It is certainly true that in my many years as a dung gobbler I have felt a great deal of frustration and considerable resentment, but I have suffered no ulcers, no migraines, and no hemorrhoids. This exemplary health I attribute to my practice of keeping someone in reserve to whom I can confide what I actually felt, what I should have said, and what I might have done. When my confidant himself mortifies me, I have recourse to thoughts of murder or suicide.

Of course, I never attack the well-equipped. The bemused and innocent are plumper. The prospect of a blow in retaliation terrifies me. All my assaults use guerrilla tactics and reveal the putrescent core of the secret bully.

But I am old-fashioned. The years of kowtowing, the million false smiles, the bibles and snacks and banquets and smorgasbords of reeking feces are a source of pride to me. It seems a major accomplishment to have deceived so thoroughly and often. The failures rankle. Those who saw through me or were too subtle or simple for my techniques are a lasting embarrassment. But to have manufactured peace and even liking in a relationship whose true elements, if revealed, would be completely explosive, makes me smug.

My meanness, on the other hand, horrifies me, makes sleep a precarious state in which my dreams are agonizing, and remind me of my own venom. I would like to be able to accept the Catholic religion. Formal penance seems clean and enviable. Maybe the new eclectic absolution could free me of this little scene:

Dusty, my object of adoration at the time, was in the hospital recovering from minor injuries suffered during an automobile accident. My feelings toward him had always been mixed, but were, nonetheless, passionate. It had come to my attention that the urine queen, Moira Clancy, had taken him to bed with her on several occasions during my occupancy. I had always maintained distantly cordial relations with Moira in much the same manner that a well-fed and relatively wise mutt is on good terms with a stink bug. My jealous fury, combined with a need to use my muscles on somebody, encouraged me in hatching a plot. I invited Moira to drink wine in my room. I also invited Raymond. The audience was crucial, a silent ally, a goad. When they arrived separately I furnished equally warm welcomes for them both. The wine passed. We grew jovial, though I detected in Ray’s eye a consciousness of the disparity in our trio, a surprise at finding himself in a small party that included Clancy. The peanuts were going around. I stared into the glass while drumming up my zest for what followed.

“Moira, you may have been wondering why I asked you to come here…”

She blinked flatly; the light glanced off the lenses of her spectacles.

“I have something in particular to ask you about.”

She gathered her big knees close, lifted her chin, attentive.