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True! I am afraid -- very afraid -- and almost paralyzed with nervousness. The fear sets my nerves on end, gripping across me like a hand-knitted wool pullover in a surprise summer storm. My very soul is the unwilling victim this mongrel cur in heat humps away at.

Crazy? Insane? Of course that doesn't make me insane! I'm as sane as anyone else in this room. I... I can prove it! Yes, only a man of the keenest, most steadfast sanity could have plotted and executed as well as I.

It began in the summer of my 17th year as I sat in a fetid summer school classroom. The heat boiled the institutional staleness, government-issue cleaning supplies, and stench of sweaty pits, feet, and 'nads into an oppressive and suffocating brew.

Then it happened. Emanating from Tubby Toby -- freakazoid of Summer High, behemoth of post-pubescents, the literal 800-pound gorilla in the room -- the sound of a thousand thunders ripped across the room. And fast upon it, like the wretched downpour upon a hapless hitchhiker came the most unbelievably, horrifyingly overpowering stench ever to assault any nostril anywhere. It overwhelmed the previous reek, making it but the pleasant memory of a delicate rosebud.

And Tubby -- that damnable wretch -- he but smirked as all gagged and laid out and evacuated their lunches upon counter, desk, and floor, smirked his irksome smirk and laughed, "Mexican lunch!"

Louisa Maya Allende -- star softball pitcher and afternoon slave to her father's taco stand -- removed her mule and nailed Tubby Toby squarely in the head with it. That didn't help the room's stench any.

That is how it began. The fear, the irrational fear -- but no, it is not irrational, cannot be irrational! for did I not experience it myself? did not an entire room of my self-same comrades experience it like a Kurdish village under Saddam Hussein's greasy thumb? -- that one day I too would let rip with the vapor from Hell's gaping maul, that I too would suffer the fate of all eyes hatefully reproaching me, that I too would spend the next week branded with Sketchers writ in inverse puffy red boldness 'cross my brow.

Let this then be the proof of my sanity -- my ingenuity! I plotted, I conceived! Beginning that very night, every night at exactly midnight so as not to disturb the rest of the household, I began eating bowl upon bowl of canned beans, chili products, and any other combustible my body would accept. Thus slowly, carefully, I spent night after night sitting up expelling bodily gases, carefully twisting and manipulating my sphincter. Night after night I listened to the loud bursts, the machine gun rat-a-tats I feared surely would wake the entire household, the neighbors, the neighborhood! But none came, none knew.

Slowly, cunningly, I gained control of the gases -- conquered them! -- till at last one day, emboldened by my progress, I ate all my meals at Louisa Maya's taco stand, then precisely at midnight emptied every cabinet in the house of bean products. When my stomach bloated up like the Michelin Man in heat, I did not run. I did not hide in my room or a faraway closet. I sat quietly in the living room. Slowly, slowly did I expel my putrid entrails' gift to the room. So slowly, so quietly that for the longest time it was hardly noticed. Frozen maple sap dripping through a knothole is slower than I was!

At long last, almost with a start, those others in the room who had this night stayed up till that late hour began to sniff and look around, as if searching for an important and just missed item. I joined them in the sport. Sniff-sniff, glance-glance! What jolly and great fun! All looking and not finding, all searching and not seeing, and I -- I! -- as the source of this delightful discomfort. At long last when I had expelled the lot, my companions cornered the family dog as the culprit. Monty-boy was thoroughly beaten and cast from the house, while I laid down to the most quiet and peaceful night's rest of my life.

I no longer had to fear the curse of Tubby Toby, of Louisa Maya's heel.

Until tonight.

Tonight when three boon companions showed up at my doorstep, seeking nothing more than companionship and friendly chatter. Even as I opened the door, I felt a certain dread creep upon me. Why had they arrived this night? Why was I certain that doom presented itself at my door? I've heard that man knows when his fated time has arrived, and I felt certain that fate laughed as I sealed the door behind these unexpected guests. In an instant I knew -- knew! -- as I followed these intruders into my abode that this night held only ill for me. One intruder who I knew not, but who had joined t'others, possessed the dreaded branding tool of female fiends everywhere: a new pair of freshly shined mules!

We had not long entered the drawing room, pulling chairs into a circle, opening brews and carefully balancing them upon whatever precipice presented itself, when I felt a growing pressure begin to build deep within my bowels. As the pressure grew, so did my consternation. I felt my face begin to contort, sweat began to seep from my pours, as if pushed out by the rapidly increasing gases.

Never before in my life had I felt such a rapid onset. Had some jokester slipped a massive whoopie cushion onto my chair and by some twist of spiteful fate the expelled gases not entered the room to all's delight but found their way up my unsuspecting rectum, filling my body, and using me as an unwilling instrument of delayed surprise? What possibly could have caused this? Had I not since that first night of triumph studiously avoided even the streets possessed of filthy, bean-vendoring skunks?

Why? Why now of all times would the most massive eruption in history build deep within me? As that long ago night of Monty-boy's beating flitted through my brain, I realized that this build-up had already far exceeded that combustion. I could hardly breath, and now the sweat flowed freely and obviously -- it had to be obvious! -- and yet my companions continued their gaiety as if all were well, as if they could not see.

Liars! Liars! Surely they must see my distress! my bulging eyes! my twisted torso!

But wait... softly now... softly... I can handle this. While surely the biggest challenge of my expelling career, am I not more than up to the task? Am I not the master of my bowels and sphincter? Are they not under my total control? Is not my sphincter "under my thumb"?

So slowly I began my manipulations, began my work of expelling this foul waste into the air. Just a little at a time, but as the night wore on and the conversation went unassuaged, as not a nostril twitched, I became emboldened. I let out more and more, faster and faster, and all without making a sound! Noiseless was I! Why, there should be an award for such bravado, control, and excellence!

But then -- as suddenly as a cough in the night -- I started and looked violently around. (Was it not odd that my companions did not react even to this?) Surely Tubby Toby had entered the room, for never in my life except that spasm of time in that rancid, sweltering summer schoolroom had I ever experienced such a stench. It wrapped itself around me. It thrust itself up my nostrils and stabbed at my sinus cavity.

And my "companions" -- these "friends" -- these intruders continued on, oblivious to all. I may as well not have been in the room. I may as well have been but one more precipice for balancing discarded longnecks! How could they not know? How could they not smell? How could they not see?

Yes, see! For now it seemed to me -- my senses so finely tuned, so keen to the outward expanding miasma -- that I could see the damnable filth as it filled the room. Oh, my God! I can't take any more! Why don't you react? Why don't you gag? Why don't you rush to the phone and have Louisa Maya deliver tacos so my indignity can be complete?!

I gag, I claw at my throat and rip at my nose, I rise so rapidly I knock my chair across the room and against the wall shattering it into a million shards.

"Stop it!" I shriek. "Stop with your laughing and dissembling joviality! Look! Look here! It is I! I am the source of your noxious indignity! I who have coated you with putrid grime! I smelt it! I dealt it!"

And the last thing I ever remember of this world is seeing my friends' shocked, twisted faces, and the heel of a mule hitting me squarely between the eyes.