romance Unforgettable Cruise

[Sonic Purity]

Voyaging on a cruise ship in March 2020? What could possibly go wrong? 😟

Boarding a Floating City

🎼 So be my guest

You’ve got nothing to lose

Won’t you let me take you on a

Sea Cruise? 🎼

The spectacularly-appointed Sapphire Prince assuredly dwarfed whatever cruise ship about which Huey “Piano” Smith and His Clowns sang in 1958, or for that matter the vastly more familiar 1959 major hit single with Frankie Ford doing the vocal over the identical instrumental and sound effect track. It was the latter version singing to about-to-be vacationing Leigh Down through her earbuds as she boarded the ship at her home port of San Diego, California. Adrenalin pumping from high excitement, she continued her way up the gangway.

The ship looked ever-more impressive the closer to, and finally onto, it she got. 1370 cabins holding up to Two-Thousand-Beast-Number passengers as Leigh sillily thought of it (2666 to the rest of us) plus well over one thousand crew and staff members, more decks than many lesser hotels had floors, redundant on-board water treatment each fit for supplying the needs of a small town, redundant high-tech propulsion, state-of-the-art facilities and accoutrements too numerous to enumerate—this was some serious maritime hardware!

 

Her pleasure with her chosen pleasure craft grew further upon meeting her Upper Promenade Deck stateroom. Plushly, beautifully, and tastefully appointed (especially since the ship’s most recent refresh just a year prior), the light, optically bright pastel wall finish and complimentarily-contrasting medium dark wood trim, panels, and accents—and indeed the entire stateroom—were well- and evenly-lit by lines and rings of energy-efficient soft white dimmable LED lighting. Shaped vaguely like neon tubing and unlike rope LED designs with their individual light dots, these LED tubes produced smooth, continuous, often indirect light, blending into the room well enough to become one with it, rather than discrete fixtures.

On the small side of medium in size, while able to sleep 3 by design, it was perfect for one person wanting some space without requiring extravagant amounts. She happily stowed her well-packed suitcases in the closet, then made a beeline to the one area of concern she’d had: how big was the shower door? {Big enough} she thought as she tried it, smiling from a combination of relief and the shower’s (and indeed the bathroom’s) innate glass with gold structural members and fittings beauty. While fitting through the shower door wasn’t any issue now, given how her life usually went and what she had in mind for this vacation cruise, it could have been later. The sink in the gray terrazzo countertop and toilet were equally well-appointed. Some of the fanciest staterooms had those newfangled bidet seats, with all kinds of cleaning and warming and other functions. Leigh was just as glad to have a conventional “dumb” toilet seat and toilet paper for their own sake, beyond saving money. No question: the bathroom would be fully up to the task for this leisurely-paced leisure cruise.

Upon finishing making use of the latter two bathroom fixtures, her next beeline was over to the bed, near the full wall-height exterior window/sliding door. She expected to be spending most of her time when in this stateroom on or in the bed, whether sleeping, enjoying the view, reading, or possibly even getting into some pleasure writing she’d long neglected. Gloriously sensually soft, plush, and welcoming, its materials gave it a slightly warm feel of the nature of some cloth materials, others of which can feel cold to the touch despite both being measurably at the same ambient temperature. Laying fully down atop it she thought, {This really is like floating on a cloud}.

The view out the full-wall picture window/door was gloriously free from visual restrictions, and with the day being a nice sunny San Diego late afternoon, glorious in general. Royal Prince Cruise Lines was very proud of the innovation they’d introduced on this series of ocean liners during the most recent extensive refresh: a small balcony-like area just outside each of these staterooms with a waist-height metal-side glass-front wall with its own door out onto the main Upper Promenade deck area ringing this deck level. The metal sides were equipped with sliding opaque privacy partitions (initially retracted) able to be adjusted by either of the visually adjoining staterooms, when one wanted a more traditional private balcony experience. Called the Balconette by Royal Prince, the name reminded her of a bra style for which she barely had enough boob flesh to justify. Leigh made sure to test the electric self-locking picture window glass door, both from its pushbutton opener on the inside and the key card mechanism on the outside. She was just as glad to have overhead cover at that moment, given the flock of seagulls noisily chirping as they flew by (definitely not singing any early 1980s Hair Band/Neuromantic songs, by any band).

The ship was still in port and would so remain for awhile as other cruisers continued to board, and Leigh had more of her stateroom to check out! Back inside, she found the couch entirely serviceable. Even if not as nice as hers at home in terms of plush comfort, it was undeniably cleaner! The nearby comfy chair was on the verge of claustrophobically snug, and of no matter to her given the couch and bed options. It was comfortable, and if a guest wound up visiting, they could likely sit there with no issue. The small desk and its chair were indeed several notches above motel perfunctory, even if not quite up to the level of the rest of the room in terms of elegance and comfort. Not a place she expected to spend any time, so no matter.

 

She spent some time reading a good bit of the voluminous information Royal Prince Cruise Lines provided regarding the many activities, amenities, services, and so on from which she could partake. {Ten restaurants?! Mmmmmm… thank goodness it’s dinner time soon. Four swimming pools?! Yikes!… Eight lounges doesn’t surprise me. Well} “hhhhhh” she sighed aloud, {might as well fine-tune myself and get ready for the muster drill, then after that head directly out to dinner}.

 

* *

Experiencing the escalator ride after the reasonably brief and pleasantly painless muster drill down to the lower level of the expansive multi-deck-height Grand Promenade area looked and felt in every way to Leigh like a mash-up of going down a land-based upscale shopping mall escalator near the prime stores from its upper to lower level with descending into the main lobby of a well-appointed luxury hotel: open, spacious, vast, opulent.

The many disparate languages being spoken by those moving every which way around her—quite like a busy mall or hotel lobby, or even transit terminal—along with details of physical build and appearance caught her attention. {It’s like a mini-UN here} she mentally mused.

 

She made her way to Glissando, one of the higher-end restaurants on the ship. As part of the Pampered Gem package into which she’d bought, eating there was no extra charge for her, as it would be for those opting for standard fares. Thankfully, she was able to be seated right away.

Excellent acoustic treatments integral to the tasteful dark wood-forward decor made for a peaceful relatively quiet space for private at-table conversation, as well as dispersing the mellifluous notes of the beautiful and beautifully-dressed harpist’s large gold-colored harp evenly throughout the restaurant space such that it could be easily heard without being overbearing. Yes, this lithe brown-haired maiden in her white sequined full-length dress was running glissandos lovely enough to make angels weep.

{Goodness, I’m in one of my nicer outfits and I’m almost underdressed!} she thought on the walk over to her table, following the hostess’s tight, small ass, the likes of which she hadn’t had since she was 11, if then.

 

The young woman’s gracious smile and waving hand motion towards the linen-covered table exuded welcoming sincerity.

“Thank you” said Leigh, thinking as the woman left, {You’d be about the age of the daughter I’m glad I never had}.

 

“Good evening, Ms. Down” a tall square-jawed young man not much older than the hostess greeted her, his light brown eyes glittering from his toreador-like face framed by long jet black hair. His uniform informed her that he was her waiter, named Andrés per his black text on shiny gold name tag. “How are you this evening?” he asked as he set down a generously-large glass of water and basket of fresh, warm bread.

“Well, thank you. And you?”

“Delighted to be here, and to be of service. Tonight’s Sapphire Special is Braised Veal Bonavente. Our Explorer Special this evening is Sardine Poutine.”

Leigh couldn’t help grimacing slightly at the thought.

“Chef Lindgren assures me that its name was chosen more for purposes of alliteration than literal representation of its composition, other than it assuredly contains fresh premium sardines. He promises it will delight the palate, and few of us who’ve ever had the honor and privilege of partaking of his creations have ever found them less than delightful.”

“Seems like an unusual choice of fish.”

“Chef claims that sardines’ position low in the food chain makes it a far more healthful option in our modern world than nearly any other seafood outside of wild-caught Alaskan salmon, which we prefer to source once we’re much farther up the coast.”

“Fair enough. Being new on-board tonight, I’m going to need some time to peruse the menu before making my selection” {and hope that you’re on the menu}.

“Of course; please take your time” he smiled, just missing patting her hand with his gentle table touch before departing.

 

An inveterate foodie, Leigh was already feeling food lust arousal before even making it out of the appetizer listings. {Uuoooohh, I’m gonna love this cruise!}

 

* *

Leigh was rarin’ to go the moment Andrés next returned to her table. “I’ll please start with the Tempura Wands and Crab Rangoon Moons, then look forward to the Porcine Suprema, and a side of Buffalo Coins.”

“Very good” he smiled, thinking {Your generous hips suggest to me I needn’t say anything about our generous portions.} “Beverage this evening?”

“A bottle of the 2017 Pearly Night merlot, please.”

“Excellent. Wine with the meal?”

“I’m ready now” she grinned.

 

Millions of people in the world, millions of opinions of all sorts. What to Andrés was Leigh’s generous right hip (the only one of hers he could see as she sat) tended to be little more than pleasantly curvaceous in the fatlovesex world, a.k.a. the fatosphere. Naturally even there opinions differed, with some in the community likely to apply the plumper label to her physique, others disagreeing that she’d reached that level of plushness.

 

* *

{This is why I’m doing this cruise!} blissed-out Leigh thought, as she savored her current Crab Rangoon Moon moon-shaped dumpling, feeling wholly in the moment and mostly (apart from the dressy formality) in her element. {No one knows me, no one’s looking at me, no one’s judging me.}

 

Throughout the entirety of the meal, every bite of every dish made love to her taste buds, with every sip of wine caressing them.

 

* *

Well over an hour later, vanquished plates, platters, and bowls disappeared into the hands of the busser, then into his pre-rinse/transport bucket.

The moment he rolled away, Andrés reappeared. “Dessert this evening?”

“Yes please. Please kindly explain why even a chef prone to alliteration would name a dessert Persnickety Snickerdoodles?”

“We do generally tend to think of the definition of persnickety as fussing over trivial, minor, possibly irrelevant details, I admit. There is however the definition of substances, materials, or ingredients requiring the utmost precision and care, which is how Chef Lindgren describes this dish’s titling.”

“I’ve made snickerdoodles at home before. The ingredients aren’t that fussy!” she objected.

“Ah, but the many nuanced ingredients setting Persnickety Snickerdoodles apart from those you and I and others we know have made put them in a separate category necessitating precise execution.”

 

Her very full stomach told Leigh to proceed with caution, perhaps even opt out of dessert. Her lusty taste buds told her otherwise. “I must know for myself what sets these Persnickety Snickerdoodles apart from the many good ones I’ve had and occasionally made over the years.”

“Very good.”

“Is a small ** of mint tea an option?”

“Absolutely. We have spearmint, peppermint, and blended mint non-caffeinated herbal infusions.”

“Spearmint please.”

 

* *

{Nutmeg… candied lavender… honey… wowwww!}

Her mouth figuratively danced a jig at the joys of these amazing cookies, complimented exquisitely by the spearmint tea.

 

Very mildly disappointed that Andrés wasn’t on the menu in any capacity, Leigh bid him and Glissando goodnight. Her bright below-knee floral extravaganza-on-white dress had its work cut out for it containing her maxed-out belly. Other than tightness around that region from the 100% cotton dress’s lack of give, she felt comfortable on her way out of the restaurant.

 

* *

On her way back through the still-busy Grand Promenade, Leigh played a solo game of identifying as many different languages as she could recognize. Monolingual herself, she nevertheless had sufficient familiarity with the characteristics of several of the world’s major languages to be able to identify them on sound, even if she could rarely understand more than an occasional word and not ever speak even that much.

Italian from the large group of about 23 apparently-Italians standing near the lobby seating area of the Grand Promenade was easy. One friendly gentleman amongst them briefly smiled and waved at her over the distance as she passed, upon seeing her apparently studying him/them.

German from a passing likely-German couple in a deep conversation with one another and seemingly in somewhat of a hurry was easy.

A group of 4 individuals sounding to her to be speaking Chinese on the brief occasions they spoke as they stood and looked between one another (possibly figuring something out together) incremented her count by one.

Gliding down the down escalator as she glid up the up escalator, Leigh thought she heard a couple looking to her like parents speaking to 4 younger people with them in an Asian language of which she was not certain. Hearing “kimchee” she guessed Korean.

A few steps away from the top of the escalators near the main elevators the characteristic serial monosyllabic staccato of Japanese caught her ear, confirmed with several repeated “Hi”s (themselves confirmations).

 

Hearing Spanish came as no surprise whatsoever, for a ship which most recently boarded no more than 15 miles from the Mexican border. Thing was, to Leigh’s ears the couple riding with her in the elevator seemed to be speaking another Spanish dialect. Which one, she had no idea.

“Beeauuutiful ship, yes?” the gentleman of the pair said to her.

Much as she was tempted to reply “Si. Muy linda”, her better wisdom kept her on the much safer path of sticking with “Yes, very much so.”

Each of Ernesto and Gloria Albiol introduced themselves to Leigh (and vice-versa) with hearty handshakes just before exiting the elevator on the Vista deck—one amongst the primarily-stateroom decks.

 

* *

Leigh’s destination was the Sports deck. It was prime time for her to introduce herself to the Fitness Center: her essential travel companion on this journey. After all, it was her gym activity which routinely kept the flabbergasting flab off her body in her home life, along with occasional nature and/or beach walks when she could fit either of those into her schedule and away from crowds.

 

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, it appeared well-equipped, with higher-end versions of the typical gear she knew so well from her local gyms over the years. Plenty of busy bodies dressed in a range of “please don’t look at me” through “please look at me” activewear were making good use of the facilities.

As acceptable as the Fitness Center was, and as much as she knew she really ought to return to her stateroom, change, and come back up and get in motion, the potent spell of the adjacent spa called to her. It wasn’t so much its very light, delicate, pleasant aroma as the promises which lay within which drew her longing attention. Beautifully appointed in well-lit shades of whites and pinks with subtle yellow and sky blue embellishments, it drew her in like a magnet.

{I’m goin’ in!}

 

* *

“Good evening” the smiling woman of the two white-coated spa employees currently standing near the counter greeted her, with the gasp-worthy hunky gentleman next to her asking, “How may we benefit you tonight?”

{Friends With Benefits might work for me, once we get to know one another} Leigh brashly thought as she looked him over. “I’mmm… freshly boarded this afternoon and familiarizing myself with the ship’s amenities. I’m a Pampered Gem, uh, member, so I’m highly likely to want to partake of your services here.”

 

The range of services on display and enumerated by Gabi and Raphael (per their name tags) dazzled her.

 

“Middays, mid-afternoons, and evenings tend to be our busiest times,” noted Gabi near her presentation conclusion, “during which reservations are recommended.”

“We currently have one sauna and one massage table open” Raphael added.

“Who does the massages?”

As they’d been doing throughout their explanatory presentation, Gabi and Raphael took tag-team turns speaking. It was again Gabi’s turn, “At all times we’re open there is at least one female and one male massage therapist.”

“More during busier times, as now, with Humberto and Lydia currently assisting other cruisers.”

“So I could get a Thai massage from you right now, Raphael?”

“Absolutely” he smiled. “Soon as you’re signed in, we can get you going.”

 

* *

The sensual delights of Raphael’s big, strong, skilled hands working her energy meridians from foot to head and, well away from her erogenous zones and societally-sanctioned private areas, skin to skin had what felt like buckets of stress and tension dissolving and melting away out of Leigh’s body.

Busy professional woman that she was, Leigh’s primary reason for the lack of loving, sensual hands at her ready beck and call in her life was a lack of time and inclination to date. Parts of her mind minimized or suppressed thoughts of additional factors in play. In a society warped to apparently agree that a woman’s value as an intimate lover rapidly declines with age, being 3 years shy of the most common retirement age benchmark put her so far out on the asymptote near zero value that the exact positioning wasn’t worth a moment’s quibble. She thought the “skunk” shock of brilliant white hair visible amongst her still-predominantly and still-naturally medium brown hair made her look more interesting and younger—which in a way, it did. Lines and other wear and tear elsewhere told a different story she’d rather not be told. What had always been with her was her plain appearance, especially her face. Neither ugly nor beautiful enough to draw attention, it had often been a beneficial attribute when she wanted to be ignored and left alone to enjoy her solitude, as at dinner this very night. It had historically proven less beneficial during the times she wished to draw positive, and especially amorous, attention to herself.

Counting back the number of years to the last time a man had intimately had his hands on her for any meaningful length of time made her feel queasy.

 

Raphael felt her body tensing up. “Doing alright, Ms. Down?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I may have found a spot with some tension. Permission for me to ease back down then resume working up, to narrow in on it?”

“Gladly!”

“Stay in the moment and feel all there is to feel of the experience to the best of your ability, to get the most out of this.”

“Mmmmm… alright” she happily sighed.

 

From his training and experience, Raphael had a strong sense of what Ms. Down most needed: midsection tension release, especially between her lower buttocks and the small of her back. The time, place, and society within which they existed precluded his directly addressing this region with the necessary rigor. To a degree, so too did his lack of amorous interest in her, much as the professional in him wanted to help her body release what needed freeing.

Deeply skilled as he was, he worked around the limitations with aplomb.

 

Leigh Down left the massage session a satisfied, refreshed, deeply relaxed woman, all ready for a great night’s sleep in her amply-sized pillowy cloud-soft stateroom bed. So far on this first night, this pricey cruise left nothing to be desired.

Edited June 28, 2020 by Sonic Purity
Corrected spelling error a mere 19 words into the story (found by my brother, not an FA nor otherwise a part of our community)

[Sonic Purity]

Home Port

The Sapphire Prince was docked in its home Port of Los Angeles and on shore power and other utilities well before Leigh was ready to get out of bed. {I’m living my life all wrong, not feeling refreshed like this nearly every morning of every day} she thought as she drew the dark drapes, leaving the sheer white curtains closed to let in the sunny morning’s light as well as give her a passable gauzy view outside without putting her on full, clear display to the many early morning walkers traversing the Upper Promenade deck.

 

Contrary to the way many other cruise lines handled their ships’ times in their home ports, Royal Prince Cruise Lines flipped tradition on its head, having home port stopovers of shorter duration than at many destination ports along the route. Shore leave, boarding, and deboarding at the home port on this voyage were limited to the hours of 0800 to 1100, barely allowing time to see much of anything not immediately adjacent to the Port’s location sandwiched between the City of Los Angeles district of San Pedro to the west and Terminal Island to the east. Royal Prince Cruise Lines’ logic was that there was so much to experience in the greater metropolitan Los Angeles region that even a 3 day layover could easily prove insufficient, thus keep it short for those who live there and/or are disinterested in seeing L.A., and have those with local touring interest pick up another cruise once they’ve had their fill—or even the next loop of the Sapphire Prince, if they’d be touring locally for weeks.

Currently, Sapphire Prince’s loop had the ship meandering up the coast from Los Angeles to Monterey, a longer layover in compact, walkable San Francisco, on to Eureka, then Portland Oregon, and finally Seattle Washington for the northbound leg. The faster southbound leg of the loop voyage returns from Seattle to Eureka California, then San Francisco as much for the many who prefer to board or exit in that city as touring, then Santa Catalina Island for variety and fun, then San Diego, then ending with the again-northbound San Diego to Los Angeles overnight. This bus-style routing made it possible for passengers to embark and eventually disembark at any port along the way, if they were interested in and able to take the 16 day voyage for the whole loop.

 

Having grown up in the Los Angeles area-adjacent Inland Empire, Leigh had seen enough of the western part of the metropolis to have no interest in getting off the ship—especially with her first-of-voyage brunch beckoning! For now, the leisurely, slow, restful early-ish morning in her plush, cozy stateroom suited her well. The light hazy mixed morning clouds and sunshine put the very nearby Vincent Thomas Bridge through a series of different lighting effects, providing her light entertainment as she gradually went through her morning routine and selected her start-of-day wardrobe.

 

* *

{Dressing down on the start of my first full day on the cruise because my nicer things are already edge of too snug is decidedly suboptimal} Leigh mused on her way to brunch. {Better plan on some gym time after brunch, especially since I’m basically dressed for it already.}

 

This passing thought drifted to the back of her mind as the siren aromas emanating from Bunch’s Bistro captivated her senses. A self-serve buffet-style dining facility available to all on the base fares (and of course above), Bunch’s was doing brisk business this latter half of the 9 AM hour, no doubt in part from the acceptably pleasant weather and its outdoor Sun Deck location.

Once Leigh was in sight of the long row of chafing dishes and related serving platforms, captivating visuals united with the existing olfactory joys, making the wide range of offerings that much more compelling.

{Mmmm… some of theeese, a little of this… oh yes I will do a green tortilla mini breakfast burrito! Ya know what? Since I’m going to the gym soon after brunch and this is brunch and not breakfast plus lunch for me today, I’ll do two of these very special mini burritos. Wonder if the green is more avocado-based, or pesto, or what?}

 

Once through the line, Leigh made her way with her heavily-loaded dinner-size plate towards open seating. She nearly spat out the cannolo held in her mouth (due to the lack of free space on her plate) upon seeing someone she knew making a beeline straight towards her, eyes tractor-beam locked on her. Formerly hoping to find an unoccupied table, she now sought one with no readily-available space for this fast-approaching interloper.

Unfortunately soon as she sat down, the others around the table got up and left, having concluded their meal and ready for their next adventure. The only good news about this was that the unwanted arrival remained standing rather than taking a seat.

“Nice look” was his near-smirky greeting, with his eyes focused on the cannolo still in her mouth.

With no readily-available good place to set it down, she took a big bite then held the remainder in her hand. The failure of her glare to drive him away eventually (once she’d chewed and swallowed) led her to reply, “Anything you might possibly say will get you nowhere, Clark.”

All smirk vanished, his demeanor instantly turning serious and apologetic, “I’m truly sorry for what happened at MatCon!”

{He seems serious, for once.}

“That is the real reason I came directly over here soon as I saw you.” His sigh hinted of letting go of a burden. “You know I got whupped with the nerd stick in childhood enough times to struggle with social interactions like this. Hence my apparently tone-deaf greeting just now. I won’t belabor things because even I can sense that you want me to go away. I’ve never been perfect, nor ever shall be, yet I do strive to learn from my errors. Hence my having undertaken a fair whack of personal work in the aftermath of MatCon, and apologizing to you now. Here’s hoping you have a great cruise, Leigh. I’m very much looking forward to it… to mine.”

 

Clark’s tall frame with long legs had already moved the entirety of him including his ears out of earshot well before Leigh could get another word out beyond her singular sentence. He might already be fading towards the deck’s visual horizon, though his emotional wake continued to rock her emotional boat enough that she was almost taking on water.

It wasn’t that she disliked Clark Barr. Far from it: she felt all wobbly wiggly when he was near, including just now. Irrational as it was to her, something about this engineer who worked at a company who used her company’s composite materials as key elements of their products floated her boat higher than a dinghy riding a wave at high tide. Nerdy though he might be in terms of behavior, the nerd stick apparently missed or glanced off him when it came to appearance: he was closer to stage and screen handsome than geek-nerd gangly—at least to her.

She’d always gone for the nerdy smart ones the few times in her life she’d bothered with love, identifying as a member of a broader form of this archetype herself. Many if not most engineers couldn’t communicate clearly to lay people to save their lives—hence her solid career as a tech writer, bridging the sometimes-cavernous gap between the engineers and those who had to understand, market, and use their products.

As a writing professional, Clark’s solid command of spoken and written English further woggled her toggle—and bedeviled her. At times he was breathtakingly eloquent. Other times—sometimes mere minutes later, maddeningly obtuse. She was convinced some neuroscientist would have a field day researching what it was about Clark’s mind that had him moving between these realms with seamless chameleon-like ease, subtlety, and rapidity.

Fun to be with when things were going well, he’d several times over the years they’d occasionally crossed paths charmed the pants off her—literally, after-hours at the most recent MatCon (Materials Convention) trade show they’d both attended, over a year back now. What seemed like a great idea in the moment quickly went pear-shaped for her when she felt he flipped to suddenly emotionally abusing her, pretending to go after her actual mild pear shape, faux-pervily amplifying it beyond all reason in some fictional parallel universe in his head where having chair-overfilling hips and buns was a good thing. How a seemingly otherwise nice man could be so mean and insensitive regarding a woman’s unwanted soft, wobbly weight mystified her—especially how quickly he shifted into that mode. {There’s that chameleon thing again} she mused, tapping her fork tines against the lovely green shell of one of her two mini burritos.

 

Feeling and thinking about all this sapped a good bit of her appetite. Halfheartedly and armed with a refreshed again-hot mug of nice Kona coffee, she nibbled her way through about half of her over-generous brunch plate before calling it a meal.

{Fuck, he’s going to be on this whole cruise!} she suddenly clearly realized as she packed away the many leftovers for later hopefully-enjoyment in the privacy of her stateroom. {At least this is a damn huge ship, so maybe I won’t see that much of him.}

[Sonic Purity]

Merging Universes

Productive as her midday gym session had been, between grazing on her brunch leftovers most of the afternoon then overdoing it with the many delights offered in one of the Sapphire Prince’s numerous other restaurants, getting onto the dance floor was as much about burning off some more calories as mingling. On-ship wedding chapel notwithstanding, this wasn’t the Love Boat as far as Leigh was concerned, nor was she explicitly roaming for romance. Sure, if chance circumstances brought someone special into her orbit and vice-versa, she’d keep an open mind. Seeking or working at it? Nope, not so much.

 

The sight of Clark Barr in the distance soon as she stepped onto the open-air outdoor dance floor of Club Troposphere (up on the top level Sky Deck) almost made her walk directly back off it. {Of course you’re at the same dance club I am! Grrrrr.}

 

Rationally, Leigh had no reason to be surprised. Of the ship’s 4 1/2 dance venues (one was mixed-use, hence the 1/2), Club Troposphere was the largest, meant as the main event for the majority of cruisers seeking live DJ dancing. Only 2 of the others were nighttime operations along with this one, one of them focusing on country & western line dancing, the other rotating through various niche genres, tonight’s being ballroom dancing to 18th. century (and thereabouts) classical music.

Several hundreds of other cruisers were on the dance floor along with her and Clark, making it entirely easy to maintain distance and mostly forget about the other’s presence.

 

DJ Swash Buckle looked as hot as the tunes she spun, in her sexy pirate outfit complete with a real, live, apparently very well-trained parrot on her shoulder (most of the time) and her trademark wide black belt with its shiny and outrageously large buckle. No one but her knew that her dark black pencil mustache (matching her head hair color) was her own totally real facial hair.

{Damn your incessant beauty and mad DJ skills} Leigh briefly caught her mind thinking, {but seriously, glad you’re up there doing what you’re doing}.

Part of Leigh’s issue was indeed Swash Buckle’s youthful beauty and bounteous cascading wavy curly locks combined with her outstanding talent for merging vastly disparate danceable musical genres spanning the majority of the history of recorded music with smooth organic flow, beat-matched to boot. Most of it was one specific physical focus: breast envy. Swash Buckle had a nice (and very much on display) pair of well-formed orbs in the 32F or G neighborhood, whereas Leigh barely made 32B on a good day.

There were plenty of other ample bosoms for Leigh to envy in Club Troposphere, the largest pair within her sight of which belonged to a doe-eyed huge-boobed blonde haired breast-predominant BBW with a strikingly outsized-large nose. Neither beak nor schnoz, hers was closer to pig-rounded, but without the highly visible pointing-outward piggish nostrils.

The current part of the set lended itself to free-form singular dancing as well as mingle-minded dancing up to someone (or -ones) to get some couples or group action going. Leigh finally let her body get fully into the move of the groove (though DJ Swash Buckle was mostly playing files from SSD, thus not jockeying any form of disc nor disk, nor records with anything close to grooves), making her way through ever-shifting openings on the dance floor she sought to explore.

 

{Holy Cannoli Guacamole!}

Leigh’s ability to forget about the presence of Clark Barr proved short-lived, despite the distance between them remaining beyond ample. Beyond ample barely began to describe Clark’s current dance partner. She stared at him and this hugest-of-all people she’d yet seen on the ship, much less just in Club Troposphere, putting nearly all the vastness she had into grand motion.

 

Having already lost the beat, she walked off the floor to a shadowy spot along the outside wall, fixated on Clark’s and Beluga’s (her mind had arbitrarily and harshly decided) ongoing rhythmic interaction.

{He’s doing his sexy smile.… They’re butt bumping.… They’re chest and belly bumping, over and over! He actually likes her… like that. Like… oh my. Oh my goodness: he’s grabbing her butt and she’s smiling! He actually did lust after my fat! It wasn’t an asshat put-down!}

 

Leigh’s reality spun more than the big well-lit disco mirror ball suspended above the center of the crowd, whose colorful beams of light lit the way for Clark and Beluga (along with several other couples) to joyously walk hand-in-hand together out of Club Troposphere off to other (presumed) adventures, in C & B’s case loudly conversing and laughing, apparently having a grand old time.

 

Before her wildly inscrutable, nonsensical feelings could mess with her cruise experience any further, she heard a stranger’s voice quite near her say, “Come shine in the light”.

At first she thought the man (judging by voice pitch, initially) must have been speaking to someone else. Only once she looked up did she see his smiling, friendly face on his round, lightly hair-challenged head gazing directly at her.

Tentatively, he reached out his hand towards her, “I’m Shawn, and I would love to have the honor of dancing with you, even briefly.”

 

The disco mirror ball now had a new smile to illuminate on the Club Troposphere dance floor, as Leigh joined Shawn for some hand-holding arms-outstretched moderately vigorous dancing, amongst the ongoing hundreds of their dance-minded fellow cruisers.

 

* *

Leigh’s and Shawn’s interactions remained more about dancing than romancing, notwithstanding a pleasant restful seated conversation they briefly shared at the conclusion of their dancing together fun. Pleasant enough as they found one another, there wasn’t a spark to take anything further. They left on good terms, Shawn heading back to his stateroom and Leigh back to the dance floor, for another roughly half hour of mostly solo dancing before she too called it a night and headed for her superbly comfy bed.

 

* *

Peals of tickle- and joy-induced laughter echoed off the walls of the stateroom of one Beryl Beech, making an entirely different use of her equally-comfy bed with one Clark Barr. bare since not long after she’d invited him in, they remained in the throes of broad-definition sex. For Beryl, this was a great way to start off her cruise! For Clark, this was hands-on the best sex he’d ever enjoyed in his life, directly related to doing so with far and away the fattest woman with whom he’d had the honor to get sexually intimate in his life.

Beryl had quite a bit of everything, most predominantly a huge belly. This, and truly all of her, had Clark wound up tight. The conversation they were about to share took care of springing him.

“Are you a feeder?” she asked, during a moment when both their mouths were free.

“The opportunity’s never presented itself. Why?”

“I love being fat and I very much want to get fatter, ideally teamed up with a feeder as driven as I am towards my goal.”

“HHHAAAAANNNNNGGG!” he exclaimed during his sudden, powerful orgasm.

[Sonic Purity]

A Whale(bone) of a Long Monterey Day

The daytime layover in Monterey, California was one of which Leigh Down chose to take off the ship, on Day 3 of her cruise voyage: she’d not spent much time in Monterey, and figured this was a good opportunity.

Disembarking onto an intermediary tender boat around 10 AM upon concluding her leisurely morning start, Leigh enjoyed the short ride on the little boat over to land disembarkation on Fisherman’s Wharf, where sea lions, seals, pelicans, and sea otters sounded off and otherwise entertained her, and everyone else watching. She looked forward to walking off much of the hearty breakfast she’d already enjoyed—not to mention remnants of her joyous consumption the preceding 2 days.

 

Walking the Path of History in historic downtown Monterey State Historic Park was an easy first choice: it was barely 250m from the wharf! The characteristic Monterey Colonial architecture of the Mexican-era historic buildings left a strong positive impression with her, especially their full-length second story porches, looking out onto Monterey Bay for several of the buildings.

Very nearby to the north and slightly west was the Old Whaling Station. She enjoyed walking on the whalebone sidewalk in front of it. {I’m a whale-tail wiggle walking on what might be one of the last whalebone sidewalks in the U.S.} she thought, exaggerating her hindquarter proportions somewhat.

