# What I'd Like to Say (edited) by StrugglingWriter (~BBW. Eating, Imagery, ~XWG)



## StrugglingWriter (Jul 30, 2013)

_~BBW. Eating, Imagery, ~XWG _ - a mature lady finally realizes the ectasy of life in the plump lane


*What I Would Like to Say (edited)
(updated version of author's story from 2007, found here)
by Struggling Writer​*
*Part 1*

I remember where I was when it started. I was sitting at my desk, working late again, peckish, craving my nightly glass (or two) of wine, and frustrated that the only thing available to eat in the lonely, stagnant building after dark was the processed starch available via vending machine. I was 30, single, over-worked (but well-paid), acquainted with many and friends to a few, frequently bored and often restless. 

At that time I weighed all of 112 pounds. I know this because it was my rigorous mission to make sure that every day I saw that saw that number greeting me on my digital scale before I stepped into the shower each morning. I hadn’t always been 112 pounds: in my mid-20s I had gained about ten pounds before stair-stepping it away at the gym, only to gain it and about 10 more after a break-up a few years later. Since that time my in ordinate discipline of my slender body had paid off. I never lacked for dates or friends when I wanted them, and I’d had more than my share of both shady and romantic encounters in and out of bed, in and out of town. 

But now, and for months before, each day when I had stepped off my scale, before getting into the shower, the excitement of the carefree life had waned. Instead, the competing allures of either a successful executive career or sharing a safe suburban nest with a solid guy held much more promise than whatever it was that blow-dried Bryl-crème boys still had to offer me on what admittedly was becoming a less and less frequent basis. 

So it wasn’t too surprising to me that on that night at that moment I was tired of saying no (why, exactly?) to that familiar, barely-suppressed desire to munch, and after expending all that willpower in all those gyms over the years I, in that moment, looked inside and found instead the will to tolerate that extra 20 pounds I’d been warding off all those years. 

I’d like to say that some solid sense of resolution led to some higher consciousness about a more tolerant acceptance of the imperfect body, or that some erotic vision of excess sparked some exquisitely erotic foray into endless packs of Skittles and bottomless bottles of YooHoo in the break room. 

But, no such thing. 

Truthfully, I’d had weak moments like this before, and that night I fancied that some day in the not-too-distant I was sure I’d regain my resolve to deny the appetites of my inner fat girl. But not that night. So all I did was quietly walk to the break room for one pack of Skittles and one bottle of YooHoo YooHoo, then return slightly more satisfied to my office, where the lonely hum of the HVAC coaxed me to make headway on my plans for that month’s something-or-other gala. I also recall that my night at the gym was satisfying but short and uninspired. 

It’s surprising how fast you can put on weight when you don’t stay on top of it. I’m an event coordinator by trade, and back then I was working with an industry advertising company out of the northwest. As September’s gig (one of six in a calendar year) approached, the length of my day, per usual, expanded. 

Out of concern for the business tool that was my body, I had always regularly eschewed those overtime corporate perquisite dinners—you know, the ones conjured by CEOs eager to bribe us with free food so we’ll exchange the best years of our lives for devotion to the company stock price. Just like before, the first night as I ordered one of those dinners for the first time in ages it occurred to me as nothing special. Observing myself ordering food several nights in a row, now that caught my curiosity because, I noticed upon reflection, there was none of the self-concerned guilt about expense accounts I usually considered when devoting my extra hours to the boss. 

Looking back, taking the longer view of things, I can now see that endlessly sprinting to plan one event after another was taking its toll: I was in danger of becoming another cog in the wheel, a corporate tool who would be ready for the chopping block the very that instant profit margins—or poor performance—dictated. 

So, this particular cog guiltlessly asserted its hard-earned individuality with a flair that sent my personal expense account through the roof. 

Bloated expense account or not, I do know that all my extra work that month paid off in genuine career cache’. As I lingered behind after the exhibit at the end of the day, ostensibly to supervise the union guys breaking everything down, the big boss himself congratulated me on the party’s success. In no time we were celebrating that success with a few friendly drinks together. Well, I’d like to say a few, but it was probably more like five. I don’t really remember much more about that evening, except that at the Chamber of Commerce cocktail club I was more a hit with the guys that I’d been in who knows how long. 

Even blitzed out of my mind I still knew why: it was because of how much fuller I looked in my clothes. I’d learned all about this years before during those odd times I’d let go of my diet and fitness regimen a little bit. Outside of the boardroom, guys just love a curvy body! It’s the girls that don’t let you live it down. 

But the real revelation came when I stumbled into the bathroom hung over late the next morning. I noted the usual hideous morning-after, sallow-faced hag staring back at me red-eyed in the mirror, and after the usual ministrations I stripped my robe, stepped onto the scale I’d chosen to avoid all month, and watched it greet me with a blurry “120 LBS.” 

I’d like to say I was surprised, but the truth is that at a mere 5’2” I’d felt the uncomfortable pull of those eight pounds against my clothes all week: a pinch of pants around my thighs, a snug little squeeze across my ass, pressure against the belt at my waist—that sort of thing.

What actually surprised me was my reaction to that bit of LED information. In the past, these moments had inspired me to return to my diet and my workout regimen. That morning I simply stepped into the tub, pushed aside my headache, and focused on the sensual experience of a hot, steamy shower. 

Years of this after-the-trade-show ritual had taught me to schedule this day off in advance. So, I ordered Chinese for an afternoon breakfast and sat contentedly on my duff catching glimpses of soap operas, Maury and Montel, and re-runs of the Pampered Chef. That, and a few crossword puzzles and a few more spoonfuls from the pint of Haagen Daas I’d hoarded for the occasion. That stuff is better than sex, at least when you’re hung over.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

*Part 2*

The close of the September event was essentially the close of each year. Fall is too late to put on any kind of networking push for the Christmas season and too early to make a wholesale marketing push for the spring and summer fashion market. Corporate holiday parties were, frankly, too small a gig for our firm—except inside the firm, of course. That meant that each year with regularity, late nights at work behind me, I had plenty of time to show off for my corporate colleagues. 

I threw myself with new passion into the office social scene, parlaying my well-publicized PR success into absolute office envy among that year’s crop of tight little interns and ever-softening dimwit cubicle girls. Off at five, we were frequently at the weekday martini bar by 5:45—so frequently that I dressed the part each day at work (covered by a stylish enough to jacket for respectability, of course). Off went the trim office suits and slacks and on went those stretchy slinky things I would buy over the course of each year that invariably hung mostly useless in my closet. 

I remember how pushing those stuffy office clothes aside felt sort of like turning a page of my life, and the truth is the more my clothes clung to my outside the sexier I felt inside. Before, clothes provided definition for my straight, slender frame. Now the frame was providing the definition, and, when it did, it defined the moment! 

Oh, was it fun! I don’t remember when I stopped going to the gym. I do remember a lot of cab rides home from the bar each night—or, often enough, to work from someone’s apartment the next morning. 

Fall days were spent organizing the office Halloween party. Up until then that had given me the opportunity each year to leisurely discover new venues and vendors. But that fall, however, it slipped from disciplined research into recreational experience! No longer would I let myself be scared of my boss if I spent too long drifting from vendor to vendor—nor be afraid to indulge too much in sampling the fare. I did what I felt, when I felt it. 

Inevitably I found myself spending more of my time than I ever had outside of the office, slipping into this bakery here, this wine shoppe there, “sampling” appetizers from menus in local haute cuisineries. 

It was after one of these smorgasbord lunches late one afternoon, just before heading to the costume shop to fit my Halloween costume, when I finally hit “that point,” that inevitable point. You know the one: that afternoon when I sank back uncomfortably in my chair and heard the little voice telling me I was taking things too far. My pants felt unbelievably tight, the chair seemed tight, my body just seemed anything but tight (and a little crowded), and my mind became guiltily aware of its long inattention to my diet. The only surprise was that “That point” popped up nowhere by surprise: I hadn’t experienced thoughts like that for weeks. 

So, that afternoon at the costume shop, I reluctantly paid a little guilty attention to my image in the mirror. That proud, chiseled definition of my abs had been replaced by a smooth, concave hourglass that swooped into hips at a point much higher than I remembered. The waistband of my panties, hopelessly stretched, cut sharply into those hips about halfway down, and the space between my thighs had disappeared due to their newfound eagerness to meet in the middle. 

I turned slightly and was staggered to see the view from the back: thin satin fabric stretched across doughy, rounded cheeks that once had been firm and hard. They’d clearly expanded to twice their size without my even noticing! No wonder my pants always felt so tight! 

Mesmerized, I started at my smooth tummy and rubbed my hands behind and around me to feel the Jell-O-y fullness of my ass, then rubbed then shockingly far outward before they finally navigated around the fullness of my curvaceous hips—pelvis bones hopelessly obscured—and back across to the spongy squishiness of my tummy. 

I reached up with my fingers to feel the baby softness of my naked breasts, hanging much lower than I ever remembered, cupping their unusual size and gauging their surprising weight. It had been a long time since I’d considered my boobs perky, but I discovered with new fullness came new roundness, a sort of caloric fountain of youth. 

Thrilled, I lifted and released them, savoring the sensation of a few gentle bounces that sent a discernible shimmer all through my curiously smooth new torso. That lithe muscular me had been swallowed by a more pampered couture, a disciplined athlete superseded by a coddled debutante. 

I’d like to say I was secure enough to revel in this new me at first sight. But mostly I felt a little as if I had stepped outside myself and was watching my newly-discovered twin—so me and yet so not me—from a distance. The disembodied me considered its chubby twin’s afternoon discomfort and thought with frustration about the long disciplined hours it would take to fell back at home in that body. It all struck me as unfair and wrong. 

But at the party I was oh, so right! My French maid costume was perfect, the high froofy skirts thrown outward and upward with the aid of my new bodacious rear cushions, which functioned like some kind of fleshy flying buttresses. For memory’s sake I still keep a snapshot from that night on my home office desk: one shapely thick thigh, still reminiscent of the strength in its athletic past, lifted up to my boss’s waist, his hand resting on my hip as I push my breasts, outrageously amplified by my pleated elastic bodice, out and up into his chest (you know the move), lips poutily cradled between perky vodka-flushed cheeks as they whispered against his chin. 

That evening was my brightest moment at the firm. I spent the evening in character serving expensive hors d’ourves, delightfully iced cookies, and red velvet “blood” cake far beyond the time I was competently able, eating and chatting away delightfully between foaming goblets of green misty Halloween punch. 

This time my usual after-party vacation stretched into two days—though only because, when I awoke the next morning in the boss’s townhouse apartment, he’d left his credit card on the nightstand to go shopping. That was the moment time I concluded I had the best job a girl could ever really expect to have. 

I couldn’t help but admire my curvaceous backside in the mirror before I stepped into the shower. How could I have ever thought this could steer me wrong? Never, I decided, as I spent the day discovering the most expensive things I could to cover the new ass-acious me in the petites section of every trendy fashion boutique I could think of.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

*Part 3*

The thrice-weekly martini bar ritual with the office girls pretty much ended after that. Word of this kind of thing gets around fast enough even when it isn’t true, and this most certainly was. My first day back, Halloween party behind me, I had all day to sit on my ass and reconsider the uncertainty of having a lecherous boss to please. 

However diverting my derriere may have become, it was likely to be under constant scrutiny, which eventually meant I would have to find my way back into the gym or be the constant butt (so to speak) of crude office jokes and the object of surreptitious snarky snickers.

It didn’t take long, either. The afternoon I got back, the two lazy lushes I’d wasted the majority of my drab girl-talk with were standing in the hall, conspicuously tall, indiscreetly slender, and clearly dressed to go out. Two other new girls I hardly knew met them in the hall, and the one I liked least glanced over her shoulder and flashed a hellish smile before smartly slapping herself on the behind. Catty bitch. 

