"Well how much could I have gained?" Elinor looked at Emma, who shrugged and said, "Ten pounds? Fifteen maybe." Elinor nodded in agreement, saying "Twenty at the very outside." "That's all?" Lisha asked, not really believing them. "Twenty pounds doesn't seem like a lot to gain in four days." "Look, if you lost all that weight back then," Elinor said, "then you have to remember the math. Average person eats about 2500 calories a day. Eat more than that, you gain weight, less and you lose weight. 3500 calories up or down equals one pound. Twenty pounds in four days is five pounds a day. Five pounds a day is 17,500 calories, plus the normal 2,500, for a total of 20,000 calories a day. That's eight regular days worth of eating. Eight breakfasts, eight lunches, eight dinners, eight snacks -- each day for four days. Even I couldn't eat that much and gain that much in that little time -- and Lord knows, I've tried!!"

"Well, how much did you gain when you tried?" Elinor smiled, saying, "'Tried' was a figure of speech. I didn't really try to gain weight, but I was eating as if I was. It was this Easter. The summer books had all been set up and the fall books were getting put together for the editorial committee; Simon had spring break, too, so we decided to take a vacation -- ten days -- down in Bermuda. It's not an incredibly busy time down there, and we go to this resort that's very small and very quiet and very exclusive. Jackie Bok had recommended it to me a few years ago, saying that she and her Greek tycoon found the seclusion of it to be a great relief.

"The plane ride was terrific -- there was barely anyone else on board, so Simon and I could each take up two seats very comfortably. Normally, we wind up having to fly first class or I have to buy two seats for me, because squeezing this butt into one of those tiny little seats is terribly uncomfortable for me and for whomever else I wind up sitting next to. Anyway, we're not even off the ground and he pulls out this enormous box of chocolate cordials, offering me one; I gladly accepted, very happy to discover that it was a blackberry brandy piece. Well, the whole trip, he just kept feeding me these candies, the whole time stroking my hair or running his hands all over my thighs -- like Lisha was doing to me a little while ago." "You didn't ask me to stop," Lisha said. "No, I didn't. For some reason, I just get all shivery and shuddery when someone rubs my thighs -- strange erogenous zone, but...

"Between the buzz I was getting from the liqueur and the buzz I was getting from the petting, I was so incredibly horny that if it had been possible for Simon and I to physically squeeze into one of those tiny little bathrooms, we would have definitely joined the mile high club. Then, in the airport, after he made a mysterious phonecall and we're walking through the concourse to the van that was waiting to bring us to the hotel, his hand is straying all over my back and rubbing my butt through the skin-tight capri pants I'm wearing, until I was so hot I practically couldn't walk anymore. Bermuda is a very proper place, but we didn't care, because as soon as that van door closed, I was all over him like some over-hormoned teenage girl in the back seat of a borrowed car.

"Up in the room, I discovered what the phonecall had been about: there was a wonderfully elaborate meal being set out for us by the room service staff. Despite the candy, I was feeling extremely hungry -- sexual desire often does that to me -- still, I was surprised when the captain asked Simon if the other two people were guests in the hotel and should he call them. Simon laughed, saying, 'No , there's just the two of us.' The captain says, 'Then, I'm so sorry. Our kitchen must have gotten the order wrong because there are four entrees.' Simon told him that there was nothing wrong and that we were just very hungry; the captain was going to question something, but that's when the he realized that he was stepping very close to the boundary of insult and he just asked whether we'd like them to come clear it away when we were done or would we like them to take it away in the morning. Simon said morning, gave the guy a good tip, and we were alone.

"I was incredibly horny, but Simon insisted that we have our dinner first so that the wonderful cooking wouldn't get cold. I don't remember what we ate except that it was wonderful and was made even more wonderful by Simon continually touching my legs and my face and my hair. He ate just as heartily as I did and when we had finished everything on the table, we were both so gorged and so aroused that all we were was bellies and groins and we came together in a passionate fury that... well, all I can say is that it was probably a good thing that we were on the ground floor!

"Then, the next morning, Simon ordered an enormous breakfast for four, and then a mid-morning snack and then lunch and an afternoon snack and dinner and a late-night snack. And each time we ate, we made love -- which only served to build up our outrageous appetites again. By the third day, we hadn't left the hotel room once, and the room service captain -- whom we'd been tipping very generously -- informed us that they'd put on an extra staff member just for our room, and that an extra chef was going to be on call so that we wouldn't have any delays in getting service even at the busiest lunch and dinner hours.

