform and his legs looked fine. He lugged three big boxes of taco ingredients in on his sturdy, steel dolly, placed the heavy items on the floor one by one, grunting as he did so. Then he had me sign for them and looked at me with his big, blue eyes and said, "So you sign up for the softball league yet?"

"Well, I don't know, Ernie," I said, "when's the deadline for signing up?"

"It's the fifteenth," Ernie said, "two days from now. You'd better get on it if you're gonna do it, buddy."

Buddy? I'd never heard Ernie call me "buddy" before and I'm not sure I liked it. Was this what all the guys called each other when softball season came around? Buddy? I liked the mortuary in Ernie, so I chose to ignore it even though it seemed rather gauche to me.

"You know what, Ernie?" I said. "I need to clear it with the little woman first, but I'm sure she'll be fine with it. I figure she can go to the games and watch, gossip with the other wives and such. Yeah, count me in."

Ernie smiled, seeming satisfied. He took his receipt with my signature and as he was heading out the door, he shook his fist at me and said, "If you miss practice, I'll kick your ass." Then he was out the door.

Huh? Kick my ass? I knew Ernie was smiling when he said it; I was certain he was joking; it's just that the remark didn't seem at all appropriate. He didn't know me nearly well enough to joke with me like that, and even if he did was it even funny? Why would he say such a thing? I figured the softball league was populated by a few crude, working types and I didn't mind that. In fact, I welcomed the opportunity to do something fun with good old-fashioned men. But I felt Ernie's remark was crude at best. He was evidently one of those guys who came off as crude and offensive when he joked with you; an aggressive sense of humor even though he was trying to be friendly. You know what, though? I have a bad habit of over-analyzing things. Plus, I liked the mortuary in Ernie so I chose to ignore the whole thing, figuring it didn't mean anything and I was being too sensitive and paranoid. Sniffing Mr. Turner's butthole and getting so close to all that seasoned, brown taco beef inside of him that day had really messed me up bad.

The next day I signed up to be on Ernie's team. Even though I knew he was joking about kicking my ass if I didn't show up, I understood how these guys could get angry about such a thing. I suspected that a lot of guys would sign up for these things then they wouldn't take it seriously. So yeah, even though Ernie was joking, just being a bit crass in his attempt to be my friend, I could sort of understand where the humor was coming from. It was coming from deep down in his brown, smelly mortuary and I was beginning to like it the more I thought about it.

So practice was in two days, and the day before, the UPS truck pulls up to Taco Heaven. I'm there alone again. In walks Ernie and he seemed pretty pumped up. I'm sure loading and unloading those big boxes all day gave him a good workout, made him feel alive and real and like he was doing something real manly. Something worth getting pumped up about. He rolled in his dolly with a big, beaming glow on his tan face; had a grin from cheek to cheek. On his dolly he had the usual shipment--taco shells and more taco shells; cheese, tomatoes and lettuce. But he also had something else, a plastic bag full of something which he tossed at me.

"Here, catch!" he said. The bag hit me in the face and then fell to the floor. Luckily, it contained something soft so nothing was damaged. But still. I hadn't been expecting him to do such a thing, to just out of nowhere throw this bag and hit me right between the eyes with it. And even though I could have caught it, it took me by surprise and to tell you the truth, it freaked me out a little. Stunned, I just picked it up off the floor, chose to ignore Ernie's rather rude way of throwing it at me.

"Man, you better get better at catching stuff than that, buddy, if you're gonna be on our team!" Ernie said.

"Oh yeah," I said, red-faced, flustered, trying to smile but not doing a very good job. "What's in here?"

"It's your softball uniform. I saw that you signed up and thought I'd give this to you."

"Wow, thanks Ernie," I said, honestly touched.

"So whaddya think?"

"It's nice and. . . brown, just like the taco meat inside our tacos after it is seasoned so well," I said.

"Yeah, to tell you the truth, half of the people on the team are guys I work with. We're all UPS drivers who love our jobs; we love the work-out it gives us; how it pumps us up. We want to bring the same pride and professionalism we take in our jobs out on the softball field, so we thought, "Hey, why not bring the spirit of hard work and turn it into good softball playing? We take our softball very seriously, you know."

