~BBW, ~XWG, Mild erotica, Feeding - A woman and her boyfriend explore the many stages of weight gain, with expansive results.
“So what exactly is it that you like about weight gain,” Shannon asked, her eyes twinkling with mischief. Gary had regretted every day that he had slipped his secret interest in larger woman, even if Shannon seemed more curious than disgusted.
“I’m not sure.” That seemed to be the safest answer. The more he had said, the more she had asked, filing away information to be used later. It wasn’t a constant barrage of questions, only when there wasn’t much going on in the office.
“You’re not sure? How can that be!” She leaned over enough for Gary to see a hint of cleavage around the cubicle edge. He was glad for his own embarrassment sake that they were the only two cubicles in this part of the office, the others still empty from the last round of layoffs nearly two years before.
“I can’t believe you don’t know what is it about your kink that turns you on,” she continued. “There must be something. It’s just, fat people, and purposely gaining, seem so counter-intuitive to attractiveness that I want to understand it.” Shannon had studied anthropology in college, and was always analyzing everything. Like Gary, she had hoped to use her degree in a way other than grinding out numbers in an insurance firm.
“Look,” he tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Can we just drop this?”
She had leaned back into her cubicle, but he could still hear her clearly. “Why are you so embarrassed?”
“You said why yourself. Being fat, liking fat, is not normal.”
“Don’t be so concerned with normative behaviors.”
“I went to college, too, you know. Let’s leave the undergraduate phrases there.”
She leaned back to get a look at him. “Now you’re annoyed.”
“No, I’m not.” Gary turned back to his computer, and pecked at the spreadsheet, reformatting things to look busy. He estimated that seventy percent of his time was spent pretending to work by reformatting spreadsheets.
“I think you are, Gary.” He continued to go through the Excel menus, and saw her lean forward out of sight again. “You can stop pretending to work, I know the formatting trick.”
They settled into a silence, the kind that would stretch across their corner of the office a few times a day when neither had much to say. A stench of awkwardness hung over this silence, and although Shannon eventually put on the radio to fill it, she must have been bugged by it, too.
Finally, she said, “Gary, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad at me.”
He contemplated not answering, but that would be petty. This time he really was working, as a new project had popped up in his email from the project manager.
“It’s okay.”
“Really?”
“Really, Shannon.”
They stopped talking again, but the break was shorter this time, barely longer than a song.
“Stubble really turns me on.” At this point, Gary thought the conversation was blessedly over. Her admission jolted him from his concentration on his work. She kept going, lightly, as if unsure how to navigate. “Really any kind of texture, but especially stubble. I love the way it feels against my skin, to point that I fantasize about it. Even just seeing stubble I feel a little turned on.”
“How did that come about,” he finally managed.
“I’m not sure. I’ve always liked the way things felt, but I guess it developed when I was a teen.”
“Weird.”
“Still not as weird as you, though,” she said, laughing lightly. He smiled, feeling a little less self-conscious about it.
**
There was an unspoken attraction between them, one that always seemed close to boiling over. Perhaps it was because they were essentially alone in their corner, and so the boredom and isolation and brought them closer. Perhaps it was because of similar, basic interests they shared: bad kung-fu movies, and making fun of everyone and everything. In meetings they would sit in the back and IM back and forth various mean comments about people around the room, before bursting with laughter back in their abandoned corner of the floor.
Safflower: OMG what is she wearing
ThisGuy: I DON’T EVEN KNOW
Safflower: its like that blouse is wearing her
ThisGuy: that blouse woke up this morning and picked her out of the closet
Safflower: her tits are practically eating it, never mind those love handles
Safflower: you can even see her belly button, sucking in that shirt!
ThisGuy: that’s no space station, it’s the death star trench
Safflower: turned on?
ThisGuy: ew no
And so on.
Occasionally they would go out to lunch together, taking their meeting snark to a live setting, quietly heckling the people walking down the street. Whether it was work obligations or some unspoken honor system or something else, they never spoke or acted on their mutual attraction.