 

The easy walk back over towards the bay swiftly put her on the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail, her pedestrian highway further northwest to famous Cannery Row. Frugal by nature and more into Experiences than Things, she eschewed the many shops and restaurants, the latter not only from having paid so much to eat grandly on the Sapphire Prince, but also to spend more time outdoors on land burning calories versus usually-indoors consuming them. For this same reason of frugality and wanting to remain outside, she took a pass on the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

 

Continuing her northwesterly walk along the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail, she passed no fewer than 4 parks and into the adjacent town of Pacific Grove before reaching the park she sought: Lovers’ (or Lover’s or Lovers depending on the source. The apostrophe is dead, folks) Point Park, at the Point of the same name.

Leigh spent a good bit of time here, feeling the wind blowing across her as she took in the sights, including a pair of gamboling dolphins. Catching some migrating whales off in the distance was an especially pleasant surprise.

The Point’s (and park’s) name triggered brief moments of melancholy in her. Standing on her own enjoying the moment, she was a singular lover at Lover’s Point. Thinking about waiter Andrés, massage therapist Raphael, and maybe even vaguely about someone else momentarily made her wish she was sharing this moment with someone she loved, so they could be plural lovers at Lovers’ Point.

 

The roughly 2 mile one way walk she’d undertaken so far was about as much as Leigh was up to doing. Once she’d had her fill of her solo Lover’s Point, she headed inland to get a different view, walking along Central Avenue, becoming Lighthouse Avenue once she was back in Monterey, on her way back to Fisherman’s Wharf and the tender boat which would take her back out to her ship.

 

* *

It was only mid afternoon by the time Leigh was back on board the Sapphire Prince, with the ship not set to sail until around 5 PM. All that walking plus the all-day foggy chill in the air motivated her to head back to her stateroom for a nice hot beverage and a nap.

 

The hot chocolate soothed more than wired her, conspiring with her cloud-comfort bed to ensure she remained restfully horizontal for quite some time.

{Mmmm, this is the life} she thought, resting (but not sleeping nor napping) atop her bed, gazing out the window at the bay view. {I wonder if it would ever get boring, living like this every day. Nnn, probably so. Might be an interesting experiment to find out how long that would take.}

 

* *

Freshly rested and again ready to be out and about, Leigh enjoyed a nice hot shower and change into fresh clothes. Once again she needed to put out of her mind how she’d already expanded past the anticipated girth point for this early stage of the voyage. {Minor tightness. It’ll be fine, especially since I’ll make more of an effort to take stairs rather than escalators and elevators.}

 

* *

Her currently-aimless meandering had Leigh taking the wide carpeted stairs from the Upper Promenade deck down onto the Grand Promenade deck. {View’s less openly expansive than from the escalator, though the tit bounce is a bonus. Too bad I have so little of that and so much else bouncing down below.}

Suddenly hearing a familiar voice close by yet out of sight interrupted Leigh’s mental musings.

 

“I had the fortune of the Beryl Beech experience last night. Took me to and into her stateroom and everything.”

 

She was on the generously-sized rectangular landing midway down (or up) the staircase, where it made a half circle turn. Adjacent (and attached) to one of the many structural cylindrical pillars holding the Sapphire Prince together, all she had to do was lean over the railing near the pillar and look down to find the source of the voice.

There, down below on the main lobby floor, seated in an overstuffed comfy chair in a lounge area was Clark, speaking with a younger middle-aged man she didn’t know, himself also seated in an overstuffed comfy chair nearby.

 

“How much ‘and everything’?” the other man asked.

“All the way.”

“You did Beryl Beech?!”

 

All Leigh had to do to successfully continue eavesdropping without their knowledge was to cease leaning over the railing and again stand upright, then pull out her handheld and feign looking at something on it as occasional other cruisers passed by on the stairs.

 

“Past tense, yes.”

“Why only past tense?”

“She had her sample of me, and that’s all she wants. Your mileage may vary.”

“Hopefully, if things go that way. How was she?”

“Epic. Everything I’ve ever dreamt about, for fatsex.”

“Specifics?”

“Be glad it’s noisy enough here that no one else can hear us! Heh heh heh heh.”

His compatriot joined in with his ending laugh.

“Succulent, pillowy boobs—easily the biggest I’ve ever had the pleasure of handling and/or getting my mouth on.”

 

Leigh scowled, unintentionally doing an excellent job appearing to passers-by like she was looking at something unpleasant on her device.

 

“Her upper arms are equally pillowy, and conveniently adjacent, of course. Beaucoup hips and ass to get lost in, especially the latter.”

 

At this point, Leigh’s ears were getting a touch hot.

 

“Thighs aren’t as soft as I’d imagined, though after no more than 5 seconds of thinking through the physics, I figuratively and virtually slapped my forehead over how obvious it is that carrying all that fat means she’ll have leg muscles for weeks to go with her fat for weeks.”

“Fat for months, it seems to me!”

“You said it, Per!”

Clink!

 

She didn’t know what was in the glasses she’d just heard clink, having failed to note that detail during her earlier look-over.

 

“Then there’s her legendary belly, where we’re getting into fat for years.”

“That’s what it felt like” Clark ended with a telling sigh, just barely audible from Leigh’s position.

“Hey, thanks man.”

“Gladly.”

“I appreciate the candor. It’s so hard for us in the FA community to begin with, very different from yet not entirely unlike the struggles our BBW lovers and hopefully-someday lovers endure.”

“Struggles maybe for both categories, but I don’t think it’s the same at all.”

“Why not? Seems to me other than this special moment—and I don’t mean that in a weird way!—that we’re sharing, we’re all lone wolves out here, more inclined to cutthroat competition than camaraderie.”

“I totally know what you mean. You’re the first male FA with whom I’ve ever personally had a face-to-face conversation on fatsex.”

“And again, I totally appreciate it.”

Clink.

“I just don’t see the point in being cutthroat, myself. In my field we work better on teams, for sure each doing our own thing yet in concert for a common goal. I’ve worked at cutthroat places where it was every man or woman for themselves. No real teamwork, throwing each other under the bus—all that. Stressful, shitty work environment, and the company’s deliverables sucked, in part because so many were larding the barely- or inscrutably-documented code with land mines to blow up each other’s careers, or backdoors for remote nefarious access if they got booted.”

“I don’t see how team building translates to sex, unless we’re getting into gang-bangs or other forms of orgies.”

“I’m playing for Team FA, Male Het division, building up the team by my individual efforts, or at least trying. When we’re cutthroat lone wolves attacking each other, I believe that vitriol all too easily spreads over to the women we’re supposed to be loving. Their humanity gets diluted in the heat of competition, which drives our lone wolf kind to need to treat the BBW we love more as property we aim on possessing than free-will humans gifting us their time, attention, bodies, and minds for whatever long or brief duration they deign, I assume based upon what they’re getting from us. You know the M&M bowl analogy, right?”

“Oh yeah.”

“The more cutthroat competitive dehumanizing lone wolves there are amongst us fighting what some apparently must believe is the good fight, the more bad M&Ms in the bowl. At least that’s what I imagine, trying to put myself in their place. Is it any surprise that so many choose to avoid the male FA bowl entirely, going for the safer and apparently awesome route of testosterone lite by loving another woman, often another BBW? I think not.”

“Deep… everything you’ve said these last few minutes. I still don’t understand why you’re not going back after Beryl, having tried and liked her, and why you’re so open to boosting my chances.”

“Those things are related. While not by my own definition cutthroat, I’d likely not be sharing so much with you if I intended to keep after her. I’m a pragmatist, striving to remain reality-based. She made it clear at the end of last night that she and I are done. To her credit she clue-by-4’d this to me in an entirely pleasant manner, not any sort of screaming yelling bitch-out rage rant. Nice and calm and clear, from her position of power knowing her awesomeness, and what she wants out of life.”

“So you just went back to your stateroom all happy, having lost her?”

“I wouldn’t say brimming with joy, but neither was I sad. She gifted me with a life-changing experience I might never otherwise have had, especially at my age and with the lifetime countdown clock ever-closer to Game Over.”

“Better level up and earn another life!” Per laughed.

“Oh yeah, if it worked that way I’d be all over that” Clark laughed in return. “You can’t lose something you never had. I never ‘had’ her—no one does… so far, and likely for all time as that seems to be her strong preference. I went back to my stateroom pleasantly drained, partly numb from the intensity and bliss. Yes with a sense of loss in terms of wanting to feel those kinds of feelings over and over and over, not knowing how to make that happen or if it’s even possible.

“So anyway back to the point. I’m out, there’s no question, no debate, no argument, and most of all no effort on my part to get back in where for me there’s no in to get back into. I therefore have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making this minuscule contribution to your forthcoming efforts as part of both of us being on Team FA, Male Het division. To the degree you succeed, or at least don’t piss her off or worse, the M&M bowl gets a little cleaner. Someday, even if not in my lifetime, maybe it’ll be clean enough for more BBW to dip their delightfully soft, squishy, fat hands in for a heaping helping of prongy man meat or whatever else they’re most into, without getting poisoned. My actions are as trivial as a single grain of sand on the beach near this harbor we should now be in the process of leaving. Yet like one ant amongst a colony, if we all work together as a team, we can change and move things far, far bigger than any of us individually. Good luck, Per” Clink! “You may be the one to level us all up. If not that, here’s hoping your time with Beryl is at least as memorably epic as mine.”

Clink!

 

“Everything good, Ms. Down?”

The sudden unexpected voice of concierge Akom (per his name tag) speaking to her nearly made Leigh drop her handheld when she sharply jump-jerked. “Yes, I just… like standing here. The airflow’s nice” she replied on the soft side, hoping not to be overheard down below as easily as she’d been eavesdropping up above.

“Very good. Let me or anyone on the staff know if there’s anything we can do to make your cruise better.”

“I shall. Thank you.”

 

The next time she looked over the railing (once Akom departed), the overstuffed comfy chairs were empty, all glasses, cocktail napkins, and everything else gone, almost as if no one had been sitting there. Looking around the Main Lobby as she could from her vantage point, Clark was nowhere in sight. Given her need to mentally process all she’d overheard, she was glad. She continued the rest of the way down the stairs, onward with her meandering adventure.

 

* *

{A chocolate mousse flight with triple-shot espresso at 7:30 at night is not a good idea if one wants to sleep} thought Leigh, wired and wide awake around 9 PM with nothing on her agenda. She decided she might as well change into suitable evening wear and survey all the ship had to offer in the way of nighttime entertainment.

 

* *

Neither dressed for a hoedown nor truly in the mood to be part of one, Leigh’s time in the dance venue currently running under the name Hootenanny Hall was comparatively brief, at a little over 7 minutes. She did enjoy watching, and the friendly people already on the floor encouraged her to join in despite her other-realm attire.

 

The pool table at nearby Card Shark’s Card and Game Room did entice her, were there anyone else with whom to play who looked less competitive shark-like. Deeper into the venue in a lighter, brighter area the unoccupied ping pong table called her even harder: she’d once been quite decently skilled at table tennis. {Gosh that was a long time ago} she sighed, lamenting both the passage of so much life time and the lack of a suitable playmate.

Video games had never floated Leigh’s boat, whether vintage arcade-style or more modern (and Card Shark’s had quite a range of generations and types).

“BAAHaah! Dingy Dinghy!” she laughed aloud, seeing the very clean, well-maintained, brightly lit apparently-vintage pinball machine near the far end of the line of the video arcade games, tucked into a quiet corner. For clarification, its back glass presented its title thus:

 

🔔 Dingy Dinghy ⛵

 

All about ringing bells, not drab gloominess. She gave the machine a go, scoring well and filling that area of Card Shark’s Card and Game Room with plentiful actual mechanical bell ringing (no electronic synthesis/sampling).

Two long rounds being a pinball wizard off on her own in this secluded corner was enough for Leigh; she was ready to move on.

 

* *

She gave both the stage and big screen theaters a pass, somewhat surprised how many people were gathered in the latter.

 

The painfully bad and loud singing of “DAAAAY-oh!, DAY-ay-ay-ay-Ohh!” let her know she was passing the karaoke venue, whose name she didn’t even bother checking in her rush to get away from it.

 

One particular conversation between a pair of what appeared to be young-ish (or at least far younger than her) mothers caught her ear:

“Are you sure hampster doesn’t have a P in it?”

“No, you’re thinking of that animated Hampster Dance meme, with the sped-up sample of Roger Miller. The name of the animal has no P in it. The animal itself, that’s another matter: my son’s hamster has all kinds of pee in it!”

 

* *

Her long, meandering path led her back to the happening scene up on the Sky deck at Club Troposphere. Tonight’s DJ Alien Groove looked weird in their scaled-too-large alien head, complete with slanty alien eyes. Looks aside, Alien Groove’s ungrooved grooves were as solid as Swash Buckle’s the night before, even if far more tightly focused on EDM than spanning the decades of recorded musical history.

With slight difficulty, she pushed herself out of her wary, aloof comfort zone, easing onto the dance floor and letting her body move to Groove’s current groove. Once she let her mind and its {Why must I be so rhythm-challenged?} nagging go, her in-the-present-moment instincts did her well.

 

It came as less of a surprise to her having surveyed the other nighttime entertainment alternatives to again see Clark in the distance on the Club Troposphere under-the-stars open-air dance floor, where in some ways the sky truly did seem to be the limit, given what she’d seen of the other venue options. Completely not understanding why she cared even slightly, she felt a very brief surge of upset course through her upon seeing him dancing with the doe-eyed huge-boobed blonde BBW with the oversized rounded nose. After that momentary feels surge, her focused attention on them returned to her usual analytical self, even if not wholly detached.

The music did not lend itself to contact dancing, and indeed she saw no contact between them. The glittery, affectionate smiles they were sharing—obvious to her over the distance—triggered feelings of jealousy.

A generously wrinkly man of limited head hair who had been and continued to dance right in front of her caught Leigh’s attention the moment she looked away from her voyeuristic targets. His friendly, urbane smile drew out her own friendly smile, as well as giving her a much nicer, nearby, and immediate visual focus. She’d not likely want to date him and would never bed him, but in this moment he did make an excellent, friendly non-contact dance partner.

 

The only further notice Leigh took of Clark was about 1/3 hour later when he and Boobacious Bulb-Nose exited the dance floor together, holding hands. {Looks like he’s laid out his lay for the night} she briefly thought with a sigh wholly inaudible even to her over the beat-heavy dance music. She returned her attention to her dance partner, who was in the process of easing away so another younger and less wrinkled gent could ease in.

This one didn’t stay dancing with her all that long, but long enough for her to completely forget about Clark.

 

* *

“Fun as it is, Club Troposphere doesn’t lend itself to even brief conversation” Clark smiled towards the lovely busty BBW/edge of SSBBW with whom he was currently walking, still holding hands.

“No it does not. I didn’t even clearly get your name.”

“Clark Barr. B-A-R-R.”

“Thanks for the clarification. Otherwise I would’ve been expecting a peanut butter and spun taffy core, ideally with caramel, coated in milk chocolate, if I ever wound up eating you.”

“Daah! Woah ho ho!” he laughed, her to-him heavily flirty comment taking him by surprise.

“Hee hee!” she laughed along with him at the same time. “I’m Rebecca Davidson, eyeing the couch seating in that lounge area over there as being a good place to sit and continue the introductions we couldn’t make to each other earlier.”

“Delighted to officially meet you, Rebecca, and I concur on your peaceful sitting and resting thoughts.

 

There was sufficient space on the 2m long mustard gold velour fabric couch for Clark and Rebecca to sit angled facing near one another without being in contact, a comfortably socially-polite distance between them.

{Eyes up eyes up eyes up to mine or I’m leaving. There ya go, just in time.} “How far are you on the cruise loop?” she asked.

“Just starting. I got on yesterday in L.A. You?”

“Me too.”

“You live in metropolitan Los Angeles?!”

“Yes. That surprises you for some reason?”

“Hopefully no offense, but you sound like you’re from the east. Maybe New York?”

“Yeaaaah, I guess my accent’s still that obvious. Nice Jewish girl originally from Bed-Stuy.”

“Sorry, where?”

“You don’t know New York City, do you?”

“Hardly. Whenever I get into a book or movie or whatever where they’re name-dropping 42nd. Street or Hell’s Kitchen or whatever like everyone on the planet’s supposed to know what those are and what they’re all about, I tend to lose interest. With all due respect to NYC as a vibrant place able to produce amazing people such as yourself and more, it’s not the center of the universe.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“At least not to a California native such as myself.”

“Huh! There are actual natives here? I mean, other than the indigenous actual natives.”

“Second-generation metro Angeleno here, meaning second generation born in the county and region, not necessarily the City of Los Angeles, which neither of my parents nor myself were. Which isn’t even on the same scale as descendants of the Tongva, nor those whose Mexican ancestry hails to the pre-U.S. statehood rancho era, possibly earlier. Still, in comparison to so many who came later and continue to move into the area, grandparents who immigrated to California in the early 20th. century is a comparatively long history.”

“Yeah” she slightly sighed. “And here I thought my 20 years in L.A. made me a de-facto Cali girl. What’s the statute of limitations on that?”

“There is none. Welcome” he smiled, easing into her for a brief sitting hug she seemed eager to end.

“Thanks. So whereabouts in or around L.A. do you live?”

“I don’t, in any recent years. My mother still does in the South Bay where I grew up. Knew I wanted to do this cruise and would be visiting her anyway, so ticketed to board there and get back off in SuhFrisco on the way back south.”

“Where?”

“SuhFrisco is my weak attempt to abbreviate San Francisco in a manner possibly less annoying to those who live there who chafe at Frisco, which is a city or town in Texas anyway. Closest port to where I’ve been living and working in recent years, in Silicon Valley.”

“You’re in tech?”

“Yeah. Engineer at a small package design slash fabrication firm, which operates on a consulting and/or prototype outsourcing basis, mostly.”

“Mechanical?”

“That’s my degree, though almost everything in modern times seems to lead to virtualization and coding, so I sometimes do bits of that. More coding for production line fabrication systems, not anything an end-user would ever encounter.”

“OK, so I won’t bug you about the latest annoyance I’m having with iOS.”

“Oh don’t get me started on that! Apple torques me, Microsoft torques me, Google torques me.”

“What do you run?”

“At work, whatever I have to run, which all too often is Winblows. At least XP SP 3 is decent and stable, as long as it’s nowhere near the public Internet, which the manufacturing and design systems I have to use are not. Officially getting near the grampy generation by chronological age, I’m acting that way in terms of my tech: I prefer keeping my venerable Dells going with Slackware Linux and spending my quality time there. Much as I hate the whole handtech realm, Apple sucks less than Google, so I carry an iPhone of necessity.”

“Now you’re talking a language I understand.” She briefly pulled her iPhone 11 Pro Max out of her bra enough for him to see it before putting it back, unknowingly over-exciting him as she did so. “I don’t even know of Linux—too geeky for this girl! All those different kinds with the different names, like yours and, what?, Cinnamon Swirl?”

“Mint Cinnamon.”

“See?” she laughed. “Much as Apple ruins my day far too often, this girl needs someone looking out for my security, making things I can turn on and use without getting my geek-I-don’t-have on.”

“What do you choose to do in life, for work, pleasure, or otherwise?”

“Script writer, on shows you’ve never heard of and get cancelled” she replied with an obvious tone of bitterness “is what I do for work.”

He nodded, interested.

“Occasional costume work, leveraging off years of sewing my own clothes, so I have decent things to wear which actually fit and flatter rather than flummox.”

He couldn’t help momentarily snickering at her flummox comment. “What you’ve got on now is dazzling, as well as you yourself inside it of course.”

{Eyes off the orbs. Back up here, back up here} her mind attempted to telepath to him as he continued speaking.

Fortunately he did resume direct eye contact as he finished, “Did you make it?”

“Not this one. This is from a small-output designer named Minerva Pyle, who’s a big girl herself and focuses on the underserved market of large sizes. She custom-tailors, which is why it shows off all my curves so well.”

“Ohhh yeah!” he lecherously agreed with a knowing nod. “So” he clapped his hands loudly, “What next? Your stateroom or mine, perhaps?”

The waves of rage rapidly emanating from Rebecca as she stiffened, sat more upright, and pulled back were palpable. “I don’t know what the hell you’re about, dude, but I am a woman of worth who is not desperate and is not an easy lay!” she rebuked him in no uncertain terms as she stood up.

“Rebecca–”

 

Too late: she was already walking away at a decent tight-dress-induced short-stride clip, not looking back.

 

Staring at her ever-more-distant wobbly ass as he remained seated he thought, {At least you can’t keep me from getting off to visualizing you in the privacy of my stateroom}.

 

* *

All of Rebecca, Clark, and Leigh turned in to their individual staterooms alone for the night, 2 of the 3 of them being wholly good with this situation, the other passably good with it.

[Sonic Purity]

San Franciskee

The Sapphire Prince eased into Pier 27 in San Francisco right on time, the morning of Leigh Down’s 4th. cruise day. A roughly day-and-a-half port stop from 0800 (once again on Pacific Daylight Time) Sunday 8 March to 1800 Monday 9 March gave passengers plenty of time to explore the city, possibly even other parts of the greater Bay Area which might be of interest to specific individuals.

Per, Leigh, and Rebecca were amongst the many who disembarked from the ship at varying times in the morning hours.

 

* *

First off (amongst these 3, not of everyone leaving the ship) Per was a man on a mission: enhancing online business connections via face-to-face meet-ups, all the way down the San Francisco peninsula. For him it was a rare and necessary opportunity: his entire focus for this extended port stop. In some senses it would be more difficult starting on a non-business day. Yet countering this, several of his connections showed greater interest in meeting up on one of their days off without their immediate work pressure, even if business-related.

 

* *

Leigh had visited S.F. and the Bay Area years ago, but never spent much time there, much less lived there. She was off the ship a little over an hour after it docked, on a mission to the quirky Mission District, about whose eclectic food culture she’d read so much over the years.

Her mission to the Mission District encountered plentiful delays and side-tours, most notably Chinatown, whose aromas hypnotized her! {Mmmm, I’ll be walking enough, I can have a light brunch here, then lunch or lunner in the Mission} she convinced herself.

What wound up happening was Leigh having her first dim sum experience in over a decade. Far and away the best one of the few she’d ever had, all too many dishes whose names she did not know and the majority of whose servers failed to communicate to her in a way she understood tantalized her enough to compel her inner foodie to get them on her table, then into her mouth.

 

* *

In the late morning during Leigh’s unexpected (and unexpectedly in-depth) dim sum brunch, Rebecca was off the ship, touring nearby in the Embarcadero and North Beach districts. San Francisco had long been on her bucket list, and now it was happening!

 

{I belong here} she thought, feeling a strong inner sense of connection to the people and the place as she made her way around.

 

Not in the best of shape, the walk up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower proved arduous, compelling her to take a long rest break to catch her breath.

Downhill heading inland wasn’t much better, making the leveling-off near Columbus Ave. a great relief. Even better was encountering the Powell-Mason cable car line at Filbert St. and climbing aboard.

She couldn’t help grinning, living this classic, stereotypical San Francisco experience. {This is the life!}

 

* *

{Get walking, girl} Leigh chided herself, struggling to put the excessive snugness of her waistband out of her mind as she left the dim sum restaurant.

All the homeless people along Market St. proved more depressing than the sights proved uplifting. She figuratively fell onto Fell St., finding the environs more to her liking.

The uphill walk to Alamo Square to view the picturesque Painted Ladies row houses from up high proved worthwhile, and made her feel good about getting in some solid exercise, to hopefully bring her consistency a little more back towards solid. Buried deep within her mind on her way up the hill, the same naughty part that urged her on at the dim sum restaurant made her subconsciously enjoy the jiggle of her hips and rear, even if not the bit on her belly.

Back down Steiner back onto Fell, her destination (having looked at Maps on her iPhone) was the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, with her eventual goal being the park itself.

 

* *

Less geographically adventurous Rebecca enjoyed a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant on Columbus Ave. which caught her fancy. What they could possibly do to make basic spaghetti with meat sauce and the house red wine taste so magical she did not know. The only moment of displeasure was needing to retrieve some wayward noodles and sauce from her cleavage, thinking during the after-cleaning about how all her eating was only going to make her boobs bigger, thus an even greater target for such mishaps. Thankfully she had full privacy: no one was in sight lines of her.

 

* *

Clark remained on the Sapphire Prince, having spent more than enough time all over the Bay Area in his years living there—at least the major parts of it for which he would have had time to reach.

Lunch in the Sip And A Wink Pub suited him well, especially taking a whiskey flight therein.

 

An hour after lunch and changed into his swimming trunks, he couldn’t help hearing a decades-old Boz Skaggs song in his head as he made his way to the big open-air swimming pool on the Lido deck.

 

* *

Hhhh, hhhh {Doing great} Leigh panted and thought, proud of how she’d been walking all over Golden Gate Park hither and yon, all the way to her current location near a historic windmill, in view of the Pacific Ocean. {Thank goodness I’m wearing my walking shoes!}

 

She was in for more up and downhill walking than she’d anticipated, on her mission to the Mission. Stanyan to 17th. had her feeling like a true athlete, even with the actual athletic locals jogging or running by her now and then, at her leisurely walking pace.

Once in the Mission District proper, she found a nice, and, judging from its line, well-liked taqueria. The steak taco proved worth the wait, and eminently affordable. She enjoyed it on-the-go, staying eastbound on 17th. St.

The steak taco was history before she turned northbound onto Harrison St., figuring it was as good a way as any to meander back towards the ship whilst staying off Market St.

 

{Oh noooo! Food trucks!} was her thought on sight of them, at what Maps told her was SOMA Streat (sic) Food Park, just north of the U.S. 101 freeway she’d walked under. {I’ve been good! I’ve exercised a lot today! Must have the San Francisco food truck experience!}

Lines were short at this early-mid-afternoon hour, making it easier for her to sample all of Korean fried chicken with garlic fries, a slider called the Screwball featuring buffalo chicken and blue cheese, ending with a porchetta sandwich to die for!

{I’m out of control, and I love it! Wish I could eat this way all the time.} Hhhhhh, {Thankfully I have a-ways to walk back to the ship.}

 

* *

Rebecca was already back on the ship, resting in her stateroom.

Per was already in Santa Clara county, making more business connections.

Clark was shooting some hoops, playing a for-fun pick-up game with some new friends on the Sports deck.

Beryl was using the bed in her stateroom for sex with her second man (so far) of the day.

 

* *

The to-the-ship walk Leigh promised herself she’d make didn’t happen. Feeling more lethargic and lazy than she cared to admit, she climbed onto the northbound Muni 47 bus at 11th. St. and Harrison. The view along busy Van Ness Ave. gave her plenty to keep her mind off her unexpected weariness, especially the stately City Hall and all the car dealerships. {Who needs a car in San Francisco?} she mused.

On a spur-of-the-moment whim she got off at Van Ness & Clay, backtracking 2 blocks to the end of the California cable car line. Taking that line to its eastern terminus at the Embarcadero, she felt just barely refreshed enough to solider on along the basically flat terrain north on Drumm St. then along the waterfront back to the welcome sight of the Sapphire Prince at Pier 27.

 

Upon re-boarding the ship, she returned directly to her stateroom, for a refreshing shower and a nice nap, re-living in her mind the many adventures she’d just enjoyed.

 

* *

The only one of our so-far-named day adventurers not back on the Sapphire Prince for the night was Per, staying overnight with a friend in Sunnyvale.

 

On the ship, Leigh was assembling a light evening meal at one of the self-serve buffet restaurants, when someone who kept occasionally briefly worming unbidden into her mind startled her with his sudden corporeal presence.

“Looking good” he sleazily grinned, holding his plate with its overstuffed self-assembled custom burger, plus fries. “Gotta say, I’m down with your wiggly wobbly shimmers, Ms. Down.”

She knew what he meant from all she knew of him, parts of this knowledge quite recently learned. Still, she couldn’t believe after their past interactions and his apology that he’d say such a thing out loud, especially right there in public where others were likely to overhear. “My what?”

“Your fat.”

She blinked twice, struggling to believe what she’d just heard. Not even the sparkle in his eyes nor his sweet smile that often softened her romantic heart more than she wished could take the edge off his to-her harsh words. “Dear mister Martian: here on Earth in our culture, it is considered rude to refer to people as ‘fat’.”

“Not in my world, Venus” he defiantly and annoyingly flirtily glared at her, taking his leave.

 

Upset enough at being called out as fat after her hearty day of fine walking exercise to nearly toss her singular hot dog and small green salad with fury into the nearest trash bin, her emotions drove her the opposite direction: she loaded up her plate with taquitos, spring rolls, and a second hot dog! {I took this cruise to eat freely and without shame, and dammit, I’m going to eat freely and without shame!} Grabbing a bag to hold some fries then filing up a large cup of soft-serve vanilla milkshake, she had everything she felt she needed.

Emotionally hurting and not wanting to allow anyone else to call her out for any reason, Leigh rushed back to her stateroom and closed the drapes for full privacy, so she could enjoy every single bite and sip. She had no idea what drove her to take her clothes off and doodle herself to orgasm whilst she ate, binning it as temporary insanity and focusing on the sensual pleasure rather than the mental Why.

 

* *

Clark found himself back at the Sip And A Wink Pub, alone at a table in the corner, sighing as he struggled to enjoy his craft brew. Hhhhhhhh. {Why do I keep messing up so badly with every potential love interest that I need to apologize?!} Hhhhhhh. {If I haven’t figured out how to date by age 61, it’s likely not gonna happen.}

His pulse jumped, spotting one of those to whom he felt the need to apologize taking a seat at the bar, the unabashed sexiness of her magnificent width and spreading rear making her look better than ever, thus him that much more upset. Thankfully, she hadn’t looked around much and hadn’t seen him.

 

“Anything else for you at the moment, sir?”

 

The sweet high-pitched voice of the somewhat scantily-dressed all-too-twiggy young barmaid startled Clark anew. “Yes please, if you’re willing.”

Taking full advantage of a situation better than he could have hoped, he pulled a beautiful baby blue small card envelope out of his pocket, laying it on the table with its back side and the shiny gold circle seal face-up. From his wallet he pulled out a pair of $20s, setting those atop the card.

“One of these 20s is your gratuity, if you’ll be so kind as to deliver this card to the lovely large blonde woman in the mauve dress sitting across two stools at the bar. The other is my payment for buying her whatever drink she may wish to order that 20 dollars will cover. Is this acceptable to you?”

The pleading look in the expression of this man, older than her father, tugged at the barmaid’s heartstrings. “Yes, I can do that for you. Nothing else to drink, for you?”

“I’m good with what I have, thank you.”

 

He pounded the remainder of the craft beer he had and was already out the door whilst the barmaid was on her way to deliver the card.

 

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“The gentlemen in the corner over there wanted me to give this to you, and has paid for whatever you wish to drink, totaling no more than 20 dollars on his tab.”

Rebecca couldn’t imagine what this was about. “Who?” she asked, whipping her head around to look where the barmaid was pointing.

 

They both saw the empty booth at about the same time.

 

“He was the one over in the far corner booth.”

“Didn’t see him. Thank you, luv.”

 

She studied the envelope before opening it. Unable to pick up any meaningful scent when sniffing it apart from a vague floweriness, all she could tell on the outside was that the handwriting in which she saw her given name appeared to have been an attempt by someone who didn’t normally write longhand to do so in flowing, rounded cursive. She unsealed the envelope with care.

The message on the card inside was written in the same lopsided, halting longhand. Thankfully, she had little trouble reading it.

 

[Author’s note (that’s usually what’s happening when i use square brackets): As stellar as Curvage’s presentation system is (and it is stellar vs. other options), i am not seeing an option for alternative fonts. To see my story’s presentation with optimal formatting, consider viewing it on my new stories site, specifically for this story at: Jiggle Junkie! stories: Unforgettable Cruise. Direct link to this section of Chapter 5 on my site. Otherwise, keep reading here and please visualize messy handwriting:]

Esteemed Acquaintance Rebecca,

I sincerely apologize for my in-hindsight vastly inappropriate come-on, regarding going to either of our rooms. Lifelong nerds like me never learned the requisite social skills to civilly flirt, much less date, or even to make new friends.