"Yeah, I see," I said. "I plan on taking it seriously too. I can't wait!"

"That's good, buddy," Ernie said. "Oh yeah, you need to wear that uniform to practice, too. Practice is tomorrow evening at 6:30, so don't be late."

Wear the uniform to practice? That seemed a little strange to me, but not really a big deal, I guess. Ernie started heading out, and as he opened the door he looked at me and said, "If you don't wear that uniform to practice tomorrow, I'm gonna poop on your station wagon!" Then he was out the door.

Poop on my station wagon?! Obviously, he was joking, but were all the UPS workers on the softball team as crass and crude as Ernie? I only hoped there were some store owners, or doctors and lawyers on the team also, or something, people with a little more subtle wit and sharper refinement to balance things out. I liked the smell of Ernie's mortuary, the dead taco meat that dwelled between his soft, white shells so I tried not to worry about it too much the rest of the day. The station wagon was practically brand-new, though, and if I found out that Ernie pooped on it, boy, would I be mad.

Well, the day ended and I locked up the store. I headed out to the station wagon and my heart pounded and blood raced through my veins as I swore I saw sort of lumpy-looking, brownish, wet thing resting on the hood. Surely not, I thought. I hoped. But the closer I got to the truck, the clearer it became. I found myself right up next to it, looking down on a wet, curled up blob on what was definitely human shit on the hood of my station wagon! I didn't know what to think; I blanked out; I was so shocked that I didn't even wipe it off, just got in the wagon and started driving home, staring at the turd on the hood, hoping it would just disappear so I wouldn't have to deal with this. It was times like these where my compulsions began to gnaw at me and I had a severe urge to stick the magic marker up my ass again and cry.

"Where the hell have you been?" I demanded of her.

She told me she thought my softball practice was tonight, that she didn't think I'd be home to notice her being gone, anyway. It all seemed a little strange, though; a little askew--was Tina having another affair? I just sighed, figuring I had enough on my mind to have to think of such a miserable thing tonight. Her excuse actually seemed plausible, so I just let it go at that. I decided to keep the whole "turd on my station wagon" thing to myself. It was getting late and I needed my rest for practice the next day.

Finally, the time arrived for the practice and confrontation with Ernie. I arrived at exactly 6:30, brown uniform on, and I was a little perplexed to see that no one else had on the same brown uniform. Everyone else on the field was just wearing random, casual wear. T-shirts and blue jeans. All different colored shorts, but none of them were brown like mine. I walked on the field, carrying my glove, and was greeted by a bunch of jeers from a few of the guys.

"Hey check out this guy! He thinks he's one of us!" one of them said.

"This is what Ernie told me to wear. He said this is what everyone wears." I was feeling very uncomfortable, like a wagon being circled. Like I had been a complete sucker and fallen into some sort of terribly embarassing trap.

"Yeah, to the games," one of the guys said. "We don't wear them at practice. Ernie was just pulling your leg." The guy then held out his hand for me to shake it. I reluctantly shook it, then another guy came up and patted me on the back. "It's all in fun, buddy," he said. "Relax." I wanted to relax. Actually, the congeniality of the guys began to make me feel a little better about things, but there was still the issue of the turd. I looked around the field, at all the guys, searching for Ernie. Then suddenly I felt someone coming up from behind me and grabbing me around the waist, bear hugging me with all his strength. He lifted me about four feet up into the air.

"Nice brown uniform, buddy! You look just like that blob of taco meat I put on your station wagon yesterday!" the man hugging me said in sarcasm. It was Ernie. He let out a big, hearty laugh as I turned to face him. "Nice to see you made it," he said.

"Yeah," I replied. "It's nice that I made it to practice on time so you wouldn't have to poop on my station wagon, Ernie. Oh wait," I said with a wry grin, "it wasn't a turd, it was a blob of taco meat, right?"

"Then who the hell did?" I yelled. "Man, that shit isn't cool. That's a brand-new car!"