Shannon was certainly an attractive woman, and was constantly fending off the unwanted attention at the office, from managers in other departments all the way down to summer interns who dreamed of tagging the office hottie and bragging about it back at school. She was short and petite, though not to the extreme on either account. She worked out enough to maintain herself, but that was all. She wore minimal makeup to work, and dressed fairly conservative in slacks and vests, and sometimes a simple skirt. In other words, she was like every other attractive woman in every other workplace, that brightens the day of all working straight men.
Gary wasn’t as equally attractive as Shannon, but if you were the type to associate “leagues” to people, they would be compatible. He was tall and was fairly fit, though not particularly defined. He kept himself groomed and clean shaven, and although he didn’t obsess about his appearance enough to be considered a “metrosexual” he was still concerned a “catch” amongst the female gossip circles at the company.
In other words, they were both casually but not unusually attractive, the kind of couple that would seem perfect for each other without being considered too perfect. The only problem was they barely acknowledge the attraction.
Once Gary had slipped about his preference, or at least secret desire, for fat women, a reason could be attached to their impasse, if an outsider was keeping track. Shannon had no desire to be fat, and Gary was just vain enough to never actually pursue a fat woman. Maybe a chubby girl, but that was far as he had ever gone.
And although Shannon had eventually admitted a preference for hairier men, Gary had no intention of being anything but well-groomed. He hated the itchy feeling of beards, and had been clean shaven long enough that it was the only self-image he had.
So what had originally been innocent flirting had taken a slight edge, as they both knew that their mutual attraction only went so far.
**
The only problem was the more time Gary spent with Shannon, the more he felt he was falling for her. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she felt the same. He would only have one chance to make his move though, because he didn’t particularly want to be slapped with sexual harassment.
So he began asking her to things out of the office like movies, and concerts, and even just drinks. He tried to keep things casual, but she kept saying yes, and slowly her conservative work wardrobe gave way to a sexier, ‘civilian’ style.
One night, while they walked along the mostly empty streets of the central business district, on their way to their favorite watering hole, he stopped her and leaned in for a kiss. It’s now or never, he thought, pressing his lips against hers. She didn’t pull back, or gasp, or slap him. She leaned in as well, and the kiss grew more passionate as they slid their tongues against the other, biting lips and he ran a hand up her back to the base of her neck.
The bar was quickly forgotten as they hailed a cab and sped back to his apartment, making out the entire way. They didn’t keep their hands off each other as they stumbled into the lobby and to the elevator, taking it up to the eighth floor before depositing themselves into the hallway.
By this point he was almost ready to go right there, but somehow they made it back to his apartment, and even locked it in the process. They didn’t make it to the bed, though, using his front room’s coach as place to switch positions.
Gary started on top, and Shannon put her left leg above his shoulder, wrapping it around the back of his neck as he put his dick in her. She moaned lightly as he entered, and pulled him in. He grabbed her bony hips, caressed them and felt the soft skin that barely covered her bones. He could see her ribcage poking up, underneath her small but perfectly perky breasts. Finally he had to close his eyes, and just go with it.
They rocked back and forth, both moaning and groaning in pleasure. Time seemed to stop; they could have been there for years. As the pleasure grew, an image popped in Gary’s mind: Shannon, with a good 50 pounds or more added to her small frame. It didn’t do much more than her barely chubby, but it was enough to take him to the finish line. They climaxed at the same time, and he collapsed against her on the coach, trying to catch his breath.
He passed out almost immediately, his last lucid thought was how embarrassing it was to fall asleep immediately after sex.
In the morning he could barely sort through the ever-changing images that he had dreamed, but Shannon had featured in most of them. The image of Chubby Shannon hadn’t dissipated, apparently, and as the dreams went on, the larger she became. He woke up with a massive hard-on.
He looked around, trying to figure just where in the apartment he was. Somehow he made it to bed, or more accurately, somehow Shannon had dragged him to bed. But that bed was empty, and as he shambled around his (admittedly) small apartment, he saw no trace of her. Except one: a short note.
Gary,
I had a wonderful time last night, but I wanted to hit the gym early this morning. Call me when you wake up!
Shannon.
They were back to reality.
**
Things were a little awkward between the two of them for the next week or so. Gary called her not long after waking up that morning, and they met up for a (regrettably) light lunch. Neither mentioned what had occurred the previous night, and Gary wondered if that was just the way it was going to be. A one-time fling, but nothing more.
