The tank truck emblazoned with “Sean’s Septic Services” was already in the driveway when Josh pulled in, and a man in blue coveralls—presumably Sean himself—was standing in the weedy backyard, pen poised over a clipboard.

“Are you Sean?” Josh asked as he slammed the car door shut. 

“That’s what the poop mobile says,” came the reply along with a lopsided grin. His dark hair was swept into a floppy-but-trendy bun, and he had the thickest forearms Josh had ever seen. Josh couldn’t help but stare at the snaking veins that bulged under his skin as he shook hands with him.

“I really appreciate you’re coming out so fast.” 

“Hey, anything for my buddy, Gavin.”  

“Yeah, he mentioned you knew each other.”

“I dated his sister, Heidi a while back. Hey, I’d love to shoot the shit with you…literally,” he broke into a laugh at his own apparent wit, “but I think we better see what’s got you backed up down there.”  He pointed a booted foot to an area of grass. “I’ve already determined your tank port to be down here. Just didn’t want to start digging without your go-ahead.”

Josh put his hands up as if in surrender. “Please. Do what you’ve got to do.”

At that, Sean got to work shoveling a small, neat hole in the yard. Josh tried not to enjoy the sight of his worn work boots repeatedly coming down on the shovel too much, the loops of the red laces swaying lazily with the movements, but the fact was that a good nine hours had passed since his morning shower. He was already beginning to feel the crackle of unspent energy, which—like lightning to a rod—usually sought out the nearest tantalizing male footwear.  Concerns he may normally have had about awkwardly standing by and watching his own excrement vacuumed from the ground evaporated as his endocrine system overrode social convention. 

He was already semi-hard when Sean snapped on a pair of gloves and squatted down to pull the tank lid up, the soles of his boots bending and crunching against the ground.  The reek assaulted Josh’s nose almost immediately, but Sean didn’t bat an eye.  “How long since you’ve had this pumped?” he asked as he heaved the concrete lid onto the grass. 

It took everything for Josh not to cover his nose with his shirt like a pansy-ass. “I have no idea. I inherited from my grandmother about two years ago, but I lived here for like ten before that. I don’t ever remember it being done.”

Sean rocked back on his heels and shot Josh a judgmental look. “So at least 12 years? Probably longer?” Josh shrugged. “You’re supposed to get your system pumped every three to five years.”  Josh stared blankly. Sean stood up and beckoned for him to come closer. “I want to show you something.”  Josh could feel his entire face involuntarily screwing up as he craned his neck over the foul little portal.  He was surprised to see what looked like soil just below the concrete lip of the tank. “Now every septic tank gets scum on the top after a while,” Sean explained, gesturing with his orange rubber-gloved hands, “but this is pretty extreme.”  To Josh’s surprise—and his cock’s delight—Sean extended a boot down into the hole and pushed his sole against the crust.  It didn’t give under his force. “This is one of the thicker ones I’ve seen.  It’s completely dry and solid on top.” 

“That’s…shit?”

“Your shit, to be specific.” Sean put his hands on his hips. 

Josh didn’t know why, but he found it oddly arousing to know that this muscular guy in crisp blue coveralls had just pressed his work boot against his feces.  True—it also disturbed him—yet that didn’t diminish the rush. “Wow. So…what now?”  Josh could see his clueless expression reflected in the technician’s aviators. 

“We’ll get the aerator out to break this all up, then we’ll pump it all out.  We’ll rinse it down in there and make it all pretty.  Then you’ll set a reminder in your phone to call me back in three years so it doesn’t get like this again.”

Josh nodded, feeling a little like a scolded child. But he was certainly not put off as he watched Sean drag the hose across the yard and locked on the PVC stinger.  He then retrieved a two-handled, gas powered contraption. 

“So that’s an aerator?” Josh queried.

Sean yanked on the cord a few times in rapid succession until the small two-cycle motor putted to life. “Also called a ‘crust buster,’” he called over the din. “Let’s whip up a nice smoothie, shall we?”  He inserted a long rod with a small blade on the end into the hole, which began to rotate.  While Sean watched the vile crust give way and churn into the effluent below, Josh elected instead to keep his eyes on operator himself.  Sean bent his legs as he braced against the machine. His meaty arms vibrated, his hips swayed, and the heels of his boots took turns parting with the ground as he pushed and pulled on the rod.  The air may very well have been laden with Josh’s own aerosolized shit, but there was still something very sexual about of this, and he could feel the resolve of his own rod as it stirred in kind. 

He was just imagining other circumstances that would require Sean to thrust and pull in such a way, the first drops of pleasure sliding into his boxers like slippery jewels, when Sean suddenly cut the motor. He propped his aviators on his forehead.  “Something doesn’t feel right,” he declared as he began to extract the rod from the ground.