I’d like to say it didn’t bother me, and part of me it didn’t. Truth was the martini bar had become pretty drab, and, frankly, I took satisfaction knowing that those two wannabe lifeoftheparty girls with gin-deepened smile lines and cable-TV intellect could only race fast if they had me to draft behind—no matter how wide that behind had become. And yet, annoyed, I noticed myself from the outside again, like looking at my chubby twin, reaching into my drawer for the Snickers I’d stolen from the break room refrigerator earlier that afternoon. I envisioned my slimmer self reminding my twin (as I had all day) of her reflection in the costume shop mirror, reminding her that from now on she would have to hold the line steady, that today she should at least wait until it was time to punch the clock before indulging a last bit of ease before taking the diet plunge. 

I was just tearing into the wrapper anyway when the first of what seemed to become daily occurrences materialized at my door. For the sake of my career I’d always distanced myself from the men in my office (well, all but one), and frankly, in an environment that produced a lot of electronic and mechanical exhibits, the men were either geeks with genius or hunks who were rock-box dumb. 

Thing is, when you’re screwing your boss you’ve pretty much already put workplace boundaries about as far behind you as can be. Turns out, apparently at the Halloween party I’d made more than a subtle invitation to this guy (several guys, it turned out) to stop by. Nervous chatter, then an invitation to a casual dinner, followed by the guiltless satisfaction of someone else’s Snickers. Funny how quickly I melted back into my own skin after that exchange. 

Five, six times this happened over the course of three weeks. I’d never quite enjoyed dating like this before. Five, six times I heard how a nice guy had never believed I would say yes, how distant and unapproachable I had seemed, how free and easy and fun I turned out to be. And, with them, that’s how I felt. Sure, none of these guys were potential, and I only wound up sleeping with one (OK, two), but I’d come to develop an appetite by now and I’d come to appreciate how nice it is to actually eat when someone takes you out! 

I’d like to say I handled this new development maturely. Then again, among the office bitches, this was workplace politics turned into war. Five, six times I strolled past that catty girl’s cubicle and chatted discreetly, but not so discreetly, with some guy. The last time or two I threw just the right look in just the right direction as I positioned a man’s hand across my ass at just the right moment. I regarded that hand as just the right accessory to my evening wardrobe, and the sour look on that bitch’s face was, yes, just right.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

*Part 4*

By Thanksgiving, though, the wardrobe itself had become a real problem: I was stretching the limits of even the largest pants I’d bought on the boss’s dime the month before. Moreover, I was starting to notice more acreage up top. Winter had come with full force, even in the mild Northwest, and sweaters were an easy fix, but I soon discovered changes even more extensive than just the bigger cup size I’d accommodated at an underwear clearance sale. 

Tight sweaters meant to hang loose at the waist accentuated fuller breasts nicely, but the seams stretched noticeably at the shoulders and as my waistline finally swelled enough to meet that lose cut at the bottom, all it did was accentuate my midriff. And my hips: it wasn’t so much the tummy expanding as it was my hips getting wider that gradually threatened to transform my sweaters into something more like fuzzy leotards. 

Fit was an issue, but constriction was becoming a problem, too. I discovered my forearms bumped into my hips as I walked, if I wasn’t too careful. A wrong move and my sweaters could rise up to expose the waistline of either a pleated skirt with the pleats spread half too wide, or of slacks with pleats almost flat, straining at the clasp, zipper gleaming and every now and then slipping downward. 

I found that when I sat it was as if my thighs had suddenly blown-up like balloons to fill the last micron of space in my pants. If I didn’t hike them up when I sat down, my ass I could count on a near-vice-grip about halfway down my thighs. 

And so it was that the last day before Thanksgiving break it happened: Pop! Rip! As the clasp of my roomiest size 8 slacks tore loose as I sat down to begin my work day. I sat mortified at my desk all day, thankful for the bag of miniatures in my desk and ordering in Chinese for lunch. And there was no way I could accept the inevitable invitation to dinner that night. “Ah, sure…I’ve eaten myself out of my pants, but just let me find a clothespin and I’ll be right there!” 

I knew there was no way I could look like that as I walked by cubicle land. I waited until everyone left before bustling to the car, my fly wide open, a pooch of half flesh, half panties pushing the flaps of my pants aside with each step, not quite hidden behind the trendy little Halston purse I clutched in front of me for modesty’s sake. My brain was racing: I knew Jim (my boss) was expecting to see me over the holiday, with only the slightest notice when, since it all depended upon how easily he could slip away without alerting his frequently stuporous wife. 

It was a fashion emergency, and I knew it. My jacket in my lap served as suitable cover as I slipped through the Taco Bell drive-thru on the way home, and it took a few vodka-and-cranberries before I found the courage to call my girlfriend Jennifer, a sedentary old roommate of mine who is made for times of trouble (and only times of trouble). 

She came awfully quickly—I must have cried on the phone—and when she stepped inside the condo she clearly couldn’t help but laugh. She hadn’t seen me in quite some time (years, she reminded me), and by “fat” she had thought the person sniffling in the living room would be a bit closer to her size.

I’d always remembered Jennifer as “big-boned,” but she’d left that moniker well behind, as the seeds of her sedentary life had taken root and blossomed. No matter. Tonight was about me, and the upper arms squeezed into the sleeves of my favorite Tee from yesteryear were plenty of evidence of how fat I’d become. 

My breasts hung down weightily and held up the hem of my shirt, exposing a white pooch of flesh peeking up above the tight elastic of my sweatpants. Filled with ass, those sweatpants stretched across hips just as wide as Jennifer’s, even though she had to be twice my weight. Seeing that next to her, I burst into a fresh set of tears. I hadn’t felt this miserable about myself since I put on twenty pounds after that break-up. 

But Jennifer happily comforted me, hugging me warmly and steering me and my vodka to my closet and settling down to work. Away went the A-line cuts, straight-cut tanks, straight skirts, and slim cut pants. Then, she packed me into her car and off to her place, where she rummaged through some of her fuller-cut blouses and hippier skirts, topped off with some thick belts with large, ornate buckles that had obscured her fullish waist in her short-lived svelte and trendy days. 

Jennifer’s pants, though, were clearly a no-go. A few important brand names (think Apple Bottom) and I was armed early Friday morning to shop those specialty stores that offered the casual clothes that would serve me through the weekend—at least, until I could get more control of my situation. 

The urgency, though, seemed to melt away as I slipped on that next size up of new jeans, smooth and sexy against my wide backside, securely perched above the curve of my broad hips, but mercifully loose and roomy in the waist. I wasn’t ready, though, for lingerie. Not that it mattered. Jennifer had insisted that the T-shirt I had worn to the door the night before would be all the nightwear I would need. 

In our drunken revelry that night, Jim called me the most womanly woman he’d ever known. I know he has a sad excuse for a wife, and I’m sure he had no idea why he regarded me that way, but I knew. I felt like more of a woman than I ever had before, and more than he had probably had before, too.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

*Part 5*

All I can think to say about that brief time is that I found a whole new way to be. In the past I had thought in straight lines—efficient, goal-oriented, yet unobtrusive. I’d told myself it was about playing it straight in a man’s world: be confident, effective, masculine. That’s no small task for a girl as petite as me. 

Really, I had just adopted some harsher form of femininity, a way of hiding among the men while still controlling them with the sexual allure of command and control. My manner in relationships had always been brusque and no-nonsense, but the truth is that the manipulation I used with my slender physique belied that. I would slip lithely in and out of my chair even as I’d purged all notion of sway out of my walk and taken the swing out of my arms. I had sucked my tightened self into even tighter clothes, afraid this jiggle or that softness would betray some subtle womanly weakness. 

But truth was it hadn’t ever really been about scaling back my femininity to allow my stronger traits to step forward. It had really been about the power of shifting from one illusion to another, about displaying my sexuality behind just the right competent veneer, letting just enough sexy creep its way out to get what I wanted. After years of practice, all that effort had started to pay off. Yet the moment it did I found myself drowning in job dissatisfaction and an increasing and unsettling disdain for self-discipline of any flavor. 

I’d like to say I dropped those illusions and let myself become my true self, but really all I did was craft a new illusion. Armed with a new (bigger) set of tools, I purposely chose those open-bottomed, cuffless blouses that would allow me to forget about holding my abdomen in tightly or worrying about the pull of my upper arms at the shoulders when I moved. 

The next next-size-up slacks (10/12) or occasional skirt accentuated the long curve from upper hip to lower thigh, which announced its presence each day in the boardroom when I pushed back my chair and swiveled my hips around the arm, then leaned over the edge of the table to expose a flash of jiggly cleavage. More than once I caught a guy looking away quickly at my gaze or even sitting open-mouthed, ignorant of my awareness of his sense of awe.

I even savored the experience myself. Above the beltline I savored the little tremors of my soft stomach with each step, taking longer, slower strides and moving my hips not in a straight line, but gyrating circles, imagining my ass swiveling like a church bell up and down, side-to-side. Only the tightness of my jeans preventing the fun little reverberating jiggle I’d marvel at whenever I walked around at home. 

No matter what type of bra I found, the inevitable bounce my strides produced always brought a little smile to my lips. My mannish couture and my mannish style of interaction was replaced by unapologetic sexual confidence that was honest about the space I would take up in both the boardroom and a man’s arms, perhaps even at the same time.

And yet the freer I felt, the less I was getting done. December usually entailed planning for the two great shows of the spring in February and May, but just like October, December was consumed by planning for our office party. I spent more and more of my mornings in the break room flirting with the guys around the box of doughnuts, and many more of my afternoons at the espresso machine. I spent more of my days shopping fashions online than I did calling clients for the February coffee growers expo. And I spent more money than I care to say on the stretchy number I wound up buying for the Christmas party, all but salivating over the _vavavoom!_ I could bring to that cheery little gathering. Marilyn, move over!

I may not have been networking much with expo clients, but all that time in the break room sure led to a little more informal networking in the firm. It started with a Friday night invitation out with the guys to their favorite drinking haunt. A Tuesday night and another Friday night later, and by the weekend before Christmas I was one of the guys. One of the guys with a big ass and hot boobs, that is.

Admittedly, at first it was a touch awkward, since I’d dated pretty much every one of those guys the month before, but no one ever said anything, and there wasn’t anything a little brazen boldness and diplomatic flirtatiousness couldn’t smooth over. 

I’d forgotten the joys of beer, wings and pizza from that first semester of college. This time I was able to enjoy it like never before. One night I actually leaned back tipsily in my chair at one point to unbutton my jeans and hold my tummy with both hands, just like you see the guys do. I was curious to discover a generous ball of squishy tummy which, surprisingly, filled both of my little hands completely. I found myself kneading it intermittently all night long, feeling its soft goodness oozing through my fingers.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 6

It was a day forever etched in my memory.

Its amazing how little complications can end up changing your life. Day of the Christmas party and I was still waiting for my dressthat clingy red dress I was counting on to make just the right splashto arrive at the office. Disappointed, but occupied with last-minute details, I was prepared to go casual, as-is. But Id really been counting on that clingy red dress to match my Santa hat. And to show off my curves.

I made a splash, all right. Walking around the corner, somewhat light-headed on cocktails already, I collided square on with a server and her overstacked cartincluding an entire bowl of bright red party punch. It was wet and cold and positively obscene the way it plastered my already over-stretched tanknow bright red and utterly transparentagainst my bra to reveal my cold swollen nipples. 

I handled it less than well: I cursed out anyone around me that dared to breathe and hastily draped a hand towel across my chest before muttering and dripping my way back to my little office. But instant happiness waited inside. There it was on my desk: my dress had arrived just in time! I felt like a little girl getting ready to host her first princess party. If princesses dressed like Jessica Rabbit, that is.