A few days of work passed, with only light conversation between them. Gary knew that he would either have to nut up, or lose this opportunity forever. So finally, nearly a week after their tryst, he blurted out, “So what are we?”
“Humans,” she answered without missing a beat.
“Yes, that,” he said, playing along for a bit. “I forgot, thanks.”
There was silence from her cubicle for a few seconds before typing resumed. He waited a few more minutes, building the courage.
“Seriously, though. You and I, I and you.”
“Yes,” was all she said.
“Are we anything more than a one night stand?”
“Do you want to be anything more than a one night stand,” she answered cryptically, the sound of typing still underneath.
He thought for a bit. He had been happy, the past 27 years of his life, being either single, or in light relationships. But Shannon was different. He truly enjoyed her company, and not just physically.
“Yes, Shannon, I want to be more than just a friend.” The typing stopped. He continued to stare at his computer screen hoping that she hadn’t picked up the phone to call security. Suddenly a pair of arms were wrapping themselves around his neck, and he smelled her sweet perfume.
“Good,” she murmured, as he rotated in his office chair to face her. “Because I feel the same way.”
**
The news of their relationship spread slowly throughout the office, and to management least of all. Although they, fearing lawsuits and productivity issues, didn’t approve, there wasn’t much the company could do. A supervisor would pass by more frequently, though, and it became a running joke between them that it was a “make-out check.”
Gary settled into the routine with Shannon easily, though, and they were able to move beyond the early stages of playing “get to know each other.” Instead, they spent their free time together, making love and falling each other spell. She took him over to meet her mother, and he took Shannon for a night out on the town with one of his cousins.
Things seemed fine, and maybe even perfect. Shannon’s friends cooed about how perfect they were together, and Gary’s friends told him in privacy about what a catch she was. A year passed, and they were happy.
But there was still an element under the surface that threatened to drive them apart. Every time they had sex, Gary could only close his eyes and image Shannon ever larger. He didn’t dare bring it up, and she hadn’t even once mentioned his “preference” since they had started dating. He hoped she had simply forgot.
And he might have been able to keep up the ruse, if she had never extracted the information in the first place. It came to a head a little more than a year after that fateful first night, as they sat outside a restaurant, enjoying a light lunch before a movie. Their conversation is that kind of inane talk that is only interesting to people in love, but it was interrupted when a woman passed by their table, walking down the street completely oblivious that she would be become the origin point of the next part of Gary and Shannon’s relationship.
This random woman was rather fat. She was stuffed into dark blue jeans and a large (on someone else) shirt. She seemed to fill every crevice of her clothing, and through the cloth her flesh obviously jiggled with every step. Fat cheeks balanced a round face that crowned a double chin. Her large swaying breasts might have reached her belly button, except that they were propped up by a large, round belly that wrapped around the woman’s sides, forming immense love handles, which melted into large, shifting hips.
The belly filled the entirety of the front of the jeans, and still folded over her thighs to create a bulge over the fat legs that touched all the way down to her knees. They never parted as she waddled by, merely shifting back and forth. She was fat, obese, a mountain of a woman.
And Gary caught sight of her and unknowingly followed her the entire way as she passed. It was a comically obvious maneuver that even the blind would have been able to see. Shannon saw, and she wasn’t happy.
She said tersely, “Like what you see?”
Gary froze, then immediately shot his eyes back to the woman sitting across from him, his beautiful (thin!) girlfriend. “What do you mean,” he said, feigning innocence.
“Nothing,” she replied, motioning for the check. She was distant the rest of the day, and Gary didn’t immediately put the two events together. He told himself, there’s no way she could have seen. She’s mad about something else, and it’s just barely coming to the surface.
By dinner she seemed to be back to normal, and Gary almost forgot the event at lunch. She had made a parmesan pasta and salad, with a wine he had bought a week before. They chatted sporadically, about work, about what was going on, about what they were reading. She cleared away the dishes, and he washed them off diligently and put them in the dishwasher. Shannon had gone to the bedroom, to read Gary assumed.