Sorry I blew my opportunity to get to know you better. Knowing so little about New York City and intrigued by what I read on Wikipedia about Bedford–Stuyvesant, I’m curious to know more from someone who lived there what it’s like living amongst the brownstones and row houses—or maybe those are the same thing? If, during the course of this voyage, you find you’re in a mood for a flirt-free platonic conversation on this or most any other subject, I will appreciate the opportunity to have that conversation with you.

 

Respectfully and Fondly,

Clark Barr

 

Rebecca didn’t know whether she felt more touched or confused. Having been hurt so many times in her past, she had to also consider that this could be the clever ploy of a seasoned womanizer. She slowly read it over and over, as though struggling to find something between the lines able to explain the true meaning of this apology card.

 

“Thought about how you’d like to use your drink credit?” asked the bartender, as he dried a glass.

“Yes” she replied with a faraway look, and somewhat of that tone, “I’d like a Manhattan, please.”

“Coming right up” he smiled.

 

Further studying the missive through the mind alterations of the cocktail for which Clark had paid, thinking back amongst the various nerds and geeks who’d gotten with her (or tried) over the course of her life, she concluded that this was not the work of a philanderer: it was an honest, surprisingly literate admission from a man forthrightly admitting his limited social skills. She decided that taking Clark’s message at face value was far and away the most reasonable interpretation.

 

* *

While Clark Barr might not be a womanizer, he certainly had some perv in him. Since leaving the Sip And A Wink, he’d taken up residence in the Main Lobby’s spacious lounge area on a fancy upholstered exposed wood large loveseat or small couch: an older style which surely had a name he didn’t know, the kind with the big ornate mushroom-shaped tack heads all the way around the fabric rim. It was about as good a spot as any during the chilly night hours to people watch. In his case as an ardent male het FA, he was on the lookout for women cruisers who may already have visibly fattened up since he’d last seen them. No plans to actually approach anyone, given his recent track record of offense, but looking was free 😜.

 

{How and where might I approach him? Should I even? It never seems to work out} Rebecca mused in her mind, starting to pass through the Main Lobby. {There he is!}

She managed to duck behind a pillar before he spotted her, making her way out of his sight to the nearest women’s room for some touch-up work.

 

* *

Clark had trouble believing whom he was seeing walking directly towards him, smiling. Rebecca’s sexy sway and hot pink lipstick (freshly applied, though he didn’t know this) sent his lust into overdrive. Thankfully with a face as easy on the eyes as hers (despite, or possibly because of, her eye-catching big nose), it proved somewhat easier to keep his gaze there rather than farther below.

 

In moments, she stood directly in front of him, tantalizingly close and smelling great. “Is now a good time for you, for a conversation?”

“Absolutely” he couldn’t help smiling back.

She sat down surprisingly intimately close, flustering him. “I do have one condition, about the discussion we’re about to undertake.”

{Of course you do.} “Alright.”

“I reject the notion of this being a flirt-free conversation. I want another chance with you too, moving at a more gradual pace so we can better know one another before considering moving past platonic.”

“I’m delighted! But I don’t want to wreck things again, nor leave hard feelings between us. On that basis, I’m now distracting myself from your luscious body so I can ask you about life in Bedford–Stuyvesant, about which I’m genuinely interested. As I mentioned in the card I looked it up, so I know where it is in Brooklyn in New York City and should be able to find it on a map, but nothing beyond what Wikipedia has to say about it. What was it like?”

“Well, my earliest memories as a little girl in the 1960s are of living in a brownstone—one of the rowhouses—on Throop Ave., between Lexington and Greene. Where I’m from ‘brownstone’ and ‘rowhouse’ are synonymous, even though we both know one’s a building material and the other’s all about houses with shared side walls regardless of what they’re made of.”

She noticed him looking lost.

“I’m going too New Yorker fast for a Cali boy like you, aren’t I?”

“A little bit” he smiled endearingly. “I’ll try and remember the street names and look them up.”

“Throop is T-H-R-O–”

“–O-P. Apologies for interrupting, but that one I know from the original name of Caltech: Throop Polytechnic Institute, spelled the same way. Sorry!”

“That’s alright, but let’s please try not to interrupt one another. That’s a New York thing I’d rather leave behind, to help me slow down and get more into your laid-back Cali ways. Did not know that about Caltech.”

“Is it rowhouses all one word? Or two words row houses? I ask ’cause I’ve seen it both ways online.”

Rebecca momentarily snort-chuckled. “We’re New Yorkers, we talk fast, so we run it together as one word. We never had time for row… houses. Come to think of it I’m surprised it’s not already smash-contracted to rohos. What?” she asked with a smile, regarding his latest look.

“Nothing” he weak-voice responded.

“Yeah nothing right” she couldn’t help affectionately smiling back, unconsciously aping his expression.

“Feeling strong feelings toward you. Tender, affectionate ones.”

Brief, fluttery, mutually-frightened passions swelled within each of them at different exact moments, quickly scampering at least a bit away in each case.

“I admit I used to be bigoted against New Yorkers. Irrationally, based upon likely-unfounded stereotypes and select personal interactions with a very few individuals, like two.”

She dared to tentatively lightly rest her hand atop his, “What you needed all along was an encounter like this with a nice Jewish girl from the City.”

“Careful: San Francisco also considers itself the capital-C City. Is Judaism important to you?” he asked in earnest.

“Nah. It’s my heritage and ancestry, but not my religion. This nice Jewish girl’s all secular.”

“Secular humanist? Atheist?”

“Jayzo, Clark; I’m me! I’m not into the labels. Don’t believe in God, nor any other divine power of that ilk. Gaia/Mother Nature almost, but not really as a matter of fact and science. But I’m not a scientist, nor a doctor, lawyer, indigenous chief, nor an engineer” she briefly squeezed his hand. “None of that. Just trying to be rational and smart and open-minded as I go through life, learning every day.”

 

This was only the start of a very long discussion roaming over many topics. They became so absorbed in each other’s stories—and each other’s immediate presence!—nothing and no one distracted them… not even a cute guy who’d several times caught Rebecca’s eye and passed right by them, nor several BBW on Clark’s radar who’d already visibly thickened up a little in his mere days on this cruise.

 

* *

“I didn’t mind growing up as a White Jewish girl in a heavily-Black neighborhood, nor did my parents mind, that I’ve ever known. What?”

“Nothing.”

“Stop it with the ‘nothing’, bae.” Rebecca couldn’t help smiling despite her annoyance, feeling so many positive things for this handsome, alluring man so obviously over-the-top for her—and for once, not just her top. “You’ve already ‘nothing’ed me over half a dozen times already this conversation, and every single time it’s something important, and usually something I’m glad you finally shared.” Needing to stretch, she unintentionally distracted him of necessity sticking out her chest(s). “Out with it.”

“I don’t consider this”—he pointed towards his then her skin—“to be anything near white in color, the way this piece of paper” which he quickly pulled from his pocket “is. Nor are the many wonderful and usually beautiful shades of brown on people who get called Black all that close to the true color black… not even some of the real dark brown-skinned people I’ve sometimes seen in photos, more often in Africa though elsewhere too.”

“Brown is its own other thing, m’ friend: mixed race.”

“Which makes no sense.”

“It makes total sense!” she stridently countered (still with a smile). “There’s only so much time in a day, NYC’s a busy place with busy people who have places to go and things to do. We’ve already established and you’ve agreed that the tendency in our society and at least in American English is to go for the fewest number of syllables, so we can speak faster and get on with life.”

They had indeed agreed on that, so he had to nod to confirm his ongoing agreement with her point.

“White, Black, and Brown are each one syllable—monosyllabic, but that’s 5 syllables and one syllable is 4, hence the way I first said it. Caucasian is 3, or maybe to some people 4. Euro-Caucasian is even worse at 5 or 6, so White wins. African-American is a whopping 7 syllables, and not all our dark-skinned peeps are recently out of Africa anyway. Black avoids pissing people off by getting their ancestry wrong, and is one syllable, so it’s a double winner. Not only is Brown the syllabic winner compared to mixed race or that strange phrase mulatto, but the former of those two makes it sound like we’re putting people in a blender or mixing them like a cocktail with a swizzle stick or that they’re mixed up or something, and the latter sounds like some kind of mule lottery. Play Mule Lotto and win the mule of your dreams!” she suddenly loudly exclaimed like an excited advertising announcer, with an equally exuberant zesty playful (and a touch impish) expression.

Clark’s explosive all-out laughter got Rebecca laughing to the point of tears too.

 

Several elsewhere around and passing through the lobby clearly heard her sudden dramatic explanation. Some smiled and/or laughed. Others looked on quizzically.

 

“Oyee. So where were we?”

“You were describing what it was like to grow up as what you prefer to call a White girl in a Black neighborhood.”

“Yeah right yeah. It wasn’t all Black, with others besides us in the Davidson household, but mostly it was. Stayed that way from my birth through my youth and is still kinda like that, less so with the gentrification in recent years.”

“How long did you live in that house?”

“Looooonnnng time. All the way ’til I moved to L.A. 20 years ago. Went to college super duper locally at Pratt Institute, literally within walking distance 9 blocks away, right there in the ’hood.

“So anyway, my experience of race is different. Everyone around us was Black, or some Browns now that I think about it. Whatever. Point is it was normal and how it always was to me. Wouldn’t say I’m a bleached-out Black girl or anything, but I could hold my own doing the dozens and bustin’ the occasional rhyme on time on the line, boyeee. It was intercultural exchange from birth, so normal I would have thought that term weird, had I understood it as a young child.”

“When was that?”

“Ohhh, sneaky, Mister Barr! Trying to entice my age outta me!”

“A general decade will satisfy my curiosity.”

“I’m a child of the ’60s. And if you suggest 1860s, I’m layin’ a beatin’ on ya.”

He suddenly pulled back.

“Kidding!” she assured him, rapidly repeatedly rub-caressing his hand. “By ‘child’ I mean born then. Not like the 40s-50s-born Hippie children of the ’60s.”

“Yeah, I’m end of the decade before, so we’re not that far apart.”

“Whew! I thought you might be younger, and I’d be too old for you.”

“Too old to be friends?”

Tellingly, Rebecca suddenly and sharply turned away. “Moving on…” she started once she turned back, “’60s and ’70s it was normal and natural for Mrs. Franklin next door to be showing my mom how to prep and cook collard greens, and other times Mom would show her how to make Latkes. Nowadays everyone prob’ly looks on the Internet rather than be sociable and visit their neighbors, but that’s how we rolled back in the day. We learned to make what weirdly gets called soul food and other Black culture cuisines plural specialties; they learned how to make Jewish staples. I remember my first boyfriend Jamal from 3 houses down and I would sit on the front stoop of either of our houses and share matzos with an onion-okra-corn meal spread that was pretty rad, as you westies say… or at least I see and hear that since moving to this coast.”

“I’ve heard that first loves are memorable. Mine was, but not necessarily in a great way.”

“Nah nah: this was high school puppy love—training wheels training bra love. Not that I’d ever worn a training bra, having grown right into an adult woman’s 36C in under a month from when the hormones turned on and I first started developing. Two weeks later 36D, then on up from there.”

“I’ll not ask you what age that was.”

“Eleven. Start of 5th. grade.”

“Oh” he winced.

“Yeah, it was rough. But I was and am a tough cookie, and boobs are power. So far no breast cancer knock wood”—Knock knock she did on the couch’s wood frame—“so apart from social issues, it’s all good.”

“No back pain?”

“Everyone always asks that” she wanly smiled. “Yes back pain, but not debilitating. There are moments on occasional days where my back hurts and demanding privileged asshats may be dogging me more than usual when I ask myself why the hell I’m carrying these huge flesh torpedoes around. But the same thing’s true other times or once in awhile the same time carrying around all this belly fat, butt fat, hip fat, and so on. It’s how I’m made—all of it I just mentioned. Surgeries can be dangerous as well as expensive, with no promises that things removed won’t grow back.”

 

Lost in thought listening to what she was sharing, Clark’s eyes had drifted down on her breasts and had been there longer than he knew. Even though he’d not been focusing there (nor anywhere), he quickly snapped them back up to hers.

 

“Y’know, here’s the thing—and I don’t wanna confuse you: I’m not good with strangers staring at my boobs. Yeah they’re huge, yeah they’re eye magnets, yeah you’re all programmed to go for them—you men into women plus some women into women. It’s not that I don’t like having them most of the time, because if I didn’t, I’d more proactively do something about it. They’re awesome and I love ’em myself.

“The problem is Privilege: too many men—and sorry hun, but it’s so far all men—freely staring as long as they want as though it’s their innate right, regardless of how I whose body parts they are may feel about that kind of attention. Worse are the ones feeling so entitled that they go for a grope, though those idiots get the hardest, fastest kick or punch to the groin I can give them—no holding back, going for permanent damage so they won’t reproduce and make more of themselves.”

She squeezed his hand to focus his attention before continuing, “Now in a separate category are men to whom I’m attracted, and whom I’ve gotten to know and with whom I’ve reached an acceptable or better level of comfort. Love to my LGBTQI peeps, but I’m attracted to men—no apologies.”

 

She squeezed his hand again, gazing less-than-subtly at his crotch. To Clark it looked like she was initially pleased at his moderate turgidity he could not hide, then nauseous, leaving him confused.

 

“When there’s a strong enough attraction, when I’ve reached a sufficient level of comfort with a specific man I know and feel safe with them as well as into them and vice-versa, then I like having them checking out my bodacious rack, as long as there’s still some appropriate eye contact now and then.”

“The longer I’m with you gazing into your face, the more drawn in I am by its—your!—loveliness, making it ever-more easier to keep my eyes looking into, or nearly into, yours.”

The powerful shot of pure affection Rebecca felt nearly knocked her off balance. “Even with my big schnoz?”

“To me, schnozes are big angular pointy beaks, not the admittedly big cute roundness decorating your face. Durante had a schnoz. I have closer to a schnoz than you do.”

“Nah, you’ve no schnoz. I like your nose.”

She smiled more than Clark had yet seen her smile, melting his romantic heart further. “Maybe sometime someday we’ll decide to share nose-rub kisses.”

“Hhmmh” she peep-squeaked, holding back the instant appearance of her inner race horse of passionate desire, chomping at the bit to attack him and make out right then and there!

“Everything about your face is so wonderful to gaze onto… or is it into? Mouth, nose, eyes… oh your eyes! Is it OK for me to refer to you as doe-eyed? Or is that offensive?”

“Given that my middle name is Ayala, which is Hebrew for doe, my parents would be offended if I took offense at someone respectfully referring to me that way.”

“They’re the center of your look of sweet innocence.”

“I’m not as innocent as I look” she salaciously and flirtily gazed his way, with a touch of defiance.

 

It was another opportunity for her to take a big stretch, this time with a yawn. This time she clearly knew that doing so was working him up. She was good with this.

 

“Thirsty?” she asked, “For anything non-alcoholic?”

“Are you alcoholic?”

“What?!”

“Not an alcoholic!” he quickly backtracked. “I was wondering–… never mind.”

“Stop.” She squeeze-massaged his hand. “Say it.”

“It was a bad start of an attempt at a joke, using language I don’t fully understand, hence none of my business to utilize. I’ve read the word ‘thirsty’ being used in recent years as some sort of synonym for desperately horny, or something like that. I was trying to find a non-offensive way to flirt with you and show more of my desire of you/for you without being a boorish ass nor privileged dick nor any other bad M&M in the Man Bowl. So please allow me to start apologizing right now, because you’re a wonderful person and I’m truly enjoying this long conversation we’re having on its own merits, with the flirting and the ability to hopefully respectfully and tastefully check out the rest of your body below your head being wonderful unanticipated bonuses.”

“Am I misinterpreting where your eyes have been, or are you physically attracted to me below boob level?”

“I’m a Fat Admirer. Do you wish me to candidly speak further on this topic?”

“Yes, but not here, please. If I invite you to my stateroom, will you take it the wrong way?”

“I’ll take it the way you tell me to take it, as long as you explicitly and clearly tell me.”

“I want to be private with you, so we can freely talk about anything in any depth like we’ve been doing, and take our conversation further than I feel comfortable doing here. I also want some tea—herbal infusion, actually. Some I brought rather than what Royal Prince Cruise Lines provides, nice as several of theirs are. I promise nothing about taking things further towards intimacy than what we’re doing here, but I do want that option.”

“My intent is that all that happens between us—me and anyone, actually—whether here, in your stateroom, or anywhere else, will always be fully consensual and as informed as we imperfect humans are capable of communicating successfully.”

“You’ve got a way with words, mister engineer” she brightly smiled. “Let’s go.”

 

The hip-rubbing hand-holding stroll was scintillating to Clark (and Rebecca) from the moment they started across the Main Lobby towards the stairs from which Leigh had eavesdropped on him (wider than the escalator, hence Rebecca’s choice). Once she moved in closer and put her arm around him, encouraging him to do the same, the stroll became magical!

 

* *

Far from being offended as he trembled, fighting to hold back his lusty desire staring at her boobs bouncing mightily up and down with each step on the staircase they ascended, Rebecca was pleased. {Can’t have anything less than a boob man I’m into. Not worth my time.}

 

Some corridors were wide enough for them to continue walking side-by-side, others narrower. As an experiment she had him walk behind her along one of these narrower sections.

{Hmmm, I feel the burn. He’s an ass and hips man too—even better!}

She reached her arms out behind her, pulling him into her, specifically her butt, soon as his hands clasped hers.

He had no idea what was happening, putting all he had into staying in the current moment, to optimally experience all of it.

 

* *

Passions and moods mercurially cycled in and out and back and forth in a swirly mess, once Clark and Rebecca were inside her pleasant ocean view stateroom on the Vista deck. Rebecca in charge and him struggling to stay on the same page with her as well as manage his own instinctual desires had them repeatedly jerking jackrabbit forward then slamming to a stop, quite like a new driver learning how to drive a manual transmission automobile struggling to master the clutch.

Somewhat like that new driver learning to drive that automobile and possibly having trouble restarting it after a stall, despite several repeated attempts many minutes apart, neither Rebecca nor Clark succeeded in restarting their conversation, whether where they’d been or on any other subject.

The lavender-lemon-chamomile tea was sublime, and soothing. The very soft Brazilian jazz music she’d put on in the background to ease the tension absolutely succeeded. The main issue seemed to be that the sexual tension between them felt thick enough to cut with a knife, on both their part: a passion fog so deep and so blinding, Clark several times tried to wipe what was not there out of his eyes. Rebecca kept waiting to hear a fog horn sound, eventually hearing a real one somewhere on the San Francisco Bay.

 

One particular jackrabbit start blasted further forward than others so far: Rebecca led Clark by the hand over to her stateroom’s couch, sitting down very intimately with him, each of them holding their tea mug in their free hand.

With her own slight trembling and a frightened, pleading look, Rebecca announced, “I’ve gotta tell you something, and I’ve just got to blurt it out.”

“Please do!”

“Set your tea mug down, please” she asked of him as she did so herself.

 

She claimed and held each of his hands tightly, melting him further with that frightened, innocent, pleading doe-eyed look she in part could not help projecting. “I’m powerfully into you… romantically, passionately. But it’s complicated, and I don’t want either of us to get hurt.”

With nothing to say, he continued giving her his own intense undivided attention.

“I’ve been abused in my past, sexually and otherwise. My trust issues are deep. Many things trigger me, including some things of which I may not be aware, therefore can’t explain nor warn anyone about. I have a literal love-hate relationship with men’s genitals. I desire them more than I can tell you, yet they’ve so often been used as supremely hurtful weapons against me, that it takes a very very long time with a man, continually building up trust, before I even consider going there.”

{The poisonous M&Ms} Clark couldn’t help thinking, maintaining his full eye contact and other than this thought, his attentive focus.

“You may have the best penis and scrotum in the world, and from what I’ve been seeing so far, what you have is extremely appealing to me. I cannot go there—with you or anyone I’ve not known a long time—at least a year of frequent dating in many cases, if not longer, and it’s case-by-case as so many things in life are.

“So what I want to do is have what I call up-top sex with you. Specifically what that means is you and I get to the point of being topless, but no further. I’ll have a skirt I’ll change into on and we’ll discuss those details in a moment. You’ll keep your pants on.”

“Shoes and socks?”

“Off please, when the time comes” she smiled, relieved that so far he seemed genuinely willing to go along with her requirements, which had not always been the case in the past, despite what her on-deck lover of the moment told her. “We’re free and encouraged to get into any consensual sexy loving things we can do with one another with our hands and mouths, and after we please discuss the details, maybe feet, other than playing footsie is a go, I’ll tell you right now. Hands and mouths mostly, above the waist. Nothing below the waist. Well OK that’s not quite true” she blurted out, working out the details in her mind as she spoke. “You may feel my butt and my hips through the outside of my skirt and panties, and as long as you keep your pants fully on and zipper closed, I’m even good with you pressed into my butt and rubbing if you want, like a sexed-up version of the fun we had walking.”

He raised his hand and was acknowledged by her. “Did you have fun with that?”

Her eyes widened with surprise, “Yes! I’m into you, Clark—sexually! It’s just hard for me, as I’m explaining.”

“Thank you and apologies for the interruption. Please go on.”

“We’re good, I think. You get what I’m saying?”

“I think so. As long as we agree beforehand on what’s happening, my hands and mouth can experience you from the waist up per what we agree, as yours can on me. Other than footsie, feet are more complicated and will likely require more careful discussion. With all pants and skirt and stuff on, you’ve told me it’s OK for me to rub against your clothed hips and buns. Correct?”

He could see the tension in her body melting away. “Yes.”

“My only question is where you’re defining your waist.”

She tensed up again, sensing him trying to push a limit, more stridently replying, “Where my waistband is, after I change.”

A few tears snuck unbidden out of his eyes as he explained, “Your deliciously fat belly looks so wonderful, I would love to caress and kiss and rub it! I was trying to figure out whether it was off-limits or not.”

Her cheeks glowed brighter red as a fresh burst of lust blasted through her. “I’ll have my belly out. It’s fair game for everything you just described, no additional consent-seeking needed for that. Unless you have other questions or comments, as far as I’m concerned we can get into the logistics, then the fun!”

 

* *

Logistics amounted to his asking to please be able to go to the bathroom before they got started, and that they each wanted the pleasure of taking the other’s top (and bra, in Clark’s case with Rebecca) off gradually, as the mood felt proper.

 

The tantalizing touch of his index finger tracing around her default new low-cut top-on exposed boob flesh unleashed her lust enough to have her panting and her chest heaving moments after they started. Her hands needed to feel his very slightly scruffy face, easing down onto his shoulders, then his upper arms.

“It looks like you need a little more room in here. I may need to unbutton a button.”

“I do!” she breathily sighed, tantalized by every little bit of finger skin she could feel gracing any part of her vast bosoms as he slowly and tantalizingly unleashed them. She snuck a finger between his shirt plackets, needing to caress more freely there. Her voice remained lust-addled breathy, “Your chest is getting hot.”

“Hot for you!”

“I’m going to have to unbutton all your buttons and let you out!”

 

Apparently more eager than he, or at least wanting to move things along faster, she not only fully unbuttoned his shirt in short order, but with his unspoken cooperation following her lead, eased it off of him, setting it carefully aside.

 

“I’m swelling up for you! Seriously, for realz: my boobs are getting bigger from arousal. Let me out, Clark! Pleeease!”

His eyebrows shot up and his eyes grew wide feeling and seeing the suddenly measurably (and he was qualified to measure it, had he the necessary equipment with him) greater difficulty unbuttoning her top’s remaining buttons (not already unbuttoned as some had been all night) from her visible swelling. “Holy granola! You are bigger!”

“Yes! All women’s breasts swell up when they’re aroused. Did you not know this?”

“I’ve read about it and very rarely experienced subtle versions of it, but I’ve never experienced anything like this—you!” he said as he finished unbuttoning her top, which only had buttons halfway down and was otherwise a pull-over.

Her beautifully soft, fat arms were already “reach for the sky” up in the air as she urged him, “♫ Frrreeee-eeee Bec-ca Day-vid-son! ♫” sung like the opening line of an early 1980s The Special A.K.A. song.

He had her top off straightaway, yet she obviously still wasn’t free. “I can’t believe how much you’re swelling out of your bra every which way!”

“I am so turned on! Squeeze them as necessary to reduce the tension to unhook them, as I know your boob-loving engineering mind knows how.”

 

“Hhhhhhhh” she gasped from a combination of great relief and great pleasure once the last hook was undone and her bodacious breasts eased her bra to the sides as they regained freedom.

He barely managed to finish slipping her bra off, in shock with how massive she was—and how aroused!

Rebecca herself was somewhat shocked: it had been too long since the last man she trusted enough to get to this point, and a long time since she’d been this extremely aroused. {Ohhh I love being huge-boobed!} she couldn’t help thinking during her shock. {This is why I do what I do!}

As she kept thinking about it, she realized that while she’d been this fat or even fatter in the past, she’d not been like that and this fully aroused at the same time. {Wow!}

 

Thankfully (as far as Rebecca was concerned) Clark couldn’t hold back: his hands and mouth were deep on/into the biggest breasts he had ever felt by far, and some of the biggest of which he’d ever even seen pictures! All in his hands and mouth, the mind of the woman part and parcel of them surprisingly (to him) thrilled to be sharing herself this way with him! Not only were hers the biggest in sheer volume, she also had the biggest areolae and biggest, hardest nips he’d ever experienced—far and away so!

“Uuaaaggghhh, AAAAAAUUUGGGH YES!”

Even he, sometimes amazingly clueless about such things, knew she’d just experienced a likely-powerful orgasm. Her expression of bliss rather than pain strongly suggested she enjoyed it.

“Oh please more and don’t make me beg!”

“Really?”

“Yes! It’s not fair but we women get more, and I want more! Please.”

So did Clark, and at this moment, not of her breasts. His deep passionate mouth-to-mouth sudden kissing attack leveled her, making her weak enough that together they rushed over to her king-sized bed and crashed down atop it.

The flexing and creaking noises pulled Clark nearly all the way out of his passions and into his rational mechanical engineering mind.

 

She felt the sudden disappearance of his lust immediately. “What?”

“Noth–”

“No” she punctuated with a potent, deep kiss. “I need to know.”

“Mentally analyzing the structural integrity of this bed, based upon the impact we just now imposed upon it.”

Slightly frustrated, she grabbed her boobs, gently smashing them into his cheeks, “Wouldn’t you rather be calculating the angle of these danglers of mine? Or, better, getting back to full passion?”

“Yes. Thank you. My preference for doing that is some slow, affectionate kissing with sexy and affectionate caressing. Is that agreeable to you?”

“Yes.”

 

She was the one actually in charge immediately after her response, super-deep face-eating + french kissing as her hands wantonly grabbed his upper arms, now deliciously skin-to-skin.

 

This night of passion continued for several hours, basically every moment of which was at least pleasurable to both of them, more often enthralling, occasionally blissfully sublime. Highlights in the latter category over the hours included 2 other breast-centric orgasms for her at unexpected moments well apart from one another, Clark enjoying more than one orgasmic release of his own within the confines of his pants, and both of them being surprised when the biggest orgasm of the night happened unexpectedly with no explicit intention of such a thing during the extended time he was kissing, licking, lipping, and hand handling her belly. His brief offhand comment that big fat bellies could be like a third boob resonated within her more deeply than he could ever have imagined.

[Sonic Purity]

Love Infection

🎼 Big ship sailing on the o-ceannn 🎼

Freddie MacGregor’s soothing singing atop the restful reggae beat absolutely was apropos for the smooth cruise Leigh was currently enjoying the following morning. One of the few reggae tracks in her personal music collection and possibly her favorite in that genre, it sounded really good played by her handheld (currently on a table) through the stateroom’s Bluetooth-capable barely-visible (other than the video screen) built-in audio/video infotainment system. It was a perfect background for the moment, out at sea, refreshed from her overnight sleep, picking out her outfit for the day.

 

In terms of covering ground, modern cruise ships could easily sail right on up from Los Angeles to the lowest part of Alaska in 4 days, with no intermediate stops. More commonly, U.S. west coast cruises stopping in multiple ports might run the same 4 days, from southern California to Seattle, or more often Vancouver if they needed to go to a non-U.S. port for regulatory reasons related to whose flag under which they sailed. For this itinerary and others in their system, Royal Prince Cruise Lines chose to mash up a cruise to nowhere—a cruise solely for being on a cruise ship’s sake—with port visits. This mash-up led to the leisurely pace of an entire 11 days up to the northernmost port for a two-day stay as in S.F., then a quicker 4 day southerly return trip with far fewer port stops, and at least one new one, before returning to San Diego then again to the L.A. home port and continuing the loop.

Leigh and all other cruisers on board were currently experiencing, and presumably enjoying, one of these restful interludes: an overnight on the ocean—2 days between departing from San Francisco and arriving in Eureka, California.

 

With no need to be thinking about land-based sightseeing or other land-based activities, it fell to Leigh to figure out what she’d most enjoy doing on the Sapphire Prince. The most immediate choice she already knew: breakfast!

 

* *

Seating was scarce in Home Comfort, one of the ship’s many restaurants. Specializing in general cuisine leaning towards various cultures’ comfort foods (with a heavy traditional American emphasis), many other cruisers besides Leigh apparently decided that today was a good morning for more basic, familiar fare.

Far more disconcerting than the seating situation were the several soft-spoken conversations she heard as she roamed around deciding where to sit.

A pair of late middle-aged women:

“Three more!”

“Confirmed cases?”

“No: dead!”

 

A balding well-fed man around her age, speaking with what on surface appearances may have been his wife:

“We’re on a fucking floating petri dish. This was a bad idea.”

“Should we disembark in Eureka and rent a car or something?”

“May have to. At least maybe the virus isn’t there yet.”

 

An arguing middle-aged couple:

“Says right here the risk increases linearly with age—there’s your answer!”

“Yes, but what does that mean?! It’s not like the novel coronavirus has a built-in date function that pulls up your or my or anyone’s public records that the AARP amongst others uses to check our birth dates!”

“If you’ve got this all worked out, why don’t you do us all a favor and get with the CDC and lay your ‘brilliant insights’ on them!”

 

Anyone coughing earned several to many steely-eyed glares aimed their way.

 

Contrary to her prior experiences on this cruise, seeing an open seat at a table across from Clark Barr in this moment was a welcome sight indeed! She didn’t consciously put on a slight additional sexy sway as she headed directly towards him with a smile: that was her subconscious putting out that order from her brain bridge to the engine room of her body’s muscles.

For reasons she couldn’t fathom, he didn’t appear pleased to see her.

 

“Is this seat taken?”

“No. Have at it.”

 

Once Leigh figured out what she wanted, waitress Mackenzie dropped by and cheerily took her order.

 

Clark’s demeanor remained subdued, “Are you as hungry as you look?”

She could feel her face flushing ever-so-slightly. “Yes.”

“Anything I have that you’d like?”

{Yes, and we can’t possibly get into that here in any way that won’t get us thrown into the brig—or at least me.} “You don’t want all you have?”

“I’m not really into it this morning, like I thought I’d be when I ordered. Prolly should’ve gone for something with more flavor than bland comfort food. Seriously: anything you want.”

“Rest of your muffin, please?”

 

He almost smiled mildly as he passed it over. Seeing her eagerly bite into it right away briefly lit him up ever-so-slightly, before quickly dimming back down.

 

“How was your tour yesterday?”

“It was alright” munch, munch. “I took your suggestion to take the ferry to Sausalito, discovering that it stops first at Angel Island then Tiburon” munch.

“How’d you like Angel Island?”

“Didn’t get off there. No especial interest in the Ellis Island of the West.”

“There’s a lot more to it than that! It can be very pretty for a nature walk, especially in springtime as we are.”

“Yeah, maybe I blew it” she sighed.

 

Mackenzie was back, bringing her smile to the table. “Heeeerrree ya go!: Tex-Mex omelette, toast, and bacon! Refill on your coffee?”

“Yes please.”

 

Eating took priority to conversation for Leigh, happy to dig right in to her breakfast.

Clark had nothing he wished to say, losing himself to wistfulness from the living art masterpiece in live motion in front of him. He certainly wasn’t eating much of his own meal.

 

A couple of minutes later, curiosity overcame her, “You like watching me eat?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

His voice sounded especially wistful as he replied, “You look so happy when you’re eating.”