I could hardly believe my luck and hastily put in a call to an intern to take care of the punch thing, then gathered my things. The plan was to use Jims executive washroom, a definite corporate no-no (unless, of course, youre sleeping with him, another corporate no-no.) I dripped at my door for a few minutes as I waited for Jims secretary to step away from her desk, then slipped down the hall, through the bosss door and into his executive washroom to work my Christmas magic.

But there was no magic to be had that night. 

I soaked my blouse and coat in the sink, dried off and slipped on the halter-top dress. It was a disastrous fit. I dont need a picture to tell you frame-by-frame how it looked: its blazed into my memory. The cup supports were too shallow: each heavy globe slipped well below the bodice and was smashed sideways against my stomach by the taut fabric below. I lifted each breast to fill the cups: the lacy fringe barely covered the nipples and my cleavage protruded to ridiculous proportions. The dress itself was too flimsy. My midsection caterpillared into three sections just like those Before pictures that document training programs in health clubs: one little round ball sitting on top of a wider w-shaped roll on top of another round mound shaped by the clearly visible outline of my panties. 

You would think with all the attention Id paid to myself Id have had a sense of proportion about how huge my ass had really become compared to the rest of me. But then, clothes do a lot of lying both to and for us. _Some_ clothes do, just not slinky dresses. The cusp of each of my ass cheeks was visible from the front, only partially obscured by a protruding saddlebag that was joined in the front by the crests of my overly-ambitious thighs. In the back, the hem of the skirt lay higher than the front, and the stretchy fabric crawled up the sides of my hips with even the slightest of movements. Tying the straps tighter or pulling on the dress to fix it here sent it out of kilter here, wildly askew here, exposing a nipple or flopping a breast to one side or settling unattractively between my bodice and the top curve of my little snowman belly. Any movement and everything everywhere wiggled in every direction. 

Now, I wasnt stupid. Even in my delusion I had known my new chub would need some sort of support. But, boy, did I make the wrong choice: all my old school control top panty-hose was demarcate and elastic line between the bumpy, lumpy torso up top and the unnaturally constrained hips and thighs below. This was no Marilyn! This was the Michelin man! And in ten minutes I was gonna have to walk into my own party looking like one of those dolls made of cotton stuffed into panty hose. The comments I would get behind my back would destroy me. Hell, in years past Id have been the one making them.

I flopped heavily into Jims chair, my left breast flopping out of my bodice, the right breast slipping out of its support cup and squishing heavily against the top of my tummy. I thought of Jims private whiskey stash, pulled it from the desk drawer and gulped straight from the flask, hardly a grimace as it went down. I fumbled with my exposed breast, gave up when, covering the left one, the right one swooped up and out just as prominently. Even my own body was working against me! I felt a wave of panic starting to rise in my chest and took another hit of whiskey. Each anxious passing moment is emblazoned in my memory: naked chest heaving with each exaggerated breath, choking back tears, biting my lip as in my mind I saw my career unraveling.

I had to go this party. The sense of conviction sent a quick thought into my mind. I reached into the drawer, found a pair of scissors, cut a slit up the left side of my dress to lowest curve of my hip, stood up to see it fall more evenly to the floor. That was one step, and suddenly the way out seemed possible. At least I had enough presence of mind to get a glass from behind me and pour my whiskey like a civilized person, although I still downed it in two quick gulps. I flopped back down in Jims oversized chair, breasts askew again. The chair with me in it rolled backward and disturbed the crystal with an audible _clink_. 

I sat there with the shades drawn in the dim light from the open bathroom for what couldnt have been too long, but what seemed like hours. My head was starting to fog up from the alcohol, and I couldnt think past it to find a way to get out the door without someone seeing me leave. 

Or before someone came in.

With that thought I panicked and stood upunsteadilyresolved to put on my wet underwear and pants and make a break down the hall

when the door opened and shadowy light fell into the room. I dont know where the hell she-- 

It was Jim, talking to his secretary. I froze. They froze. Two, three more shapes stopped behind them past the doorway in the hall. 

Jim dismissed his secretary and closed the door, leaving the light off. What a relief! Suddenly I could move and I clumsily pulled my dress up over my exposed boob, again feeling the support flip up over my breasts pressed and the rest of the dress riding upward at the waist. I kept fumbling nervously as Jim walked over, hoping to find some kind of appropriate cover but unable to think of anything but how I must have looked. 

Tears started streaming down my face. My chest was still heaving, boobs aquiver. He reached for me. He grabbed my hand, which at that moment I just realized had inexplicably wrapped around the scissors. He pried them from my fingers and placed them on the desk. Looked at me in withering condemnation. Id seen that look written in mens eyes before, the one that read, Whore! Then he pulled me to him with both arms around my waist and started probing violently into my mouth with his tongue. I felt shocked, but it didnt keep me from dazedly probing back.

It was quick, and it wasnt pretty. Id like to be able to say he had overpowered me, that I didnt want what he was giving, but then thats not the kind of girl I was back then. Head spinning I found myself on my back as I heard the rip of clothes, felt his lifting up my dress even as I started to claw back at him with my hands and lips. It was quick, and it was violent, but not quiet. He called me names_two-bit whore, fat bitch_I screamed back yes, though I wanted to scream back something else. Or maybe to someone else. I felt him reach around my waist with his arms to get holdhands just werent enough anymoreand I arched my back to help him do it. I felt my ass and thighs like stationary cushions fixed to the floor, the rest of my body rocking back and forth with each motion. I screamed out with the release and tears streamed down my face as he came, then pushed me violently down and rolled off of me. I started to laugh. Uncontrollably, as I lay on the floor with my eyes closed. I heard him go to the restroom and clean himself, then leave wordlessly, not a word, just the sound of him clearing his throat.

Merry Christmas.

As horrible as I had felt before, I felt elated now. Id faced the worst of my fears, and yet now I survived. I dizzily propped myself up with the desk, still holding back giggles, and tears, then stumbled to the bathroom and cleaned myself up as best I could. I can still see that proud pouty profile the mirror after I finished: thick, red, bowling pin torso, two sagging bare breasts hanging over the bodice of my dress, the truly outrageous semicircle of my ass like a bifurcated bustle shouting its presence proudly below broad, gym-honed, now-soft shoulders and back. Dizzily, I bent over to the floor and felt my heavy breasts stretch downward toward the floor. I clumsily stepped into my panties, stretched them across my thighs and around my hips, pulled the dress down, stuffed my breasts back under my bodice. I climbed shakily into my high heels and smeared on some lipstick. My self-conscious paralysis was gone. I guess it was the adrenaline. Or maybe the booze. Could I have had any more proof how desirable I was? Me and my outrageous badonkadonk were going into that room to stare those skinny bitches in the eye!

It was hardly the moment of triumph that I imagined it would be. I know I stumbled in, said some crazy, maybe incoherent things to an all-but silent room as I strode to the punch table, swiveling my hips outrageously up and down, undulating with every step all the way as I held up my bodice with one hand. The other hand fumbled with that self-same punch bowl, but I was having trouble holding the ladle steady and hit the side of the bowl as I aimed it toward one of those little plastic cups. 

It spilled all over me again. All of that, and I was right back where I started! Tears spilled out of my eyes one more time.

It was Jakethe tall dumb one Id slept withwho stepped up to help me. He put his jacket around my shoulders and pretended to talk with me in the corner between the trips he made for me to the punchbowl. I didnt even know hed taken me home that night until I woke up early, and jittery, and definitely still drunk in his baggy sweats and an oversized t-shirt. Frankly, I was just grateful for the warm clothes, since most of that morning was spent on the cold, hard tile of his bathroom. I weighed 151 pounds that day. You get bored sitting on the floor all morning wishing you were dead.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 7

Men are simply amazing. Jake checked up on me all morning, getting me towels, water, anything I wanted. He took time out of his Saturday afternoon to run me up to work, then showed me where my keys were before he bid me goodbye with a paternal hug, an encouraging wink, and a what the hell shrug. 

It wasnt just him, either. Tuesday, our first day back, I sat mortified in my office all day, munching mindlessly as I obsessed about my long-neglected February show, wishing some vendors would return my calls, wondering why they wouldnt and blaming the holidays. Right before five, one of the guys pokes his head in and lets me know the gang would be heading to our favorite haunt for beer and bowl games. Quite a party, eh? And thats the only thing anyone said to me. 

I dont think any of it mattered to them one bit, though Ill never believe it wasnt common knowledge what happened in that office, given the noise Id made in that office and the curious audience I was pretty sure had been listening outside. And my fashion disaster? The guys were clueless. They hadnt seen the same misshapen monster the girls in the cubicles had surely been sniggering about all day. To them it was just another party where some girl had a wee too much alcohol. And according to guy ethics, the best way to erase the memory of that one was apparently to set the stage for another one. I imbibed my share andthe way I saw itpaid Jake his due later that night. Can you believe I was grateful? I couldnt believe hed take me after everything hed seen. Amazing.

Of course one man wasnt amazing, and that was my boss. All communication from him stopped, even by memos, and frankly, despite how ominous that should have seemed to me, I was happy for it. For me, I knew the only way out of this doghouse was forward: keeping a low profile and proving my immediate indispensability was gonna prove to be really important. No longer was I preoccupied with acting the part of sensual blonde bombshell. (For the record, Im a brunette, but does anyone ever connect brunette with bombshell?) I outsourced completion of the New Years blowout to some young up-and-comerkeeping to myself, of course, all the details Id already taken care of. Instead, I spent my days on the phone, frantically trying to bolster my February numbers. And no more kibbutzing in the break room, either. I holed up in my office with a treasure trove of snacks and ordered takeout for working lunches as much as possible. The new year brought the return of late-night number-crunching (and snack crunching) at my desk. It looked like everything was going back to normal.

Or it would have, if my stomach hadnt gotten in the way.

A lot of the in-house arrangements I could take care of with persistent calls, and I put those in with little compunction. But history told me I needed to get out of the office to have success with many of our vendors. In the past, all that pent-up nervous energy drove me out of my little closet of an office all the way through the front doors of the biggest, most challenging clients in the metro area. Now, maybe it was the extra weight, or maybe it was the lingering effects of my recent career burnout, but now the motivation to hit the pavement was harder to find. I started popping back into the break room for a snack not out of hunger or to socialize, but purely out of delay, as if munching on a doughnut I could find a small bit of peace before taking on the world.

I didnt feel different on the inside, but it became clear to me that people viewed me differently. Old clients didnt seem sure they recognized me. Secretaries were less bitchy but took me less seriously. So did new clients, who seemed to forget my name on follow-up. I certainly wasnt less talented, or less a salesman. I didnt even look unattractive frumpy, or fat; I just no longer fit that well-hewn corporate image I had worked so hard to craft. Turns out, all of my shallow assumptions about professional identity were true.

Id like to say I took that as a challenge and that I redoubled my efforts. Mostly I just felt deflated that what I had taken for personal success had more to do with corporate sexuality than business sensibilities. As January slipped by I stopped making that third or fourth follow-up in person, relying on voice mail messages or notes left with secretaries. I made practically no follow-ups at all with accounting or with requisitions or with Jim, none of whom seemed to be following through on my routine requests. But it was more than that.

Hunger, never a crisis before, always a cheerleader on the sidelines instructing me how busy a go-getter I was, transformed into my coach, maybe even the referee. Once breakfast had been optional, skipped in favor of an early start in the office. No more. Now a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts run through the drive-thru was a must, if not a full on Big Breakfast from McDonalds. Once upon a time, lunchtime had a special slot on my calendar as the time for a quick bite during meetings with terminally busy account managers. Now, I reserved it for myself and ordered take-out while shopping online for supplements to my ever-inadequate wardrobe. Or, increasingly Id get an early start on visits to vendors by eating out for lunch. Account managers, I told myself, could wait. Truthfully, though, the one who always wound up waiting was me, since those meetings got pushed into the late afternoon, or more often into the next morning. Afternoons Id trek back to the office early enough to make sure support staff could take my dinner order before they all left for the evening. Thursdays and Fridays, I noticed, and a couple of Tuesdays, I threw in the towel on plans to work through the evenings and met the guys for beer. 

