On his fortieth birthday, Joe came to the conclusion that he was lower than dirt.
   How else would you describe a man with the thoughts he had?
   How else would you describe a man who did the things he did when nobody was watching him?
   He was lower than dirt. Plain and simple. As vile as a rabid dog, skulking around, muzzle foaming, burying his dirty little secrets like a ratty bone.
   He watched as Kerry Anne picked at her salad, and stopped a scowl from forming on his face. He didn’t recall when she had ceased being beautiful to him, only that one day she had. Kerry Anne, with her sinewy muscles, her boyish thinness; everything about her was compact and economical, like a Japanese car.
   "Enjoying your salad, honey?" he ventured, although he could tell she wasn’t. She flipped her fork through the lettuce as if she was looking for bugs, or worse, something with fat on it. When it came to fat, Kerry Anne was the best seek-and-destroy missile he’d ever seen.
   "Mmmm," she said. She was reading Vogue, and didn’t look up.
   "I got you a surprise," he told her.
   "I didn’t get you anything," she said.
   "Nah, that’s okay. But I got you something."
She looked at him dully. "You’re going to spend less time on the computer?"
He pretended not to hear. "I got your favorite.""My favorite?" she repeated. "My favorite what?"
   Joe went to the hall closet, and brought a bag into the kitchen. With a histrionic flourish that he knew fell flat, he withdrew the bag and placed the expensive chocolates on top of the open magazine in front of her.
   "Godiva!" he said, a bit too loudly. He felt himself grinning stupidly.
   She glared at him. "Why are you doing this? Why?"
   "Doing what?"
   "Undermining me! Why are you undermining me? You know I am trying to lose weight. You know I have been watching what I eat. You can’t not know!"
   "But you’ve been so good!" he countered. "And you look fine, you look great! You’re beautiful! You don’t need to lose weight. You need to gain weight! Kerry Anne, I’ve been meaning to say something about this. You’ve lost enough weight. You’re fine!"
   She closed her magazine. "What is going on here, Joe? What is wrong with you?"
   "Wrong with me? What do you mean?"
   "You know damn well what I mean. I'm still at least thirty pounds overweight. You know I have been dieting. What is this new thing you’re doing, bringing me goodies? Why are you tempting me? Is this some sort of a game?"
   "It’s not a game, Kerry Anne."
   The solemnity of his voice made her pause before she went on.
   "Two days ago, it was chocolate danish. Before that, it was halvah. Before that, key lime pie! Why are you doing this?"
   "I like the way you looked fat," he said, quietly.
   She stared at him.
   "What?" she said, closing her eyes.
   "Yes, godammit. I like the way you looked fat. I love the way you looked. You were gorgeous, sexy, womanly."
   "But I was three hundred pounds!" A scream.
   He nodded solemnly. "Yes, you were."
   She got quiet for a minute. He could tell she was mulling it over. He held his breath, waiting for her to leap into his arms, thanking him for saving her from a lifetime of salads with fat-free dressing, Pam-sprayed frying pans, gaily multi-colored pills.
   Finally, she got up. In almost a whisper, she said, "Joe, you’re a sick bastard." She left the kitchen.
   She’s right, she’s right. I shouldn’t have told her, I shouldn’t have told her.
   He popped a chocolate truffle in his mouth, and fought the urge to cry.

   Bliss.
   Oh God…how long has this stuff been around?
  Joe stared at the computer screen, unaware that his mouth was hanging open and that the hand that clutched the mouse was quivering.
   Oh God….. so much pain, so much pain….could have been….avoided….
   Playing on the Internet, he had entered the words "fat women" into a search engine as a lark. He thought he’d get circus fat ladies, or maybe Mama Cass’ tribute page.
   The computer hummed and whirred, finally informing Joe that it had found 122,000 documents for his topic. It listed the top ten sites, and now Joe gawked at the names of some of them: Dimensions Magazine-Where Big is Beautiful; Bob’s Bodacious Big Babes; Gorgeous Fat Women-All Nudes!; Big Beautiful Women…
   Oh God….bliss. Pure bliss.
   The tips of his fingers tingled as he scrolled the pages of the nude women; he wanted to suck the huge breasts, those jutting pink casabas decorated with perky cherries; ached to stick his finger into the generous belly folds; longed to feel the mammoth thighs quivering against his neck as he plunged into dark, wet sweetness that would swallow him whole.
   He dreamily traced stretchmarks on the screen with his finger; he placed the palm of his hand on the widest backside he had ever seen unclothed, gawking at the width of her. He could lie on top of her and only occupy one-third her width. This thought fascinated him and he was suddenly erect, like a teenager.
   Joe, you’re a sick bastard, sick bastard, sick bastard…
   A picture of a brunette lustily sucking an ice cream cone commanded his attention for an hour. He wasn’t sure if the reason was merely the phallic symbol; there surely was more to it. As he fantasized about watching her eat six or seven ice cream cones, he heard his blood roar in his ears and felt a sticky wetness spreading around his thighs. He gasped in shame, though he was still alone.