“I like eating” she smiled, resuming. Her comment apparently triggered a momentary flicker of something along the lines of energy within him, then back to his dim, distant grey.

 

“What’s up, Clark?”

“Nothing.”

{Alright. I tried} she thought as she continued enjoying her omelette, other than its to-her unexpected blandness.

 

“Did you explore Tiburon? Or skip that too and go to your actual destination?”

“No, I did Tiburon. Explored Tiburon.”

{Figures you’d be possibly lust-minded when I’m at a nadir of interest in that with anyone.}

“A couple of things like the horse statue and the Hippie swing seemed worth checking out and weren’t that far away in the greater scheme of things, but farther than I wanted to walk after all the walking I did day before yesterday in S.F., plus day before that in Monterey.”

 

She went on to describe what she did do and see, both there and in Sausalito.

 

“What about you? What did you do yesterday?”

“Slept in my stateroom—by myself, lounged in the sun. That’s about it. Exciting stuff.”

“Figured out what you’re doing today?”

He slowly half-shook his head, maintaining eye contact. Half a minute later he said, “You’re a very curious one, aren’t you?”

“I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to spend my day. Thought you might have some good ideas.”

“Nothing that Royal Prince hasn’t already suggested in their literature. I may well just rest again.”

“You’re not going to go to the sports bar and bro it up?”

{Where did that come from?!} “What?”

“You know” she wiggled in her seat. “Talk about guy stuff and sports and all that.”

With a look of shock he told her, “You do not know me well at all” as he got up and left.

 

She again watched him the entire time he walked away, until he was out of sight.

 

Hunger quickly overcame both the brief emotional wake and less-than-exciting flavor profile.

 

* *

Leigh finding Clark soon after noon was no accident: she’d sought him out.

It was a complete turning of the tables when she walked up to him seated at one in the Sip And A Wink Pub, nursing a pint. “Clark, I’m very sorry about this morning… what I said.”

“It’s fine” he replied in the same tired, dispassionate tone and overall demeanor as at breakfast.

{Doesn’t sound fine.} “Can I buy you a drink or anything?”

“I’ve got what I need, thank you.”

“I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you truly want.”

“What do you truly want?”

“To sit with you and have lunch. You can watch me eat again” she smiled.

Once more, she saw an upswell in vitality. “Alright.”

“This is my first time. Have you been here before? Maybe had food?”

“I have. Both of those.”

“Any suggestions for a hearty, hopefully flavorful meal?”

More signs of life, and interest. “You want a hearty meal so soon after breakfast?”

“I told you I like to eat. If you want to hear more, please tell me you’ll stay, let me place my order, then come rejoin you.”

“I’ll be here, sipping this. In terms of food here, I can vouch for the lamb pastie as flavorful and filling. Have not had the ploughman’s lunch, though as with pasties traditionally those were meant for hungry workingmen, so it ought to be at least filling.”

“Beer suggestions?”

“Whatever you’re into. Every one of the several I’ve had here has been good.”

 

* *

A sweeping range of feelings crashed over Clark like an ocean swell, seeing Leigh’s body in sinuous, rippling wave motion (especially her middle body) on her return to his-now-their table.

She didn’t notice, being busy carrying her plate and too preoccupied thinking about how great her lunch would likely taste. The barmaid-du-jour delivered her glistening golden pint seconds after she sat down, again across from Clark. This time it was their own private rectangular table booth as opposed to the more family-style open large table seating at Home Comfort.

 

Without either of them trying, they wound up making eyes at each other as she tucked into her pastie and he watched, occasionally quaffing from his gradually-dwindling pint.

“Mmmm (munch, munch, swallow), I went non-traditional with the pastie, going for the curried lamb to get more spice.”

“It might be traditional somewhere. Spice success?”

“Not really, which amazes me.” She slid her plate over towards him, “Second opinion, please?”

 

He took a reasonably generous bite around the thicker middle, to ensure he got a full sample of everything inside. Chewing with focus and contemplating what he was tasting studiously, he slid her plate back over to her.

 

“I taste the curry for sure, but it’s in no danger of overwhelming me. Yet now I’m feeling some tongue burn.”

“That’s what I’m having! Nor am I smelling other food aromas, nor the salt air.”

“That’s what I’ve got: anosmia, as we discussed yesterday over breakfast.”

“What if it’s the start of the novel corona?!”

“That would be a new beer from Mexico, or a novel about it” he teased. “Or a new royal crown, maybe for a Sapphire Prince.”

“Coronavirus. Better?”

“Yes better. And no, not likely COVID-19 unless you have a fever.”

“Feel me, please?” she asked, standing part-way up to enable her to lean over closer to him.

 

{Don’t tempt me} he thought during the process of doing another coarse body temperature guesstimate. “Same as this morning.”

“Whew!” She sat back down, relieved.

“Now if you stress on it too much, that’ll depress your immune system, and then you may have reason for concern. Dry cough?”

“No.”

“Then this non-medical professional thinks you’re fine.”

“Thank you.”

Her sincere smile touched him deeper than he wanted to be touched.

“Aren’t you worried about it?”

“COVID-19?”

“What else?!”

“Oh, the world economy tanking, Die-Ann Feinstein and other idiots trying to eviscerate encryption ‘for the children’, stuff I’ve read about shipboard crime on cruise ships—there’s no shortage of stuff to worry about, if one goes that way.”

“But people are dying on this ship!”

“Yeah, and that happens anyway throughout life, including on cruise ships, with or without this novel coronavirus! Why do you think they have a morgue on here?”

“Hhhhhhhh!”

“They didn’t just install it for present circumstances and worries! People die. It happens. And if it happens when a cruise ship is out to sea, sucks for the other 99.9% of the passengers if one croaker requires immediate emergency handling which throws the ship off-course.”

“They have medivac helicopters! I’ve heard them!”

“Yes, and they want cruisers alive and healthy, and they’ll get people the medical attention they need when it goes beyond the on-ship infirmary. To answer your question and hopefully get this depressing topic behind us, I am rationally concerned about COVID-19, but not worried about it.”

“Wow.”

“Worry depresses the immune system as I just noted, making it more likely a person will fall ill and/or that their illness will be a more severe variant that might lead to pneumonia and possibly death. May we please change the subject now?”

“Yeah, we better. This is nearly making me lose my appetite. Any suggestions?”

“I’d love to hear more about how you like to eat. At suitably convenient points between bites, of course.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but when I first saw you on board, I felt like my entire vacation was ruined.”

“Jeez Leigh! I know I’m tact-challenged and have to keep apologizing for it, but my mere presence is trashing your vacation?!”

“Lemme explain, lemme explain. I like to eat, more than my body needs. Can’t help it; have always been this way, as far back as I can remember. In my normal life, it’s important to me to be amongst the average-sized part of humanity, hence I have to carefully moderate my food intake. For me this cruise is all about no one knowing me, and likely no one else ever crossing paths with me again in the future, so I can feel free eating freely and plentifully. Spending time in the gym and walking on shore and so on to stay in shape and burn off some of the excess, sure, but we both know by looking at me that there’s more gain from the eating than loss from the exercise.”

{Not much evidence on your upper half where I can see you now, but yeah.}

“So at first it upset me that you would be here as a witness, given our past and what I thought I knew of you. But… I’ve been getting the sense that you don’t mind my thickening, and might not judge me harshly.”

“I’m truly sorry if you feel I’ve been judging you harshly, no matter what I do or do not think. I strive not to be that sort of asshole… or any other sort of asshole, for that matter. It’s absolutely none of my business, and I hope you’ll please resume doing what you want same as if I wasn’t here.”

“Hmmm, but….”

“Yes, you have a nice one.”

{Finally a full smile!} “Thank you! Will I be wrecking your viewing if I park it next to you?”

“No.” {Wish I knew why the hell you’re so flirty all of a sudden.}

 

She slid her plate and pint glass over first, then moved herself out and back in on his side. Her generous seated soft fat hip spread along with the size of the booth’s bench seat(s) required her to sit intimately next to, and slightly on top of, him.

“That’s very dangerous, what you’re doing.”

“How so?”

“Stirring my desires, after my having so mindfully shut that part of me down, to avoid more romance fails.”

“What romance fails? Seems to me I’m always seeing you leaving Club Troposphere holding hands with someone of the squishy feminine persuasion.”

“If always equals twice by your definition, then that’s correct. And it doesn’t last. And it doesn’t end well. Remind you of anything?”

“We were at a trade show and passions flared and there may have been misunderstandings and things didn’t work out” she ended with a sigh.

“No they didn’t. For me with you then, and on this cruise with two other amazing women.”

“Third one has the charms” she flirted.

“How do you people turn your eye sparkles on and off like that?”

“Which ‘you people’? Chunky women?”

“With all due respect, I don’t go for the half-hearted chunksters. Needs to be an all-out chonky woman to make it worth my while.”

Leigh’s eyebrows went up. So did her left thigh lifted by her leg muscles plus her left hip fat lifted by her left hand, towards the goal of scooting slightly closer to him. “Is a chonky woman anything like a fat woman?” she asked with a cheeky grin, dropping her left hip and thigh fat atop his right thigh.

“Yes” he replied with a sultry half-smile, studying her expression and her farther below. “How would you feel about my arm around you?”

“Favorably.”

 

The mutual passions neither could fully suppress reignited.

Leigh couldn’t help leaning into him and nuzzling him affectionately. “Am I chonky enough for you?”

“I’ll have to feel you to answer that question.”

“Let’s plan on that, a little later. Right now I want to chonk up with the rest of this lunch and my ale.”

 

Neither of them wanted to fight losing themselves to loving one another. It was too delicious and comforting a feeling, even if being with the other didn’t truly make sense to either of them on most rational levels.

 

* *

“Here it is, such as it is” said Clark, flipping on the lights in his inner-ship stateroom.

 

He and Leigh agreed they wanted to share a mini stateroom tour, showing each other their own. The heady, intense passions on their stroll from the Sip And A Wink Pub to his stateroom wherein they kept almost holding hands before individually or sometimes together silently deciding it was too much too soon hinted that they might well be spending some long quality time together.

 

“A little small” she noted. “Doesn’t it bother you, having no outside view at all?”

He turned on the A/V system, its screen displaying an exterior camera view as its startup default.

“It’s not the same as unfiltered reality.”

“Agreed; it’s not. It’s also hecka cheaper than the staterooms with views. With so many other places to be on-ship that are nice and spacious and beautiful, and with the Promenade and other decks I can walk or take a seat upon with wholly unrestricted views for no extra charge, why would I pay more for a stateroom with a view?”

“To spend cozy comfy private time in it with a nice view. It’s getting chillier out the farther north we go, you know.”

“That’s how it usually works, depending on the weather pattern.”

 

Adrenalin blasted through him as she wordlessly took him by the hand and led him over to his own bed, then down with her atop it, into a front-to-front cuddle. “Chrysler Dodge Jeep you move fast!”

“I’m studying dimensions, Chumley!” she chided. “Trying to figure out why you’d not get a larger room to better bed the superchonkers you seem to prefer.”

The fire within him faded. “Oh. Alright.”

“Come check out mine. Not saying this is bad, nor that I’d mind taking things further with you in here. I do like my view, and I did pay for the privilege.”

“Yes, let’s do that. Paying for it and not using it would be wasteful.”

She couldn’t help grinning as they got up. {I like that you’re frugal. Hope you’re not a tightwad.}

 

* *

On the between deck stroll over to her stateroom they outright held hands the whole way, no longer pretending there was any reason to try and minimize PDAs that others likely could obviously see, whether they held hands or not. Passion coursing through and between them electrified the walk.

 

* *

“OK, this is very nice” rolled right out of Clark’s mouth first thing, soon as Leigh opened the door to her stateroom and invited him inside, preceding her.

 

Once she’d closed and locked the door he asked, “Worth it to you, paying the differential?”

“Absolutely! I mean look!” She motioned with her hands every which way around the room during a slow full-circle spin.

 

He absolutely did look with every morsel of attention he had: at her.

She knew. She could feel the passions flaring up as well as see them in his expression. “Come check out the bathroom.”

 

“Yeahhh, this is posh. Do you truly spend enough time in here to justify all the space and glitz?”

“A: Yes. B: This is a better value and less extreme in poshness and glitz than the suites and larger view staterooms.

 

He allowed her to lead him by the hand back out into the main room, over to and onto the couch.

Each felt their own version of very intense, confusing, somewhat murky feelings when their gazes suddenly directly met as they sat part-turned towards one another, as might be a couple having a restful discussion.

“This couch makes more sense with double or greater occupancy” he couldn’t help commenting, smiling.

“Maybe so” she smiled back, very much wanting a kiss (at least). “Not the reason I selected this cabin class and no extra charge, so why not? It’s a nice change of pace at night when it’s dark, if I tire of being on or in the bed. Of which, come check mine out.”

 

He sat himself down along its inner-room side. “Feels like mine, only slightly bigger.”

She joined him, intentionally sitting part-way atop him again, this time to his left. “Isn’t it great, having a cloud-like bed?”

“We’re absolutely paying for top-notch bedding when we cruise, otherwise there’d be far more unhappy, poorly-rested cruisers.”

Her eyes absolutely lit up all the way in full shimmering glitteriness as she suggested, “Let’s study dimensions!”, gently guiding him down onto the bed along with herself.

 

Seeing Leigh’s lusty look along with hearing her shoes drop to the floor suggested to Clark that any tour of her balconette she might consider giving him was going to happen later, if it happened at all. He followed her lead: using his feet to slip each of his shoes off, as she had.

Further slipping included each of them slipping their arms around one another for renewed front-to-front lying down cuddling, as well as slipping deeper into lusty desire.

 

“What do you conclude, Ms. Measurement?”

“I measure very carefully, thank you” she teased, struggling to hold back from attacking him with her lips. “Roomier on this bed. More than sufficient for as much as I’ll fatten up on this voyage.”

“You intend to fatten up further?!” he panted.

Exciting as his words were, his suddenly-bigger hot bulge pressed deeper into the lower belly she’d not much had at the start of the cruise excited her far more. She couldn’t help pushing into him further there. “I intend to enjoy eating the remainder of this cruise. Fattening is a side effect, which you are welcome to enjoy.”

“Careful, Leigh: I can’t hold back much more.”

“I won’t hold back any more!”

 

She launched them into a mutual all-out passion kiss attack, their mouths devouring each other, their hands roaming: caressing, squeezing, grabbing.

 

“Am I chonky enough for you?” she breathlessly gasp-whispered.

“Feels like it. (huff)” he panted back. “I’ll know better when your clothes are off.”

 

She smashed her mouth against his for the very deepest, most passionate kiss they’d yet shared (since MatCon).

 

He could barely string a sentence together when she came up for air. “What’s that for?”

“You saying when my clothes are off, not if” she grinned, immediately thereafter resuming passionate kissing.

 

Without a word, they made a game out of undressing each other with the absolute minimum of pauses or breaks in their kissy touchy-feely lovemaking. It proved surprisingly easy and very fun!

“Damn Leigh, you’ve chonked up so beautifully!”

“Is that why you’re so—hhhhhhh!—much bigger than you were last time?!”

“Partly. Let’s not get into that now, please” he got out between pants, kissing her anew because he couldn’t hold back.

 

“Please please slip that thang in me!” she seemed to nearly beg at their next breath break.

“I didn’t bring a condom.”

“Did you use one with Beryl and Boobacious Bulb-Nose?”

“Her name’s Rebecca, and she and I did things not requiring a condom. How do you know Beryl’s name and not hers?”

{Uh-oh!} “Overheard it, as I was going about my business” {and trying to learn yours}. She planted his ceiling-nearest hand back onto her hip fat, generating the full re-rising she sought. It amazed and pleased her that he hadn’t shot off yet. “How many have you been with since me at MatCon and besides those two, and did you use protection with them?”

“Only one other—Alyssa, long before this cruise—and yes on protection.”

“Let’s go on a cruise adventure and do it bareback! I’ll do a Morning After.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want!”

 

“AaaaaAAAAaaaahhhh! Oh yesss!” she gasped in pleasure as they mated.

Passion filled the room, heating up the walls such that they almost seemed to be blushing.

“Push all the way into me and hold, pretty please!”

 

He gladly obliged, doing so slowly in case she changed her mind. Once all the way in he realized his hands were embedded deep within her hip fat. He removed them, and softened slightly.

 

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t want this to end like MatCon.”

“Clark, it’s different now! Back then I thought that you were being mean to me, putting me down for being fat. I didn’t know! Obviously from seeing you get with Beryl and Rebecca plus the shipboard discussions we’ve shared, I get that you’re an FA, and know enough about what that’s about to be more than OK getting with you like this. You have my consent to feel me any loving, lusting way on any part of the exterior of my body.”

“You’re going to get all your fat fondled.”

“Sounds good to me!”

 

She launched back into kissing, feeling what she wanted of him. He gave back in to his desires, reconnecting to them in full and re-hardening in full accordingly.

 

* *

Another not-quite quarter hour of eye-crossing arousal slow-intercourse bliss seemed like a natural pinnacle point.

“You feel like you’re ready to blow” she whispered.

“I am. You’re… very stimulating!”

Tingly arousal dialed her back up to full volume, “So are youuu!”

He panted louder and harder, “Your… your fat is so… EXCITINNNNG!”

 

She fully and totally gave herself in to the imminent explosion within her depths.

It never came. Literally.

 

She assuredly felt him cease humping, dropping in arousal a notch or two, otherwise remaining hard. “Your control is amazing!”

“That’s not what it is.”

Now she could feel him gradually softening within her. “What’s happening?”

“I had my orgasm.”

“But… nothing came out.”

His face grew more ashen than she’d ever seen it, by magnitudes. “I know.” A river of tears rolled forth from his eyes, as if a dam bypass channel had just been opened. “Believe me, I know!”

Confused and lost, she gently said, “I don’t understand.”

“There was a surgery… to save my life, indirectly. Prostate enlarged severely enough to cut off my ability to urinate, entirely and suddenly. I’ve been peeing slow for years, as you remember from MatCon and my several overnight trips to the bathroom. Going along same as always, ’til early in the dark hours one morning, nothing came out. At all.

“Did all the things I usually do, which I’ve learned over the years: relaxation, hot water—all that. Nothing helped. Hardly even one tiny drop came out, with the pressure on my bladder building and building.”

Too shocked and still confused to say anything, Leigh continued listening intently, feeling a degree of compassion as well as passion for him beyond what she understood.

“I had no idea what was going on at that point. Had to go to the emergency room, where they put in an in-dwelling catheter. About a liter of urine flowed out—more than an entire standard-sized wine bottle’s worth. As it did, pressure on my bladder reduced to normal: basically nothing. They strapped on a so-called walking catheter—a joke if there ever was one—and sent me home. This of course was late on a Friday after my urologist’s office was closed, so I had to have that fucking catheter in me and on me all weekend. Just stop for a moment and imagine what it would feel like to have a plastic tube shoved into a hole in your clitoris.”

She winced and writhed.

“Exactly. Then every time you move even slightly, it’s rubbing and twisting inside you and out at the tip where all the nerve endings are, and not in any sense in an arousing way!”

“Ulllaaagggh!” she shuddered.

“You’re getting it. Monday morning my urologist told me through his office intermediaries that I had to have that fucking torture device in me for an additional three days, so that my bladder would recover enough from the distention it had undergone for him to be able to examine me.

“Suffered through that, somehow made it in to my appointment. My expectation was that he could fix the problem then and there, and I would have considered many procedures at other times I’d avoid or eliminate from consideration, to get this behind me. Oh no, that’s not how it works. He put me on Tamsulosin, which is a targeted muscle relaxant, hoping—hoping!—that I’d be able to keep the urine flowing for another couple of weeks until they could get me in for a sonogram, then at another appointment for a cystoscopy.”

“I’m not familiar with the latter.”

“That’s the joy of someone sticking a flexible scope through that very sensitive hole in one’s sex organ, gleefully running it all the way inside for a look-see. So fast-scanning ahead, yes the drug worked to get me to those appointments. Sonogram, no big deal. Cystoscopy was yet another foreign object being pushed inside of me where things aren’t meant to be pushed inside.

“There’s I-don’t-know-how-many drugs and something like six different techniques for dealing with benign prostate hyperplasty to resolve this sort of issue. My urologist, a shining star in his field who’s skilled with all those procedures and even has placards for most of them advertising them around his office, told me in no uncertain terms that my case was severe enough that we had to skip right over all the pharmaceuticals and the less-invasive surgeries and go all the way to the ultimate end-game, which he called the ‘gold standard’: the Button TURP. Do you even want to hear any of this, Leigh?”

“Yes, please. It matters to you, and I want to understand.”

“I think the abbreviation expands to Trans Urethral Resection of the Prostate, and ‘button’ means it’s a newer device with that shape which offers the surgeon greater control. More important is the general concept. The surgeon goes in with this device, which via controlled laser power blasts away parts of the prostate to open things back up so the urethra’s no longer crushed, and the person can again urinate normally. Like nearly anything else in our medical system, there’s collateral damage. In my case, there was no way to avoid destroying a valve back up near my bladder, whose name I’ve not bothered looking up. Under normal circumstances as a genetic male goes into his ejaculatory process, this valve closes, so the semen jets or flows or dribbles out the tip of the penis, rather than flowing back into the bladder. Well, since the surgery I no longer have that valve, so my cum takes the path of least resistance, mostly or entirely going back into my bladder, where it comes out with the urine next time I pee.” He began to tremble from emotions, renewed tears again flowing, “So… I… am no longer able to fill anyone’s insides, who might want that experience.”

Not even knowing why, instinctively she pulled them together into a tighter embrace. “I don’t mind not feeling stuff spray into me. I just didn’t know what was going on. But obviously it means a lot to you.”

“I’m sorry, Leigh! I’m treating you like you’re my therapist or my wife or girlfriend or something, dumping all this on you.”

“I care, you know! Willing to tell me more about what this change means to you?”

“It has a name: retrograde ejaculation. Drugs like the one I was on can cause it too, though that’s a temporary effect, unlike the surgeries, which are… permanent.

“I don’t know what to think, honestly. Had I been planning to have children, it’d be close to a death sentence. I don’t even like my cum—it’s messy and gross! So in that sense, this is better: no mess.”

“So when I put you in my mouth and you cum, I won’t gag?”

 

Overwhelmed with gratitude that she’d even be thinking of anything involving him as an ongoing lover, he again kissed her repeatedly, this time tenderly and with tears rather than lusty potently. “Correct. And if on some future occasion when we’re mutually in a sexy mood and you want to be super-nice to me, if you let me get off in your butt crack between your buns, there’s no mess to clean up afterwards. Though… I can’t glue us together with my Love Hot Glue any longer… because my hot glue gun no longer works.”

“Seems like it works really really well for getting all big and hard and rubbing my sensitive formerly-reproductive insides the right way.”

“Formerly?”

“I’m not dropping eggs, Clark. I’dve taken a morning after just to be on the safe side, and if via some miracle I get pregnant I’ll take care of it, as in terminate it early. But I rrrrreeeeally doubt that would happen, even with a strapping big-balled 20-something semen-blaster.”

He turned away.

“Hey.” She gently eased him back looking towards her, caressing his face. “I’m not a cougar. I prefer men my own age, or at least a hork of a lot closer.”

“Hork?”

“I didn’t feel like saying hell or heck.”

“How convenient… I prefer women close to me in age.” He chose to punctuate his sentence with a long loving + lusting kiss.

 

She came out of the extended kiss deeply dazed, needing time to recover.

 

Caressing his hair she asked, “Is there no upside for you whatsoever, related to the surgery?”

“I can go all night without having to go to the bathroom many nights, which wasn’t even true generally when I was a teenager.”

“I’m thinking sexually.”

“Initially, it was hell: I felt like I was perpetually edging, unable to ever get off. That’s fun when one wants to do that, but one eventually needs release! One person who had this surgery was so distraught and ruined and likely over-wound from being unable to get off that he shot his urologist.”

“Hhhhhh!”

“I’m not going to shoot mine, Leigh! Nor anyone else not immediately and credibly threatening me. That did happen, and I present it to make the point that the surgery side-effects can be highly problematic. In my case, remembering that sex happens as much or more in the mind than the genitals, I knew I had to reprogram my mind. I cannot tell you how I did it, but somehow, with solo practice, I managed to find my way back to emotional and at least some biochemical release, even while lacking sensations to which I’ve been accustomed for decades. Worked for me with Beryl for what that was worth, worked wholly inside my pants with Rebecca and didn’t make a mess I had to clean up, and at my end worked with you now… until I let you down.”

“You didn’t let me down, Clark! I’m great with having you all hard inside me and making me all happy and getting off with nothing coming out of you. To be honest, the whole thing about you being able to cum anywhere on or in me without the sticky gooeyness I find highly appealing. Not that I have nor will have the kinds of surfaces Beryl and Rebecca have, but it’s rather hot to me that if I did, you’d be able to poke into a fold or create one by grabbing a hunk of me and rub and get harder and bigger and get off pretty much spur-of-the-moment without either of us having to fret about whether there was time and resources for cleanup. And given how you’re already getting hard again, apparently you find it hot too.”

“I do.”

“What is your refractive period anyway?”

“Being recalculated. In recent years it could range from half an hour to half a day. Since this surgery, it’s faster. Possibly related to the lack of full release, my body seems to want to have another go sooner.”

This very much excited Leigh! “Another question, if I may?”

“Of course.”

“Did the surgery have some effect on your, um, hardness and size?”

“Apparently it did, though my urologist said nothing about it and I’ve read nothing about it online. At first I didn’t know what to think when I’d wake up in the morning and be harder and feel bigger than ever before, morning after morning. Not every morning, but the majority of them. I knew it wasn’t my imagination, because for years I’ve been able to wrap my closed fists around my shaft and have the length of my paired closed fists closely match the distance from my body past my scrotum to the penis tip. Post-surgery and a lengthy several months of recovery where all kinds of blood was coming out of my penis and I wasn’t allowed to lift things nor have any form of sex, had to try to avoid intentional arousal, and the urine flow remained bad, once I went through the whole discovery of the orgasm change and getting over that, consistently morning after morning I’d wake up with these raging boners whereby when I did the in-bed hand measurement the way I always had, my penis was longer, by one to several centimeters. Feels thicker too, but I’ve never had a way to accurately measure that.

“Common wisdom is that genitals like this stop growing at or near the end of adolescence. I think that’s probably true. As this kept happening and I kept thinking about it, I realized I had been this big and hard in the past, on rare occasion. Not seemingly related to arousal, though maybe it would have been had I been with someone sufficiently arousing.” He smiled at her and very clearly groped and kissed her at the same time to strongly hint that she was in that category. “I think the deal is that whatever happened with the surgery is stimulating or irritating something inside me which causes this effect. It feels heavy enough that it’s more comfortable to get my hands around it to support its greater weight, which is likely the mass of additional blood in there. Because the cause is unknown—at least to me—I have no clue whether it’s permanent or will diminish over time as my body heals, or aging continues.”

“Thank you for explaining all that, and trusting me enough to share.”

“Thank you for listening! If there’s ever anything like that which you want to get off your chest now or in the future whenever we’re in a situation where you feel comfortable sharing, I’ll do all I can to return the favor you’ve just given me.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Even right here and now, while we’re still in afterglow?”

“Are we both in it? You didn’t cum, did you?”

“Breaking news: orgasms aren’t necessary for great, enjoyable sex. For me at least. But I did have a really quick one when you were in me and before your climax. I call those super-fast ones lightning orgasms, because of how they’re there in a flash then gone.”

“Was that when you suddenly went wide-eyed ever-so-briefly and momentarily twitched?”

“That was it. So truly, you’re ready for me to jump right into my too-small big issue?”

“With a title like that, how can I not be?”

“OK. I’ll need you to hold me and let me know I’m OK.”

“I want to and intend to be here for you, like you’ve been for me.”

“Stay with me on this: there may be twists and turns.”

“You mean like these?” he asked, caressing her sinuous curves as he adjusted into optimal supportive holding position.

She couldn’t help smiling as she restfully cuddled into him a little more. “Here we go…. I feel worthless as a woman.”

 

Silence filled the room as Clark strove to keep listening, supportively and gently gazing at her with full attention.

 

“You’re supposed to ask why.”

“Oh! Why? Why would you feel worthless as a woman, or for that matter in any other way?”

“Multiple reasons. Society tells us that women age out past 30, and I’m past double that age.”

“Pffft! That’s ridiculous!”

She glared at him, thinking he was contradicting her heartfelt confession.

“Humans aren’t even fully formed adults until they’re around 27! I read about this recently: yes, we’re mostly there by 18, more so by 21, and heading well out onto the long tail of the asymptote after that. The brain and I forgot what all else is still developing into its final form through the late 20s, which makes things like binge drinking more harmful as a 20-something than as a 30-something or later, though obviously binge drinking is harmful at any age. Sorry; go on.”

“What you say may be true, and likely is. So is what I’m telling you. That standard applies to every woman, and we already discussed age a little bit and I’d like to discuss it more in the future. Right now it’s a foundation for discussing my overall sense of worth—part and parcel, yet not the entirety.

“At every adult age, I’ve suffered from being plain. Not dazzling like Beryl and so many other women. Nor adorably cute, like Rebecca and so many other women.”

“If that’s true, then why do I feel this nearly overpowering desire to nose-rub kiss you?”

“Because you’re wonderful” she smiled, starting up the soon-mutual nose-rub kissing between them. The pure affection felt so good, her smile couldn’t resist turning into a grin.

 

The nose rub kissing morphed to cheek-to-cheek nuzzling and related exceedingly affectionate canoodling, filling the room with love hearts one could almost see and feel.

 

“Mmmmm” she softly sighed, “Let’s please continue this later.”

“You don’t want to keep doing this while you continue sharing your big issue with me?” nuzzle nuzzle nuzzle

“I can’t think clearly when we’re being all deliciously romantic like this. Mmmmmh.”

“Just trying to do my part to help you feel your worth as a woman.”

“Oh forget whatever I was talking about and let’s do this instead all the rest of the day and all night long, or until we can’t stand it any more.”

 

The passions and physical love were too strong: conversation ceased as Leigh and Clark lavished affection upon one another.

Within the hour as part and parcel of their affection immersion, sexual arousal drove them to again couple up, with him again being very hard for and in her. Seamless with the affection, it was true lovemaking at its most romantic.

 

* *

Slow, sensual lovemaking and restful romance continued well into the late afternoon. Neither Leigh nor Clark tried to fight what was happening at all: it was too wonderful and had been simmering for far too long—from prior to MatCon those several years back, actually. They bonded deeper and deeper into a murky, confusing love which they knew to be more than just physical, but not how much more.

 

“Will you hate me if I change my mind and ask to be held and listened-to again, so I may share my worrisome issue?”

“I’ll have trouble hating you at all for nearly any reason (kiss). Tell me or guide me into the supportive embracing position you prefer. I’m all yours.”

{Oh how I wish it was that easy!} she thought, snuggling into him and making minor adjustments to where his arms and hands were. “OK. I briefly discussed age, and still want to get into that later, but not now and maybe not today or even soon. As you were saying about asymptotes and human maturation, I’m so vastly far out on the tail of societal undesirability that I’m for all intents and purposes invisible. Then there’s the whole being plain rather than pretty thing we discussed, which has been true my whole life and I’m thrilled beyond words that you got the deluxe rose-colored glasses such that you find me appealing.”

“I find you fetching without any optical distortions.”

“If it wasn’t getting towards dinner time and I wasn’t feeling a deep need to share with you before we hopefully pretty please go to dinner together, I would be sucking your face again now. Most of the world finds me plain, and that’s the important point for you to hopefully maybe understand what’s up with my self-image and body image issues.

“This next is the difficult part for me, and in many ways the crux of the matter. Not the only thing, not the whole thing. Should not matter at all and should not be important at all, to me or anyone else. But it is, both to society and assuredly to me. Hold me close, Neener.”

“What?”

She caressed his face, projecting the most love-worthy affectionate expression possible, “It’s my pet name for you: my equivalent of your Chonky for me.”

“What does it mean?”