Several afternoons, for no justifiable reason at all, I double-checked details with our food vendorsa few mom-and-pop local cuisineries and bakeries Id used for the holiday parties. I would sit on the phone at one of their tables snacking on cookies or little quiches leaving polite messages with secretaries: So when do you think Mr. So-and-So would be able to talk to me? Friday morning? I guess that will have to do. Looking back I sort of think of it as hoarding nos: I started accepting all kinds of no for an answer at the same time I stopped denying no to my appetite.

I noticed little changes to my life. In the BMW Id pull down my seatbelt, then find I had to make a second pull so I could get the belt to stretch over my breasts and across my hips. My first space adjustment was lowering my seat to accommodate just how much the extra padding on my thighs and bottoms added to my seated height. Soon, I was leaning my seat back for lap comfort, and soon after I started tilting my steering wheel down so I could reach over my breasts, which were now inconveniently in the way. One day I was sitting at my desk and realized it was pinching the top of my thighs. I ratcheted down a notch, but at 52 theres really only so far down you can go, you know? I was continually plagued with wardrobe issues: that gap at the back of the waistline of my pants had filled up, and my size 14s were getting uncomfortably tight. Id started wearing my skirts with support hose (to fight the January cold, I told myself, but really as an aid for zipping), and it took superhuman effort to fasten them. And as hard a time as I had balancing in my heels, youd think Id never worn them before. When the scale said 160 two days before the show I was actually surprised it was that low. By that time I was all but sure this would be my worst event ever.

It was. Well, at the firm, anyway. I greeted vendors nervously at the door that morning, no less than three safety pins as back-up for my skirt. Despite the sweltering dry heat of the convention center boilers, Id chosen a jacket to hide the bifurcation of my tummy into fleshy dirges north and south of my belt. But the girth of my breasts it impossible to button without my looking like a woolen sausage, so my pudge was on display for anyone who cared to take a closer look. And while I looked full, my show looked empty. Thirty percent of the booths for the growers, vendors, buyers, and shippers were unoccupied, and foot-traffic was abysmal. I was so embarrassed I spent the day avoiding my boss the big-money wholesalers to whom Id promised a cornucopia of local vendors. Instead, I invested my time inconspicuously wandering from vendor to vendor, sipping on sugary coffee beverages in between guilty retreats to the buffet displays. 

If there was one success it was that: vendors repeatedly asked me about those-wonderful-local-bakeries, wherever-did-you-find-them? But none of this would translate into the kind of contract that could end up saving my ass since, sadly, none of these vendors were prepared to handle the kind of volume to satisfy their needs. The days volume satisfied my personal needs, though: I stashed away a healthy portion of leftovers for myself and, like usual, was able to hand out a few cards with my cell number for a little personal networking. But these guys were different than the kind of guy I usually went for: average family guys who were actually nice. And horny. Really guys, what is it about big breasts? This time, I decided, I might even answer their phone calls.

That was small consolation the next day. When Jim called me into his office, I feared the worst. I got it. Unprofessional conduct and appearance unbefitting to the organization. High personal expenses. Poor performance. I thought hed can me. But can you believe it? The schlock wasnt angry, he was concerned. That condescending asshole actually gave me a mandatory referral to the Employee Assistance Program.

_I_ was angry! Unprofessional conduct? Poor performance? Compared to his, um, performance, my minor failings of late were nothing compared to _his_ chronic poor performance!

I got sloppy drunk that night. I hadnt talked to Jake for weeks but I spilled every detail to him that night at the bar. Even though I was smashed I can still remember that concerned look on his face when he told me he thought it might be a good idea for me to go to counseling. Id like to say I was adamant about not going. But the truth was, I wondered if maybe I might be losing my grip. I remember how embarrassed I was when Jake called a cab to send me back to my home. I couldnt see straight enough to make the call, and he had to hoist me into the back seat.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 8

At first they gave me a woman. It could not have been a worse choice. There I sat across from some carbon-copy of one those cubicle girls, not one day in a professional workforce, maybe a year out of school and a good three years my junior, tightly packed into her slim professional skirt and blouse, her psychobabble words saying one thing and the privileged party-girl look on her face saying something entirely different. My thighs literally filled the tiny easy chair shed packed me in. Me? Sporting those? Sexy office boytoy? She didnt buy my complaints for one second. The referral says youve been using alcohol at work. Excessive spendingdoes this include your personal life, too? You were discovered alone in the dark holding a pair of scissorswere you planning on hurting yourself? I was shocked. I couldnt see how this high-handed princess could connect with anyone at all. I didnt wait to find out, but I didnt bolt either.

On the way out I asked the receptionist for a new guy and my next visit got it. Middle-aged, balding, bearded, pleasant, kind, domesticated. He asked intelligent questions. I was appropriately attentive, posture forward, gaze steady. Feelings of dispassion? Yes. Low sexual drive? No. Depressed feelings? Some. Substance abuse? Maybe a little? Drugs? Never. Weight gain? Yes. I cried about aimlessness in my work. I cried about sex discrimination, about stress. No family to speak of. No close friends, all alienated due to absorption in my career. No children. No prospects. Lecherous boss. I was very convincing. He was very attentive and understanding. He referred me for some Paxil, scheduled me another confidential appointment. I tossed the Paxil script but I kept the appointment.

It didnt take counseling appointments to recognize that I needed a new job. Jim was clearly covering his ass against a sexual harassment suit, and I was in a race to keep my benefits and severance intact. But for now, I resolved, no more nights with the guys and their wives (and girlfriends). I resolved to hit the gym and stop my forays into the concrete jungle food. Come five oclock each day Id forget it all. I was tired. I was too hungry. Tomorrow. I deserve a good meal. I need a drink.

My doctor kept using the word empty. I thought he just didnt understand what single professional life was like. He thought I was obsessed like a lot of women with my appearance, instructed me that a woman doesnt have to be a slim hard body to be successful or attractive. Exercise and diet improve health, bring balance and stability, encourage a healthy sense of individuality and well-being. He was so earnest and naïve: I wanted to slip him my number like I did those guys at the convention.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 9

Job posting: small liberal arts college, student services event coordinator, experienced preferred, posting closes March 15. Pay cut, but I needed a pre-emptive strike. I put down the Danish I was eating and made the call right there from work. Interview in two days. The relief was palpable. I blew out of work at 3:00 and went to the Holly Hill deli and bakery. The owner was becoming a fast friend, and I chatted excitedly over a second lunchhero sandwich and cinnamon roll (on the house)about this cinch chance to land a new gig. She gave me that polite Asian smileyou know the onealong with a small complementary bag of cookies to go. Looking back I think she was disappointed because of the business she would lose with my firm.

I was elated all evening until it hit me: I had no idea what I would interview in. I hadnt talked to Jennifer since Thanksgiving, and somewhat guiltily I called with my dilemma. Jennifer had never been proud and welcomed me over. Of course, Id always been proud, I came with a mollifying gift in hand: a Marie Callendars pie. (Those cookies were long gone!) I know I looked pretty sheepish as her eye swept over me with that knowing look, but she took it all in without a word. I like how Jennifer never judges me. Jennifer chatted me up with a friendly smile as we dove right into my chocolate double crème, which went right up the stairs with us on our trip to raid her closet.

Jennifer herself looked great. She was still a really big girl, dont get me wrong, but clearly shed hit the weight room and lost some significant pounds. It showed mostly in her face, in her clothes and in how she walked: she seemed stronger and more confident, and was she smiling a lot more? It didnt take long for her to spill that she had a new boyfriend, and while she chattered on I fought off my just-a-tinge of boredom by eating more pie. I really was happy for her, comparatively. When we roomed together I doubt I would have even asked questions, just done what I could to subtly steal her boyfriend away. I had done that a couple of times, actually, and when the memories slipped into my mind, for the first time a feeling of shame went with them.

We were comparing ourselves in the mirror that hung on the door of her walk-in closet. We had tried things on and realized there wasnt much she would be able to loan me: everything that fit across my hips left way too much material up front, and everything Jennifer had held onto (hoping one day it would fit again, Im sure) was built to accentuate her bustline. Definitely not my problem. She seemed a little jealous and talked nervously about how even now she was still 240 pounds and had fifty more she would need to lose to have the midsection she felt she could live with. 

Being 240 pounds was simply incomprehensible to me. I was genuinely curious. I asked her how her boyfriend felt about it. He says he likes it, she answered, voice clouded with certain disbelief. She said she had started losing because the attention hed given her made her feel subconscious. Apparently not self-conscious enough to keep from inhaling half of that pie. 

Standing there in my underwear next to Jennifer I still felt small, but the image in the mirror belied it. I studied myself in muted fascination. My arms couldnt hang without my hands resting on my hips at an angle, and I couldnt clasp them in front of my waist without squeezing my boobs between my arms. The crest of my hips started well above my elbows and went in one long bell-shaped curve to my knees. My thighs pushed out in all directions in competition with the curves of my ass in the back and the hips at my sides, smashing into each other in a long crease that almost went to my knees. What had once been a little mound camping quietly beneath my beltline had now pushed outward and upward above my beltline and was now crowned at an angle by my belly-button. My gym-shaped shoulders were now coated with a squishy layer of fat that curved in a long arc around my shoulders and down to my elbows. There was hardly a hint of my collar bones, or the sinews in my neck. My wide eyes sat on top of chubby cheeks which were themselves cradled in a soft, round jawline that was threatening to dip down below my little round chin. 

When I turned to the side I realized that long, slim S in silhouette I was used to seeing was only a memory, and the culprit was largely my outrageously bodacious ass. While I wasnt watching (and who can really see behind them?), it had sneakily swollen out of proportion to the rest of me, dwarfing in all directions the ass of the girl beside me who outweighed me by half. That bowling pin figure Id seen last month had morphed into some kind of back-heavy teardropum, with breasts, whatever that shape is. In a rare moment of self-deprecating humor I stifled a laugh as, standing here in granny panties, with heavy boobs wired to my chest in a heavy-duty support bra, I told Jennifer I looked like Playboys version of a rubber ducky with legs. She laughed too much, in that exaggerated way that fat girls always seem to do, but I didnt let it embarrass me as much as usual.

So, my guilty trip to Jennifers transformed itself into a trip to a mall department store, where for the first time I was introduced to the Womens section. A girl like me should have been embarrassed. I wasnt. I should have been thinking about the best ways to present a slim appearance, or how to somehow wear the latest fashions I would have bought this spring if I could fit into them. But I wasnt. All I could think about was finding something respectable to cover my huge ass without looking like I belonged on In Living Color. 

Ultimately I stuck to business attire with a couple of long open-bottom blouses; expansive skirts; loose-fitting pants with an acre of room in the seat; wide-sleeved jackets with large buttons really there just for show. With Jennifers help I accessorized with something new: large, simple jewelry instead of classic, dainty designs. I enjoyed it all and I wanted to splurge on a few sets of everything I bought. Something inside me, though, told me Id better buy only one of each. I did need two blouses: one cotton blouse with small ruffles for a female interviewer, one shiny silk for a male one. Through it all I listened to everything Jennifer had to tell me about fat fashion, which I had to glean between the endlessly repetitive exclamations about her boyfriend. That part continued during our dinner (and second dessert) once wed wrapped things up.

Still I was nervous about making that right impression as I walked to the interview. Walk is the operative wordId forgotten how much you have to walk on a college campus, especially from the visitors lots! By the time I climbed the steps to the office I felt out of breath for the first time in who-knows-how-long. I had to pull myself together in the ladies restroomcirca 1930s architecturefeeling none of the confidence about my appearance that I had felt last night during my shopping spree. I was grateful, though, for the comfort of my clothes, and I tried to think of that rather than the disparaging thoughts that would doubtless race through the office staffs mind when I walked through the door. I have never felt as fat and out of place in those few seconds, and I dont know where I found the courage not to walk right back down the stairs instead of turning into the appointed office.