One of the guys tried to console me. "Man, it's all in fun," he said. "Don't worry about it. Ernie can be a jerk sometimes, but he's a good guy once you get to know him. And he's the best pitcher and hitter we have."

"A good guy?" I said, flabbergasted, smelling Ernie's mortuary as the odor of dead seasoned taco meat spread throughout the field, imagining the process of a man placing a taco he had stolen right from under my nose-- while delivering supplies to Taco Heaven-- on my station wagon and then denying it straight to my face when we both KNOW it was him, and how it has somehow become "not a big deal". How would that work? All of a sudden it was being set up somehow that none of the awful things Ernie said or did were a big deal. "The man stole a fucking taco!" I exclaimed.

"Look, just forget about it, okay? We'll all go to Taco Heaven after practice and buy a shitload of tacos to make up for it," the guy said. "Now why don't you go out in centerfield and let's see what you can do." I did what he said, not really knowing why, then I caught a strong whiff of Ernie's dead taco mortuary as a breeze went by my face and I just decided this was all a fluke, some weird beginning that just needed to be ironed out. This softball thing was going to be fun from here on out. Ernie had had his little period of "messing with the rookie," probably because he didn't think I was serious about playing. But now here I was, on time and wearing the brown uniform just like he wanted. He knew I was serious so now we could all just have fun being men and playing a game.

I just stood out in centerfield, slapping my fist into my mitt, ready to catch my first fly ball. Ernie was pitching. Whoever was batting took quite a few swings before he finally connected to one of Ernie's fast balls. Once he did, it came right to me. My heart raced in excitement as the ball went high into the air and my eyes followed it. Soon, it began its descent. I was right on it, ready to impress the guys with my first catch when all of a sudden I heard Ernie yell, "Godddamit, if you don't catch this I'm gonna fuck your wife again like I did last night!"

The ball bounced out of my glove and plopped upon the grass. I looked at Ernie, in a rage, and said, "What the fuck did you say?"

"Nothing!" Ernie yelled, turning toward the batter with his back facing me. "Don't worry about it. I was gonna fuck your wife whether you caught the ball or not."

The smell of Ernie's mortuary then began to gag me but I liked it somehow. The rich, pungent earthy odor of his dead brown seasoned taco meat seemed to permeate through the fiber of every blade of bright green grass I stood upon out there in center field. I had to sniff his butt to be sure, check out all of the ingredients for crispness and freshness; I had to know for certain that he had been the one who pooped on my station wagon so I reached into my pocket. I pulled out a small plastic sandwich bag in which I had placed all of the taco meat that was on my car hood for evidence. As I looked at Tina out there sitting in the bleachers, waving at Ernie as he struck another batter out, I put the open bag up to my nose and began breathing in the fumes of what I was certain was Ernie's mortuary. Sniffing his seasoned ground beef (but I needed to sniff his butt to be sure!); taking in the memories, all those who had come before him--the dead workers at Taco Heaven, they plagued me. I began to inch my way toward the infield, closer and closer to second base. I looked up into the evening sky and saw the sweet birds and then I looked at Ernie on the pitcher's mound. "This one's for you, babe!" he said to my wife, right in front of me, as he threw a fast ball which the next batter swung at in futility. Ernie's head was big like a burrito, I realized this now, much larger than mine and he was surely Tiki's father.

The dead tacos screamed in my mind to be eaten and sniffed for proof of their succulent taste and worth to society. In my soul I heard the taco shells crunching that Ernie delivered daily; in my heart I heard the squishing of tomatoes drowned by hot sauce and sick sour cream, as I continued to inhale the fumes inside the plastic, turd-filled baggie and was now standing right next to the second baseman. I didn't need to worry about any balls going out to center field because Ernie was now in a groove and no one could hit a damn thing off of him. The second baseman looked at me curiously as I surreptitiously jerked the baggie from my nose down to my side, appearing nothing but totally innocent even though I was guilty of butt sniffing. I had ruined my life. This urge, this compulsion toward the dead, toward pure, true knowledge which makes you numb and unable to even read a book because you know the words have no bearing in the end when it comes down to the hole, the taco stand we are all doomed to in our gloom and I'll live in my tomb, with my dead ancestors, remembering nothing but NOW!!! The seasoned ground beef in the baggie; the tiny, sweaty brown hole between Ernie's buttcheeks, two soft white flour tortilla shells that were driving me mad!