“I thought it was feeling great,” Josh was mumbling under his breath just as a mass of gray slime balled up on the end of the aerator came into view. “Good night!” he said in tone equal parts awe and revulsion.

Sean stoically crouched and studied the gelatinous substance.  Threadlike tendrils wound around the shaft of the machine and dangled from the sagging misshapen form, which completely obscured the aerator’s fin.

“What the hell is that?”

“I’ve seen it all,” Sean murmured. “Fatbergs, ass wipes, hair…but this—” he dabbed an orange gloved index finger at the mass and gluelike strands clung to it. “It’s almost like rubber cement,” he marveled. A thick snotty rope slid off the rod and landed on his boot and became fixed there.  While it escaped Sean’s notice, it certainly hadn’t Josh’s. There was something terribly familiar about it. Hazy wisps of pleasure and horror were just coalescing into thought when Sean beat him to it. 

“Holy fuck,” he gasped softly. “It’s semen.”  He stood and looked at Josh with an expression he couldn’t quite read. It definitely contained shock. But was it also disgust?  Or possibly reverence?  Josh felt the fire that had ignited between his legs now spread to his cheeks, but he stood defiantly before Sean and refused to break his gaze.  He was mortified…and so wet that surely it was starting to show on his work pants.

Neither said a word. Sean clenched his jaw, the muscles working in his cheeks as he quietly hosed off the aerator, threw the switch to the truck’s pump, and held the hose over the opening in the ground.  He stood with his boot—christened with Josh’s clotted cream—resting on the ridged pipe. Occasionally the pump would whine and race, and the hose would quiver between his gloved hands and convulse under his foot.  Josh noticed Sean’s fleeting glance in his direction each time this happened, and he could only imagine it was because they had hit another payload. 

---

By the time the lid had been replaced, the loose dirt piled into the void, the hose coiled on the truck, and the copy of the bill had been ripped from the clipboard, Josh could hardly contain his raging erection.  The vibrations of the tanker pulling out of the driveway were still rattling the panes in the front windows when he slammed the door behind him and clawed at his belt. In about five strokes, pearly streams were arcing over the living room rug.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he hissed, his fist crunching the Sean’s Septic Service invoice on the hall table beside him.  He shakily slid to the floor with his back against the wall, gasping.  He sat, staring blankly for a moment, his mind so steeped in endorphins that it seemed to rattle around uselessly in his head like the pit of an overripe avocado. He gazed at his wasted seed settling over the carpet fibers.  It was literally the only thing in the room that glistened.  And that’s when he finally things with crystal clarity: his life really was going down the fucking drain. 

He thought about the countless nights spent on fantasies that would never breathe oxygen.  He thought about the gallons of semen his body had faithfully manufactured for him, day after day—possibly the only productive thing he had ever done—hauled away in a shit tanker. He thought about Gavin.  Gavin, his friend of six or seven years that he had secretly crushed on for just as long, who was starting an apprenticeship as a stone mason. Certainly, it wasn’t the career Josh would ever pick for himself, but at least Gavin had a plan.  He was moving on from the sporting goods store they had worked together since high school—hell, he was changing his goddamned name. And here Josh sat, looking at his congealed cum brought forth by his own hand on the cruddy floor of what used to be his grandmother’s house. 

His head lolled against the wall as he took in the room. He saw the darkened pathways that had been smashed into the rug in front of the sagging couch and into the kitchen. The old console tube TV that, while still dominating the room as it had for three decades, sat forgotten under a film of grime because of the flat screen he had rested on top of it. And of course, there was the detritus of his lifestyle littering every surface and lurking in every corner. Every half-emptied Red Bull can and petrified carton of lo mein that had so passively accumulated over the weeks now seemed to rise up to mock him.  

The loser. 

Well, this was one thing he could change starting now. After peeling off clothes slick with his own juices and quickly showering, Josh set to work getting the house in order. He moved through the rooms with a garbage bag, sweeping the surfaces of clutter with his arm.  He rolled up the living room rug and heaved it onto the front porch, revealing enough fine silt on the hardwoods underneath to fill a child’s sandbox. He unearthed cleaning supplies he didn’t know he had from deep within cabinets he never entered. He vacuumed, he sprayed, he scrubbed. The fridge was cleared, the countertops unladen.  Faded curtains were torn from their rings and the cobwebs were wrangled with a towel on a yardstick. He loaded the ancient dishwasher for the first time in two years and twirled the dial.

It was nearly 3AM when an exhausted Josh collapsed on the couch and drifted off to the swishing of the Maytag in the kitchen, his snores softly echoing in the stark-but-clean living room.