I neednt have worried. The room inside was as outdated and run-down as the bathroom, a maze of desks separated by partitions, inside which peopleall womenwere sitting quietly at their desks or standing lazily chatting. One round middle-aged lady walked up to me and greeted me by name, led me to the back of the room to a small enclosed conference room. All the women smiled at me as I passed, and every single one of them was both older and bigger than me. Their desks were all neatly arranged with framed family photos of mostly grown children. Simple, friendly artwork was attached to pinboards, interspersed with pithy fliers proclaiming sanctimonious bureaucratic truths like _If your job has no frustrations then it isnt a job_ or _Your failure to plan is not my emergency._ 

On the other side of the conference room door, two more round ladies and one taller male were standing in the room sipping on coffee, apparently waiting for me. They welcomed me simply and warmly, as if they had nothing better to do, then offered me a muffin and coffee of my own. That muffin looked really appetizing, and I wanted one, but I thought better of it and begged off, blaming a nervous stomach. One of the round ladies, a northeast-Italian-looking woman in her 50s with frosted curled black hair, just smiled and gestured to an aged chair.

Based on your resume, the woman said as I sat down, we werent sure you would be a right fit for us, clearly meaning that they were already more optimistic that I would. In a hundred years I would have never thought that putting on extra weight would actually _help_ me in an interview. And yet, the interview was as pleasant as such things can be, although throughout I got the odd sense that I shouldnt be too bold or appear too competent. They let me know they could take no action until the posting ended on March 15 and that they would call to let me know. They pushed a couple of muffins wrapped in napkins toward me and walked me to the door, and before I knew it I was scarfing down poppy seeds absent-mindedly in my car, thinking about how my life was about to change. I knew the job was mine.

And so the three-week farewell tour began. At work it started with my workplace rehabilitation plan, self-authored as a requisite of my informal reprimand. I accomplished this by selecting Colleen-the-new-quiet-cubicle-girlnot one of the snotty bitchesas a partner for corporate accountability days before anyone thought that maybe they should assign me one. It was a week before Jim was aware of it, and by then I already had her thigh-deep into arrangements for the April event, effectively securing her place as my successor and snubbing the bitches whod had their eyes on my office these past three years. This process looked suspiciously like delegating. Meanwhile, for the sake of appearances I made a few stops in a few cursory meetings with solid corporate clients, which I invariably followed with more informal consultations that strengthened our new business ties with the Holy Hill, Sunshine Brothers and La Cremerie bakeries. I took extensive amounts of research material with me (amazingly similar to fashion catalogs and celebrity magazines) and diligently poured over this material for hours. Of course I had plenty of brain food and expert input from chatty bakery employees to keep me company. Research can be exhausting.

While Colleen worked late into the evenings, I stopped in to see those coffee vendors Id met at the last convention, exploring over intimate dinners potential corporate relationships and, um, negotiating (and sometimes executing) the amelioration of certain stresses and strains experienced by those overworked public servants who bring coffee to a grateful populace. I spent other nights repairing workplace relationships with the guys and their girls over leisurely pitchers of beer, imparting important corporate knowledge that looked a lot like targeted malicious office gossip. I even spent a night out with Jennifer and her boyfriend David, a surprisingly tall, good-looking and thoughtful man who seemed to take interest in me while Jennifer poked at some salmon salad or other. I ordered a second mudslide before dinner even arrived and hung flirtatiously on every one of Davids words while Jennifer glared at me with hurt and annoyed eyes. I couldnt really find a way to integrate that experience into my workplace plan. Ah, well. Not everything can be tax deductible.

I can remember back in college that these kinds of endless social experiences had been approached with a kind of wild anxiety, a mindset I could work up inside of me to work hard, party harder, live for thrills and be the center of it all. Now, for the first time I enjoyed all of the leisure with none of the pressure. One afternoon I was sitting in my office munching on Oreos and sipping another Coke, enjoying not being busy, quietly realizing that my most yearning desire was to just stop fighting the inevitable self-decline, to stop dancing in and out of the incessant push-pull between the need to make powerful first impressions and the need to please others. What I really wanted was just to be for a while, just relax and do what I wanted without needing or being needed by other people. All that off-time Id used to frantically travel the world all those years, and yet here I was on my first vacation! 

I told my doctor that maybe Id always kept pushing and pushing just to cover up some other need, that maybe when that didnt work I just covered it up with too much alcohol and the serial conquest of menprofessionally in the board room and sexually everywhere else. He just smiled, asked me how much Id reflected about my alcoholism and whether I would choose to put it aside and pursue my deepest needor whether Id keep it up and find some other way to mask it. Id like to say I had an answer for him, but I didnt. Instead, my heart yearned for him to tell me what my need was. I just kept silent while shifting uncomfortably in my chair and finishing off my caramel frappucino. It was unnerving how this guy seemed to have had me figured out long before I had.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 10

The next-to-last stop on the farewell tour, planned with special enthusiasm, came that fateful Friday March 16, minutes after I accepted the colleges job offer (without even entering salary negotiations). I hung up my phone and marched down the hall and into Jims office. I told Jim he had used me, that the stress had ruined my career, my self-esteem, my figure, that I had to leave my job because everyone in the company knew everything and because even my therapist had said I should. Its a wonder I didnt sueor worse, file a sexual harassment claim! Jim looked at me placidly but quizzically. He didnt say anything.

I myself was very calm and detachedin fact, perhaps even warm and conciliatory. Of course, I also said it without any reference to the pair of scissors I clutched in my hand with the exposed blades pointed in his direction. As I turned my substantial ass toward him to leave I smiled. I figured that would keep him scared enough to give me the outrageous severance package Id slipped into his mailbox on the way in. 

My last stop on the tour was that afternoons visit to my doctors office, where I told him about my sudden career move, about the way Id been eating of late and about the new fitness regimen I would be starting next week. I was surprised at how much I cried, at how sympathetic and supportive he was, at how sensual the full-frontal hug I gave him was. I felt his wiry form press deeply into my soft bosom, rubbing against the cushion of my tummy, and I had to remind myself this man was like the father I never had. Even so a little thrill went through me when he told us our visits didnt have to end with my resignation and gave me the card with the number to his private practice.

Did I say that was my last stop on the farewell tour? It wasnt. March 17 was St. Pattys and, fortunately, my surprise farewell party with the guys. For once I didnt have to plan anything. I got absolutely smashed on green beer and made out in the corner at one point or another with any of the guys whod spent the last months leering at my swelling breasts. I had mens hands all over my bulging form all night. 

In my favorite picture of me that night two of the guys are propping me up under my armpits at the table. My half-open blouse, straining at two buttons around my widest point, is pulled up to expose the soft white pillow of my rounded tummy. My jeans sit at half-hip and plunge across the bulges of my prodigious hips, each pulling mightily at a heroic button, and causing those jeans to bifurcate what looks like half of a dimpled watermelon I must have swallowed. Just above my squeezed waistline was my sofa-cushion-divet-of-a-belly-button, and the flesh of my tummy, squished under the pressure of my overstrained jeans, had forced down my zipper to expose my panties. Up top, due to the manly arms holding me up, the flaps of my blouse had ridden up over my belly and wrapped around each breasts, accentuating each portentous curve and bringing my expansive hardened nipples into shadowed relief. On my face was a high-as-a-kite, Valerie Bertinelli smile framed by a rounded jawline and the new shadow of a double-chin. I dont know how I got home that night. That morning on the bathroom floor I weighed in at an amazing 175 pounds.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 11

That Tuesday, fully recovered, I scaled the stairs (my new exercise regimen) at the college and walked through the door into my new life. I was welcomed by what I soon learned was the office staple: the office potluck. Other than the shared space, no single person in that room shared anything in common (functionally, anyway) as anyone else. The office potluck provided the glue that helped people who competed for space and resources to get along with each other. 

Apparently, despite the generally amiable disposition of everyone in our tight little room, we needed a lot of glue. We had a potluck for every holiday, minor or major, birthdays each month, new employee, departing employees from just about anywhere on campus, and the odd celebration of some minor accomplishment by someone one of us might have known thrown in for good measure. They had this one with leftovers from the St. Pattys Day potluck still in the fridge! When I filled out the employment paperwork, a copy of the sign-up list for the next potluck had been slipped in with the rest of it.

Is it any wonder all of the girls in the office were fat? According to the family pictures I saw on desksthe ones with the much thinner versions of each of these ladies includedthis office was in no small part responsible for that. I quickly learned the code (read: lies) people used that allowed this to happen with impunity. Im gonna regret this later is for whenever people who arent eating see you loading your plate. Everything looked so good I just couldnt decide validates the overfilled plate. No one here ever bothered with corporate Americas This means extra time at the gym or Well, the diet starts tomorrow! But then, people in those workplaces actually followed through. Here No matter what I do it just doesnt matter and, especially, Its just too hard having to feed the (kids, grandkids, husband, pets) all the time. And, there was always a fair amount of the competitive You have to try my ______. In this world, no matter what their size, people always want someone else to be fatter. Around this office, everyone wanted to be a mother, too. The logical target of both desires was me.

Me, I chose a fantastic lie, the one that guaranteed the most attention with the least judgment. I said Id just spent the last year losing about 75 poundsafter being dumped by my boyfriend. It was a lie that sealed my fate. It wasnt long before Griseldaa 50-year-old, round-faced Mexican-American woman with the typical prominent belly and smallish Mexican hipswas showing me pictures of her tall doughy son while sharing with me some of the tamales she had made for his birthday.

I had been warned about the pile of unfinished work that awaited me. It consisted of coordinating with other departmentsall in-houseto plan graduation and a few student club requests, for which my job was primarily to arrange tables, chairs, space and refreshmentsall in-house. Two major events a year and these shoestring-budget student events comprised most of my job, and I caught up on most of that by the end of the week.

Around the office I saw that most people werent much busier. Theyd spend hours making just the right flier for events that twenty students would attend, or mentoring student assistances an hour or two per day, or plugging away on rudimentary spreadsheets. Compared to what I was used to, all it looked like to me was a gaggle of women counting minutes toward lunch, tallying months toward pensions, and chattering away about mundane topics involving their children.

Id like to say all the mindless talk didnt interest me, but the truth is the more I heard about their children and grandchildren and husbands and houses, something started to wake inside of me. I felt restless there, but I also felt the warmth and security that so many good people who had built so many nice homes could bring to an office like ours. 

I think Paul, the tall, balding guy who in some sense oversaw us all but had no real authority (he had bureaucratic responsibility for utilization of the office space, which hadnt changed in about twenty years), had hoped I would be a lone holdout to give him someone less-gossip-more-task-oriented that he could relate to in the office. But it wasnt long before the chatter in our common area chased him into one of the two enclosed offices in the place, probably to avoid going crazy. It was him who got me moved to the space by the door, where I served as _de facto_ receptionist. I didnt mind: I certainly had the spare time and it instantly acquainted me with just about everyone in the college.

Everyone in the college, because there was a constant parade of employees who found daily excuses (and, frequently, no excuse at all) to sample the conference rooms potluck fare. I loved it when they came in. It gave me plenty of excuse to go back to the conference room and sample the fare (again) myself. These women could cook! I, in contrast, most certainly could not. I contributed instead my favorite selections from my favorite bakeries, which became an instant hit.