{Really?! You don’t know?!} She reached down and wantonly grabbed his penis, deep-caressing him there. “You’ve got a big flesh banana that I love having in me and against me and around me. Bananas in silly-talk are baneners or neeners, so you’re my Neener!” she ended with a passionate wet mouth-to-mouth kiss, her hand remaining clamped onto his “ripening” neener, with no sign of letting go any time soon.

“My too-small big issue is boobs. Boobs are power. Boobs are a symbol of womanhood, and desirability. Society tells us these things, over and over relentlessly ad nauseam. I’ve had wicked-strong big boob envy and small boob shame since the end of adolescence, when it became clear that mine were done growing, and this is all I was going to get.”

He extricated his arm so he could raise his hand.

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Is it time for me to render an opinion yet? Or maybe I ought not to at all.”

“You definitely should, because if you don’t offer it, I’ll request it. But not now, please. I’ll let you know.”

He nodded, fine-tuning his replaced arm and hand in supportive holding position.

“I’ve tried and tried and tried to get over this and let it go, on my own and with help, including psychotherapy for a spell. Has not ever worked. I’m well aware of the availability of implants and related surgical options. At times I’ve considered them, always backing away due to their unnatural nature, possibility of complications, and cost. Part of me feels I’m defective because of how readily I fatten out in pear shape—which as we know is a synonym for deterioration and losing desirability—but never gain up top.”

“At all?”

“It’s such a teeny bit, Neen, it hardly counts.”

“Some other day and time I’ll want to ask you about your fat gain patterns, but obviously not now. Please tell me more.”

“I’m genuinely obsessed with big boobs, almost as much as the stereotype of the most extreme boob-loving man. Seriously: I have been known to look at big-boob porn. Not to get off, but to rage.”

“Why would you do that to yourself? Makes no sense.”

“There’s a lot of things we humans do that make no sense. Such as, oh say, falling madly and hopelessly in love with someone I’m still getting to know, before I know them well.”

“That’s where I am” he admitted, his voice slightly choked by emotions beyond his understanding.

 

They shared a long, tender kiss instigated by her.

 

“OK, I’m so close to finishing, I gotta do this. Women with big boobs fascinate and threaten me in general. BBW with big boobs do so in particular, in part because that’s considered standard equipment.”

“I’m going to start playing with yours, you know.”

“I want that more than you have any idea, but not now, please. After dinner works for me.”

“I like where this is going” he grinned. “Apologies for the interruption; please go on.”

“Seeing you heading off with Beryl was a good news/bad news situation for me: good news because it made clear to me that you truly are an FA and truly do like fat women, and weren’t being mean to me back at MatCon as I’d concluded at that time. Bad news ’cause she’s quite busty and big all over, and I’m not.

“So then I saw you going off with the woman I now know is named Rebecca, nearly apoplectic over what she has that I don’t. This is mostly about me, but it’s about you too, given that we’re currently again bare together and at least I’m so lost to love with you that I can barely see.”

“I’m there.”

“I need to know what you’re into, in terms of your lover’s body. ’Cause if it’s boobs, we need to please work together to wind this thing down before either of us gets hurt.”

“How can we do that when we fell into this deep well without knowing?”

“Let’s start with whether there’s a need to get out or not. Total truth, no spin: are you a boob man, Neener?”

“I’m an everything man, when it comes to fat. 3Bs, hips, thighs, lower legs, arms, back—if it’s soft fat on a passionate woman’s body who’s into me and consents for me to feel her, I’m there.”

“3Bs?”

“Boobs, belly, butt. This is news?”

“No, I just ripped a brain fart. Back is a B, so you might want to update that to 4Bs.”

“With the next maintenance release I shall” he snickered.

“But what is your preference, amongst those, Mister Everything?”

“I have between 2 and 4, depending how one counts body parts. One of those, as a pair usually, is boobs. Love big boobs! Since you’re name-dropping my prior cruise dates, so shall I: Beryl was sublime up top. Rebecca was transcendental.”

She tightened up and pulled inside, obviously hurt.

“Hey—don’t make me teethe your nipples before dinner—those are for dessert!”

“Why would you even bother with mine?”

“Because I love you, and you want to be loved there, and… boobs! Seriously Chonk, you look to me to be in the 34 to 36C range, which ain’t no mosquito bites.”

“34C. But that’s dinky on a 202 pound fat pear!”

“You’ve got all this”–he grabbed her hips–“and you only weigh two hundred two pounds?!”

“Yes. Does that disappoint you further?”

“I’m not disappointed at all, just surprised. My innate desire beyond my mind’s control lusts by volume, not weight. I believe it’s better for everyone to carry less dense fat: easier on you because it weighs less, thus less ** wear, with all the exciting, sensual space-consuming volume. Easier on me because when you’re lying atop me in the throes of intimacy, both of us enjoying your vast dimensions and spread, the pressure on me is less, so it’s more comfortable and we can do it longer.

“34C is average, not dinky! 34A is dinky. 34B is marginal. And here’s the thing you didn’t let me get to: the other 1 to 3 preferences of mine. It/those are what you have: fat hips, fat buns, fat thighs. At least the first 2 of those tend to blend into unitary smoothly well-rounded objects on the women to whom I can’t help feeling most attracted, such as yourself.

“More is always better, and in a perfect world my USBBW lover would be profoundly fat all over in a sexy shape, details of sexy shape being difficult to define, because unlike my work, it’s not something which can be rationally predicted by modeling, measured, drawn to scale, then created at full size with final materials. When And is not the best option, Or is great!”

He stared deep into her eyes, startling her with his intensity, “Let me put this another way: a sufficiently super wobbly fat pear-shaped woman does not need boobs, at all! Because what she’s got going on down below for soft luscious fat is so compelling, the boobs don’t matter.”

“What’s sufficient in terms of super wobbly mid-body fat to you?”

“You truly want to know?”

“Yes.”

 

He retrieved his handheld, swiping to a near-empty app screen so she could see his home screen picture. “This” he said as he held it up for her to see.

 

It was a headless photo of a hips-for-days huge-thighed USBBW with a generous belly and relatively small breasts. bare.

 

“Oh not even!” she ranted. “I’m not gonna be a quarter ton 3 seat hippo hipper!”

“You think she’s a quarter tonner?”

“Yes” she indignantly replied, pushing his device and hand away, “Get that away from me, please.”

“Sure thing; you asked. To be clear, the woman in the photo is beyond sufficient, but is the closest example at my fingertips from my pear-shaped collection. The point is: when one’s as big as her, she has so much mid-body stuff going on, I’m unconcerned about what she has for boobs. I’ll assuredly pay attention to them or not as she prefers, but I won’t be lacking in any way.”

“But you are with me, at my current size.”

“I’m thoroughly enjoying the great gift you’re giving me letting us be here like this at all in the first place! Your body to make into what you most want it to be, for those of us out here with whom you care to share enjoying it as it is, as you want it to be.”

“It’s not rational, Neener—none of this is! I wouldn’t be caring what you think if I wasn’t madly in love with you, which isn’t rational. My boob obsession isn’t in any way rational, as we’ve established. I love that you are rational, and I prefer being in that space myself. My concern is that I’m investing too much energy in our love for you to quickly wander off to your next lover, as has been your pattern so far this cruise.”

“Beryl does one-offs—that was not my choice. Had it been otherwise, I’d likely have not made it to Rebecca… at least not yet, per historic short-term loving patterns not necessarily at all of my choosing. Rebecca is a whole other story and a private matter due to my needing to respect her privacy in terms of what I share with other people. For our purposes it’s a one-and-done, as with Beryl. Chances Rebecca will want to be near me on the rest of this cruise if ever anywhere are slim.”

“Unlike her and me and Beryl” she quipped.

“Yep. When it comes to us, we have that same pattern from MatCon. Things seem different now, so maybe this time will be different. If I’m with someone and things are going decently well or there’s a strong enough bond and the expectation that problems can and will be worked through, I’m with that person—especially for a brand-new searing hot love. I don’t know what we’re doing here, other than we already have pet names for one another and the feelings I feel for you feel strong enough to crush my chest—brand new to me! If or when we blow up or fall apart or calmly agree to move on, I’ll actively be looking for others to intimately love. Until then, and especially with all this insane love power I’m feeling, you own me, Chonk!”

 

The extremely strong passionate feelings within her triggered by his ending comment ensured that Leigh’s appetizer course was one of her favorites: Clark’s mouth. Her hands once again roamed over areas of his sexy body within reach, as did his on hers.

 

* *

Freshly-bathed formally dressed Clark Barr gently clasped the hand of his freshly-bathed and done-up dinner date Leigh Down, atop their pink cloth-covered table at Glissando. “Please do not ever again let me hear you say that you’re plain-looking, Chonk. You…”–he began to get choked up, his eyes growing moist–“are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever dated.”

The shimmer in her cosmetized eyes was at least as bright as the 3 tall white candles in the silver candelabra adorning their table, possibly at least in part because of them. The angelic live harp music in the background seemed to her the perfect soundtrack for the handsome living angel seated across from her, his generous wavy salt-and-pepper hair shining in the candlelight, his own purely natural eyes and all his face owning her romantic soul with the loving beauty it—he!—exuded, especially his endearing smile. For the longest time all she managed was repeatedly gently squeezing and releasing his held hand.

Eventually a few words came to her. “I am at a loss for words, Neen. This—all of this—is magical to me. You look better than I’ve ever seen you, and this whole cruise you’ve looked good to me.”

“Even when I was the last person you wanted to see?”

“Even then” she blushed, briefly averting her eyes. “I’m very glad to be seeing you now, in several senses of that phrase.”

“More wine?”

“Yes please.”

 

Waiter Andrés was back with their entrees.

Leigh’s eyes had a new reason to glisten, seeing the startlingly large proportions of the night’s Sapphire Special: Steak ’n’ Bake. Whilst Chef Lindgren’s very basic alliteration adequately described the general nature of the steak and baked potato main course, in no way could it convey the nuances of taste, texture, and presentation. Clark could see on his date’s blissed-out expression without having to ask that the steak was an outlying delight. The baked potato’s aroma was so impressive that it snaked through his currently-waning anosmia. As well its boisterous colors and textures were so eye-catching, he knew before she took her first bite that she was going to love it.

 

“How’s your Finger Snapper?” she asked during an eating pause.

“Quite nice. I’d never thought of red snapper as finger food, nor that there was any left out there that wasn’t all contaminated to hell and gone. Mmmm… thhrs… sorry, this is nice!”

 

This very special dinner date upon which they’d agreed and arranged prior to parting ways for their individual cleanup and dressing up was proving entirely worthwhile, and especially in Clark’s case not partaking of the Pampered Gem package, worth the extra money.

In this moment, she was his dream date: the only woman he wanted to be with. The only woman existing in his mind!

Similarly, he was her dream date: loved, trusted, known, super-easy on the eyes. Her lover and most intimate confidant, knowing some of her deepest secrets of great import. Possibly most of all: fully on-board with her personal cruise goals, rather than as she’d originally feared an impediment to them.

For Clark and Leigh this leisurely 2 hour multi-course feast was something more: foreplay.

 

* *

It went without saying they’d remain together, wherever they happened to agree to go. Immediately post-dinner that was to her stateroom. On this walk, arms around one another supplanted handholding.

“You sure you want to go dancing so soon after eating?”

“Why do you ask? Is my fat hip grinding against your firm one with every step too enticing? Or the lordosis from my high heels?”

“Both are incredibly enticing, but no, that’s not why I ask. For the same reason I’m surprised you want to go out dancing straightaway, I’d be being gentle with you in or on bed, or wherever else we might wind up, in deference to your clothes-torturing fullness.”

“Your awareness of my need to digest before heavy exercise is noted and greatly appreciated, though you do overstate my mild garment distress” she replied as she cuddled into him deeper, slowing their walk a little more. “I don’t want to dance all that long.”

“What’s the point of going tonight then, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind your asking. It’s important to my self-esteem to be seen dancing with you and walking off the dance floor with you, as… has happened with you and others.”

“Do I need to pretend I don’t know you, like I didn’t know them?”

“Nooo.”

“Alright, alright! Just trying to understand, and properly fulfill my role beyond what my nature dictates.”

“Go with your nature and love me true, and my goals will be met.”

 

* *

All-smiles DJ Swash Buckle and her on-shoulder turquoise-breasted mostly-green parrot once again held court at Club Troposphere.

Neither Clark nor Leigh knew the current medium tempo beat-heavy dance track to which they were dancing (nor did either feel motivated to have their handheld query SoundHound, Shazam, nor any other music look-up service). Beyond Leigh’s ongoing breathtaking extra-special made-up beauty the unexpected amount of fat jiggle and wobble he could see on her after such a big meal that he felt sure would arrest her gelatinous quiver had him fixated on her and her alone. Leigh nearly forgot about showing off her date to others in her focus of being with her date, thrilled that it was virtually guaranteed that she’d have her hands all over him all the rest of the waking night and be cuddled intimately and cozily into him throughout the sleeping night.

 

Plans often change, and theirs did: at Leigh’s behest, they wound up dancing longer than she’d estimated, losing track of time under the stars to the rhythmic tunes.

 

The sudden appearance of someone vaguely familiar to Leigh urgently seeking Clark’s attention interrupted their gently gyrating groove.

“Question, Clark.”

“Hey Per! Have you met Leigh yet?”

{The FA guy he was talking about Beryl with!} she realized.

“No. Hi Leigh, I’m Per Haugen.”

“Nice to meet you, Per. I’m Leigh Down.”

“Great name” he grinned, first towards her then Clark.

“I like yours too.”

“So what’s up friend?” asked Clark.

“It’s kinda… can we go to a quieter place, please?”

 

Leigh joined in, holding hands with her honey as the 3 of them rushed off the dance floor to a quiet enough private space behind a support pillar.

 

Per’s gaze was intense, stressed, and rushed, “I don’t know that this is– do you want to be talking about your other lovers in front of your current one?”

“Leigh is very special to me. Anything you can possibly say to me or ask of me is something she should be able to hear too.”

“Alright” he sighed, remaining uncomfortable, yet plunging ahead, “Tell me about Rebecca Davidson—please.”

Clark briefly let go of Leigh’s hand so he could plant both of his atop his FA friend’s shoulders, staring into his eyes, “Go slow with her, Per. Very slow. Be hyper-aware of tension in her body, and if you feel her tense up, walk it back—whatever’s going on.”

“Trauma victim?”

He looked down, pursing his lips. A moment later he nodded, ever-so-slightly. His eyes jumped back up to his, “She needs each of our very best.”

“I’ll be a good M&M, I promise. Thanks!” he ended with a smile and shoulder pat, adding “Great to meet you, Leigh!” as he rushed off.

“You too, Per!” she shouted over the ever-growing distance between them.

 

“What’s next for us?” asked Clark.

“One more song’s-worth dance on the dance floor, then back to my stateroom.”

“What’s the point of that? The one-song dance?”

“Right now it might have looked to some like I left with both of you. I want to be seen leaving with you alone.”

 

* *

The fact that neither Clark nor Leigh were striving to have sex upon their return to her stateroom and instead were happy doing anything involving intimate closeness ironically made for smoother sailing to another round of very satisfying scintillating slow sex. Technically outercourse humping her fattened inner thighs wholly outside her vagina (and indeed all of her vulva), Leigh didn’t know whether it was more exciting the way he was attacking her small breasts like giant treasure chests with his boob-hungry boob-skilled mouth, or feeling him get all the way off with absolutely no messy goo… at least his.

 

They had another shower, together this time, immediately before (sleeping in) bed, because they could, because it was sensual, and because it made it easier for Leigh to remove her cosmetics.

[Sonic Purity]

Eureka! Love! Gimme Samoa!

Around 5 in the morning, in-bed Little Spoon Leigh Downs woke to a profoundly intense sensation, as Big Spoon Clark Barr continued to peacefully sleep, his arms wrapped gently and lovingly around her. {Holy rigatoni! There’s a hot fleshy redwood tree between my buns!} The entirety of the experience felt so soothing and loving, Leigh felt yet another momentary touch of vertigo—the “falling” for falling in love! It was all good: rationally she knew she wasn’t physically falling anywhere, and if she was, Clark was right there with her, at least somewhat literally embedded in her, as one.

{He feels huge. And he fits better because my butt’s fatter. No wonder he’s into BBW!}

She drifted back to sleep to the wonderful feelings, gently caressing one of his arms while she remained somewhat awake.

 

* *

Daylight morning found Leigh and Clark lost to all-encompassing restful blissful love: mouths unable to speak, being too busy kissing, over and over. Hands unable to gesticulate, too busy obsessively caressing every possible in-reach sensual sexy surface of their lover. Their mutual love consumed them, temporarily obliterating awareness of the rest of the universe.

Sexual lovemaking eased into the mix in its own time, organically one as part of the whole of expressing their affectionate romantic caring love. It felt like a welcoming homecoming to them both as his love log logged in to her, shall we say, pleasure pocket. That was truly wonderful and felt great, but by no means was genital contact the center of attention even in the engorged heat of the moment—their glittering eyes upon each other or kissing lips (and sometimes wandering tongues) along with ever-caressing hands never let up, even as they added genital intercourse. It was about as all-encompassing as human loving can be!

 

Nearly an hour and a half after first both waking and getting into all this, they wound active loving down towards restful cuddling enough for the first words of the day to be spoken, by Leigh, still caressing him. “Any interest in being my cruise boyfriend, going steady with me?”

“Yes please (kiss). Sure you want to limit your options like that?”

“Given the various flavors of infection forever going around plus the famous new one, along with evolutionary forces within predisposing me as a human female to be choosy regarding with whom and how many I’m intimate, along with the insanely powerful love I feel for you and with you, yes I am totally good limiting my options. What about you, with your evolved predisposition to multiply mate?”

“Before you starting yesterday I’d already had more variety in days than I normally do in a year or two, at least. It speaks volumes—at least to me—that you’re the only one with whom I’ve awoken in the same bed in the morning on this voyage. I like variety. I believe many if not most humans crave new experiences and variety across the various genders and preferences. This love I’m feeling with you is terrifying in terms of its all-encompassing nature and addictive power.”

She caressed his cheek, a hint of whimper or whine in her voice, “Why would that be terrifying instead of beautiful?”

“Because my experience is it doesn’t last. At least not over the long term.”

“I’m not asking to be engaged to you {right now}, Neener (kiss). What I’m suggesting is long short-term: the remaining 8 days of our 15 day cruise loop cycle, until I get off at my home port.”

“You’re going to edge between now and arriving in San Diego before you next get off?!” he teased, laughing.

“Not with you anywhere near me, Mister Love Log!” She gave him a playful-not-hurtful backhand thwock to his upper chest.

“Is that all I am to you?”

“No, and you know it!” she exclaimed with a loud, long, deep punctuating smooch. “You’re everything and prolly too much to me, because if things keep going like this I won’t want to end it 8 days from now, or even dial it down.”

“I’ll keep an open mind about relocating to be near you, in the unlikely-to-me chance that my part of Us feels as strongly about being with you then as I do right now.” Smooch!

Moisture then a couple of tears rolled out of her eyes. “That means more to me than you have any idea. Having seen more of San Francisco, I’ll reciprocally keep an open mind about finding work near you.”

“Santa Clara where I am’s not the same thing. It’s more suburban, like a lot of Los Angeles County and where you are.” Kiss.

“I know. (kiss) So what are we doing today?”

“Do you know how giddy what you just said is making me feel?” Kiss.

“No.” Kiss.

“In the past I’ve usually been offended when a love interest gets all presumptuous about my doing things together with them. The fact that you and I are both assuming in all we say to one another that we’re going to remain together and do things together fills me with joy nearly to the point of tears.”

 

Conversation paused for a minute or so of intense cuddles and lip-devouring kissing.

 

“Since you asked, my vague thought for the day is to get off the ship for at least a few hours, since we’ll be on it the next couple of days again until docking in Portland. I’m not seeing much in the way of compelling stuff to do in or walking distance from Eureka, and a fair bit of disturbing negativity from the locals.”

“Like what negativity?”

“Junkies and addicts shooting up and acting as panhandlers around downtown and the waterfront area, mostly.”

“That would suck. I’d read that shopping is something to do, but we already know that’s not a goal of mine. Maybe just walking cuddly-close holding hands and looking at the architecture will be fun.”

“Breakfast on the ship, which frugal me would prefer? Or would you rather try something shoreside?”

“I’m frugal too, Neener (kiss). Let’s kiss and caress our way into clothes for once, and go get that going to keep at least me well-fed.”

 

* *

The strong love force field Clark and Leigh projected everywhere they went on the Sapphire Prince triggered envy in several and jealousy in a few. A majority of onlookers felt a sense of “Awwwh!” seeing and feeling powerful true love in full bloom.

 

They made their affectionate way up to the Sky deck, for its open-air buffet—one of two open-air buffet restaurants on the ship, the third being indoors on a lower deck.

“I never knew this was called Jimmy’s Buffet” Leigh smiled, seeing the buffet’s sign for the first time.

“Either that sign wasn’t there before, or something was visually blocking it. Or maybe the change in latitude produced a change in attentive attitude?”

“Stop it, Mister 1970s Oldies” she laughed.

“Good thing you made that plural, otherwise I might have been offended” he smiled, squeeze-cuddling her affectionately.

 

The sudden appearance of an exceedingly large, soft presence sloshing up to the buffet serving area caught Clark’s attention and made Leigh jump. “Hey hey cush-loving crusiers!” her brash, full-of-life voice greeted them.

“G’morning Beryl. I don’t think you and Leigh have met yet, have you?”

“Soitenly not.” She turned more fully towards the new-to-her woman, shaking hands, “Big Beautiful Beryl Beech, in your presence and pleased to meet you.”

“Good to meet you, Beryl. I’m Leigh Down.”

“Great name! No wonder Clark’s all over you like butter on my toast will soon be. Bet he likes to lay you down, amIright?” Nudge, nudge.

“He’s definitely logged into me and pulled into my port. We’re both into each other enough that we’re cruise honeys.”

“Going steady” Clark clarified.

{Ohhh kay. Not my way of living!} “If that’s floating your boats and everything’s ship-shape, that’s golden. Hey Brian! What took you so long?”

 

A newly-arrived man neither Clark nor Leigh had previously seen (or if they had in passing, had not noticed), sidled up to and into Beryl. Long in roundness of his head and short on quantity of hair, the length of what there was of his brown-with-white “Caesar ring” of hair was also quite short. Tall and mixed hard-and-soft thick, his somewhat imposing physical presence was a good match for Beryl’s. Like her, he projected friendliness, in a more reserved manner.

 

“Needed to sleep in to throw off this lingering cough and energy drain. Hi you two, I’m Brian.”

“Pull that hand back, fool! You’re coughing and you may have something, Mister Brian O’Brien. Do an elbow bump.”

“It’s not a dry cough” he noted.

Leigh offered the tip of her left elbow, “Leigh Down is my name.”

“And I’m Clark Barr.”

“Hah! We’re almost a sentence, all together: Brian O’Brien Leigh Down with a Clark Barr on Beryl Beech.” Hack hack! he coughed away from everyone, towards the ground.

 

Several other cruisers who heard him turned towards the source of the coughing, shooting cold, icy stares.

 

“That is a dry cough” declared Beryl, putting the back of her hand up against his forehead. “You are overheated, sir, even if not yet burning up. Please, for all that is good in our world, get thee back to your stateroom and isolate.”

“It’s just allergies.”

“Dude: we can’t take that chance! Now get outta here or at least keep a 2 meter distance from the rest of humanity.”

“CDC only requires 1 meter.”

“CDC wants anyone with symptoms quarantined in isolation! Now git!”

 

Reluctantly, Brian left. Whether to his stateroom or another destination, no one knew.

 

“We’d better all wash up really carefully and start this oh-so-necessary morning feed again. First one of us back claim a table for all of us, please, where no one’s coughing nor otherwise projecting illness.”

 

* *

Leigh and Clark were already parked at a so-far-otherwise-vacant large rectangular table, with his light and her generous self-assembled breakfasts, well before Beryl returned into view, much less loaded with fast-breaking comestibles and heading their way.

She parked her bulk across from them and diagonally offset, the sturdy seating creaking as she sat. “Social distancing, friends. Nothing personal, I assure you! I swear, I do not know what gets into some people. Hhhhh!”

They all felt the urge to dig into their breakfast before conversing further.

 

Seeing Leigh return to the buffet for seconds on the sausage prompted Beryl to comment upon her return, “Don’t know what your capacity is, my friend of fleshiness, but unless you’re at ninja nommer level as I am, you may find your Samoa Cookhouse experience diminished.”

“What is this cookhouse of which you speak?”

“You haven’t heard of the Samoa Cookhouse?! Sister of Squish, allow me to drop the 411! Oh wait, we don’t do that any more in the new millennium. Is 411 even a thing any more?”

Both Clark and Leigh shrugged, neither of them knowing.

With the joy of a fat foodie professor teaching her fat food-loving class, Beryl explained, “The Samoa Cookhouse is one of the top must-visit foodie destinations on this cruise, for anyone who loves to eat! Visualize… An authentic logging camp cookhouse going back a century and still going. Food served family-style at big, long tables—like this except 3 times as long. Maybe twice; something like that. Anyway…. Nothing to pick, because just like when they served the mighty hungry lumberjacks over a century ago, they serve the one entree per day the cook chooses to make, along with all of soup or salad, cookhouse bread, vegetable, potato, dessert, and coffee or tea. All you can eat, friend, for one low fixed price of 15 bucks a person for lunch, which is the only meal to which any of us will be able to do justice, given our ship’s itinerary.”

“But is it any good?”

“It’s basic American logging camp cookhouse food, so it’s not likely to pass muster with Chef Froofy-froo nor any of his peers—which reminds me, I’m so glad Royal Prince has figured out how to track newly-boarded passengers such that only the freshly boarded have to go through the muster drill at their boarding port. But I digress. It’s all about quantity more than quality, but unless things have shitholed, the quality is plenty good enough to keep us hungry honeys wanting more until we simply can’t. It is scratch-made rather than pre-fab, so that ought to be a plus in nearly everyone’s book. It may not exactly be a gainer’s and feedist’s heaven, but it’s a damn nice purgatory on the way up! I know I’m looking forward to packing on some more pounds of luxurious sensual fat, all the way from around when they open for lunch at 11 ’til they’re easing me out the door at the end of lunch at 3.”

The excited look on her face when Leigh turned towards Clark wordlessly let him know that she agreed with his genitals that this was something which needed to happen. Had he reached down to feel hers, he would have discovered that her genitals agreed with his.

During their brief exchange, Beryl took the opportunity to look something up on her handheld, wearing her reading glasses. “Sez here on their Faceskank page that today they’re serving Southern Fried Chicken Breasts for lunch. All we can eat fried chicken! How can ya go wrong wi’ that?!”

“I could go in half on yours and we could share, given how little I’m likely to want.”

“Don’t be a cheapskate, Clark!” Beryl scolded. “First, 15 a pop for all you can eat is more than fair in today’s world for even light eaters such as yourself. Second, they’re harsh on those who try and pull what you’re doing. To each his and her own meal, period. Respect that. Respect the history. Given your FA proclivities, consider your possibly underutilizing yours an investment in lovingly being there for and with Leigh, as she joins me maximizing each of our meal costs.”

“Alright, points taken.”

“So you two in on this?”

“Do we have to do things as a group?” asked Leigh.

“It’s on Samoa, that island over yonder, not in the city of Eureka. This is car country: not a lot of public transit, and not necessarily any I’d personally want to ride. Mister O’Contagion was going to be my accomplice and ride finder, but that’s obviously not happening. What I’m hoping is we can pool coin for a cheap rent-a-wreck for the day, maybe land cruising around a bit to catch some redwoods or something until they open for lunch, or after lunch before our ship sails.”

“I really wanted to walk around Old Town Eureka.”

“How about we finish our breakfast noms, each get back to our staterooms and get ready, and work out the finer points on the dock in, say… half an hour? Is that long enough?”

 

They agreed it was, and that this plan would work for them.

 

* *

“This looks cleaner and more junkie-free than I expected” Leigh confided to Clark as they set foot upon Schneider Dock, to the soundtrack of several seagulls flying overhead beneath the morning clouds.

“What I read was several years old. It doesn’t necessarily take a long time to work things out such that that particular issue may have been resolved, or at least attenuated sufficiently.”

 

“Eureka! You’ve found us!” a bright-eyed booming-voiced brownish-red-haired woman standing behind a black cloth-covered rectangular table greeted them, with an ending giggle. The thin gold chain necklace on her bright red long sleeve cable-knit top followed gravity’s will as she extended her hand for a welcoming shake, “Hi, I’m– oh right, we’re supposed to social distance” she remembered, quickly withdrawing her hand. “Six feet apart and let’s wave at each other. Hiiiiii! I’m Zazz from the Eureka Chamber of Commerce, welcoming you to our historic city.”

“Zaz?” Clark queried.

“It’s Zazu, legally” she more softly admitted. “I prefer Z-A-double Z, but anything polite that’s close to either works for me. Even Hey Chamber of Commerce Lady!, but that’s too many syllables.”

“Whadid I tell you about too many syllables, Clark?” a newly-arrived voice commented.

“Rebecca! Per!” he grinned, annoying Leigh via greeting Rebecca with a hug before his handshake with Per, very obviously paired with Rebecca (at least for now). To Zazz he turned and explained, “We all know each other and have been close in various combinations, so if any of us have anything, we’re all already exposed.” He quickly eased back against Leigh and expedited the introductions between them.

 

“You all going around as a group?” Zazz asked the group once the introductions concluded.

“Hadn’t planned on it” replied Rebecca, asking Leigh and Clark, “What are you two doing?”

“We’re thinking of a romantic walking tour of Old Town, then if we can work out the logistics driving over together with Beryl to the Samoa Cookhouse” Leigh answered. “Have you met Beryl yet?”

“No.” {Her reputation precedes her, as does her belly.}

“I just met her this morning at breakfast.”

“I’m not one for walking, other than over a limited area such as an arts district.”

“We have one of those” Zazz piped up. “Nice pleasant flat 1 mile walk east of here onto F Street. There’s the Morris Graves Museum of Art in the old Carnegie library at 636 F Street, though it’s not open until noon today.”

“That’s too bad. We have to be over in Samoa at 11.”

“You’re going to the Cookhouse too?” asked Leigh, somewhat hoping the answer was no, so she’d have less competition for Clark’s attention.

“My date for the day and I have decided that it’s a can’t-miss opportunity. Though the museum is tempting.”

“They’re open today until 5, so maybe you could catch it after lunch” suggested Zazz. “Ink People Center for the Arts is only half a block east of the Graves on Seventh, and they’ll be open from as soon as any of us could walk or fast jog from here to there, through 5. If you find yourself wandering north to Second and E, or make a point of doing so, the Old Town Art Gallery is there for you, open 10 to 5 today.”

Rebecca turned to Per, “I’m not gonna want to be walking much of anywhere after lunch, if things play out the way we’re thinking they might.”

 

“Hey hey crew!” Beryl called out as she slowly waddled ever-nearer. Once she arrived amongst the group she asked, “Are we all worked out on who’s arranging the ride and what we’re doing? Hey there Per’s paired peach! I’m Beryl.”

“Good to meet you. I’m Rebecca, the wannabe Cali girl of 20 years who according to native son Clark has yet to shake the born-and-bred New Yawwwker out. I was just saying I’m not intending to walk much after a Samoa Cookhouse lunch, so any art galleries or museums are going to have to happen now or soon, pre-lunch.”

“You’re going with us too?! Awesomme! We can all rent a bulky babe-capable SUV together and do our own group tour!”

“Clark and I really wanted to walk the downtown, or wherever the older buildings are.”

“Old Town is what you want for that” Zazz advised.

“There’s always an athletic hiker BoBerry-type BBW amongst us” Beryl sighed. “Good on you, Leigh; you’ll prolly outlive us all.”

“Any suggestions for car rentals?” Per asked Zazz.

“I wouldn’t know what qualifies as a ‘bulky babe-capable SUV’, but give both Hertz and Rent-A-Dent-A calls.”

 

The group moved aside so others coming off the ship could be greeted by Zazz and access the greeting table none of them had truly inspected.