When he went to the bedroom, though, she sat at the computer in only her underwear. Either she didn’t hear him or was ignoring him. Either way, he peered over her shoulder and saw “Dimensions Magazine.”
Shit.
He sat down on the bed heavily, a prisoner waiting for the order of execution. Finally, she turned to him, her face unreadable. Although they had been sexual for the last year, and practically living together for the past three months, he took the time then to really look at her body, as he had in the early, frantic days of their relationship. She was still fit, almost incredibly so. Bony hips and ribcage and collarbone all poked out of her skin, which was almost translucent.
Finally she said, “Gary, you can’t run away from this anymore.”
“What do you mean.” Ignorance had gotten him this far.
“Stop. Seriously. I saw you at lunch today, practically fucking that fat woman with your eyes. I’ve seen you nearly every day, checking out every busty or fat or pregnant woman that even passes by your peripheral vision. I’ve felt the way you caress my hips and stomach as we have sex, like you wish there was something more there.”
He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“What I want, is not some ‘explanation,’” she sounded annoyed without actually sounding annoyed, in that way that only women can do. “What I want, is some honesty. What I want to know is if I’m good enough for you. If I’m frankly enough for you. If you’re going to leave me for some cow in a year just because I don’t overeat everyday.”
What do you say to that, he thought. Then he said it aloud, still staring at his hands. “I can’t help what I feel. But I also can’t help but feel that I love you.”
“Even though I’m not physically what you want.”
“No,” he looked up at her, she was crying. “You’re beautiful. And I love looking at you every single day. But I can’t help that there’s a baser part of me that wants…this. That doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you.” He got up off the bed, and took her in her arms, felt her heart racing. “I love you. No matter what.”
“I love you,” she mumbled back. They shared the space, that sort of post-sexual and sexual intimacy that long-term relationships understand. After a while (was it hours?) she started to laugh.
“What?”
She kept laughing. “Look at us. I’m worried that the man I love is going to leave me for some fatter lady. Most women would kill for that kind of freedom.”
He desperately wanted to push her a little then, to say, “You could have that freedom, too.” But he knew that would be too far, and just held her close instead.
Stages of Love
By tacofive
By tacofive
“So what exactly is it that you like about weight gain,” Shannon asked, her eyes twinkling with mischief. Gary had regretted every day that he had slipped his secret interest in larger woman, even if Shannon seemed more curious than disgusted.
“I’m not sure.” That seemed to be the safest answer. The more he had said, the more she had asked, filing away information to be used later. It wasn’t a constant barrage of questions, only when there wasn’t much going on in the office.
“You’re not sure? How can that be!” She leaned over enough for Gary to see a hint of cleavage around the cubicle edge. He was glad for his own embarrassment sake that they were the only two cubicles in this part of the office, the others still empty from the last round of layoffs nearly two years before.
“I can’t believe you don’t know what is it about your kink that turns you on,” she continued. “There must be something. It’s just, fat people, and purposely gaining, seem so counter-intuitive to attractiveness that I want to understand it.” Shannon had studied anthropology in college, and was always analyzing everything. Like Gary, she had hoped to use her degree in a way other than grinding out numbers in an insurance firm.
“Look,” he tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Can we just drop this?”
She had leaned back into her cubicle, but he could still hear her clearly. “Why are you so embarrassed?”
“You said why yourself. Being fat, liking fat, is not normal.”
“Don’t be so concerned with normative behaviors.”
“I went to college, too, you know. Let’s leave the undergraduate phrases there.”
She leaned back to get a look at him. “Now you’re annoyed.”
“No, I’m not.” Gary turned back to his computer, and pecked at the spreadsheet, reformatting things to look busy. He estimated that seventy percent of his time was spent pretending to work by reformatting spreadsheets.
“I think you are, Gary.” He continued to go through the Excel menus, and saw her lean forward out of sight again. “You can stop pretending to work, I know the formatting trick.”
They settled into a silence, the kind that would stretch across their corner of the office a few times a day when neither had much to say. A stench of awkwardness hung over this silence, and although Shannon eventually put on the radio to fill it, she must have been bugged by it, too.
Finally, she said, “Gary, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad at me.”