It took no time at all to discover the other reason we were so popularly visited: Dining Services was by everyones account singularly atrocious. I had just two meals of rubber chicken at the cafeteria and then never again. The catered student events I supervised were even worse: chewy lard-flavored sugar cookies and nondescript punch at monopoly-inflated prices that busted my little in-house budget and bruised my pride to serve. The students werent happy about it either. The most frequent request I fielded was for organizations to cater their own food. That, sadly, was out of my power and fully under the purview of the service employees union.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 12

It was just a matter of time before the college president stopped by to meet the new employee. By now I regularly by reputation kept a box of frosted Holly Hill cookies on my desk. The president long ago had found it in his best interest not to alienate Dining Services by snacking here, but with me he was at least political enough to try the cookie I offered him. He wasnt political enough to hide how much he liked them, or to avoid talking a little too long with the zaftig young girl half his age with the expansive cleavage prominently displayed in the shallow bodice of her blouse.

Working there I never had a chance. I had known when I took the job that I would be saying goodbye to a skinny me, probably forever. And I was pleased to just let that happen. But I didnt think it would be like this. A month into the job I purchased my first size 18 Apple Bottom jeans for casual Friday. They hugged every last curve with only the slightest gap in the back at the waist. I had the nagging feeling it wouldnt take too long to fill that up, but I wanted to savor that ohsohot feeling of my bubble butt pushing against the seat of my jeans and didnt mind the extra expense of failing to plan ahead.

Frankly, I was more concerned about fitting into my chair than my pants. I noticed that now if I shifted in my chair at all that my hips brushed against the armrests, and unless I wore jeans my thighs and ass would spread to fill out the entire seat with no room to spare. My breasts, too, were causing a problem: propped up by the compression of my burgeoning belly into my stifled sitting space, they were starting to obscure my retractable keyboard as I typed. I solved the problem by sitting a little further back from the desk, but more lately the pure volume of my backside had begun pushing me further and further forward than I was used to, which made it difficult to lean back. I had to sit up so straight, shoulders pulled back, I felt like I was at cotillion. I half expected some scrawny schoolmarm to step out from behind me to swat my hand away from the cookies. True ladies, you know, always watch their figures.

I wasnt only just starting to feel bulky. Clearly I was getting heavy. I sat with a slight flop instead of slipping into my chair, hydraulics compressing with an audible _whush!_ My thighs and calves were starting to burn a little each morning and afternoon while climbing the stairs, and I noticed myself thinking ahead each time I wanted to get up trying to decide whether my mission was truly worth the effort. 

I had a hard time gauging my girth, too, particularly because of my outrageously wide ass. I was unsure exactly how to fit between things. I would misjudge the size of the openings between the cubicles in our cramped space, jostling a co-worker here or bumping an empty chair there. Every time I misjudged I discovered that a slight brush threatened to knock things over. Perhaps it was the new circular sway in my walk: to keep my thighs from rubbing together too uncomfortably I noticed I had sort of widened my steps a little, which meant I had to swing my hips around to accommodate. It all kind of brought me to pause. Self-indulgence wasnt supposed to mean work! 

By the time May graduation came around I was at 200 pounds. Now, that may not sound like much, but at 52, there arent a lot of places for an extra 90 pounds or so to go. In one of my many idle moments I calculated the change: that was 25% more girl than I was when I walked in for my interview! I reflected on that while I gnawed through a Dining Services cookie and sipped on orange punch with the college president during the proceedings. My breasts were squeezed into the same (now undersized) top with the open bodice hed seen me in before, and curiously he seemed to recall the incomparable quality of the cookies wed shared the previous month. A box sent over by the office the next week in commemoration of his tenth year of service, and suddenly he was calling me directly about making the summer board meeting something a little more impressive than he was used to.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 13

Id like to say Id planned it all out in advance, but the truth was I simply took things as they came. A few calls to my friendly coffee retailers and bakery owners, a few hobnobs with the owners of some of our citys finer restaurants, and suddenly Id negotiated for us the best local food our city had to offer, and for half what I could get from Dining Services. And, that next month, as the board discussed the capital development of their new property acquisition across the street from the campus quad, as they haggled over union contracts and debated declining interest in on-campus housing, a certain plump, knowledgeable hostess was there to serve them and, whenever possible, plainly but convincingly explain how much the events department had saved on its (my) budget by sidestepping Dining Services. It was only a few weeks later that the college unilaterally issued a new policy suspending the college service unions jurisdiction over campus events until contract negotiations were over. Dining Services staff didnt really come to our office for potlucks much after that. That was fine by me. It left more food for me. 

June also brought me my first date with Griseldas son. The Northwest doesnt have a lot of Hispanicswell, not born and raised here, at least. He was educated and polite and family-oriented, and like most Hispanic boys he wasnt at all turned off by my size. I dove right into our citys small but growing Hispanic cultural scene. He loved itI loved ithow with each salsa step my body shook all over. Id shake those mile-wide hips up and down, and theyd rebound back and forth, sending tremors down both sides of my thighs and up around my marshmallow tummy, sending my bloated boobs up and down to the beat of that relentless Latin rhythm. Id sit down shining with sweat, trying not to breathe hard, reluctant to admit how a dance made for fat girls was wearing me out. Mostly it made me hungry! More than once I made Robi take us home early so I could catch a second dinner at the drive thru.

Like most Hispanic boys, Robierto was devoted to his mother, who revered him as a good boy. Like most Hispanic boys, he clearly knew his way around away from his mother and was anything but a good boy. Id like to say I was enthusiastic about his attention, but truthfully I was hesitant at first. I felt big, and I was having a hard time understanding how I could be an object of erotic desire. And secretly, inside, I was afraid I wouldnt know how to get all my parts going in the right direction! 

When the time came, I found he knew exactly what he was doing and knew exactly what I could do. Id finish tired and out of breath but more satisfied by his thoughtful attention than many a more exciting man. I began looking forward to every weekend more excited about sex than Id been since my first college flame. Soon I felt that embarrassing urge to just be with him or talk with him at the end of the day. The first night I felt that feeling I didnt talk to him until two weeks later. But I didnt break up with him either.

I couldnt stay away from that feeling of family. I was lounging in the backyard in one of those cheap plastic Wal-Mart chairs at their July 4 barbeque, just watching everyone around me. Griselda and her husband just sat happily listening to traditional Mexican music (how, Ill never know), while their five children managed eight grandchildren either running and laughing, or toddling and babbling, or, in the case of the two tiny ones sleeping, crying or nursing in the middle of it all. I sat there, stuffed and happy, a pillow of midsection now resting on my lap, albeit comfortably overshadowed by my increasingly dominant bosom and hidden away behind the loose fabric of my generous tunic. I watched Griseldas busy daughters, young, happy and plump, oblivious to their roundness and content with their roles as they ministered to whichever whim of their needy children dominated the moment. Me, I was now larger than them all, happy to be grazing on hot dogs and chips and tamales and wondering where people learned to be as happy as these women around me.

I felt so right that later I even called my mother for her domestic point of view, until she started to talk about the things the President was whispering through the TV about the coming alien invasion and about how her medication didnt seem to be working anymore. Happy 4th, Mom.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 14

By the time the students came back in full force that September, the little wheel of my new scale was spinning past 225. Id been watching it almost every day, no particular emotion other than curiosity. I went from holding my naked breasts back out of the way to bending over and pushing in my bulging belly so I could see. It was stimulating to think that, compared to a year ago, there were now two of me. For no particular reason I quietly commemorated the day with a double-fudge double sundae at the Crimson Ribbon, my favorite local ice cream parlor, that evening after work. Only in my mind, though, was my indulgence actually a special occurrence. Its not as if I gorged myself or anything. Its just that my foray into freedom had so progressed that it seemed there wasnt any single moment of any single day where food wasnt a potential companion. 

My first impulse each morning when I awoke was to grab a muffin or a piece of cake from the kitchen, then shower, then grab something again as I got ready. On the way to work it was the Starbucks drive-thru, then, once at work, directly to the conference room for whatever might be waiting. The morning could bring up to three, even four trips back, and chocolate and other random candies (and sometimes cookies from Holly Hill) were always within arms reach. Lunch, usually early, meant a potluck in back or one ordered in at my deskor more infrequently down the stairs from Raes Sandwich Stand, a private vendor the regents had, at my urging, approved for business out in front of our building.

When I wasnt getting my own food, the older women were constantly sharing with me something theyd cooked at home or bought from one of the bakeries themselves. Martha, the youngish 40ish woman who sat behind me, had taken to slipping things the ladies had given to her to me behind their backs. (Take themthey give me gas, shed whisper. Or, more often, My husband really wants me to watch my weight these days!) I gathered Martha had once been the target of office attention and was happy to watch me outpace her gains.

The ride home usually began with a stop at Holly Hill or Raes or Crimson Ribbon after work, where I often discussed with them plans for the December regents meeting over dinner, followed more often than not by a pit stop at Robiertos place for beer and snacks or for pizza. Id arrive home early for a snack before bed, and it wasnt unusual for me to wake in the middle of the night with a serious case of the munchies.

I was very clearly now a fat girl. Catching a glimpse of my reflection in a random mirror or passing window started to surprise me so much that sometime around Thanksgiving I stood a few minutes in front of the mirror just to get acquainted. Naked, facing the mirror, I was singularly impressed by my stupendous breasts. Round and full, areoles the size of cinnamon rolls, they hung heavily within inches of my navel, pushed slightly to each side by my round doughy tummy. No longer was that tummy just a mound around my navel, framed by wide hips on each side. Now the fat around my sides and on my hips had melded to form one wide rounded dome, interrupted only by one faint, foot-long crease above my deepening navel and by the beginnings of a bulging fold just above my neatly groomed bush. Gravity was starting to take hold.

Only from the side did I really have a discernible waist, high up the middle of my back where the perfect semicircle of my bodacious ass collided with the downward curve of the fat that had spilled out of my bloated arms to take residence on my shoulders. An enclave had formed in the middle of my back above the crowded split of my ass cheeks, and each globe rested securely above the dimply white columns of jiggly fat that had completely engulfed what my mind still regarded as my true thighs. Each shift in the mirror brought a bounce to my breasts, a shimmer through my arms, and undulous waves to my ass and thighs. In the light my skin had started to look smooth and milky white, except for the darker white and red streaks that stood out in long horizontal tendrils, a lot like hair highlights. Except instead of locks, these emphasized the progressing curves of my steadily rounding body.

Id like to say I felt curvy and sexy. The truth is, I had a hard time accepting that this girl was me. I didnt feel like me, either. Instead, I felt clumsy. At work my hips kept knocking things off the pinboard dividers as I squeezed my way through the narrow office jungle. And if I bent over to pick things up, Id careen forward much faster than expected. My ass would shoot out and knock office supplies off desks as I fumbled around, struggling to see around the breasts that swung out in front of me to obscure my view. Id feel my clothes pull on my body in odd places I wasnt even aware existed, and one clumsy adjustment here meant another awkward adjustment there which more than not just sent things right back to where they started. An exemplar of grace and dignity I was not.

Everyone noticed, of course, but no one wanted to shatter their own cocoon of protection by saying anything. Not directly, anyway. They stopped mentioning their diets around me, and from time-to-time the oldest ladiesmostly Griswould talk about how happy I looked or, ominously, about how my thoughts should be turning soon to starting a family. I guess to them chub was an inevitable sign of domestic bliss. One day on my way to the conference room for cookies I was especially conscious of their eyes following me to the back of the room, so I announced that I was headed to the conference room to get happier. Everyone looked around at each other with sweet, mildly devilish weve-been-caught smiles. And, it did indeed make me happy. I took particular satisfaction when, once again, my hips knocked down papers from Marthas pinboard. I made amends by dropping a couple of cookies on her desk on the way back. 