   Joe, you’re a sick bastard.
   He put his head in his hands.

   He reached over to caress his wife, and he was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t resist. He thought about recent events, what life had been like since he’d confessed his secret to her. Kerry Anne on the kitchen phone, turning her back and lowering her voice when he walked in. Kerry Anne chomping defiantly on her salad, fixing him with an angry glare. Kerry Anne in their marital bed, making herself as small as possible so they wouldn’t touch. It was hell.
   But now, she was letting him touch her; she was even breathing heavily.
   He was going to ask her if this was a birthday gift, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment. She read his mind.
   "I’m sorry, honey," she panted in his ear. "I read up about this stuff, and everything’s okay."
   Joe laughed, and sat up. "Oh, yeah?"
   "Yes," she said, laughing a little, too. She sat up. "I’ve done some research about this. It’s just a harmless little fetish; it will go away. It isn’t important, really."
   He looked at her. "I wish that were so," he said.
   She flipped the lamp on. "It is so, Joe. It is! You’re probably just going through some nostalgia thing for who I used to be, who we used to be, you know, during the time I was…heavier. That’s when we were younger, when we first met. It makes sense."
   He didn’t answer.
   "Joe," she said, snuggling up against him, "everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry about it! It’s very normal for middle--for men your age to have these weird little fantasy things. Let’s just forget about it."
   When he didn’t answer her, she prodded him. "Okay?"
   He sighed. "Look, Kerry Anne, I don’t want to upset you, but it’s not a ‘fetish.’ It’s a lot more than that. It’s a preference, it’s a fire in my belll, it’s something that’s been a part of me since I was a little boy. I am finally starting to deal with it."
   She narrowed her eyes. "Oh, really?" she said, and he didn’t like the sudden change in her tone. "Is that," she continued coldly, "why you married me?"
"That was part of it, yes," he answered, and she slapped him.
   He tried to squeeze her hand, but she pulled it away.
   "Look, I love you. I will love you no matter what. If you’re three hundred pounds or one hundred and twenty pounds or whatever. That will never change, okay? Let’s not talk about it any more." He lay down again, gestured for her to shut off the light. She ignored him.
   "’No matter what’," she repeated. "But you’d prefer it if I was three hundred pounds?"
   He paused a long time before he answered. "Yes."
   "Three-fifty? Four? Five?" She was screaming.
   "Kerry Anne, don’t do this."
   Suddenly, the world had become a blur. He could suddenly see all the hairline cracks in his life opening up, revealing a stinking black morass. What a strange brew this was, the light airiness of finally telling her mixed with the shame of it, like a dark stain spreading on his pants.
   "Answer me!"
   "You’re upset now, we can’t discuss it when you’re like this. Just calm down."
   "I won’t calm down, you fucking bastard!" She stared at him, eyes wild.
   Then, in a quick, angry move, yanked her nightgown over her head. She was naked underneath. "Look at this!" a shriek. "Tell me you don’t like this, tell me you don’t want this? This diet was for you!"
   He sat up again, heard his voice get louder. "No, Kerry Anne, it was for you."
   She started to cry. "It was for both of us, for my health, for my fucking sanity! And now you’re saying you can only be turned on by me if I am a big, fat, cow?"
   She was crying now, her chest heaving.
   "You were never a cow, Kerry Anne," he said quietly.
   "Yes I was, you sonofabitch!" she screamed. "I was hideous! I couldn’t fit into anything that wasn’t a tent! I was a big fat ugly miserable cow, you sick bastard!" She leapt from the bed and a second later the bathroom door slammed.
   Happy Birthday, you sick bastard.

   They were sitting in the living room.
   Kerry Anne was knitting, the television was on. To an outsider, all was normal.
   Joe tried to make conversation.
   "How was your day?"
   She grunted. "Okay." She didn’t look up.
   "You want to watch something special?" he asked, picking up the TV Guide.
   "Why don’t you put on Rosanne so you can drool at her?" she said, head still down.
   Joe sighed. "Look, do you want to talk about this?"
   "Talk about what? That my husband’s a freak?"
   Joe felt himself start to wilt, felt a headache begin behind his eyeballs. "Oh, so that’s what you think I am?"
   "What do you think you are?" she snapped back.
   "Your husband. A man. A man with a preference. A man who loves you."
   "But you don’t prefer me."
   "I love you," he said.
   "That’s not enough."
   "It should be, Kerry Anne. I am working through this. I am sorry I said anything to you. That was a mistake."
   She seemed to soften. "I don’t want you to hold anything back from me, Joe."
   "How can I not? Look what happened here!"
   She sat quietly for a moment, then said, "talk to me."