Then suddenly I made my move, shoving the second basemen to the dirt as I lunged toward Ernie like a leopard. "What the fuck?" he shouted in surprise as, down on my knees I jerked down his jogging pants in one fell swoop, immediately jamming my nose between his tight, hairy butt cheeks, spreading them widely then quickly rubbing my nostrils into the dark, hideous cavern of his dead taco mortuary for I knew my time was short. It was mind-blowing. The same sensation of cold, white milk washed over my brain that I felt when I sniffed Mr. Turner's taco salad on that horrible, fateful day not long ago and I saw it in my mind plain as day-- Ernie stopping in front of my station wagon after delivering the packages to Taco Heaven; looking all around with a mischievous grin on his face before dropping his brown UPS shorts and quickly evacuating the steaming hot turd upon the hood of my car. The smell was exactly the same between his butt and the seasoned ground beef I had placed in the baggie and then I knew for sure. Gagging, I stepped back and on my hands and knees began spitting up right there on the pitcher's mound, my mind and entire insides, on every level, being eaten alive by the dead tacos and so many memories of haunting, ancient cheese, lettuce and tomato that I dare not try and understand. I just knew. I knew everything then as Ernie said to me, pulling his pants back up, "Did you just sniff my fucking butt?"

"You did it, Ernie," I said in between gagging. "You pooped on my station wagon and I have the proof now." I fumbled in the pocket for the baggie which contained his brown ground beef, tossed it toward his feet. "The taco meat in that baggie smells just like your butt did just now." All I heard was a short period of shocked silence as I stared down at the ground, trying not to lose my mind, trying to let the dead tacos and the memories of absolutely nothing take over until I heard a sudden eruption of laughter. First from Ernie, then from the second baseman, and then it contagiously caught on until every one in the field was laughing at me, and soon after I heard the laughter of my wife. Then I heard Ernie shout "Play ball!"

And so it went. Obviously, my marriage was ruined. I began living in a motel room, continuing to go to work but feeling dreadfully sorry for myself. I started to eat nothing but hot sauce every single day. I stayed up eating hot sauce later and later, subsequently getting to Taco Heaven to work later and later in the mornings, more and more nauseous and with my guts burning and sphincter evacuating loudly amongst my co-workers, until eventually Mr. Campbell had to let me go and somehow I found myself sitting on a bench with all these guys around me. Unlike the last time, during my secret life before Tiki was born, when I tried butt sex it was just for fun and in the spirit of experimentation. I led a nice stable life with a decent income from being a a guidance counselor, had a nice house, with the prospect of a nice family life ahead of me. This time when I let men butt fuck me it was different. It was a matter of survival, and somehow I'd let myself get strung out on hot sauce, hardly eating anything else. I was on the set of yet another gay porno movie, when one of the actors I was scheduled to "stunt butt" for that morning, Buck Lee, came up to me. He was a big buff guy with short, blonde hair, a brown sugary tan, and biceps that made one wonder why he wasn't starring in a movie with The Rock. He was a handsome, good-looking guy and the star of the movie we were making.

"Say, Taco," Buck said, walking up to me naked, his huge thick cock dangling before my eyes. "Haven't seen you on the set for a couple weeks."

"I've been filling in for Hugo Hamstring over at Mayfair Productions."

"Filling in?" Buck questioned smugly. "Don't you mean getting filled for him?"

I looked away from Buck; he had his cock dangling right in front of my face. Everyone knew I didn't suck cock. I was a specialist.

"Still not sucking dick on film?" Buck asked.

"No. You know what I do, Buck."