It was only when Robierto mentioned babies that I started to get uncomfortable with things. These months Id spent a lot of warm hours with his family and with co-workers talking about their babies and their grandbabies, learning and wanting to learn more than I ever thought I would about childbirth and childrearing, even enjoying taking nieces and nephews on outings to carnivals and ice cream parlors. But the concept of a baby of my own was still unsettling. My body had undergone complete transformation in just over a year, and yet the thought of a belly distended by pregnancy seemed, as it always had, like a complete invasion. When I finally opened up about it to him I told him I thought I would have to lose a lot of weight before I could even think of having children. It worked: it was the first time I ever called myself fat to anyone, or that I had voiced concern about my weight to him. But sometimes we say things and theyre just words. At least Robi and his mother stopped talking to me about babies.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 15

By the time I made the local vendor proposal to the Board that December I nibbled my way up to 242 pounds. This was no occasion for exposed boobs tucked into tight bodices: this was a serious meeting that had called for my first size 22/24 skirt suit. For that nights celebration I poured myself into my new size 24 jeans and a modest Lane Bryant sweater before meeting Robi and Jennifer and her beau at my favorite little Italian restaurant. 

I was always the glue of our little get-togethers, what with Robi always uncomfortable in non-Latin social settings and Jennifer, well, being Jennifer. This night proved more difficult than manyI guess because Id been up long nights preparing my presentationand there I was on my third breadstick and fourth glass of wine, thinking about ordering more of both, when Robi walks off for a spell with the one beer hed been nursing since wed arrived an hour earlier.

Wed been crammed into one of those semi-circular booths together. Id already grown used to the spread of my seated hips pushing against the arms of my chair or, as in this occasion, against my closest friends. So, Id thought nothing of each of the boys cozying up against my expansive hips until I slid over to fill the empty space Robi had leftonly to feel David slip away from Jennifer and back up onto my hip. I thought little about it until I shakily (it had been awhile since Id done this much drinking) slathered more butter on my garlic bread and tore my teeth into it. Suddenly Davids hand was sliding across the bulge of my inner thigh, which is when I first knew it was really true.

You do figure it out. Walking across campus a head turns, or someones eyes linger a little too long. Maybe because itd grown less common over the past year that Id come to give it renewed attention. President Walker, the Board members, no. They get the grey suit. David? Or the guy who slipped the extra apple pie in my bag at the late night McDonalds drive thru this week? They get the tight jeans and the form-fitting shirt, and I get damn near anything I want in return. Apparently the rules are the same at any size. 

For the first time in my life, I was fatter than Jennifer. Jennifer had sweat off a few more pounds and looked chic but shapeless in the shirt-from-the-closet-of-yesteryear shed been saving for such an occasion. I had parts bulging out in every directionmile-wide hips, seated stomach roll spilling out above my belt, breasts resting on the edge of the tableand Davids hand working toward my crotch.

David had been into Jennifers fat. Now he was into my fat. I engaged my garlic bread with subtle passion and watched it turn him on, and that forbidden _zing!_ Id been missing in my life for what seemed like forever suddenly zung back with an almost-painful vengeance. Two bites into my bread and David was dancing in his seat. I was ready to drop my pants down then and there, Jennifer be damned, but right then and there our tight little waitress with the tighter khaki shorts labored her way toward us under the wide tray of our evening entrées. She put the tray down to reveal Robi sauntering up right behind her. I slid back over to accommodate him, and he slid back into the booth, and I exhaled deeply as I felt both men pushing against my big soft hips once again.

Thankfully I had enough experience with wine to disguise my behavior as playful flirting, but truthfully it wasnt the wine that night I found intoxicating. It started with my plate of fettucini, which I slurped and savored at every spinning forkful. I ordered another basket of garlic bread and ate it all, but for the one piece that Jennifer seemed obliged to eat despite her disciplined Caesar salad. I finished quickly and brazenly began spooning ravioli off of Davids plate, ignoring his feeble protests and laughing as Robi and Jennifer looked on with confusion. I was stuffed, but I felt so warm and excited that I didnt care. I ordered a mudslide and a chocolate calzone for dessert, although I ate half of Davids tiramisu before diving in.

I could hardly breathe when I was done. My noisy belt buckle announced the unzipping of my pants, and I slip down in the booth best I could, smiling tipsily as I cradled my swollen stomach with my chubby hands. I couldnt believe how much broader and tighter and heavier it felt after one tiny little meal!

By the time Robi dropped me off at home I thought I would explode with anticipation. I bustled through the door, banging my hips first against the doorjamb then against the door as I dropped my jeans mindlessly and pushed the door closed with my couch-cushion ass. Id taken to baking a cake in advance for my midnight snack. I snatched it from the counter and, with pants still around my ankles, waddled my way to the living room and plopped down with a _whoosh!_ into my new reclining chair. Between painfully impeded breaths I sliced off bites of cake one-handed like cheese and slipped them onto my tonguegiggling as I felt each sliver melt upon my tongue. The other hand worked restlessly and determinedly in and out of the crowded space between my thighs. That night I came more loudly and with more satisfaction than I could ever remember from the ministrations of a man. I lay back in my recliner covered in crumbs and smeared with frosting, panting in huge grinning gasps, watching the ceiling swim in circles as I basked in the joy of sheer hedonism. Dont know how long I lay there like that. But when I finally looked back down I noticed something for the first time: underneath the half-eaten cake still resting on my stomach, poking up above the firm orbs of my huge brassiered boobs, was the pasty white crest of a burgeoning belly.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Part 16

Id like to say that night was some kind of hedonistic epiphany, but the truth is, it kind of scared me. Things really settled down for a while. Christmas came and went. Back at work after the Christmas Break I spent most of my day sitting at the computer surfing for new clothes or chatting with the girls about their grandchildren or their home improvements, nibbling on New Years cookies or tamales or sipping on a Coke. Some nights Id go to Robis and spend an evening lounging lazily and watching TV, or maybe wed spend the night grazing on tostadas at Griseldas accompanied by the endless squeals of grandchildren and her husbands beer-addled snores from his easy chair. Often enough those days Id just go home and vegetate there, usually ordering pizza for company while I watched DVDs or read mindless magazines. I dont know, I just felt sort ofI dont know. _Content_ doesnt seem like the right word. I cant remember another time simply not feeling the need to do something. Anything. But thats how I felt then.

One day that February I was sitting at my desk, snug in my chair, intentionally spacing out my work so, if asked, I could say I had something I needed to be working on, thinking that I had finally settled into a comfortable life, pondering that a domestic life with Robi might be a lot like the life I had now as I shaped the colleges quiet public image over the next dozen years or so. I had a vision of myself as one of the round ladies, about the size I was now: that short, plump ageless woman with the full bosom and round backside you always wondered about as she plodded across campus. I could nurture a program, or nurture a family, maybe even nurture a little life and be that motherly figure Id always hoped I could be but had secretly dreaded since the day my period started. I knew then this was the place I could always feel happy and secure.

That night, from Jennifers, I called David. I ate that night like there was no tomorrow. T started when I begged off sick with Jennifer, then met David at my place and went out: another pasta restaurant with bread and salad and lasagna and cannoli. I ate with my pants unzipped while he massaged my belly quietly under the table, his hands moving intermittently from the bulge that hung between my outspread thighs to slip inside of me with a shallow, measured, gentle stroke, his upturned palm first cupping and smoothing the hanging flesh, then rubbing the soft flesh of my thighs on either side, then tracing with his finger around the sensitive wet lips before pushing against and circumnavigating my engorged clit, then pausing to feed me another bite before doing it all again. It wasnt so much an out-of-body experience as an other-body experience. For over a year Id watched as all over my body, parts first grew softer, then larger, then changed altogether as some parts grew out of proportion to others. Everywhere everything grew heavier. But everything that grew was at least something that Id started with: hips, ass, breasts, arms, even cheekseverything except a belly. Now, by that time I had just about come to accept that I even had a belly. It was a little bit harder accepting that my belly was actually part of me. But to discover that my belly could be a new source of erotic pleasure, that was like being reborn.

We smooched between bites of a cookies-n-cream shake on the way home, and, after he helped me, groaning, into my kitchen, he spooned the last of it into my mouth. That was before scooping up the pound cake, and the chocolate syrup, and the whipped cream, and the whiskey. I lay prone on my bed as he teased me with bites of cake, which I reached for with my outstretched tongue or snapped at weakly with my fleshy jaw, unable to rise under my own weight while wedged in the crevice created by both of us on my poor old mattress. He dabbed syrup and whipped cream on my chin, on his nose, on his lips, then hovered tantalizingly above the reach of my lips while he slowly stripped off my clothes. He slipped piece after piece of pound cake beyond my greedy lips as he brought me home with his fingers, then massaged my stomach as he patiently waited for my moaning to subside. But that wasnt near enough. I pushed him aside, rolled over with an effort and undid his pants, pulling them down to his ankles before pulling him back on top of me. Each thrust from him brought an effort to breathe as he crowded my stuffed stomach, but a surge of both danger and pleasure swirled around inside my abdomen, and I came and came again and again, well beyond the point he collapsed heavily, still inside me as he buried his face in my sore and swollen breasts. I felt like the center of the world, as if the gravity from the solid inner core of my swollen stomach were pulling Davids tall wiry form irresistibly and inevitably into me.

Even before I learned the good news it was a happier, more energetic me chugging into the office the next morning. In my inbox I found the letter detailing the tripling of my accounts budget, the construction of the food court and entertainment venue (all local vendors and talent)on the land theyd purchased across the street, the closure of the cafeteria, its re-design into a banquet space with adjoining office and basement storageit was my entire proposal in unaltered form. Dining Services would concentrate only on dormitory fare, and students could use dining hall credits with my on- and off-campus suppliers. My vendors all retained complete control of their venues, constituting an unmitigated defeat of the service employees union. Its members, of course, would probably eventually sign a new contract with competitive wages and benefits packages, adjusted to levels closer to some sort of believable reality, but associated with a much more ambitious workload. To the employees that couldnt adapt, reality would hit really hard.

But then, they should have learned how to bake better cookies.

As for me, I did three things. First, I set up my meeting with the student affairs vice president to discuss my new budget plans. Second, I put into motion two phone calls in order to arrange a suitable groundbreaking event (to the president and a new vendor). And third, I left my desk and went downstairs to have breakfast, my second that morning, in the Dining services cafeteria. I stopped in at Raes on the way, of course. You cant put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to campus dining.

My days that spring became much busier. Not only did the workload for my crack staff (me) double, I found myself traveling a lot more outside of the office. I would like to say I traveled entirely for the benefit of the events office, and, frankly, I always found some way in which it would. But the truth is, no matter what the office culture I just couldnt be open about the way I had started to eat. Mindless snacking was one thing. This was out-and-out gorging. Id sneak down two cookies (or pieces of cake, or handfuls of chips) in an empty conference room before taking a third and fourth down to my desk. Id finish a plate of lasagna and salad or a sandwich or some KFC and look around for seconds before some people even loaded their platesa serious violation of office etiquette. So I would grab a plate of dessert for the road and head to some errand to Highland Coffee or the Chocolate Hut. If it wasnt travel off-campus, Id take another plate out of the office when no one was looking and slip into a bathroom stall with it. It was becoming a compulsion. Used to be I was eating to not feel hungry. Now I felt hunger all the time, and I ate in search of the satisfaction that came with the fleeting tightness of a freshly filled stomach.