He contemplated not answering, but that would be petty. This time he really was working, as a new project had popped up in his email from the project manager.
“It’s okay.”
“Really?”
“Really, Shannon.”
They stopped talking again, but the break was shorter this time, barely longer than a song.
“Stubble really turns me on.” At this point, Gary thought the conversation was blessedly over. Her admission jolted him from his concentration on his work. She kept going, lightly, as if unsure how to navigate. “Really any kind of texture, but especially stubble. I love the way it feels against my skin, to point that I fantasize about it. Even just seeing stubble I feel a little turned on.”
“How did that come about,” he finally managed.
“I’m not sure. I’ve always liked the way things felt, but I guess it developed when I was a teen.”
“Weird.”
“Still not as weird as you, though,” she said, laughing lightly. He smiled, feeling a little less self-conscious about it.
**
There was an unspoken attraction between them, one that always seemed close to boiling over. Perhaps it was because they were essentially alone in their corner, and so the boredom and isolation and brought them closer. Perhaps it was because of similar, basic interests they shared: bad kung-fu movies, and making fun of everyone and everything. In meetings they would sit in the back and IM back and forth various mean comments about people around the room, before bursting with laughter back in their abandoned corner of the floor.
Safflower: OMG what is she wearing
ThisGuy: I DON’T EVEN KNOW
Safflower: its like that blouse is wearing her
ThisGuy: that blouse woke up this morning and picked her out of the closet
Safflower: her tits are practically eating it, never mind those love handles
Safflower: you can even see her belly button, sucking in that shirt!
ThisGuy: that’s no space station, it’s the death star trench
Safflower: turned on?
ThisGuy: ew no
And so on.
Occasionally they would go out to lunch together, taking their meeting snark to a live setting, quietly heckling the people walking down the street. Whether it was work obligations or some unspoken honor system or something else, they never spoke or acted on their mutual attraction.
Shannon was certainly an attractive woman, and was constantly fending off the unwanted attention at the office, from managers in other departments all the way down to summer interns who dreamed of tagging the office hottie and bragging about it back at school. She was short and petite, though not to the extreme on either account. She worked out enough to maintain herself, but that was all. She wore minimal makeup to work, and dressed fairly conservative in slacks and vests, and sometimes a simple skirt. In other words, she was like every other attractive woman in every other workplace, that brightens the day of all working straight men.
Gary wasn’t as equally attractive as Shannon, but if you were the type to associate “leagues” to people, they would be compatible. He was tall and was fairly fit, though not particularly defined. He kept himself groomed and clean shaven, and although he didn’t obsess about his appearance enough to be considered a “metrosexual” he was still concerned a “catch” amongst the female gossip circles at the company.
In other words, they were both casually but not unusually attractive, the kind of couple that would seem perfect for each other without being considered too perfect. The only problem was they barely acknowledge the attraction.
Once Gary had slipped about his preference, or at least secret desire, for fat women, a reason could be attached to their impasse, if an outsider was keeping track. Shannon had no desire to be fat, and Gary was just vain enough to never actually pursue a fat woman. Maybe a chubby girl, but that was far as he had ever gone.
And although Shannon had eventually admitted a preference for hairier men, Gary had no intention of being anything but well-groomed. He hated the itchy feeling of beards, and had been clean shaven long enough that it was the only self-image he had.
So what had originally been innocent flirting had taken a slight edge, as they both knew that their mutual attraction only went so far.
**
The only problem was the more time Gary spent with Shannon, the more he felt he was falling for her. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she felt the same. He would only have one chance to make his move though, because he didn’t particularly want to be slapped with sexual harassment.
So he began asking her to things out of the office like movies, and concerts, and even just drinks. He tried to keep things casual, but she kept saying yes, and slowly her conservative work wardrobe gave way to a sexier, ‘civilian’ style.
One night, while they walked along the mostly empty streets of the central business district, on their way to their favorite watering hole, he stopped her and leaned in for a kiss. It’s now or never, he thought, pressing his lips against hers. She didn’t pull back, or gasp, or slap him. She leaned in as well, and the kiss grew more passionate as they slid their tongues against the other, biting lips and he ran a hand up her back to the base of her neck.