"On the fifth day, the hotel manager called our room, made some pleasantries, beat around the bush in a very stiff and proper British manner, finally getting to the point and asking if we would object to his verifying that our room and room service charges would be accepted by our credit card company, since we'd already accumulated four thousand dollars in room service bills. His awkwardness was wasted on us, because we were actually surprised that he HADN'T run it through yet, and he was very relieved when he called back a few minutes later to tell us that there would be no further need for verification until we were ready to check out.

"On our seventh day in the room, the effects of our non-stop feasting were becoming very apparent -- more so on Simon than on me. When I'd first met him about two years ago, he had a chubby little belly that was barely discernible under a shirt and tie. Now -- as you've seen, Lisha -- he's got this incredibly huge furry belly that just drives me CRAZY! Just the sight of him shirtless... Mmmmmm! I mean, I'm very fat: fat belly , fat butt, fat hips, fat thighs, fat calves, fat arms, fat boobs -- hell, even my fingers are fat! It's all just me, though. With Simon, he's relatively slim everywhere else except for that enormous gut. And it's so big and so solid that it almost seems like it's another person, like it's me and him and his belly in the bed and that feeling is just indescrbably erotic to me..."

Elinor had been talking for a while and after this last little confession, she paused, her face a little flushed; Emma had stopped working on the computer, becoming totally wrapped up in the older woman's story. Lisha brought them each another beer, without even being asked and after a long swallow, Elinor continued. "Anyway, by the seventh day of this trip, Simon's stomach was obviously bigger, and he was constantly showing it off to me, walking around the room and out on the deck wearing just his bathing suit -- a little bikini thing -- with his gut entering and exiting the room a few seconds before the rest of him. The terrycloth robes that came with the room wouldn't close around his swollen stomach anymore -- of course, they'd never even made it halfway around MY body! So, he was feeding me and I was feeding him and our appetites seemed to have entered this mythical realm where they couldn't be sated; besides that, the constant sex had left me with a permanent fire between my legs that kept pulling my attention downwards. When we'd had room service come up for about the seventeenth time that day, the hotel manager called up and asked us whether we would accept, with his compliments, an upgrade of our room to the private cottage where presidents and royalty usually stay, since that building had staff quarters and a full kitchen on the premises.

"Of course we accepted, and having the run of this seventeen-room 'cottage' seemed to redouble ALL of our appetites, so much so that we very quickly managed to eat a meal and make love in every room. It was an absolutely mind-boggling experience, and when we checked out and discovered that our room charges -- not counting the actual cost of the room, which we'd paid for in advance -- were well over ten thousand dollars, we both looked at each other and said that it would have been a bargain at twice the price.

When we got home, Simon had to be back in the city, but I had a couple more days, so we said a long and luscious goodbye at Kennedy Airport and I came out here. I knew I'd gained a good deal of weight, but I wasn't prepared to see the needle on the scale stop at forty-one pounds -- 401 in the real world.

"I panicked at first. Two-hundreds are fat, but I know plenty of people in that range. Three-hundreds are enormous, but still, there's football players and basketball stars who weigh in the three-hundreds, so it's not totally out of the realm of experience. But four-hundred pounds -- I just wasn't prepared for that number. None of my clothes fit comfortably at that weight, so I was walking around the house naked, catching a glimpse of myself in every mirror and reflective surface and remembering how Simon had been showering me with attention and compliments and love and sex, and how the entire vacation had become one never-ending orgasmic fantasia. And I realized that four-hundred was just another number that meant nothing in and of itself, and all that mattered was that I loved and was loved. So... there's the long and roundabout answer to your question of how much weight can you gain in a short time. Thirty pounds for me. And -- without trying -- I've dropped those thirty in the last couple of months. My body seems to like this weight and doesn't tend to stray far from it."

"Wow!" said Emma when Elinor had finished. "That sounds incredible. Do you think the hotel would put your story in their brochure? Y'know: Come to Bermuda and gain thirty pounds in ten wonderful days!" "Somehow I doubt it," she laughed. "Hey," Lisha said, jokingly. "It's a sign from the heavens. It can't be a coincidence that we just got ten thousand dollars for that picture we sent. What's the name of that hotel?" They joked a little longer, but then Elinor realized that it was nearly five p.m. and she had to be heading back into the city that evening. She got up and thanked the two girls for their company and for a lot of fun. She leaned over and gave Emma a kiss on the cheek, and then she walked out of the computer room with Lisha following, saying that she'd show her out. At the door, Elinor gave Lisha a kiss, too, stepping back for a second afterwards, then gathering the smaller girl in a loving hug. Lisha felt herself sinking into the other woman's embrace, melting into the depths of softness and imagining that it was her own rolls and bulges that she was feeling and wanting never to let go...

If you've got any comments or criticisms, you can post them on the WeightBoard or e-mail me at: melaniebel@aol.com.

And don't forget to visit my website at http://members.aol.com/melaniebel