 

* *

It is unlikely that any 2 lovers have ever been more lost to love of each other than Leigh Down and Clark Barr. Their love force field apparently joined in with moisture in the air to create a deep, thick pea soup love fog. Invisible to the eye, it affected the romantic hearts of those who neared them. For the loving pair themselves, it wholly enveloped them. Everything about Old Town Eureka looked prettier and nicer than it actually was, through their loving mental filters.

 

As they meandered near an outdoor supply store, the sound of a very brief horn Beep! caught their attention.

They could see Beryl leaning out the window of a decent-looking generously-sized SUV. They along with everyone within half a block heard her yell, “Hey lovers! Stop walking off all the good stuff and get in here with us! It’s cookhouse tiiiiimee!”

 

Driver Per eased the vehicle into the parking lot immediately in front of the pedestrian pair.

 

Leigh was displeased to find out how relatively little space there was. With Per and Rebecca in the front seats, big Beryl in the back, and this being a 2-row vehicle and not a 3, it was going to be a squishy ride no matter what the seating order.

“You’re welcome to sit into me if you want” Beryl told Leigh, seeing her hesitation (and her blocking Clark’s entrance). “I thought we’d all be better off with Clark in the middle.”

{I don’t want to share him! Especially not with you as his very recent huge and sexy lover he might decide he prefers!} she irrationally thought.

“Whatever you two wanna do, let’s please do it. We don’t want to be late for this.”

 

After a whispered conversation with Clark, Leigh was good. He climbed in and settled himself a normal polite seating distance from Beryl, welcoming his hefty heartthrob atop his lap.

“That’ll work” Beryl nodded as Leigh pulled the door closed. “Let’s roll!”

 

* *

Leigh needn’t have worried: Clark thought of no one else nor even did more than politely and briefly glance at anyone else the whole way over, buzzed as he was with everything about her.

Even independent Beryl became slightly envious of the immersive love Leigh was receiving. “Better turn the love defrost on, Per: these two are steaming things up so much, soon you’ll not be able to see to drive!”

“Wouldn’t the defrost just make their love hotter, and worsen the situation?” he asked in reply.

Rebecca had a whole other musing, “What I want to know is how flat Clark’s going to come out if we’re in this seating arrangement after lunch.”

“If we’re seated like this and Leigh eats anywhere near as much as maybe you and definitely I am going to eat, not only will Clark be crushed, he won’t be able to get his arms all the way around her buzzed waist.”

“I’ll be crushed more than that if I fail to love this amazing woman to anything less than my full ability.”

 

Clark’s romantic comment made Rebecca feel the need to reach across for a hand squeeze from Per. Beryl contented herself visualizing all she was going to eat, and how much fatter it would make her.

 

* *

Digestive systems rumbled within the rented SUV as the Samoa Cookhouse came into view. Leigh found herself as taken by the 1890s architecture as anticipation of the forthcoming feast. The long, quirky, partly 2-story partly 1 red-painted clapboard-covered building had enough differently-sized and -shaped white-border windows that she had to wonder whether the sections were built at different times, or if they were using up surplus windows as available. The unassuming red-on-white sign on the side of the building said nothing more than Samoa Cookhouse, presumably because nothing more needed to be said.

 

The interior proved as authentic as the exterior: white painted wood board walls and ceilings, red drapes, standard red and white checkered tablecloths (albeit modern plastic coated for sanitary reasons and practicality), helmets and boots hung on the wall, real deal old-timey paddle ceiling fans, and more.

“This place never changes,” Beryl grinned, “and that’s a good thing.”

“It’s like a museum” commented Clark.

“It is a museum!” Leigh excitedly pointed out, pointing towards the separate museum room signed COOKHOUSE & LOGGING RELICS with a white on black narrow sign over the wide entryway.

“Later, kids. Time to eat!”

 

Being the middle of the week in March it wasn’t crowded. Being the Samoa Cookhouse and the first day of operation for the week, it wasn’t empty. Each of the many identical rectangular tables sat 10 standard-sized people, 5 to a side in individual chairs.

Beryl parked herself across 2 adjacent chairs not quite in the middle of one side of her chosen table: one along the exterior wall nearest the hung colorful hard hats and one of the larger historic pictures.

“Why don’t you move one seat towards the aisle, so Per can be next to you and me next to him?” Rebecca suggested.

“Because you’re gorgeously huge and I’m gorgeously huge, so it makes sense to me that we should be on opposite sides.”

“But if we’re all over there, that’s 4 of us all on one side.”

“If the love barnacles are over here with me and you and Per are over there, it’s a 3-2 split. Wouldn’t you rather already be sitting pretty and that much closer to food?”

“What if Leigh needs more than one seat?” asked Clark, embarrassing the woman in question.

Beryl looked at him like it was a ridiculous question. “She’ll park her overflow on your lap as always.”

 

Leigh got things moving taking the wall-nearest seat on Beryl’s side, leaving the one between them for Clark. Per held Rebecca’s 2 wall-nearest seats across from Leigh and Clark to keep them in place as she sat, thereafter taking the middle seat next to his day date, across from Beryl and almost from Clark.

 

With the only choices to be made being soup or salad and coffee or tea, ordering (such as it was) went lightning fast. Beryl, Per, and Rebecca all had the hearty vegetable soup. Clark and Leigh had the green salad. Entree veggie of the day for lunch was green beans; seasoned potato wedges were the potato option. Clark, Per, and Rebecca had tea; Beryl and Leigh had coffee. Tempting as it was to dig right into the rectangles of carrot cake with smooth glossy white vanilla frosting being served for dessert, only Leigh fell for this beginner fail.

Beryl noticed, advising, “If your system’s anything like mine, starting with dessert may confuse it, leading to reduced overall consumption.”

“What if she’s not trying to push a limit?” Per suggested, in part trying to be a good M&M.

“Then she may be at the wrong lunch venue. Not that I’d know, since I always eat here when I’m passing gas– uh, passing through this area, but sure looked to me like there were a good dozen places in Eureka I’d be parking my posterior and filling my face if I lived around here and wanted a change of pace. But what am I doing talking so much?! There’s food to eat!”

 

There was, and they all did. Nevertheless over the course of the hours of paced eating and drinking, there were numerous opportunities to share what they’d each been doing around Eureka earlier as a conversational starting point, moving from there to other non-contentious subjects (to keep everyone’s digestive systems calm and optimized).

 

* *

Somewhat after 1 PM when one of the servers was back for the umpteenth time, Beryl asked around the table regarding what might be needed. “More brrreaaaasts for bigger breasts, right ladies?”

Everyone agreed that more fried chicken breasts would be good, with Clark and Per each getting a second wind after taking very long breaks from eating anything. Only Leigh felt the stabbing pains of breast envy and knowing that even if she could and did eat all the chicken breasts on the premises, her breast growth would be minuscule. Looking at Beryl’s and especially Rebecca’s existing massive orbs, the latter directly across from her and so tantalizingly eye-catching obvious, made the envy thus the pain worse.

Clark felt her tension. He didn’t need to know exactly what was going on with her (though he had a fairly good idea) to be able to soothe her via affectionate caresses and light hip fat squeezes.

Given how she knew she excelled at generating and carrying wide, fat hips, this did indeed soothe her. So did defying Beryl’s suggestion and interleaving more slices of cake with the savory items, so far with no deleterious effect on her eating.

 

* *

Per and Clark looked on in amazement as the 3 BBW they loved (or had loved) kept right on going well into the 2 PM hour—the final hour of lunch. Per barely had enough room to sip his tea; Clark was too full for even that.

Yes, there was a hint of competition between the women, each for their own exact reason(s). Mostly they all 3 truly were big eaters with big capacities, even if 2 of them hadn’t been exercising their capacities anywhere near their full range in any recent month, or year.

 

Three absolutely packed absolutely huge women exited the Samoa Cookhouse just past 3 PM. The only reason Leigh Down stopped a quarter hour before Beryl and Rebecca was so she and Clark could look in the museum. Given how stuffed she was and how tight her clothes were, it wasn’t easy!

 

* *

Getting back in the SUV proved amusing. Not only was it a challenge, once inside neither Rebecca nor Beryl could fasten their seatbelts—and they each had extenders in place already!

“How ya doin’, Clark?” Beryl asked, once everyone was inside (in the same seating arrangement as before).

“I definitely feel the difference.”

“What are we doing?” asked driver Per.

“Anybody up for a road trip?”

“Uuuaagh! No thank you!” was Rebecca’s response to Beryl’s question.

“Bouncing and movement is suboptimal, so no please” was Leigh’s.

“I’m with them. Back to the ship please, kind sir.”

 

He eased them on their way, driving as gently as he knew how.

 

* *

Unsurprisingly, none of the fully-fed feedees/gainers (at least on this day at this meal) wanted to walk any more than necessary. Per managed to drive them all the way in as far as possible near Schneider Dock, minimizing their walk to under 200m, all the way from the SUV to onto the Sapphire Prince.

Being a pro at being routinely enormous and more so after a huge meal, Beryl waddled her way up the gangway and to her stateroom solo.

Rebecca wanted Per’s help, and the vehicle wasn’t sitting in any sort of even medium-term parking space. Clark and Leigh agreed to wait in the vehicle whilst Per helped guide, spot, and possibly support Rebecca on her overstuffed slow shuffle back to her stateroom. Per left the keys in the vehicle in case they needed to move it during his absence.

 

“Oy. (huff) This is… (puff). Wow, that was a big lunch (huff)” Rebecca gasped out between labored breaths, on her struggle up the gangway.

Sad though he was regarding whatever exact discomfort she was feeling, Per couldn’t help being profoundly aroused being so near her, seeing how vastly much fat she carried, and how so much of her was in sensual motion. Tempting as it was to his instincts to move faster towards intimacy with her, his mind well-heeded Clark’s advice, holding those instincts at bay.

He wound up being a very good approximation to a perfect FA gentleman, getting her comfortably settled in her stateroom with all she needed, then leaving her in peace.

 

* *

“Thanks, Per! See you!” Clark called out as he and Leigh waved, the rental SUV easing away from them back into town and its rental agency home.

 

Turning towards her man, powerful love overcame Leigh’s physical discomfort. There on the dock, she clasped each of his hands in hers, easing them together for a kiss.

Something made this process more difficult than usual, however.

“Even rationally knowing how much you ate, I cannot believe how big and relatively firm your belly is.”

“Lean over more and let’s kiss please, then take me inside.”

“How do you mean that last clause?”

“We’ll talk, later.”

 

* *

EhHEH EhHEH EhHuuh

Heeeeee huuuuuuu. Heeeeee huuuuuuu

Whhheeeeeeeezzz!

 

Coughs, wheezing, and more could be heard all over the Upper Promenade Deck, from passing-by cruisers in the halls with them, others they passed by standing out in the hallway, and even from behind closed doors of staterooms they passed.

“This sounds more like a hospital ward than a cruise ship” Clark near-whispered to lover Leigh as she waddled and he walked with her through the deck’s interior hallways, towards her stateroom.

“I know. It’s freaky!”

 

* *

Thankfully things were quiet, lovely, and peaceful within Leigh’s stateroom, once they were inside with the door closed.

 

“Why are you so diligently working to get me out of my clothes when yours are so much more confining?”

“Silly Neener!: I need to see what your neener does when you undress me.”

“My neener’s nearly always at least half grown any time I’m around you.”

 

Once he was fully bare, she presented herself for undressing.

Footwear and socks were straightforward, unexpectedly exciting to her when he spontaneously massaged her feet.

“Big Yes on the foot massage, but please pretty please once I’m freed from these constraining garments.”

“Damn, Chonk! I can’t believe you haven’t popped any buttons yet!”

“It’s getting close. You’re going to have to start with the pants since my top’s tucked into them, even though that may make removing the top anticlimactic.”

“Taking your clothes off is never anticlimactic” he definitively assured her. “Can you breathe in at all?”

Hhhhhh.

“No, that’s just making it tighter.”

“I’ll breathe out all the way, now.” Hhaaaaaaaaaa.

 

The struggle was real. Nevertheless, working as a team, Clark barely managed to get her vastly over-tight pants unbuttoned then unzipped. “Jeezo Piezoelectric, you’re huge!”

“You’re not finished yet. Are you going to unbutton my top and get it off me, or shall I?”

 

Diligently he got to work, starting from the bottom, where it was tightest. Soon enough it was off her. Moments later, so was her bra.

“Lordy Berry Gordy! Your panties are buried so deep in you!”

“Believe me I know! Care to get them off of me now, pretty please?”

 

To Clark’s amazement, even sliding this overburdened undergarment off proved difficult: its elastic was already stretched to its absolute limit! Once all of her belly was out of it (and only somewhat under half had been in it, the remainder of removal proved straightforward, if still not necessarily easy.

“Ahhhhhh” she sighed with relief the moment they were off and she was fully bare. “So nice to finally be able to breathe freely again.”

“Damnation Plantation!”

“What?”

“Are you OK, Chonky? Those are wicked deep garment indentations!”

“They’ll go away, now that you’ve freed my flesh.”

Watching her slosh into a more comfortable, restful position atop the bed led to another exclamation, “You’re massive!”

“Thank you.”

“You look like you’re loaded with quadruplets and near term!”

“Thankfully I have no idea what that would actually be like. Prob-ly about this size, though.”

The way she gently rubbed her own hugely-distended belly looking peaceful and contented shot a powerful jolt of lust through Clark.

“Care to get back to that foot massage whilst I take care of my belly like this?” she gently smiled his way.

 

She didn’t need to ask twice: he was her cruise boyfriend, utterly lost to loving her. Anything he could possibly do for her even remotely within his comfort zone and ability, he’d do.

 

* *

Over in her stateroom, Rebecca struggled with whether she felt comfortable inviting Per over to gently rub her belly and otherwise care for her. The desire and need were assuredly there; the problem being her longstanding unease exposing her middle body to anyone she’d yet to get to know and trust exceedingly well.

 

* *

Beryl Beech had no such qualms over in her stateroom. By chance, she’d been respectfully and politely propositioned by a pair of identical twins, who candidly admitted neither of them had ever done it with a very fat woman, and hoped for the opportunity. Beyond being easygoing and dignified, empowered easy, her experience equipped her to be good at reading people. These two brothers, Devin and Kevin Cleven, very clearly came across to her as subbish—and horny, like her!

During their soft private hallway discussion, she explained her fullness situation and that it would be many hours of worshipping her in ways which let her rest and kept pressure off her belly until her body had time to digest her massive meal before they could get into “the good stuff” (her exact words).

Her estimation of their intent, orientation, and abilities paid off: she was currently enjoying arousing, sexual gentle caresses, kisses, and licks all over her body as she lay restfully and comfortably atop her bed. So were they.

 

* *

By this time over in Leigh’s stateroom, Clark was cuddled up next to her, lost to the bliss of caressing her swollen belly. She lost herself equally to slowly caress-stroking his to-her breathtakingly engorged flesh banana.

Motion through the outside window/door caught his attention. “Looks like we’re sailing.”

She looked, then nodded. “We may be on the water and back in motion, but I feel like I’m floating on a cloud.”

“Yes, these are especially nice beds.”

“Being with you, Neener! (kiss). That’s what really has me floating on a cloud. (kiss)”

 

“Hhhnnnnn” she softly sighed, “I’ve always dreamt of a man able to seamlessly combine deep romantic affection and restful all-out sexuality at the same time.”

“Hopefully I’m that man. At least for the duration of this cruise.”

“You’re not like this all the time?”

“I think I am, but the concept has never been tested. I was thinking more about the eventual end of the cruise, and going back to our separate lives.”

“Don’t think about that tonight, please. Not only is it a sad thought—to me, at least—but it’s the future. As always, thinking about the future or the past takes one out of the present.”

“How Buddha-like, for which you certainly have the belly. (kiss)”

“Kiss my Buddha belly too, please” she asked, her eyes heavy from relaxation, bliss, and tiredness.

 

Letting him reposition himself to kiss her belly did mean that she needed to let go of his neener. The orgasm which caught both of them wholly by surprise set in motion by the unexpectedly sensual sensations of his repeated, varied kisses all over her bloated belly made this letting go of gland a minor loss.

 

Another brief look out the window brought a moment of wistfulness to Clark. “Goodbye Eureka” he softly sighed.

“I’ve taken a good bit of neighboring Samoa with us” Leigh smiled, bringing his attention back to her belly via her hand claiming and moving his atop it. “Of which, come on back up here and cuddle next to me, so you can gimme Samoa whole body edge affectionate intimate cuddly love, and I can give you Samoa of the world’s slowest hand job.”

“Your hand job is just my speed” he smiled as he repositioned per her request. “Faster ones are too intense for me. You’re an Angry Samoans fan, I take it?”

She shook her head slightly, looking unsure. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“California punk band from the late 1970s. Who, as far as I could tell from the few photos I ever saw of the band members, had no actual Samoan members. Their full catalog CD compilation album was titled Gimme Samoa: 31 Garbage Pit Hits.”

“Wait—did they do that song about Rodney Bingenheimer needing to get off the air?”

“That’s them.”

“Alright. I know at least one out of the 31. Are you big into punk rock?”

“Nah, not any more. It mattered a generation or two ago, less so now. Very negative culture, too. I still like to hear some of the old songs on occasion, but it hasn’t been a big part of my life since we were young and it was new and the current happening thing. What about you?”

“I was more New Wave than punk: more poppy and upbeat. Except when I got my Goth on. Musically—I never dressed the part.”

 

They cuddled and sexually caressed quietly for awhile. Occasionally they could hear the waves breaking against the coast they were at the moment leaving for the open ocean. More frequently they heard (and tried to ignore) occasional loud, labored coughing from other nearby staterooms. It sounded as though those doing it were coughing things up.

 

“I’m assuming you’re not going to want dinner tonight.”

“I’m not?”

“You are?!”

“I’m not going to eat a big meal like at lunch, but yes, I was planning to get a little something small and light. Maybe a salad, delivered by room service, with tea we brew here. Hopefully kindly you, so I can lie here and continue converting lunch into more fat.” Giggle giggle

“What’s giving you the giggles?”

“The way you nearly instantly got a lot harder when I told you I plan to have something for dinner.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize! I know what this is about—you and your needs.”

“Desires aren’t needs.”

“Extremely strong ones can be. Like your need for romantically and sexually loving very fat women, and my need to now and then let go of life constraints and eat freely. Thankfully these deep needs of ours happened to meet on this cruise, hence this glorious love. (kiss)”

“What life constraints keep you from eating freely during the normal course of your life?”

“The main one is the entire category of mainstream society’s fat hate, phobia, and/or disgust, none of which I hope I have to explain to you, seasoned FA that you are.”

“Granted we’re all different and you’re not Beryl, but none of those things seem to be stopping her.”

“I don’t know what-all she’s about. Clearly she’s a forthright, bold gainer and maybe also a feedee, and from what I gather running high in terms of sex drive. Is she a sex worker?”

“Sex professional? No.”

“They’re professionals now?!”

“They’ve always been! Just not given that respect. Out of one side of the mouth people call them names like ‘SW’, the out of the other side of the same mouth say ‘oldest profession in the world’. Can’t have it both ways: it’s a profession or it isn’t. I think it is, I think they’re professionals right up there with physicians and attorneys and definitely at or above engineers such as myself.”

“Pffffft!” she blew off the idea. “Do you moonlight as the ad agency for a brothel or something?”

“Nooo.”

“Regular customer?”

“I’ve never once been with a sex professional. These are people who not only have to monitor the pulse of their marketplace and provide services accordingly in line with their abilities and interests, they have to have wicked mad customer service skills! It’s daunting enough when an independent contractor or a business has an irate customer after them at arms-length or greater distance, but it’s a whole other bunch of levels up having one intimately touching you, likely with all of both your clothes off! Independents who aren’t working in some system or service or firm like a brothel have the whole sales layer on top of that, demanding even more professionalism out of them. On what planet do people doing this sort of risky high-level skilled work get called anything less than professionals?! To me it’s all about respect. I don’t use their services for my own reasons, but as a class and unless proven otherwise for certain individuals who may not be at that level, they have my full respect.”

“What about those of us who would never consider that line of work?”

“You all have my total respect too!” He added a series of kisses to further emphasize his reply. “So you’re not Beryl, we don’t know what’s up with her and it’s not relevant to you in any case. I do clearly keep in my mind what you said about being into the food and not the fat side-effect, which to me is the primary feature. I’m clear on the nauseatingly awful situation with large-sized women’s clothing in terms of price, availability, lack of reasonable fit, and so on. I’m angered by the medical system’s blindness to their own fat hate, but then I’m angered by orthodox medicine in general, and especially as practiced in the U.S. in any recent decade. Though I’ve not personally experienced it because of my body and gender presentation being totally different, via plentiful reading I at least mostly understand the incessant bullshit fat people continue to endure after far, far too long and the good work of many individuals and a few organizations like NAAFA. What I am struggling to understand is why if foodie joy is a need for you, you feel you have to suppress that need during your regular life and only fulfill it on occasional vacations such as this. Or am I hilariously off-base with your reality?”

“No, you’re pretty much there. In terms of needing to suppress, seems to me it’s the same reason you probably don’t bone BBW at work where you work. We all—OK, most of us—have needs we may not be able to fulfill whenever we want. Living in our consensus reality, I don’t enjoy the fatness side-effect, which always happens when I meet my foodie needs. I balance that by some foodie fulfillment in the course of my normal life along with lots of gym time, so I stay chunky instead of chonky because thinness is not an option for my body makeup and genetics, and to minimize the fat hate, ignorance, and all that and maximize the accessible, affordable clothing options, medical gowns, blood pressure cuffs, chairs and related seating, and other aspects of participating in normal life in our world.”

“Hypothetically, how would you feel about the fat side-effect of your foodie joy if we lived in a world where society was at least as neutral about body fat as it is about eye color, or maybe more neutral?”

“That’s not a fair question to ask when you’re making me want to bond with you forever via your ultra-sexy-sensual caresses of my bulging belly.”

“Why not?”

{Is it not obvious?!} “Because I’m lost to love of every kind with you including passionate sexual love and everything about being fatter drives you even more wild and in love with me wholly beyond your control and totally under my control in terms of my fattening, which dovetails with my foodie lust! That’s why! And that’s why I’m more than OK doing what we did today, being here now with you doing what we’re doing now including having this conversation, why I fully intend to keep eating for the duration of this cruise or nearly that long as my food joy dictates and especially if it enhances the passion aspects of our love. That’s also why I’m torn between going to the gym tomorrow for a good workout, recalling what you told me about the world being your gym and that you’re not a gym person thus you’ll not likely accompany me there, or whether to blow off the gym for maximum fat side-effect, thus maximum loving sex-positive romance between us.”

“Think they’ll let me watch you from the outside? Seeing a fat woman in tights with her fat rolling, sloshing, swaying, and bouncing all over the place as she’s working out is a real turn-on” he lasciviously grinned.

“Even though it means I’m burning off some of the fat?”

“Yes, because everyone needs exercise and movement for health, and most especially because it’s your body and it makes you happy to exercise. I’d be an idiot FA to block you or anyone’s joy of movement!”

“Dammit Neen! You’re making me love you more than I already do, and that’s not possible!” she exhorted, pulling him into an even deeper on-bed side cuddle with her.

“If they won’t let me watch from outside, or maybe even if they would, as long as my presence in the gym won’t take away from another cruiser’s gym opportunity, I’ll go to the gym with you tomorrow whenever you go.”

The thought shot a powerful burst of joyous energy through Leigh. “You will?!”

“That’s what I just said, yes. Under the conditions described. I don’t even have to be behind you staring at your stunning and stunningly fat ass and hips, much as I’d prefer that. Nor was my expression of my on-you clothing preference any sort of requirement.”

“Stretchy black leggings are all I’m going to be able to fit into tomorrow, that I brought with me. I’ll look fat as fuck in them, but that’s OK because it’ll keep your neener big and hard for the righteous fat fuck we’ll enjoy back here after the gym and before we shower.”

 

More in love than ever, Leigh Down and Clark Barr had many other exciting exercise-related discussions to share this night, as the Sapphire Prince glided north along the western coast of the United States, for the near-term leaving California behind.

[Sonic Purity]

Closed and Hacking

Leigh awoke to another of those pre-dawn love-log-in-buns plus profoundly powerful affectionate and romantic cuddly love moments that seriously and compellingly made her want to do rash things to forever more continue to have this extremely blissful experience. Clark, as usual, remained asleep through his tree trunk tumescence. She wondered whether he had any awareness whatsoever that his hands were gently repeatedly squeezing her belly fat.

She drifted back to sleep, loving all the feelings and the whole experience, dreaming of the fun they’d have on this new day—sharing it together!

 

---

“Hhhhhhh huuuuuu hhhhhhh huuuuu Aaaaaahhhh! Oh, Chonky! Aaaahh! You’re so… succulent! Hhhhhh And faaaaat!”

“Hhh hhhh hhh hhh Oh Neener! Hhh hhh I love this! Hhhh hhhh I love you inside me! Hhhh Aauuggh Yess! Grab my fat! I love you feeling my fat! And feeling your neener!”

 

Clearly, Clark and Leigh were thoroughly enjoying each other sexually, to start their morning. This 12th. of March 2020 Thursday was voyage day 8 for her, day 7 for him. It and much of the following day would be excellent at-sea days to enjoy all the Sapphire Prince had to offer. At the moment, neither of them could think of anything better than her stateroom’s “cloud” bed, as a cloud-like sex platform.

It was great sex, with a great ending more about a love bond frightening in magnitude than orgasms, though truly both of those. Faster, more intense, and more stereotypical than usual in these ways, their push to finish and move on was driven as much by anticipation of sharing breakfast and a gym workout as their immediate intense passions that refused to wait.

 

---

HaaaAAhuuu Hulllp PTTT! one cruiser passing Leigh and Clark by in one of the wider hallways spit a big opaque colorful glob into his handkerchief.

“Thaaat’s nice” she sarcastically whispered to her love.

“Let’s keep walking, and be sure to wash our hands before breakfast.”

 

---

In one of the larger public areas, they heard a loud AAAAAAAAACHOOO!, with people scrambling to get away from the sneezer, and others cursing her.

 

---

Taking the elevator, a fellow passenger continually sniffed and snorted, her breathing sounding like she had gravel in her lungs. “Does it feel hot to you in here?” she asked.

“No” replied Leigh, shaking her head as was Clark.

 

---

Leigh couldn’t believe what she was seeing on the Sky deck, as they approached Jimmy’s Buffet. “Waaa? ‘All buffets are closed? Please use one of our standard restaurants or room service’?”

Clark pulled them closer together with his wrapped-around-her arm, “What were you hoping to have?”

“I didn’t and don’t know, which is why I wanted a buffet” she responded glumly, with bird lips. “Was hoping for inspiration.”

“Here I was hoping for an explanation regarding why the buffets are closed.”

“Sanitary reasons” a nearby crew member responded, having overheard them as he was swabbing the deck with what to him was an overpowering alcohol-based cleaner, which neither Leigh nor Clark smelled at all. “Too many COVID-19 cases on board, so Captain Cranch and Royal Prince management have agreed to step up CDC-recommended procedures.”

“But Royal Prince Cruise Lines flies under the flag of Panama, doesn’t it?”

“Oh don’t I know it! Thing is we operate mostly on the west coast of the U.S. serving a majority of U.S. passengers. The captain is God at sea under most foreign flags, thus when he says we’re following the CDC recommendations of his choosing, that’s what’s going down.”

 

Leigh paused to think about how “going down” was not a phrase she wished to be hearing on a ship at sea—at least not from a crew member!

 

“Honestly, all this food comes out of galleys of the same design run by the same people, other than Glissando with its name-brand chef and hoity toity ‘kitchen’. Just pick one of the sit-down get-served restaurants that’s not overcrowded and has what you want and call it good.”

“Thank you.”

“You got it—no handshaking, though!”

“Sorry; thanks!” Clark saluted, not knowing what else to do.

 

Turning his attention back to Leigh, he saw she was looking at something on her small portable screen. “What’s happening in handheld land?”

“Was checking to see whether the Royal Prince app had any stats on available seating or reservations for the restaurants.”

“And?”

She looked up from her screen towards him with a hybrid vexed-amused expression, “App’s down.”

“On the back end.”

“Probably. I’ll take your word for it” she grinned, pushing her plush butt into him, “You certainly seem to be well-versed in back ends and pay close attention to them.”

He pulled her in tighter so he could kiss the back of her head.

After she turned around for a proper intimate hug and kiss, they were on their way to find an open breakfast venue.

 

---

“I may not have to go to the gym if we wind up covering every possible deck with a restaurant on it” Leigh commented during their search on the big Grand Promenade deck.

“How many more do we have?”

“Restaurants or decks?”

“Either.”

“Three of each: decks and restaurants. One per deck that we have yet to check.”

 

Glissando wasn’t open for breakfast, and wasn’t what they wanted anyway. Sip And A Wink Pub and Home Comfort were both full, which is to say as full as the new rules allowed, with every other table required to be empty to ensure sufficient social distancing.

 

It wasn’t until they made it up to the Lido deck and found the small Oasis restaurant open and not overcrowded that Leigh and Clark felt they had a chance for breakfast.

“Hold on please, folks” the hostess which the Oasis didn’t usually have greeted them, along with a body block at the entrance.

“I see all kinds of open tables” said Clark.

“Those have to remain vacant, to keep the virus at bay.”

It amused Clark the way hostess Felicia (per her name tag) dipped her voice down and avoided calling SARS-CoV-2 by name (if she even knew the name), as though the virus might hear her and strike viciously.

Leigh, who was getting hungrier by the moment, was less amused. “Not even an opening for someone on the Pampered Gem plan?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s a matter of social distancing per the captain’s directive, applying equally to all fare levels. It’ll only be a few minutes until an in-service table becomes available. Let me get your name and then you two can go enjoy the view over nearer the pool, and I’ll call you when a table opens up.”

 

Reluctantly, they went along with this least-worst option. With several newcomers approaching the restaurant projecting airs of malaise and sounds of wheezy breathing, they felt just as good establishing some distance.

 

---

Leigh managed to get her breakfast burrito: another avocado green tortilla one at that. “Same lackluster flavor as the one from the buffet” she sighed.

“You know why that is, yes? And why my burger is nice and hot and the texture’s good, but the flavor’s on some other cruise?”

“Yes, and we’ve discussed this and I really don’t want to think about it.”

 

She so very much didn’t want to think about COVID-19 that her mind wholly suppressed any awareness of how she was feeling a touch feverish. Her fatigue she easily chalked up to all the walking carrying around more of herself from yesterday’s massive lunch meal.

Coughing and wheezing amongst other cruisers at other tables in the small restaurant repeatedly dragged her mind back to this unwanted subject.

 

Hack! Hack! “None of this food has any taste to it!” came from a raspy-coughs gentleman in Leigh’s sight, diagonally nearest them behind Clark.

Before she could clear that comment out of her mind from the table diagonally behind her to her left she overheard, “The morgue’s full, Tim. It only holds 4. They’re going to be putting them in the food walk-in freezer, I just know it!”

“If the sickies would just stay in their staterooms instead of coming into places like this, we wouldn’t have this problem! Is this table salt some new healthy de-flavorized variety, or what?”

Others at other tables coughing and/or wheezing were speaking in languages wholly foreign to Leigh’s ears, adding no information she could understand.

 

Between all this and the impatient line of waiting cruisers forced to wait outside peering hungrily through the windows, both Leigh and Clark wound up eating less and faster than they otherwise would have. Tough to tell whether they were happier getting out of there, or the next people in line were happier that they could finally be seated and eat.

 

---

“You feel so nice” Clark couldn’t help commenting to Leigh on their hip-grinding hand-holding walk (and elevator ride) up to the Sports deck.

“So do you” she smiled his way.

“But I’m all hard and bony, and you’re all soft and—hhhhhh—cushiony.”

“You’re half right: the half about me. You, Neen, are all hard and—hhhhh—hunky” she intentionally mimicked his gasp.

 

Both being dressed for the gym before going to breakfast saved them time, in hopes of getting a gym slot. For reasons unknown and possibly or possibly not related to the restaurant seating map being down, she’d been unable to make a gym reservation since first trying last night.

Soon as they were actually on the Sports Deck and nearing the Fitness Center they found out why: it was dark and closed. A sign on the door said nothing other than:

CLOSED FOR CLEANING

“That’s less than informative” noted Clark.