   "You don’t want to hear it. You can’t handle it."
   "Yes I can, I can. Please give me another chance. I was upset, angry, scared. This is all so…new, confusing. I don’t know what to do with this, how to feel."
   "It’s confusing to me, too. I only realized I can’t fight it any more, hide it any more. And I didn’t want to hide it from you. Not you."
   She kissed his lips softly. "Please forgive me. Talk to me. I’ll try to understand. Please."
   "You’re sure about this."
   "Yes, oh yes. Please."
   "Okay," he said, drawing in a deep breath.
   "I don’t even know where to start with this. I never even heard myself say these words out loud, you know?"
   She nodded.
   "I was asking myself the other day, you know, when I realized I was…different. I was young, very young. Maybe ten, eleven. The chubby girls in class excited me. Of course, I was just a kid, I didn’t understand sex, but I knew I felt…different when I watched them. Happy, kinda, and excited. The thin girls, the popular ones, left me cold. I knew even then that this was to be a big secret, that I couldn’t tell my friends about it, or even ask them questions. I knew it was bad, because I saw how those chubby girls were treated, even then." He paused. "And then, when I got older, I figured it would go away. I did what every normal teenager does. Jerk off to Playboy, date thin girls. But I still knew what I was, even if I wasn’t going to ever act on it. I wonder if that’s how gay people feel? Anyway, I did these weird things. I would trace the outline of the models, making them much bigger. And remember those awful diet ads? The before and after? I used to switch them around, making the fat ones the "after". Crazy, huh?" Pause. "And I’d see these really pretty thin girls at high school, at college. And I would fantasize about them getting fat, what they’d look like, where they’d store the extra weight. I got real good at that, figuring out who’d be a pear shape, who’d be an hour glass, who’d carry it well, who wouldn’t, that kind of thing. I can still do it, you know. When someone I know gains weight, I can predict exactly where they’ll put it, you know? Anyway, then the food thing came into it, or, at least, I became aware that it was all tied in."
   She interrupted him. "Food? You mean food excites you, or something?"
   "Well, yeah, you can put it that way. Feeding a woman excites me. Watching her eat, really eat and enjoy her food, drives me crazy. I used to take these girls out to dinner, and get really depressed as I watched them pick at their salads---uh, sorry---and fantasize about them gorging themselves on spareribs or porkchops. The thought of them doing that could make me crazy. I used to beg my girlfriends to eat, but they never would. Or, at least, not in front of me." He smiled sadly. "To see a woman’s belly get full….hard, taut….nothing is more erotic to me, Kerry Anne. When she’s eaten so much that she can’t move, hardly breath…just laying there…I can’t even describe to you…." He trailed off when he realized Kerry Anne had started to cry.
   "Honey," he moaned, reaching for her. She shook her head violently, wiping her eyes. "I can’t hear any more, I can’t hear any more! Don’t make me listen to any more!" Sobbing, she pulled away from his touch. "No, no, no no, noooooooo."
   "Oh God honey," he said again, standing up, trying to pull her up into his arms. She pushed him away.
   "You’re sick," she hissed, between clenched teeth. "I don’t even know you. You’re a stranger to me now."
   "Maybe you’re the stranger, Kerry Anne," he said quietly to her back, as she went up the stairs to slam the bedroom door.
   Joe sat in the darkened room, his face a blue spot of light from the computer monitor. He was riveted to the screen, scrolling down a story written by a guy who was just like him. He could have written the damn thing himself. "FA’s", they were called. Funny. There was even a name for guys like him. When had all this happened? Where had he been?
   On an impulse, he sent the man an e:mail.
   There goes my guts, flying through cyberspace, heading for a perfect stranger.
   About a half hour later, he heard the computer announce new mail.
   The man had written back quickly, God bless him. Joe especially remembered the last line, and it gave him strength: What you did took guts: you were true to yourself. Isn’t that the best birthday gift anyone could ever get?

   Joe felt his wife lying next to him in the dark.
   She was sleeping quietly, and, though he felt the sudden need to touch her, didn’t want to wake her up.
   He wanted to talk to her, although he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.
   "Joe?" she whispered softly.
   "You’re up?"
   "Yep. I wasn’t sleeping too heavily."
   "I wanted to talk to you," he told her.
   "Oh yeah? What about?"
   "Oh, things," he said vaguely.
   "Why don’t you talk with your hands?" she said, and put his hand on her big, warm belly. "Like that?"
   "You have no idea," he said.
   "Oh, I think I do," she purred, and pulled him on top of her. He felt her huge breasts flatten beneath his weight, marveled at how the width of his body only occupied half of hers.
   This was heaven.
   A song suddenly entered his head, an old Sinatra tune: The Second Time Around.
   He sang it softly in her ear.
   "Pretty song," Michelle murmured.
   "Yes," he agreed. "Isn’t it?"