The bar was quickly forgotten as they hailed a cab and sped back to his apartment, making out the entire way. They didn’t keep their hands off each other as they stumbled into the lobby and to the elevator, taking it up to the eighth floor before depositing themselves into the hallway.
By this point he was almost ready to go right there, but somehow they made it back to his apartment, and even locked it in the process. They didn’t make it to the bed, though, using his front room’s coach as place to switch positions.
Gary started on top, and Shannon put her left leg above his shoulder, wrapping it around the back of his neck as he put his dick in her. She moaned lightly as he entered, and pulled him in. He grabbed her bony hips, caressed them and felt the soft skin that barely covered her bones. He could see her ribcage poking up, underneath her small but perfectly perky breasts. Finally he had to close his eyes, and just go with it.
They rocked back and forth, both moaning and groaning in pleasure. Time seemed to stop; they could have been there for years. As the pleasure grew, an image popped in Gary’s mind: Shannon, with a good 50 pounds or more added to her small frame. It didn’t do much more than her barely chubby, but it was enough to take him to the finish line. They climaxed at the same time, and he collapsed against her on the coach, trying to catch his breath.
He passed out almost immediately, his last lucid thought was how embarrassing it was to fall asleep immediately after sex.
In the morning he could barely sort through the ever-changing images that he had dreamed, but Shannon had featured in most of them. The image of Chubby Shannon hadn’t dissipated, apparently, and as the dreams went on, the larger she became. He woke up with a massive hard-on.
He looked around, trying to figure just where in the apartment he was. Somehow he made it to bed, or more accurately, somehow Shannon had dragged him to bed. But that bed was empty, and as he shambled around his (admittedly) small apartment, he saw no trace of her. Except one: a short note.
Gary,
I had a wonderful time last night, but I wanted to hit the gym early this morning. Call me when you wake up!
Shannon.
They were back to reality.
**
Things were a little awkward between the two of them for the next week or so. Gary called her not long after waking up that morning, and they met up for a (regrettably) light lunch. Neither mentioned what had occurred the previous night, and Gary wondered if that was just the way it was going to be. A one-time fling, but nothing more.
A few days of work passed, with only light conversation between them. Gary knew that he would either have to nut up, or lose this opportunity forever. So finally, nearly a week after their tryst, he blurted out, “So what are we?”
“Humans,” she answered without missing a beat.
“Yes, that,” he said, playing along for a bit. “I forgot, thanks.”
There was silence from her cubicle for a few seconds before typing resumed. He waited a few more minutes, building the courage.
“Seriously, though. You and I, I and you.”
“Yes,” was all she said.
“Are we anything more than a one night stand?”
“Do you want to be anything more than a one night stand,” she answered cryptically, the sound of typing still underneath.
He thought for a bit. He had been happy, the past 27 years of his life, being either single, or in light relationships. But Shannon was different. He truly enjoyed her company, and not just physically.
“Yes, Shannon, I want to be more than just a friend.” The typing stopped. He continued to stare at his computer screen hoping that she hadn’t picked up the phone to call security. Suddenly a pair of arms were wrapping themselves around his neck, and he smelled her sweet perfume.
“Good,” she murmured, as he rotated in his office chair to face her. “Because I feel the same way.”
**
The news of their relationship spread slowly throughout the office, and to management least of all. Although they, fearing lawsuits and productivity issues, didn’t approve, there wasn’t much the company could do. A supervisor would pass by more frequently, though, and it became a running joke between them that it was a “make-out check.”
Gary settled into the routine with Shannon easily, though, and they were able to move beyond the early stages of playing “get to know each other.” Instead, they spent their free time together, making love and falling each other spell. She took him over to meet her mother, and he took Shannon for a night out on the town with one of his cousins.
Things seemed fine, and maybe even perfect. Shannon’s friends cooed about how perfect they were together, and Gary’s friends told him in privacy about what a catch she was. A year passed, and they were happy.
But there was still an element under the surface that threatened to drive them apart. Every time they had sex, Gary could only close his eyes and image Shannon ever larger. He didn’t dare bring it up, and she hadn’t even once mentioned his “preference” since they had started dating. He hoped she had simply forgot.