The spa was still open, Leigh noted. Given her good experience there before, she figured they’d at least know the story regarding the Fitness Center. “Let’s go find out the deal” she suggested, leading him by the hand and happy that their arm span and her rump size was such that of necessity he had to keep bumping into her butt.

 

---

The looks of worry on those behind the counter were concerning.

“Yes. We’ll close right now. Is it in the scheduling system already?… OK, good.… Absolutely.… Thank you. Bye.” Finished with the phone call, after a deep sigh massage therapist Humberto (as revealed on his name tag) told the new arrivals, “Sorry folks, we have to close immediately, per captain’s orders.”

“Why?” asked Leigh.

He looked uneasily towards his on-duty female colleague Gail, then back towards Leigh, “COVID-19. It’s here on board, and it’s spreading too fast. We’ve been disinfecting the whole time—we always disinfect and otherwise use proper cleaning and sanitary procedures—but orders from above per Royal Prince’s interpretation of U.S. CDC guidelines plus other international recommendations are that there’s still too much unknown about the spread, so non-essential services where people gather need to shut down.”

“Isn’t that pretty much everything?! What’s the point of a cruise without a spa, a gym, restaurants, pools, et cetera?”

“I know; I absolutely get it. Captain’s word is law when we’re at sea, so it is what it is.”

“Is that the real reason the Fitness Center is closed?” asked Clark.

“The sign is literally correct—or was, before this newest order came down. Several passenger infections have been traced back to someone who used the Fitness Center for over an hour. Not knowing what equipment and so on he used and with conflicting information on the transmittable lifetime of novel coronavirus on various metals, plastics, foam, and other materials in there, it’s been cleaned and shut down waiting the worst-case longest time estimate to time out. If they were still open, they’d have to close down now along with us.”

“For how long?”

“No idea, sir. This whole thing is unfolding faster than I can believe. The situation changes hour by hour.”

“There’s going to be a lot of sore, stressed, chonky passengers on board if everything remains shut down.”

The way Leigh brightly smiled and grabbed and wobbled her belly fat as she spoke confused the two massage therapists. Little did they know that not only did a part of Leigh not truly mind the exercise shutdown, she was having a blast titillating her man, feeling some of the results against her butt as he stood intimately behind her.

Ill-at-ease from Leigh’s observation (and her prodigious plumpness), Gail thought she might be able to help, at least slightly. “We can’t help with the gym equipment, but if you have someone to massage you, we can help with that.”

 

---

Clark and especially Leigh grinned like fools, leaving the spa each carrying a large grocery sack-sized tote bag chock-a-block with massage lotions and oils, extra-soft towels, hand sanitizer, and even a wooden massage roller in her bag and a wooden egg-shaped with 4 feet massage device in his.

“This is going to be even better than either the gym or the spa!” she gleamed.

“Sure you’re OK with missing out on exercise.”

“Better: this gives us more time for sexercise! But I would rather take the stairs back down.”

 

As they reached the staircase, an announcement blared to life over the ship’s P.A. system.

“Attention cruisers: effective immediately we are under Quarantine Level 1. Quarantine Level 1 requires all passengers who are ill or who have any symptoms of contagious illness to return to their staterooms and self-isolate. Those with symptoms of fever and/or fatigue and/or muscle pain and/or dry cough are at particular risk for transmitting COVID-19 disease. Those with minor breathing difficulty must return to their staterooms and contact the infirmary immediately. Anyone with moderate to high breathing difficulty and/or chest tightness please proceed immediately to the infirmary for triage. All cruisers are urged in the strongest possible terms to social distance a minimum of 2 meters or 6 feet, avoid touching your face, and please wash your hands well: 20 seconds at least with soap and water, or hand sanitizer. More information and the most current updates are available from your stateroom’s infotainment system and the Royal Prince app. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation, and for sailing with us on the Sapphire Prince.”

The message repeated multiple times, next in Spanish, then Italian, then German, then Chinese, then Japanese, before the entire loop repeated a second time, starting from the initial English version of the announcement. It went on long enough that they’d returned to Leigh’s stateroom before the last cycle completed.

 

---

Soon as her stateroom door was closed and locked and they’d set down their spa goody bags, Leigh sunk herself into her handsome hunk, wrapping her arms around him. “Oh dear. Isn’t it too bad that you’re going to have a very fat cruise girlfriend, because of the Fitness Center closure?” Her beaming grin came through in her teasingly sarcastic tone, making it abundantly clear that she too looked forward to her seemingly forthcoming burgeoning abundance.

“You don’t seem sad about that.”

“I’m not sad.” Hack! “Excuse me! And I’m very hot for you!”

He held the back of his hand to her forehead. “You’re very hot in general, Chonk. Sexily yes of course, but here I mean thermally. Honestly, Leigh: how do you feel?”

“Tired” she sighed. “More so than I ought to be, so early in the day. I’m going to be so pissed if I caught this thing.”

“That’s better than worried.”

“Oh, I’m that too! I’m in the elder age category more greatly affected by it.”

“So am I, and I still think it’s a steaming mountain of bullshit, using age as a proxy for a weakened immune system, or the ability for the person’s immune system to respond.”

“The statistics show it’s true.”

“There’s insufficient data for true minimally-biased statistics! They’re not testing zillions of people who likely have been exposed and are asymptomatic!”

“I don’t wanna argue with you. And I don’t want to be sick, and maybe die!”

“Too bad it’s not sunny today, else you could go sit in the sun on your balconette and absorb some vitamin D.”

“Why not you too?!”

“Because” he nose-rub kissed her, “you are contagious.”

“Then you just infected yourself!”

“We’ve been kissing like crazy! Of course I’m exposed to whatever you have. My plan is for you to stay here and rest and start healing, while I go seek out some zinc and vitamins C and D.”

She quickly pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You’re overly-warm too.”

“That may be, but I’m not coughing nor having other symptoms yet, beyond the anosmia. If you have a scarf I can purloin as a bandana I’ll cover up with that, otherwise I’ll strive to keep my distance from others both for them and for me.”

“Why not just have room service deliver?”

“Betcha they’re vastly overbooked and can’t do it. I believe vigorous in-person lobbying in the infirmary will prove more effective.”

“You’ll bring the stronger disease back here!”

He grabbed her, striving to be gentle as he shook her, “Chonk!: you’re being irrational! This is one disease! Hasn’t had time to mutate yet. The difference in effect is the difference in each person’s health and immune system response, and for those on meds interactions with the meds. What’s that official CDC boilerplate we keep seeing? Something like ‘Most people develop mild symptoms or are asymptomatic’?”

“But we both have fevers!”

“Yes we may. Hence why I am going out now to go get some things that along with rest, plenty of fluids, relaxation, and letting go of stress ought to help our immune systems better cope, whether we have everyday rhinovirus, or regular or novel coronavirus, or whatever else.”

 

Far more like a petulant young newlywed than a mature cruise girlfriend, Leigh provided plenty of pouty whine to Clark along with the only scarf she’d packed, politely demanding that he come right back to her right away, soon as he picked up what he hoped to obtain.

 

---

Knock knock knock

 

{Ulllgh, I feel awful} thought Leigh as she hefted herself off her bed to answer the door.

 

Thankfully, it was Clark, and he was properly wearing the scarf bandana.

“How did you do?”

He held up 2 packets, “Two zinc capsules, seen here—that’s it. That’s all they’d give me, at any price I might pay them.”

“You had to pay them for those?”

“No. These and the two packets of two 500 milligram vitamin C tablets were free, and all we get” he concluded with a loud sigh, immediately handing her one of the zinc packets.

 

As he removed the scarf he asked, “How are things here?”

“Fever-hot, achey, and tiring, or I suppose tired. What’s it like out where I’m not supposed to go?”

“Weird. Some people are acting what I consider rationally, going about their business maintaining distance from those not in their group. Others are acting paranoid, like everyone else is about to launch a COVID-19 rocket grenade straight at them. Still others are acting like nothing’s happening at all, ignoring all distancing and non-contacting advisories. Crew and staff are wiping things down and cleaning like mad, most but not all of them wearing medical masks or those white construction workers’ dust masks. All the ones I saw wore gloves.”

She looked sad, sucking her solitary zinc lozenge.

“We’ll get through this, Chonk” he assured her, gently embracing her.

“Staying with me?” she asked hopefully.

“Unless you want me to go or Captain Dictator requires it, that’s my plan.”

“You sure we’re exposed to each other enough that it’s safe for us to be close to one another?”

“Yes. Along with a functioning immune system and sufficient nutrition, love can heal.”

“Come to bed with me and heal me please.”

 

Love, in the form of gentle caring affection and companionship did help heal, at least a little bit. So did the zinc tablet.

 

---

“Love the tea” Leigh told Clark from the comfort of her “cloud” sick bed. “Wish there was lunch to go with it.”

“You and me both, girlfriend. They’re going to have to step up their delivery game, if too many cruisers are confined to their staterooms.”

 

They’d ordered lunch in plenty of time: before noon. It was getting on to 1:30 and still no sign of lunch, nor status updates.

 

“Good thing I ate about 5 lunches-worth at lunch yesterday.”

The blissful look merging with her existing tired-ill-spacey look and especially her circularly caressing her own belly hoisted his sail significantly.

 

Knock knock knock “Room service!”

 

By the time Clark made it to the door and opened it, the delivery person was long gone.

It was totally worth it to see the gleeful expectant joy of his cruise girlfriend awaiting his delivering the delayed sustenance. Despite being a year older than him and weighing more than he did, in this moment she was his little girl, and he was bringing all he had to care for her.

 

The juicy lamb potstickers and pork fried rice they shared satisfied them in most ways.

“Mmmmm… I sure am looking forward to getting my sense of taste back” she confided.

“Me too.”

“At least this is hot, and the texture’s nice. How’s your fever?”

“Better, actually.”

“Let me feel.”

“That’s what he said” he giggled.

“Feels are for dessert. Annnd you do feel cooler. How’re you doing that?”

“Zinc, vitamin C, and loving you. Not necessarily in that order, though prolly better in that order with this disease. Would that we had more of the first two starting days ago when we each first noticed the loss of taste, we might not be on the edge of something now.”

“We don’t need more love?”

He nuzzled deep into her side. “I think we’re saturated with that: we have all it’s possible to have.”

C-Huhh, C-Huuh she coughed. “Sorry.”

“Anything coming up?”

“Thankfully no. It’s the dry cough.”

 

They got back into the food, going through it in fairly short order.

“No, you can’t give me the rest of yourrrs!” she whined, with a punctuating cough.

“Why not? I’m doing fine.”

“You sure?”

“With the innocent, sweet look you’re giving me now, I wish I had a whole other container to give you. Or at least be able to go readily fetch one with minimal hassle, like on a normal cruise when everything’s open” he sighed.

“I could definitely eat it, I’m sure.” Her patting her own fat belly as she commented not only aroused him but also made him feel as though he was bonding deeper in love with her, despite such a thing not being possible. She welcomed the gentle circular belly caresses he gave her as she happily consumed the rest of their lunch.

 

Claiming the empty containers and utensils from her he asked, “More tea?”

“Not right now, thank you.” Eh-Huuh! “Think we should order dinner now, so it’s ready on time?”

“An hour or so early for that, if the time delay’s about the same. Hopefully they’ll have pulled things together so there’s not so much of a delay. I mean, I don’t really understand what the delay’s about. Normally they have to serve the same number of people, so it shouldn’t be any different at the kitchen end.”

“It’s likely the delivery end.”

“Has to be. I would’ve thought they’d have contingencies in place for this, given how common norovirus is on cruise ships.”

 

His smile upon returning from disposing of the empties brought out hers. Both of them were excited to get back to on-bed cuddling, notwithstanding the cloud of marginal illness.

The bed bounced a bit as he adjusted into position, during which he noticed something. “Are your hips bigger?”

“My hips are fatter, yes, and you may caress them. As well as any other part of me.”

“That might get us into things you may not feel up to getting into.”

“I’m feeling better now, thanks to the zinc and the vitamin C. And your love!”

He felt and saw the rapid change in her demeanor to one of generous amorousness: the sultry lip puffing-up, her searing sensual gaze aimed directly at him, the sinuous motions she made, her hands slithering like sex snakes onto him, one of them unbuttoning his shirt and slipping in.

“Somebody may want to consider seeking my new fat. Ya never know where I may be hiding it.”

“And here all this time I thought you were hiding it in plain sight” he grinned, slipping his hand under her leggings’ and panties’ waistbands. Once he did and had a quarter minute to feel around, his expression changed to amazement. “My gosh Chonky! I can– I can’t believe how much more of you there is here!”

“Mmm hmm” she purred, knowing what he liked and in this moment liking all she was very much herself.

 

Passions crept up, clothes crept off. To no one’s surprise and certainly not theirs, Leigh Down and Clark Barr were once again sharing immersive fatlovesex, mostly lying down.

 

---

Dinner arrived in a relatively timely manner—much sooner than lunch at around half an hour after they ordered. In the process of serving it, Clark saw something that disturbed him. “Chonk: you’re shivering. If you’re going to remain bare under the blankets, please at least let me get a top for you to wear to cover your upper body out of the blanket.”

She made a pouty bird lip, sighing “Hhhhhhhhhhh, alright.”

With sad puppy dog eyes of sincerity, he caressed her bare, intermittently shivering shoulder. “I want you to get better.”

“I know; so do I. Thing is, hhhhhhhhhh, if this really is COVID-19 and runs 14 days, the cruise will be over before the illness, and I’ll miss out on night after night of sleeping wholly bare in bed with you the way I’d hoped.”

“Hhmmh hhmmh” he chuckled.

“What?” she asked as she snatched the container of spaghetti with meat sauce from him so she could start eating.

“Thinking about how we’ve gone from the first day I boarded where I was close to the last person on the planet you wanted to see, totally ruining your cruise, to now where being anything less than head-to-toe skin-to-skin with me every night will ruin your cruise.”

“Mmrmpf” she mumbled as she chewed, “I wasn’t expecting to discover that we’re compatible beyond what I could have imagined, nor that I’d fall crazy deep in love with you.” Hack! Hack!

He shot her an expectant look.

“There’s a fleecy yellow long-sleeve pajama-like top in the vine suitcase.”

“Is your other suitcase named Hollywood?” he snickered.

“It’s got a vine pattern on it, alright?!” Huuck!

 

She looked even more adorable once it was retrieved and on her. Far better than that, she ceased shivering.

[Sonic Purity]

Off The Itinerary

“Ulllllggh!” Leigh groaned, upon awakening to the new day’s cloudy, diffuse daylight.

“That’s about how I feel” the tired voice of her just-waking cruise boyfriend responded. “Aches, fever, no energy. How about you?”

“Same things here. I don’t even have enough energy to be angry.”

“Angry about what?”

Hack! “Sorry. About not feeling up to sex.”

“I don’t feel like it either.”

“That’s good, because I won’t feel like I’m letting you down, and terrible, because it’s one fewer cruise romp we get to have before our voyage of ill is over.”

“Is it not possible to get together for sex outside of this cruise?” Eh-HUH Eh-HUH

“500-some miles between us qualifies as a long-distance romance in my book.”

“Where exactly do you live in San Diego?”

“Clairemont, C-L-A-I-R-E mont.”

“We’re about 50 miles closer than your estimate.” Ccchhh “Where’re you going?”

“To make tea, to hopefully soothe our throats, so we don’t”—ACCH!—“cough so much.”

 

He weakly smiled, enjoying the sight of the rear of his bottomless cruise girlfriend bobbling away, “Wiggle Wobble Shimmer tea?”

“I don’t know that I’ve got any shimmer in me”—Hack!—“with this illness” she told him, looking over her shoulder. “But until near the end of the cruise and I get back into the gym”—Khhh!—“the wiggle wobble’s always there.”

 

Remaining in Leigh’s stateroom proved no especial hardship, especially given how ill each of them felt. Once ordered, breakfast arrived within 3/4s of an hour, still flavorless to them otherwise OK. Best of all, they were able to eat it bare and cuddling in/on bed, with very light, restful making out amenable to ill passionate new lovers.

 

---

Almost exactly at high noon, the speakers in the stateroom’s A/V system spontaneously came to life for an announcement, which they could also hear echoing outside over the P.A. system:

“Attention cruisers: effective immediately we have advanced to Quarantine Level 2. In addition to continuing all existing requirements of Level 1, Quarantine Level 2 requires all passengers, crew members, and staff to wear facial protection at all times when outside one’s stateroom or cabin. All non-essential public services and amenities including the Sapphire Stage and Sea Screen theaters, all club and dance venues, Card Shark’s Card and Game Room, retail stores, and buffet and specialty restaurants are closed until further notice. Home Comfort and Dish’s restaurants on the Grand Promenade deck remain open at this time. Seating in both restaurants is highly limited and advanced reservations are required. Room service is recommended as a better option. Cruisers in good health showing no COVID-19 symptoms may move around the ship wearing facial protection and maintaining social distance from others. Limited sun bathing on the Sun and Lido Decks remains available at this time, by advanced reservation and with proper social distancing. Social distancing and facial protection will be monitored by Security. Violators may be confined to their staterooms.

“Portland is refusing to let us dock at this time. Captain Cranch and crew remain in active negotiation with the port and other relevant authorities. The most current updates and additional information as well as the reservation and room service functions are available from your stateroom’s infotainment system and the Royal Prince app. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation, and for sailing with us on the Sapphire Prince.”

 

“Wow.”

“Intense, isn’t it?” Leigh agreed.

“Actually what I’m thinking about is how their system is smart enough to know that you’re an English speaker, so your speakers in here went off when the English announcement ended, yet I can still hear the P.A. system outside repeating the information in the other languages.”

She turned and gave him a potent look of disbelief. “You are weird, Neener.”

“Why?”

“Suddenly we can’t dock in Portland, and all that’s on your mind are the finer points of their announcement system?!”

Eh-HEHHH… Eh-HEHHH “Don’t know about you, but the way I feel, doesn’t much matter when or even if we dock in Portland.”

 

---

“Unacceptable.”

 

Second Deck Officer Niles Mayhew and First Deck and current Navigating Officer Ellen Glenn glanced towards one another, each quieting their nervous deep sighs. A consummate professional and seasoned cruise ship captain, Captain Cranch kept a level head under difficult circumstances, never in their experience losing his cool. Seeing his left eye occasionally twitch and an ever-so-slight tremble in his hands that neither crew member had ever seen before worried them.

 

“The morgue is full to capacity. Do you propose medivacing the deceased after those in critical condition?… What then? You expect me to violate common sense and every health regulation in existence and stow the additional bodies in the galley refrigerators?”

 

Tension on the Bridge, whilst low relative to other areas of the ship, was increasing.

 

“We are in the midst of a worldwide medical crisis triggered by a heretofore unknown coronavirus variant, most of humanity pulling together to work through the unknowns and get through this, and you are telling me that you will not even allow a brief technical port call for resupply and health exigencies?… It may become your problem should our situation continue its exponential growth and those of us here at Royal Prince share with the world your obstinate refusal to render even minimal aid urgently needed by town-sized ocean liner in distress.… Good day, sir.”

 

All the color drained out of the Deck Officers’ faces, seeing their Captain struggling to retain his composure. Officer Glenn dared to ask, “What now, Captain?”

“Stay the course back towards Portland, targeting the edge of international waters nearest Tillamook Bay. What cannot be more reasonably accomplished in the Port of Portland shall be handled by alternative means.”

 

---

Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock

The choppy thrumming of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Eurocopter MH-65 Dolphin rotors alerted everyone on board the Sapphire Prince (who didn’t already know) that something major was going on.

 

“See anything?” Leigh asked Clark from the comfort of their/her bed, as he peered out the window.

“Not even” he replied, opening the sliding door.

“You can’t go out there bare!” Hack Cuuuuh! Cuuuuh!

“Says who?”

“Common sense plus your cruise girlfriend! Besides which, you’d need a mask to go out if you weren’t contagious, and we’re both contagious.”

“What’s anyone going to do if I violate those rules?” he grinned. “Confine me to my stateroom?”

 

Not waiting for an answer to his rhetorical question(s), Clark already had the door open and was heading outside onto Leigh’s balconette. The far louder Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock soon as he opened the door precluded further conversation.

{You better not infect anyone} Leigh thought as she watched him, annoyed at his obstinance. {Nor bring back anything worse. Nor get yourself confined to your stateroom instead of this one!}

 

Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock Thwock

Once again, her bare cruise boyfriend was back inside her stateroom. “And?”

“Directly above the ship, I’m figuring. Can’t see anything from your balconette.”

“Thank you for not going out onto the actual promenade decking.”

“I’m not that much of a limit-pusher!”

{Could’ve fooled me.} “Medical evacuation, you think?” Hack

“Gotta be, given what we’re going through and what all we’ve seen and heard this voyage.” KHHHhhh KHHHhhh “I’ll go get some more tea going.”

 

---

Uh-KKKHH! Uh-KKKHH! Uh-KKKHH!

CAAAH! CAAAH!

cuu-HHUUH!… cuu-HHUUH!

WHHHHEEE woooh, WHHHHEEE woooh, WHHHHEEE woooh

 

By no means were all coughs coming from Leigh’s stateroom. These particular coughing and wheezing sounds emanated from surrounding staterooms on the Upper Promenade deck. Some louder ones even made it down from the Vista deck, or up from the Grand Promenade deck, from folks who probably ought not to have been moving about in the public spaces on that deck.

Leigh and Clark shared weary, ill glances, too tired and yucky feeling to manage more than 1/8th. smiles. If it wasn’t the Coast Guard medivac helicopter, recently having completed its 4th. of who-knows-how-many trips, filling their lives with noise and vibrations, or the incessant dry coughs and labored breathing, the noise and vibrations of a seemingly endless parade of spaced-apart deck walkers with nothing better to do than tromp around the Upper Promenade deck kept them safely from rest in any way pacific, notwithstanding the capitalized ocean of that name upon which they currently floated.

She did manage to make it to a half smile for a little while, as he gently circularly caressed her Buddha belly.

“Maybe we should take this opportunity where going places, sex, and any sort of deep rest are all off the table to get to know one another better” he suggested. “What do you think?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I’d love to know anything you care to share about your life.”

“It’s really not that exciting.”

Her comment eked a grin out of him. “It’s been my experience that people who say that tend to have the most interesting lives of anyone I know.”

“You’d better ask questions to get me started.”

“OK. Where were you born? Who are your parents and what are or were they like? What was your childhood like?”

“OK OK OK—that’s more than enough to get started!”

 

It was as good a way to spend a sick day together as any, most of the time successfully distracting them from the noisy activity going on all around them. Once the conversation got going, it flowed naturally, for hours and hours, well into the evening. Along with tea and water, they weren’t even coughing all that much.

[Sonic Purity]

Lockdown

“Mmmmm” COOOGGGH! achey, tired Leigh Down awoke Saturday morning 14 March 2020, to the day’s dark cloudy, rainy light.

CAAAAGGH! KUFF-A!, KUFF-A! “’Morning Chonky.”

“Did I wake you, Neen?”

“Nah” CUUUH! he coughed away from her. Once that was over, his hand couldn’t help gravitating onto her nearest fat hip, caressing her there. “How is it that you keep chonking up when neither of us are eating that much?” CUUUH!

“That’s a part of my life story that I didn’t share yesterday, nor am I ready to share today. Maybe not even on this cruise.”

“Awww. Not even with your cruise boyfriend?”

 

She cast her eyes downward for a good third of a minute. “Part of me very much wants to tell you, but I’d rather save it for when we’re both healthy and feeling better. There’s nothing magic about it, but for right now until the day we’re both healed from this, pretend it’s cruise magic.”

“Like that magician Mikahel the Mysterious who performed last weekend?”

“Wouldn’t know. Did you go to that?”

CUUUH! “No. Just saw it on the day calendar.” His caressing hand roamed up to her belly, “Need some breakfast, to keep this cruise magic happening?”

“Not likely” HAACK! “Need a light breakfast because I’m hungry.”

 

Their light breakfast thankfully arrived in a timely manner. Given how much coughing they were doing after sipping the nice hot bean-brewed brown beverage Clark made for them and especially how much they did after having bites of their favorite breakfast item of the day, together they decided the beverage needed to be renamed coughy, and the food item coughy cake.

 

---

Day 3 of Leigh’s full illness (beyond the loss of taste and smell) and Day 2 of the same for Clark went on very much like the day prior, other than there were no helicopter visits so far, likely due to the inclement weather making them unsafe. Similarly, almost no one bothered walking around the exposed Upper Promenade deck.

This all changed in the early afternoon around 1:30, when another all-ship announcement intruded into their (and everyone else’s) lives.

“Attention cruisers: Please return to your staterooms immediately. The Sapphire Prince is now under Quarantine Level 3: Lockdown. I repeat: The Sapphire Prince is now under Quarantine Level 3: Lockdown. Please return to your staterooms immediately. All public facilities are now closed. Staff and Crew: Q L 3 L procedures are in effect immediately; report to your stations. Captain Cranch will present a ship-wide address with full details and all information at 2 PM sharp, over the ship’s infotainment system, crew and staff systems, and the Royal Prince app.”

As usual, the announcement repeated in the various major languages Royal Prince Cruise Lines supported. Unlike the announcement the day before, the second reading in English once again played through Leigh’s in-stateroom system.

 

Leigh threw her fattening, heavier leg up onto Clark, pinning him down in place.

“Thank you.”

“I think we have a good case that we became infected together, or nearly together, thus should quarantine together.”

“I agree” he confirmed with a kiss, which made them both briefly cough. “Want anything we have here in the room, in preparation for the forthcoming official announcement?”

“Just a trip to the bathroom before it starts. You need to go?”

“Not right now; you go ahead.”

 

He couldn’t help sighing, watching her butt crack dance and buns and hips wobble and sway on her wiggle-wobble way to the bathroom. If he hadn’t had a fever and thus might not be perceiving reality as clearly as usual, he would have sworn that her buns were bigger in addition to her hips.

 

---

All cuddled together tired bare and ill like they were about to watch a movie, Leigh and Clark awaited the speech. At his insistence, they left the infotainment system in its standby/off setting, to find out whether it would turn on automatically.

At 2 PM, it did: coming alive with the upper body image of their ship’s captain, as neat and well-dressed as one in that position could be.

Transcript of Captain Cranch’s address:

Good afternoon one and all. Those of you whose videos or other entertainment have been interrupted by this announcement, rest assured that your content is paused at this time. You will be able to continue from the point of interruption or back up or start the program over from the beginning as you choose, once this address is complete.

 

Thank you for your ongoing understanding and cooperation during this unprecedented, challenging time we and indeed all the world are currently undergoing, on account of COVID-19 disease, caused by the virus named SARS-CoV-2, colloquially the novel coronavirus. Quarantines on cruise ships are never undertaken lightly, as even the minimal Level 1 is disruptive to fully enjoying the cruise experience. Initially the hope was that a light touch and minimal disruption via Quarantine Level 1 would prove sufficient to stem the spread of COVID-19 on the Sapphire Prince. The combination of an alarming acceleration in the rates of infection and serious illness from this disease here on this ship along with circumstances I’ll soon address in the outer world demanded invoking Level 2 quarantining yesterday, and as of this afternoon leave me no choice but to instate full lockdown—Quarantine Level 3, our line’s highest level.

Thousands dead from this disease in Wuhan China, with new cases continuing to grow. Nearly one thousand five hundred dead in Italy already, with their infection rate and death rate continuing to grow exponentially. Spain is already over 100; the U.S. already over half that. Experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assure us that the U.S. rate is set to explode, quite possibly well exceeding the rates in the nation of the disease’s presumed origin. (Stares forcefully directly into camera) There have been eight COVID-19-related deaths as of this moment, here on the Sapphire Prince —this despite everyone’s best efforts. The Coast Guard medivac helicopters you’ve all heard have been evacuating our most critical passengers for superior treatment at either of the two Level 1 trauma hospitals in Portland Oregon. As well they have evacuated our 8 deceased, all of whom were passengers with underlying health conditions, the majority well into their elder years.

There are currently no dead people on this ship. Let us all please work together to keep it that way. To this end, it is imperative for your health and the health of others that everyone on this ship remain quarantined: passengers in their assigned staterooms, off-duty crew and staff in their cabins. On-duty crew and staff members must at all times follow all social isolation, hygiene, and personal protective equipment procedures. Anyone having non-urgent medical issues please use the online system or your stateroom’s telephone to contact the Infirmary. For all cases of urgent or emergency medical issues, please call the Infirmary, who will advise and send an escort or make other arrangements as needed. Medical personnel who happen to be traveling with us are asked to contact the Infirmary to kindly help with this unprecedented urgent situation.

We remain in active, focused negotiations with authorities at the state level for the 3 west coast states we serve and the U.S. Federal government regarding our next port of call. The delay is unfortunate and disappointing. Canada has banned the docking of all cruise ships effective yesterday, so unfortunately they are not an option. Until further notice we must remain at sea in international waters, staying close to the Oregon coast where we’ve been in case further medivac evacuations are necessary. U.S. citizens traveling with us who are able to do so are encouraged to contact their congressional representatives in both houses, urging them to do what they can to speed our next docking. Those who happen to live in Oregon, Washington, or California are additionally urged to also contact their state representatives for their help. Our many travelers from other fine nations elsewhere around the world are urged to contact their embassies in the U.S., to have them add their voice to the call to allow us to dock sooner than later.

What exactly will happen when we next set anchor in our port of call we cannot yet know: there are too many unknowns and too many stakeholders with conflicting goals. It is my preference to get everyone needing medical attention to superior land-based medical facilities as soon as is practicable. I look forward to working with the relevant authorities to allow those who wish to disembark and terminate their cruise the ability to do so. Yet we still know little about COVID-19, and quarantining as for the Princess line’s Diamond Princess may be required of us, for everyone’s health and well-being.

 

Many if not most of you are or will be unhappy with the loss of the ability to fully experience the cruise for which you signed up and for which you paid. Each of you will receive a full refund of your paid cruise fare, including onboard gratuities, onboard purchased items and services, any associated flights, hotels, and/or land transportation included in your fare. All passengers will receive a future cruise credit equal to your paid cruise fare for this cruise.

All meals and beverages will be provided by room service, ordered as usual through the infotainment system or Royal Prince app. There will be no charges for room service nor Internet usage during the remainder of this truncated cruise.

My utmost gratitude goes out to our dedicated crew and staff. Rest assured: you will be taken care of, in terms of receiving your designated gratuities, normal pay, medical care, and elimination of charges you might normally incur were it not for the mandatory lockdown. I mention this publicly to ensure all on board know that we take care of our cruisers and our own. Further details are available privately to those in our employ through the usual channels.

My utmost gratitude goes out as well to all of you voyaging with us, for squarely facing the disappointment, fear, and unknowns along with those of us who work here. None of us wanted any of this disruption to happen. Myself and our whole team have striven to minimize disruption, discomfort, and unpleasantries of all sorts, and will continue to do everything within our power to make this the best possible experience under these extremely trying circumstances. Each of you hearing me speak now can help out by doing your part to abide by all quarantine guidelines, giving as and when you are able, caring for yourself and each other with whom you’re traveling, in-person for those of you sharing the same stateroom.

With so much going on I may not be able to update you with an address such as this as often as may be desirable. Rest assured that our team will keep the on-ship website updated at all times with the very latest information, as soon as it is verified and fact-checked. This information is available to you any time, 24 hours a day, in your language.

Thank you for your attention and cooperation. May health, science, reason, and Providence be with us all.

The captain’s image faded to a silent still screen with basic information on connecting to replays of the speech and the information page mentioned at the speech’s conclusion. After displaying for 40 seconds, the system in Leigh’s stateroom shut itself back off as it had been, as others around the ship reverted to their pre-announcement state.

 

Throughout the whole speech, Leigh and Clark remained cuddled together bare in bed, arms around each other, staying warm with an extra blanket covering their upper bodies.

“Wonder what it takes to change a stateroom assignment?”

“Given everything they’re dealing with, I’m thinking verifying room assignments is low on their priority list, as long as no one’s out in the halls who doesn’t work for them” Clark answered. “Shouldn’t much matter to them whether I’m in here with you or in the stateroom for which I paid.” Cc-Huuh! “How’re ya feeling?”