"Oh, that's right. You don't suck cock on film because your face isn't good-looking enough. You're all about the other end aren't you?" Buck smiled arrogantly, looked around to make sure some of the other performers were watching. "We gotta guy who only deals with the dark side here, fellas!" Buck said, as the others all laughed.

"You think you can fill in for these?" Buck said, turning around and spreading his soft tortilla shells in front of me. I just stared morosely at his smooth, hairless spread shells and gaping taco stand, needing another packet of hot sauce; needing another piece of seasoned ground beef to rub against my nose; needing to be alone.

"Brown hole is a brown hole, Buck," I said. "No one notices it ain't really your ass getting fucked on film."

"That's good, Taco," Buck said, "because I like it when 5th tier, former Taco Heaven workers like you do my dirty work."

I just stared at the set, glossy-eyed, as the camera man filmed Buck as he got it on with some muscle dude. The muscle dude had an enormous, uncut prick at least 10 inches long. They kissed. Buck sucked his cock. They got in a "69" for awhile, rimming each others assholes, tonguing one anothers sweaty, manly balls. I started to stand up when I saw Buck get on all fours as the muscle dude positioned himself behind his ass, stroking his hard, long prick, getting ready to jam it all the way into Buck's tiny, dark butthole. Buck looked over his shoulder and said, "Give me all that man-meat, soldier. I want every inch of that cock up my ass."

But it wouldn't be Buck's ass that got fucked.

"Cut!" the director suddenly shouted. Buck stood up and walked toward me as I slowly moped toward where he had just been on his hands and knees.

"Bring on the stunt-butt!" the director said.

Buck passed me and slapped me on the back. "Make me look good, you little butt-whore," he said.

I took his position, on all fours, as the muscle dude positioned himself once again, stroking himself, looking down at my wretched, wrecked asshole. "You want me to fuck this?" he questioned the director. "Man, this ass don't look anything like Buck's. It looks like a family pack of more than a dozen tacos are rotting down in there."

I just stared straight ahead, waiting for it to get over with. There was a time when I truly loved getting fucked in the ass, but now it was just a matter of getting by.

"It's the only ass we could get on such short notice," the director said. "Don't worry, once we do some work in the editing room no one will notice it ain't Buck's. A brown hole is a brown hole."

"Wonderful," I thought, and braced myself, grimacing. The director yelled "Action!" and the muscle dude started shoving his huge hard cock into my ass. I didn't even have to worry about tightening up any more. The cocks just slid right in and out, no matter how big as my brown taco meat was greasy; it provided for great lubrication, as I stared ahead at all the cameras, there under the heat of all the lights, thinking of Tina and what she was doing now, wondering why this all had to happen to me. Was Sally's leg still broken? Had Tiki's head grown any bigger? I didn't like the fact that Tiki wasn't mine, that Tina was cheating on me, but she was the only woman I'd ever loved at one time. I felt the muscle dude slapping my ass, felt his thick prick plummeting deep into my taco stand, crashing through all my hard, crunchy shells that were now like bits of corn-yellow fragments of shit-stained glass. I was worried because my asshole was getting really, really loose. I'd have to take some time off work to tighten back up and wasn't sure I could afford it. As I felt that cock reaming me, stretching my shithole wider and wider, I began to worry that all the hot sauce I'd been eating would make me shit all over the place right in front of everybody. As the muscle dude fucked me harder and harder, the camera zooming in on just the area where his cock penetrated my bunghole, not wanting the viewer to see any other part of my wretched body, I suddenly felt the dam break loose. A rush of horror shot through my body as I couldn't help but allow a huge gush of runny, warm taco meat start to seep out of my ass, gushing out in its grotesque, stinking glory, all over the muscle dude's gentitals, dripping down my legs.

"Oh fuck man!" the muscle dude yelled in disgust. "This dude's shitting dead tacos all over the place!"

I started crying as tears flooded my eyes, saying, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Tina. Tiki. Buck. All you guys." But no one heard me.

"Cut! Cut!" the director yelled as I saw his shadow hovering over me, saw his finger being pointed in my face. "You nasty sonnuvabitch!" he said. "I'll see that you never get any more work stunt-butting anywhere in this town!"