I started encountering real problems. A trip downstairs meant a trip down stairsand up again. By the time Id reach the landing halfway up Id feel a serious burn in my thighs, and by the time I hauled myself up with the help of the banister I was out of breath. The journey from the staff parking lot just two buildings over, despite its lucky convenience, was becoming a chore. A trip to the administration building across campus became a source of dread. Embarrassingly I had started to notice people stepping to the side to make room for me to pass, my arms and hips swinging out in wide arcs to accommodate the flesh at my sides and to negotiate the troubled path of one thigh as it struggled to make its way around the other. In the parking lot I had to wedge in sideways to squeeze into my BMW, then let myself fall in with an exasperated whumph! The seat was as far back as it could go and still have my fat little legs reach the pedals, but the wheel crowded in against my stomach nonetheless. And, that seat was at its lowest setting and still the steering wheel would rub against my belly and the top of my thighs as it turned. Just buckling in was an adventure: I couldnt really turn enough to reach across my body because of my fat shoulders and huge breasts, so I had to reach blindly behind me with my left hand and pull one, two, three times on the strap just so I could grab the latch, then pull one, two, three times more to have enough belt to stretch over my belly and breasts. so it would fasten tightly over my bulging breasts. Times past, the shoulder strap could push my breasts down and out of the way, but now that was space my big fat belly occupied. The belt had to slip into the giant cleft of my cleavage, pushing flat whatever blouse I wore to garishly frame one giant boob on each side. And then, there was finding the clasp beneath my fluffy hip on the other side.

My office chair, a product from a less pampered, more disciplined era, was an even bigger problem. All of the girls used them, and none of them had ever been successful requisitioning another one. These months my hips had made their silent march ever wider, and despite setting the armrests as wide as possible, now I had to sit on top of them and push myself down just to squeeze my ass cheeks uncomfortably between them. Id taken to wearing loose slacks or leggings to allow the flesh of my hips to ooze between the harsh metal bars holding up the armrests, which would dig uncomfortably and even painfully into my hips. The cramped cubicle built to accommodate the fixed counter in front of me became my nemesis. Oh, I could move side to side. And good thing: my prodigious ass cheeks now occupied the entirety of the chair so that when I leaned to either side, everything from the waist down was motionless, while anything above the waist could only move a few degrees before my belly encroached either the armrests or the counter. Any time I wanted to move I had to roll the whole chair. The fixed height of the counter meant I could only lower my chair so much. But now my thighs hung weightily off the front of the shallow chair, and even my chubby calves felt heavy, and despite sitting on my tippy-toes I felt like Id slip forward at any moment. Behind me there was only the flimsy partition between me and Martha. To accommodate my breasts and belly, I had my chair as far back as I dared. Anytime I leaned forward too far, my belly, or breasts, or even my thighs would push against the counter and third law my little rolling chair against the partition. More than once I heard the thing tip back and forth while Martha gave a little gasp. I had nightmares about that thing falling on her head!

The culprit in all of itthe voracious appetite, the car, the waddle, the cubicle, the stealthy calls to David several nights a weekwas my belly. It had folded over under its own weight, requiring extra space in my pants, in my skirts, and for my belts. My tops, once strained solely by my excessive cleavage, now struggled a second time to hold in a mound of blubber that threatening more and more to stick out beyond the rim of my bodice. When I sat, it doubled over into two prodigious rolls, the lower, larger roll pushing my unbuttoned blouse (unfastened at the bottom like a mans jacket for just that purpose) or outgrown top to slide up and wrap the smaller roll, which would fold over my deepening belly button like some kind of temporary shelter. I had abandoned my keyboard drawer and begun resting my pudgy forearms on my lower bellys its billowy softness as I typed, each motion sending a thrilling little ripple along the surface of the freed flesh and even yielding a barely perceptible shake to the partition now wedged up behind me. When I stood, it now came to rest at the very top of my thighs, and when I walked I could fell the weight of it impeding the already encumbered motion of my fleshy thighs. Id lean over and pull on the banister to help myself up the stairs and feel the weight of my belly pulling on my back. And as I transitioned into loose dresses once spring weather finally came started to visit, there was even more freedom to hang low. My thighs labored against both gravity and mass with each step up the staircase, and more than once I had to sit and rest at the top before I felt composed enough to enter the office. I was mortified someone from the office would come along and find me there, though I was under no illusion that anyone there wasnt aware of my travails. 

I was getting too fat, too fast for my little body to keep up. Once downstairs I would invent reasons to stay off campus to avoid climbing back up. On two occasions, that meant abandoning an afternoon return to campus to hook up with David at his apartment. If not for the ecstasy these feasts provided, Im absolutely certain Id have become serious about somehow returning to an exercise and weight loss regimen. But then, at that size I was embarrassed to be seen at a gym and was completely ignorant of how I could even start!

Things had tapered off with Robi. He had grown more interested in that little waitress from the Italian restaurant. That was no surprise: like a lot of Hispanic boys I figured he couldnt stay faithful. Griselda hardly spoke to me anymore. She certainly never gave me tamales (my one regret), and no one at the office even bothered with comments about watching their figures or counting calories anymore.

I just let myself be consumed by my workand by the most delicious food. By the time of the groundbreaking ceremony in early May Id watched in awe as my weight climbed from 240 to 268 in ten weeks. I served gourmet hors dourves and wine to wealthy developers and their rail-thin, stretch-faced wives in a new size 28 matching top and skirt. By graduation in mid-June, one in which I served langoustines and chocolate fondue to VIP donors in an exclusive tent, I was at 279, and in my picture with the president that day Im standing in the self-same outfit, my chubby cheeks and round nose red from the wine, the cavernous depression of my belly button just peaking out from under my top.

That was the day the president offered me a position in his second-story office over in the administration building as the colleges top fundraiser, a position involving a substantial raise and, with the boards likely approval, a title of vice president. It was a moment of huge victory that, together with the significantly chubby wife of a distinguished alumnus, I celebrated unabashedly with an ample supply of cabernet and chocolate fondue. 

My triumph called for an extended reward. I took a week off, visited each of my local vendor friends (who had taken to patting or rubbing my swelling belly) to celebrate our victory together. The most excited was the little Aisan lady at Holly Hill, who had long since realized that as long as she treated me well, lucrative contracts were bound to follow. The next week I happily returned to the college, where after an arduous climb to the second floor of the administration building, I politely (and more than a little out of breath) tendered to the president my immediate resignation.


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## StrugglingWriter (Jul 31, 2013)

Conclusion

Dont take notes, I said that next March 16. My psychologist had begun opening his notebook as I rolled into the room. I could have lounged easily on the couch, but instead I chose to squeeze into my accustomed seat in the padded recliner across from his. It was two years to the day since I had last sat down in that spot.

Ill go ahead and tell you what you want to know: I was inexcusably fat. I didnt sit in the chair so much as rest on top of it. Oh, after I left the college I did give a go at bringing my waistline back in control, but at my age and my size, there really was no going back to the woman I was. I lost 40 pounds (a personal record). But soon my willpower for stringent workouts and reasonable calorie restrictions gave way to memories of sensory overload and fantasies of excessive self-indulgencethough for practical reasons, I eventually learned to incorporate a reasonable fitness regime. It was as if my weight gain started all over: after their long deference to my expanding waistline, my hips and ass had once again accepted the primary responsibility of bearing my substantial growth. My ass bulged out boldly behind me, too large to fill the generous concave cushion of my doctors leather chair. My hips flowed over the padded arms of the chair, which were just wide enough to contain the expanse of my seated thighs. That prevented me from opening my knees enough to accommodate the billowous protrusion of my healthy midsection, which spilled out on top of my thighs forced upward the cavernous cleft of my prominently displayed cleavage. The elastic under the bodice of my dress was just wide enough to support my breasts, while the great mound of fat that was my seated belly pulled the skirts of my 4X dress up to expose a pair of bulging calves atop surprisingly skinny ankles. My short sleeves cut into pliably soft, round upper arms that spread out past the limits of the chair back, easily as big around now as my thighs had been the last time I sat in this chair. My pudgy cheeks were cherubic, my chin, doubled and rounded. 

My short little frame carried 356 pounds that day, and at its widest point, where bulbous belly hung proudly over cumulous thighs, where hips stretched out beyond the width of my shoulders, where creamy round ass cheeks reached backward in ambitious outward arcs, I measured 77 around. I know now because Id wanted to know then, that day and that hour, the full extent of my ample formand how I might best display it. 

Like I told you, you figure it out.

My phone buzzed inside my purse: an important call I was expecting from a treasured potential vendor. I let it buzz away. 

Id had to move quickly the day I quit the college. My severance package from the firmnow seemingly a different life in a different lifetimehad all but run dry, strained by too many late night pizza deliveries and emergency clothing purchases. For cash Id sold the Beemer and bought a much more accommodating new generation Bug (complete with seat belt extender). Id moved out of my luxury apartment and rented a student bungalow a stones throw from the colleges rapidly progressing leisure complex. A few business cards, laptop, website consultation, second cell line and a treadmill, and soon I was in business.

It hadnt taken long. In the Northwest there are 1000 local vendors and a 100 willing hapless clients looking to sidestep corporate volume and ubiquity for the profit of distinctive local flavor. All they needed was someone with the time and penchant for finding the right fit between vendor capabilities and client needs. Planning and executing the deal was the quick and easy part; the product and marketing research was the time-consuming part. Its well worth the rewards: I know the best and worst attributes of every bakery, coffee house, delicatessen, wine and tapas baryou name itwithin 400 miles of the Portland area. My mailbox overflows with candy and bakery samples. I havent paid for a meal I didnt want to for years.

But back to that moment in the chair, my doctor was clearly overwhelmed. It was the only time Id ever known him to be speechless. He didnt need to talk. I told him everything I wanted to say. I told him I had explored myself and my world for that one source that could be my contentment. I had discovered a need to create and to nurture. Id pursued connection, explored the mundane, pleased my superiors, achieved success, indulged my senses. Id conquered alcohol dependence. Confronted social stereotypes and personal prejudices. Embraced both security and risk. Gourmandized _ad nauseam_ every natural appetite without restraint. 

And I had found every single aspect of it palatable, but not one bit of it I found had been fulfilling. What I had really discovered, what Id found I really wanted, I told my doctor, was _more_. And I told him that I knew he wanted _more_, too. This was not a session for me, I told him. The two-year time limit delineated in his ethics code had expired, I told him.

I ended my speech with particular emphasis on that last point, adjusted my bodice in that timeless way, lifting my massive breasts slightly up before dropping them back with a sensual wave of perpetual motion. He pursed his lips, finally put down his pen, which obediently he had failed to use but had never bothered to put on the small table next to him. Id like to say that he followed this with some sort of special wisdom, some sort of paternal statement of support or pride or maybe even paradox. But then, its not as if hes my doctor. Hes a mana very nurturing and insightful manand, like me, hes in pursuit of _more_. I try to make sure he gets it.

And about that, thats all Id like to say.


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## mdy73 (Jul 31, 2013)

It was truly great to read, thank you!


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## Coop (Jul 31, 2013)

Such a wonderful story.


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## jim austin (Aug 1, 2013)

I must say that this was a spectacular read. Great characterisation, a life like progression and overall a wonderful story. I can't thank you enough very well done


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## StrugglingWriter (Aug 16, 2013)

Thank you very much, ya'll. I really loved writing it.


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## ToniTails (Jun 13, 2014)

I've not finished it yet, but I've enjoyed it so far.


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## John Smith (Feb 27, 2017)

That's pretty nice.


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## StrugglingWriter (Feb 28, 2017)

Thank you very much! It looks like English may be your second language. I feel very humbled at your praise.


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## John Smith (May 15, 2017)

StrugglingWriter said:


> Thank you very much! It looks like English may be your second language. I feel very humbled at your praise.



Ah ah, indeed! 
I'm basically a French-speaking person, though I'm either kinda multilingual. 
I'm very ravished by your wg short novel. I hope your may affording us a plenty new of those stories. 

Envoyé de mon SM-J120W en utilisant Tapatalk


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## StrugglingWriter (May 17, 2017)

John Smith said:


> Ah ah, indeed!
> I'm basically a French-speaking person, though I'm either kinda multilingual.
> I'm very ravished by your wg short novel. I hope your may affording us a plenty new of those stories.
> 
> Envoyé de mon SM-J120W en utilisant Tapatalk



Are you talking about the one on Recent Additions right now? Because that one's becoming more than just a short novel! I'm impressed you can make it through even this shorter one in your second language.


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