And he might have been able to keep up the ruse, if she had never extracted the information in the first place. It came to a head a little more than a year after that fateful first night, as they sat outside a restaurant, enjoying a light lunch before a movie. Their conversation is that kind of inane talk that is only interesting to people in love, but it was interrupted when a woman passed by their table, walking down the street completely oblivious that she would be become the origin point of the next part of Gary and Shannon’s relationship.
This random woman was rather fat. She was stuffed into dark blue jeans and a large (on someone else) shirt. She seemed to fill every crevice of her clothing, and through the cloth her flesh obviously jiggled with every step. Fat cheeks balanced a round face that crowned a double chin. Her large swaying breasts might have reached her belly button, except that they were propped up by a large, round belly that wrapped around the woman’s sides, forming immense love handles, which melted into large, shifting hips.
The belly filled the entirety of the front of the jeans, and still folded over her thighs to create a bulge over the fat legs that touched all the way down to her knees. They never parted as she waddled by, merely shifting back and forth. She was fat, obese, a mountain of a woman.
And Gary caught sight of her and unknowingly followed her the entire way as she passed. It was a comically obvious maneuver that even the blind would have been able to see. Shannon saw, and she wasn’t happy.
She said tersely, “Like what you see?”
Gary froze, then immediately shot his eyes back to the woman sitting across from him, his beautiful (thin!) girlfriend. “What do you mean,” he said, feigning innocence.
“Nothing,” she replied, motioning for the check. She was distant the rest of the day, and Gary didn’t immediately put the two events together. He told himself, there’s no way she could have seen. She’s mad about something else, and it’s just barely coming to the surface.
By dinner she seemed to be back to normal, and Gary almost forgot the event at lunch. She had made a parmesan pasta and salad, with a wine he had bought a week before. They chatted sporadically, about work, about what was going on, about what they were reading. She cleared away the dishes, and he washed them off diligently and put them in the dishwasher. Shannon had gone to the bedroom, to read Gary assumed.
When he went to the bedroom, though, she sat at the computer in only her underwear. Either she didn’t hear him or was ignoring him. Either way, he peered over her shoulder and saw “Dimensions Magazine.”
Shit.
He sat down on the bed heavily, a prisoner waiting for the order of execution. Finally, she turned to him, her face unreadable. Although they had been sexual for the last year, and practically living together for the past three months, he took the time then to really look at her body, as he had in the early, frantic days of their relationship. She was still fit, almost incredibly so. Bony hips and ribcage and collarbone all poked out of her skin, which was almost translucent.
Finally she said, “Gary, you can’t run away from this anymore.”
“What do you mean.” Ignorance had gotten him this far.
“Stop. Seriously. I saw you at lunch today, practically fucking that fat woman with your eyes. I’ve seen you nearly every day, checking out every busty or fat or pregnant woman that even passes by your peripheral vision. I’ve felt the way you caress my hips and stomach as we have sex, like you wish there was something more there.”
He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“What I want, is not some ‘explanation,’” she sounded annoyed without actually sounding annoyed, in that way that only women can do. “What I want, is some honesty. What I want to know is if I’m good enough for you. If I’m frankly enough for you. If you’re going to leave me for some cow in a year just because I don’t overeat everyday.”
What do you say to that, he thought. Then he said it aloud, still staring at his hands. “I can’t help what I feel. But I also can’t help but feel that I love you.”
“Even though I’m not physically what you want.”
“No,” he looked up at her, she was crying. “You’re beautiful. And I love looking at you every single day. But I can’t help that there’s a baser part of me that wants…this. That doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you.” He got up off the bed, and took her in her arms, felt her heart racing. “I love you. No matter what.”
“I love you,” she mumbled back. They shared the space, that sort of post-sexual and sexual intimacy that long-term relationships understand. After a while (was it hours?) she started to laugh.
“What?”
She kept laughing. “Look at us. I’m worried that the man I love is going to leave me for some fatter lady. Most women would kill for that kind of freedom.”
He desperately wanted to push her a little then, to say, “You could have that freedom, too.” But he knew that would be too far, and just held her close instead.