“Wavering: aches coming and going, tiredness waxing and waning. Cough annoying” Ckkk! “What about you?”

“Basic blah yuck, not really changing much. So far really no different than a cold without sinus congestion, or a flu without vomiting. Definitely not asymptomatic, but I think I can ride this one out.”

“As long as it doesn’t get worse.”

“Think positive. (kiss) What’s your pleasure?”

“Healing.”

“Near-term pleasure? What do you want to do now?”

“Take advantage of the dark rainy weather and sleep, or at least rest.”

“Sounds good to me!”

 

---

The sudden loud DeedleEeedleEeedleEeedleEeedleEeedle, DeedleEeedleEeedleEeedleEeedleEeedle from the hardwired bedside telephone Leigh didn’t even know her stateroom had woke both her and Clark suddenly from their deeper-than-expected sleep.

“Uuuaaaggh” she groaned. “Who even has this number?”

“Sapphire Prince staffers and crew, I betcha.”

“Should I answer it?”

“Up to you. It’s your stateroom.”

 

“Hello?”

“Ms. Down? This is Jini from Reception. Is there anyone else currently with you in your stateroom?”

“Yes there is.”

“Who, please? We’re trying to account for all passengers, not all of whom are responding to our direct calls to them.”

“Mr. Clark Barr, B A R R.”

“Only Mr. Barr and yourself?”

“Correct. We’ve become a romantic item, and I want us to stay this way for the duration of this cruise.”

“So you wish that Mr. Barr remains with you throughout lockdown?”

“Correct.”

“May I speak with him, please?”

“Sure. Hold on.”

 

Instinctively from decades past, her motor memory knew to cover the mouthpiece. “It’s Jini from Reception, wanting to discuss your whereabouts.”

“How thoughtful of her” he snickered, coughing loudly thereafter. Nevertheless, he accepted the handset handoff.

 

“Hello.”

“Mr. Barr? This is Jini from Reception.”

“Hi Jini. What’s up?”

“Is it true that you wish to remain with Ms. Down in her stateroom for the remainder of lockdown?”

“Correct, other than at some point I’ll be wanting to return to mine to gather some belongings I’ll need for the long-term here.” Hack!

“Perchance are you ill, sir?”

“Yes, and so is Ms. Down, with the same sort of flu-like illness.”

“Difficulty breathing, either of you?”

 

Now it was his turn to cover the mouthpiece, “You having any breathing issues?”

“Thankfully no.”

 

“No, neither of us are having breathing difficulties.”

“Do you have a medical-grade face mask?”

“No.”

“Under the circumstances we are very willing to allow you to move into Ms. Down’s stateroom with her consent which she’s already given me, especially since after decontaminating your stateroom we will be able to reassign it to medical personnel who may soon be boarding, else staff or crew to help them isolate. Is it possible for you to move out of your stateroom and into Ms. Down’s sometime today?”

“I’ll get dressed and do it right now, gladly.”

 

Leigh felt all wiggly wobbly seeing his smile and wink directed at her during his most recent sentence.

 

“Actually Mr. Barr, please wait for us to deliver a face mask and set of gloves for you to wear along with a hall pass ribbon to you at your current location. As part of quarantine and especially if you are having symptoms which might possibly be the disease, we ask that you wear the gloves and mask at all times from before exiting Ms. Down’s stateroom until you return there for the final time, and please pin the ribbon onto the corner of either of your shoulders to make it easy for Security to see from a distance. OK so far?”

“Yes. I wait for someone to deliver the mask, gloves, and ribbon. I wear all of them as you just specified from before leaving this stateroom until my last return, which I think I can manage in one trip but might take two. Is that it?”

“Almost. Once you’re all done with your assigned stateroom and all your possessions are out of it, please leave the key card on the bed and close the door. Once you’re back where you currently are with Ms. Down, please call me back and let me know that you’re finished with your stateroom and are releasing it back to us.”

“What number do I call?”

“Using the in-room phone as you are now, just press R for Reception, a.k.a. the 7 key one time. That’s it!; the system will put you through to me.”

“Sounds good. I’m looking forward to this.”

“Glad we can help bring what joy we can to this uniquely challenging cruise experience. Someone will be up very soon with the materials, which they’ll leave outside the door and knock. ’Kay ’kay?”

“All good. Thanks!”

“Bye for now.”

“Bye Jini.”

 

Leigh and Clark both felt a little better, seeing their lover’s smile and knowing that soon he’d be all moved in with her, no longer concerned about what might be happening with his belongings over in his nearly-abandoned stateroom.

“Let’s save the kisses for after I’m all moved in. Can you believe that Jini dropped her voice and nearly whispered ‘the disease’, as though saying it aloud at normal volume or heaven forbid its actual name might bring shame upon the family or something?”

“Eight people dead from this thing on this ship alone is nothing to sneeze at.”

“Actually sneezing would prolly be an indication that it’s a cold or something else rather than COVID-19.”

“Each of us has occasionally sneezed in here over the last several days, and each of us has several classic symptoms of COVID-19, from what we’ve looked up.”

“Alright alright.” KHHHH! “Let me get all moved in here then let’s focus on healing each other from this thing with love, rest, tea, water, sleep, and whatever else we can manage that is likely to help.”

 

---

“Thanks Jini. Stay well.… You too. Bye.”

 

Despite both still feeling ill, Clark Barr and Leigh Down were all loving grins, wrapping their arms around each other as they lay sitting up in in their cosy “cloud” bed, sharing a brief kiss before their next cough.

“Oh dear. We’re stuck in quarantine together, so we have to stay together” he teased, caressing her sexually and kissing her again.

“I’m going to want to have sex with you if you keep doing that. Mmmmm!”

“Sounds good to me!”

“Careful, Neener: you’ll consummate our cruise marriage” she wickedly teased back, grinning impishly.

“Oh is that how it is?”

She nodded.

“Well then we need a ceremony. Do you, Leigh ‘Chonky’ Down, take me, Clark ‘Neener’ Barr as your duration-of-cruise husband, to love, cherish, and live with, in sickness for now and later in health, for as long as we remain on this cruise?”

“I do!” She decided with this ceremony she would kiss him immediately after her “I do”, and did so, leaving him dazed. Proud of how deeply her kiss dazzled him, she gave him a minute to recover.

 

“Do you, Clark ‘Neener’ Barr, take me, Leigh ‘Chonky’ Down as your duration-of-cruise wife, to love in every way, cherish, and live with, presently in sickness and later in health, for as long as we remain on this cruise?”

“I assuredly do.”

 

His kiss felt like a stealth passion attack: all-out, searing, take-no-prisoners. The sort of lusty kiss that most officiants at an actual marriage would ask be toned down and saved for the honeymoon.

 

In the immediate aftermath of ravagement Leigh managed to say, “By no power vested in me by anyone, I now pronounce us cruise husband and cruise wife.” Tossing back the blankets and spreading her chonky legs wide she concluded, “You may now fuck your cruise wife.”

 

He was ready; she was very ready. It very much happened, without any coughing.

[Sonic Purity]

Shut In, Shut Out

“What a great day to be shut in together” Clark softly declared soon after awakening on Sunday, kissing also-freshly-awakened cruise wife Leigh before issuing the latest of many coughs.

“Less rainy than yesterday, but yes” she kissed him back, wiggly-squiggly happy to be cuddled into her cruise husband, by any label her searing-hot lover.

 

Searing hot applied to both of them in terms of internal temperature regulation as well as passionate love: their fevers were going with a vengeance, especially Leigh’s.

Nevertheless, they enjoyed the start of this quiet, somewhat wet morning.

 

---

🎼 Come sail a-way
Come sail a-way
Come sail away
Wi–

Whump!

 

The sudden quietness from the utter cessation of all electrical sounds and most mechanical sounds on the ship—many of which were soft enough that neither Leigh nor Clark knew they existed until they were gone—along with the instantaneous loss of electrical illumination on this cloudy early afternoon did more than the stateroom’s audio power amp’s transient whump from the sudden loss of power to draw their immediate full attention.

Running Leigh’s entire cruise playlist on her iPhone through the far higher fidelity of the stateroom’s sound system to in part help distract them from their physical ills had seemed like such a good idea—and it had been good, until the power went out.

 

“This does not bode well” Clark felt the need to verbalize.

Leigh paused her device, happily streaming from their bedside over Bluetooth to nothing any longer functioning.

 

They looked around, then at one another, hearing nothing beyond their own breathing and occasional coughs, wheezes, and other louder human sounds from adjacent staterooms and other areas.

 

Before either of them could formulate another thought into a coherent sentence, the lights came back on and the A/V infotainment system went into its cold boot startup sequence. Both of them found watching the startup screen stepping through its startup sequence to be informative as well as a form of entertainment. Whatever specifically it was doing for non-volatile memory, it remembered that it had last been in audio playback mode via Bluetooth, returning to that mode once its startup finished.

“Dare I restart Styx?” she asked.

“Not my very favorite song in the world” KHHHH!, “but thankfully we’re both rational enough to know that whether you do or you don’t, your choice will have no relevancy to whether or not the power remains stably on.”

🎼 Come sail away
With meeeeee 🎼…

 

---

“We are running low on fuel. We have an urgent need to at least make a technical call, lest we have a greater humanitarian crisis on our hands.”

 

Today on this shift, it was Second Deck Officer Niles Mayhew currently at the modern, digital helm as Navigating Officer, maintaining his focus out the window along with First Deck Officer Ellen Glenn, as they once again both overheard Captain Cranch in negotiations with relevant authorities.

 

“Your hands as well as mine, ma’am. It is already widely known in social media and via some news outlets that we’re being blocked from docking, and whose states and which ports are responsible for this situation.… Correct: technical call. I seek more, because reason and civil human behavior demands it. I require a technical call as a bare minimum.… Thank you. I shall be following up no later than 1500 local if no word has come through by that time.… Very well. Best of health to you.”

 

Captain Cranch chose to answer the un-asked question on everyone in the Bridge’s minds before either on-duty deck officer could ask, “Stay the course, monitoring conditions all along the coast between Eureka and Port Angeles. They have to allow us to stop somewhere.”

 

---

Sunday evening found Leigh and Clark too wrung out to do anything other than rest, sleeping briefly when possible. The weather was cloudy enough, they were paying little enough attention, and they were far enough from shore that neither noticed the Sapphire Prince turn around and start heading southbound.

 

---

Outdoor lights and activity not entirely visible through the pre-dawn drizzle and not at all visible with both the sheer curtains and light-blocking drapes closed awoke Clark and Leigh well before they otherwise would have awoken.

“Ulllaaagggh” she gripe-groaned. “What time is it?”

“5:08.”

 

He was already out of bed, heading for the windows/balconette door.

 

“Keep the door closed, please.”

“That’s my plan” he replied, parting the drapes and curtains.

 

“What do you see?”

“We’re docked, that’s for sure. I see what appear to be cargo containers being loaded or offloaded—which I can’t tell.”

“Like intermodal?”

“Sort of, but smaller. Half-size, and maybe shorter.”

 

She turned on the infotainment system, navigating to the ship’s itinerary information page. “Damn.”

“What?”

“They say it’s a technical call, whatever that is, to the port of Coos Bay.”

“Didn’t know they had a port there… here, I suppose we are.”

“It’s a commercial shipping port with no provisions for passengers. Oh—here they define technical call as being for resupplying, refueling, and offloading recycling and waste. Get this: by order of local, state, and national authorities, only seriously ill passengers and those with severe medical issues who are likely to die if they fall ill are being allowed off the ship.”

“Sweet. Wonder where they’re drawing those lines?”

“Doesn’t say; no hint.”

“Unsurprising.”

“Oh, and someone just added that additional medical personnel are boarding to further assist those already here.”

 

He continued peering out the window.

 

“Coming back to bed?”

“What’s the point? Sleep’s not going to happen with all this going on.”

“Cuddling can! I haven’t had my morning flesh banana between my buns yet.”

“The one whose appeal according to you is its lack of a peel?”

“That’s the one.”

“You must be feeling better.”

“Actually I feel like shit” Hack!

“Hope not literally! Otherwise I’ll have to wash my hands extra double-dog triple well after feeling you. Coffee or tea yet?”

“Better make it tea” CHHHHuuh! “Otherwise I’ll be spelling the beverage as we did yesterday.”

 

Leigh delayed her morning banana bun split to cuddle sitting up in bed with her cruise husband, both sipping tea and seeing what they could with drapes and curtains drawn fully open, as well as watching the cruise status screen for updates.

To their partial amazement, the Sapphire Prince eased out of port around dawn, per the status page heading back out into international waters just off the Oregon coast.

 

---

Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh

It wasn’t some exotic animal, nor the sound of an older internal combustion engine vehicle with a weak battery trying to start. The sound was the mash-up of Leigh’s Hhhhhhhh sigh with the rrrrrrrrr wheeze she’d developed. Both she and Clark were concerned.

He was on the phone with Reception trying to do something about it. “If you don’t have lemons or oranges, which frankly would amaze me given the resupplying I saw this morning with my own eyes but whatever, then how about some vitamin C?…… Not giving me much to work with here, Adela. We’re doing our best to stay as well as possible and heal fully from this thing, but odds of that drop without basic nutrition. It’s a bit late for zinc tablets to do their best, but those might help. What about those?… Alright, let’s circle back. Do you mean to tell me that you do not have anylemons on board? Given what I’ve seen in terms of gratuitous giveaways of lemon quarter slices with everyone’s hot tea whether they ask for it or not already on this cruise, I am having trouble believing y’all can’t spare one full lemon for two passengers.… Please do that. It ought to make a material difference.… Very good. Thank you, Adela. Bye.”

 

He sat down on the edge of the bed near his Love, “How’s life in the sawmill?”

“Moving from soft pine to medium hardwood” she softly wheezed.

Upset and love propelled him into an upper body cuddle with her, caressing her hot head. “What would you most like right now to help you heal?”

She weakly shrugged her shoulders.

“How about another extended foot massage with the roller, then a lower back massage with it and the egg-footed tool? It’s been a few days.”

“Foot massage yes please. rrrrrrrrrr Back massage no thank you: I need to remain sitting up”–Hack!–“today.”

 

The massage couldn’t directly help with Leigh’s new breathing issue, though it absolutely felt good, with the love via proximity and skin-to-skin hand contact aiding her body’s natural healing process in the struggle against what they assumed must be COVID-19.

 

Within the hour 2 fresh California lemons were delivered by room service, making their afternoon tea servings slightly more healing and vastly more lemony.

 

---

Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh whhhheeeeeeez. Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh whhhheeeeeeez—this was Leigh’s breathing, not anyone sleeping. “Finding anything?” whhhheeeeeeez she asked, between breaths and bites of her light dinner.

Clark’s eyes remained locked on his notebook computer’s screen. “All kinds of things. Currently I’m in the process of sorting out the bullshit from the plausible, after which I’ll get into what we’re capable of doing under our circumstances. Anything I can get for you at this time?”

Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh “Some more tea” whhhheeeeeeez, “and an upper chest massage, please.”

 

He was already out of bed before she finished speaking, delivering her tea in short order.

The upper chest massage started soon thereafter, though she’d have to finish her tea before he got too deeply into it. The reason for that was that based upon prior interactions, this request had a special meaning: massage and grope her underappreciated (she believed) itty bitty titties. Surprised though he was that she wanted this when she was obviously not feeling well, he gladly obliged. It might not directly cure her illness, though for sure the pleasurable biochemical reactions the fondle-y caresses got going in her did at least slightly help.

[Sonic Purity]

A Different Kind of Green

There was little to celebrate in the stateroom of Leigh Down and Clark Barr St. Patrick’s Day Tuesday 17 March 2020: neither of them had slept well on account of their illnesses, and Leigh’s breathing was worse.

Ratchetratchetratchetratchet WHHHHEEEEEEEZ!, Ratchetratchetratchetratchet WHHHHEEEEEEEZ!

Ill himself, Clark’s worry related to his Love Leigh had him kneeling atop the bed facing her, his hands on her shoulders, his gaze locked on her eyes. “Keep breathing, Love!”

Ratchetratchetratchetratchet WHHHHEEEEEEEZ! “So hard” she gasped.

“You’ve got to, Leigh! You’ve got to! Please. Keep breathing!”

 

---

2 hours later in mid-morning, things were worse: along with the highly hitched, ratchety rough wheezy breathing, Leigh seemed to have something lodged in her throat.

Ratchetratchetratchetratchet WHHHHEEEEEEEZ! Hclckl. Glump

“Don’t swallow it!”

“Why not?” Ratchetratchetratchetratchet “It’s not very ladylike to spit things up.”

“It’s your body trying to get rid of the illness! Pleeeaase get it out of you next time!”

He rushed over to the trash, retrieving a wider-than-tall paper bowl. “Here: keep this handy and spit into it from hereon out.”

 

They didn’t have to wait long.

Ratchetratchetratchetratchet Hrulp. Hrrrb. Hckck.

Frantic and upset to the point of tears, with a loud male adult voice backed by a frightened child he yelled, “Cough it up! Cough it uuupp!”

Hrrrr, PTTT!

 

One giant gray-green glob the size of a U.S. quarter and at least twice as thick sat in the bottom of the paper bowl which formerly held ramen noodles.

 

“Good! Good girl! More! Get it all out!”

Hrrrrp. Chhhhh. HAAAA PTWINNNG!”

 

Now the first green glob had a friend: slightly more golden, the size of a U.S. half dollar.

 

Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh WHHHHEEEEEEEZ! “This is awful.”

“Yes, but you’re getting better! Keep going, Love!”

Hcccc, HHCCCC, PLLLLLTTT!

“Yesss!”

 

Rough though it was, and less productive past this peak output though it was, coached expectorating into the ever-more-disgusting paper cup did slightly reduce the roughness of Leigh’s breathing, more than slightly irritating her throat. Some lemon-infused chamomile tea ably and rapidly provided by Clark (ignoring his own tiredness, discomfort, and start of wheezing as he fearfully focused on her) eased the latter concern.

 

---

Things remained hairy-difficult as of the early afternoon: Leigh had nothing more so far to cough up, with her breathing plateaued and still rough. Clark continued to get more wheezy.

 

“OK” whhhhhrrr, “We gotta do this” whhhhhrrr.

Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh WHHHHEEEEEEEZ! “Do what?”

“We’ve gotta move around, Leigh!” whhhhhrrr “Get our lymphatic systems moving” whhhhhrrr “and flush this stuff out!”

“So tired” she gasped, “So, so tired.” Hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh

“We’ve gotta move!” whhhhhrrr “I know! We’ll march with Honks The Goose!”

 

A childhood favorite forgotten by oh-so-many of Clark’s and Leigh’s generation and never known by most other generations, the marching animated goose was popular amongst children in certain areas of the U.S., part of the Federal push for greater physical fitness amongst that generation’s youth.

An illin’ man on a sick mission, Clark searched and dug and scanned and auditioned all he could find on the WWW portion of the Internet. Eventually he found what he wanted, routing it to the bigger screen of the stateroom’s built-in A/V system.

 

“Let’s go, Chonky!” he excitedly urged her, with energy he barely had. Taking her by the hand he attempted to pull her out of bed, or at least get her moving that direction, to little avail.

“Do we have tooooo?” hrhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh she whined and wheezed.

“Yes!” whhhhhrrr “Honks is going to help us heal! March with Honks, just like when you were little!”

The Kate Bush song The Man With The Child In His Eyes flashed through Leigh’s fever-fogged mind, seeing her man’s inner child desperate to save them. Touched that he, whom she’d always assumed was into her mainly for sex, actually cared about her living and thriving as much as himself, she pushed herself hard to get out of bed and follow his hand-holding lead.

 

“Here we go” whhhhhrrr “Ready?”

“Yes.” whhhheeeeeeez

 

The snare drum and one-word cartoon voiced animated video (originally on film) started up right away.

🎼 Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk
Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk
Trrump-t-tu-t-tu-t-tatata rrump-t-tu-t-tu-t-tatata
Trrump-t-tu-t-tu-t-tatata rrump-t-tu-t-tu-t-tatata 🎼

and on and on, repeating in that pattern.

 

Struggle though it was, marching with Honks The Goose did get both Leigh and Clark moving around and around in a repeating oval in their stateroom. {I always preferred this one to the chicken fat song} she mused.

 

Interestingly, she felt a little better after the march.

Clark was bound and determined for them to both push through and survive. “Let’s do another!” whhhhhrrr

“OK.” whhhheeeeeeez

🎼 Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk 🎼…

 

They wound up doing a third march after this second, before stopping. In under half an hour, Leigh’s body expectorated more phlegm into the ever-grosser cup. Clark’s was yet to be productive, though he did get some tan phlegm with a very slight green cast out and so far his wheezing was getting no worse.

 

---

Things were going far, far worse down in the Infirmary: between the time Leigh and Clark awoke and when they finished marching with Honks The Goose, 2 more fellow cruisers lost their battle with COVID-19, and their lives.

[Sonic Purity]

Fever Dreams

Leigh awoke Wednesday morning during early daylight absolutely soaked. Seeing that her Love was already awake, looking ill and wheezing, her first words of the day were, “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” whhhhhrrr

“No. We went to bed, both feeling like shit but at least with nothing in particular in our throats—at least mine. Then I slept and I woke up just now. And I’m not wheezing.”

“True: you’re not” whhhhhrrr, “which is great.” whhhhhrrr “No memory of pulling me against you and slowly kiss-eating my lips as a meal, thankfully without biting me, just barely?” whhhhhrrr

“I did that?!”

“You most certainly did.” whhhhhrrr

“You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”

whhhhhrrr “I swear Leigh, this and everything else I’m about to tell you is the total truth.” whhhhhrrr “I didn’t sleep much last night, so I was awake for the whole thing.” whhhhhrrr

“What all did I do?!”

“You had a very high fever.” whhhhhrrr “Once you were done with the embrace and the kissing,” whhhhhrrr “you kept moving my hands onto your fat parts that you don’t especially appreciate me touching when you’re awake,” whhhhhrrr “such as your upper arm fat and your sloping back rolls.” whhhhhrrr “I couldn’t understand anything you said when you were asleep,” whhhhhrrr“though your emotions were a fairly easy read from your murmur intonations.” whhhhhrrr “During one span when I was all too fully awake,” whhhhhrrr “you kept moving my hand onto your mound.”

“My puss?”

“Yes.” whhhhhrrr “When my hand was first on it, you made the most endearing feminine happy peep moan sounds I’ve ever heard.” whhhhhrrr “When I moved my hand away, you made unhappy more groan-like mumbles, until you pulled my hand back over and onto your mound, when the contented sounds returned.” whhhhhrrr “We did this over and over. You don’t remember this?”

“Not even slightly.”

“Wow. I truly thought you were awake,” whhhhhrrr “and not feeling well enough to bother speaking with me.” whhhhhrrr “I think deep inside you must like all-out intimately sexy touch much more than you let on” he grinned and wheezed, then coughed.

For the first time in days, her sudden inner heat was from embarrassment rather than fever.

---

“I await a cogent explanation as to why other cruise ships have been allowed to dock in U.S. ports for purposes of releasing passengers for repatriation, land-based quarantine, or their homes as individual situations warrant, and we are barred from so doing.”

Current shift First Deck Officer Cristi Crunklebunk subtly bit her lip, staring out the Sapphire Prince’s Bridge windows with eagle eyes, scanning the ocean as the on-duty watch keeper whilst once again this shift’s Second Deck Officer Niles Mayhew navigated at the helm. It was difficult listening to Captain Cranch diplomatically negotiate with inexplicably obstinate U.S. authorities. “Debris field 25 degrees to port.”

“Debris field 25 degrees to port confirmed. Bearing 7 degrees starboard upon consensus.”

“Concur with bearing 7 degrees starboard.”

“May I respectfully and with all due deference humbly suggest that it is time to advance a step up your chain of command if no meaningful answer is forthcoming. At least 10 nations of the world are watching, awaiting news of when their citizens will be allowed to debark and repatriate.… This is already an international incident, Ms. Muellish.… It is appreciated. We need action on this. Thank you.”

Both Deck Officers eagerly awaited their Captain’s report.

“Continue with practice maneuvers until further notice. We might as well get something beneficial out of this mess” he ended with a telling sigh.

---

“Out with it! Out with it!”

Whack—Leigh slapped Clark’s back along with her verbal coaching, to get him to cough up the phlegm both of them knew was in his wheezy throat.

“Cough it out, Neener! You know you have to.”

Hhhhhccccc PTWTPT!

There it was, in his own until-now-empty reused noodle cup: a big slimy gooey gray-green-gold glob of pestilent phlegm.

“Doing good, Neener” she praised him, caressing his arm and upper back. “Soon you’ll be feeling better, like me.”

“Can’t be soon enough” whhhhh HLLULKa PPPGGGHT!—out came another glob.

“Got any more?”

whhhhhrrr “Not right now.” whhhhhrrr

“Alright, let’s get you moving and move that nastiness outta there! Ready to March With Honks The Goose?”

“I’d better.” whhhhhrrr

🎼 Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk

Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk 🎼…

She of course joined him, to motivate him and ensure she stayed on the mend. Very sick and very tired as he was, following the wildly bouncing fat butt, hips, and thighs of his cruise wife absolutely motivated Clark to push through his discomfort and fatigue, and keep marching.

As a reward for doing a fourth march cycle, Leigh let him grab her hips and press into her butt and march together as a unit. Both of them were bottomless, making the intimate marching contact very rewarding indeed!

Within roughly half an hour after the marching, with the aid of lemon-infused chamomile tea that neither of them could smell nor taste, Clark managed to get out several more phlegm blobs of various interesting shapes and coloration specifics.

---

“Ulllggh. Why does this thing have to come back for a reprise?!” Leigh whined Wednesday evening.

whhhhhrrr “At least you’re not wheezing again.” whhhhhrrr

“Thank goodness for that!” Hack! “Cough’s still around, though. How’s your fever?”

whhhhhrrr “Do I get to take the 5th. Amendment?”

“No” she replied, putting the back of her hand against his forehead. “You feel like you’re on fire, Neen.”

“Yeahhh” he sighed with a wheeze. While bad to have a wheeze at all with this disease, his still wasn’t as intense as hers had gotten.

In a very sweet, affectionate voice she asked, “Anything you need to help you feel better?”

“May I squeeze and caress your belly, please?”

She couldn’t refuse such an earnest request from her love in high discomfort, especially not with the many tears rolling out of his eyes and the slight whine his inner child applied to his tone. “You mean my gelatinous pudge ball?” she flirted.

He nodded.

“Of course.”

Affectionate and lusty restful fatsex provided an excellent distraction to both suffering lovers from their immediate ills. Leigh found herself getting so turned on by his ongoing handy hand belly explorations that her diligent digits dove down deep into her mildly plush mound, for direct personal self-stimulation they both found unexpectedly exciting.

---

Clark awoke Thursday morning the 19th. of March startled to find himself in near-sopping wet bedding. Equally unexpected, cruise wife Leigh looked more bright-eyed happy to see him than ever before that he could recall. “Please tell me I didn’t pee in our bed.”

“No, you were sweating.” She held the back of her hand to his forehead, “Your fever broke. Or, like mine, is now taking mornings off to come back late in the day. How do you feel?”

“Drained. Still can’t smell anything. Wheezing’s gone, at least for now.”

“We’ll do some marching together later, to help ensure it stays that way for both of us.”

“What’s got you grinning so much this morning? Are you part Cheshire Cat?”

“Maaaaybe” she glitter-eye flirted.

“No really Chonk, what’s up?”

“Remember anything about your fever dream?”

“I had one?”

“Ohhhh yes. I made a video of it, even. Wanna see it?”

“You made a video of my fever dream?!”

“Well the part of it that happened out here in the waking real world, yes. You’ll have to tell me if hearing and seeing yourself from my awake perspective triggers any memories of your sleeping experience of it. Come cuddle close over here, so your sweat spot can start drying out.”

Heart racing from trepidation, he settled against/into her, bracing himself for what was to come. “Alright, run it.”

The larger screen and sound system of the built-in infotainment system came to life.

Clark watched himself sleep-caressing Leigh’s distant upper arm using his hand of his arm wrapped around her as he cuddled her. To him it looked like a lying-down version of the way many loving couples stand close next to/into one another when they’re feeling loving and affectionate, especially when there are others around, such as in public places, at meetings, at parties, and so on.

Hearing himself mumble something along the lines of “mur wurfmst Churkr” caught his full attention. “What did I say?”

She paused the video, “That one’s not intelligible. Seems to me you say the same thing, or close to it, several times. The others were clearer. Ready to continue?”

“I didn’t do anything bad, did I?”

“I don’t think so! Quite the opposite. Ready?”

Her ongoing bright grin and super-strong affection continued to rattle him. “Alright.”

Transcript of the video soundtrack:

Hur hrr ur mt my wife Chonky?

(movement of limbs, as if walking)

Huurriii. Haf you met my wife Chonky?

(movement of limbs, as if walking)

Hi. Have you met my wife Chonky? Yesur reruuur mmmnn dssss

Panic burst throughout the being of Clark Barr. In full fight/flight/freeze response (tending towards flight), he wide deer-in-headlights eyes frantically looked about the room as he trembled, more so seeing the happy matrimonial gaze of his love and waking-life-declared cruise wife Leigh.

The panic made him bolt out of bed, narrowly avoiding her too-slow latest attempt to comfortably and amorously pin him down with her fat leg. He frantically ran around in circles as though the stateroom was engulfed in flames with the strongest flames on and around their bed and out in the hallway, seeking a means of escape.

“Clark honey it’s Okaaay! Settle down, please!”

She eased herself out of bed, approaching him with her palms-open hands out, as non-threateningly as she could. “Hey hey hey. Take my hands, and let’s talk about this, please.”

His overwrought unease had yet to dissipate. To him the outstretched arm hand-holding was like a wedding stance at the altar! “Another ceremony?! I already apparently said ‘I Do’!”

“Cruise lovers’ cuddle please, alright?”

He quietly went along with it, still trembling.

“Look me in the eyes, please.”

This simple request took him longer than she expected, truly making her wonder what all was going on in his world. Eventually he managed, still looking devastated though at least now no longer trembling, nor tense nor otherwise acting as though he was about to run off again.

With their eyes locked, hers looking up at his, his looking down at hers, she calmly and slowly explained, “No one can hold anyone to something they said during a fever dream. I don’t understand what your dream means to you, and now I wish that I’d waited to even mention having that video until you were more fully awake and maybe after we’d had our taste-free breakfast. In no way did I intend to upset you! From out here not knowing what’s going on in your interior, I thought it was endearing and adorable. It’s extremely flattering that you would have that kind of dream and your brain would make those words come out of your mouth, even if that’s not at all your waking reality.

“Shall we order breakfast? Maybe put some of our super-soft towels down on the couch and sit there so the bed can air out and dry out?”

“OK, but I can’t wait much beyond bathroom visits, ordering breakfast, and starting tea for me and whatever you’re drinking this morning for you before I explain my internal dream, which all vividly came back to me soon as I heard myself speaking intelligibly.”

“You don’t have to tell me Neener, if you don’t want to.”

“I need to tell you.”

---

Having not really used the couch much at all so far, it suddenly became their sitting-up secular confessional. With tea and cardboard-tasting pastry in hand, cuddled bottomless hip-to-hip with her, Clark got into his explanation.

“In that dream, of which I truly had no waking, conscious memory until you played that video, we were indeed recently wed—truly dream-real married. So here’s where you’re going to start not liking this, but as you correctly point out, it’s a fever dream, not anyone’s reality. You were twice as fat as you are now—easily. And in my fever dream, you were very contented being and remaining that way.

“The fat wasn’t even the main part. What I felt in the dream and felt all over again as you played the video was the profoundly deep all-encompassing love of every type and every definition of that word in our language that the vast majority of the time I real-world feel being here with you, with our cruise playtime dating and marriage and circumstantial forced living together.”

Deeply touched, she set aside her minimal breakfast plate in preparation for cuddling him deeply. He stuffed the rest of his flavor-free (to him) pastry into his mouth and set aside both his now-empty plate and tea mug towards the same goal.

Cuddled into a familiar yet suddenly very serious embrace, he continued, “In the dream, we were as happy as two lovers have ever been, equally and powerfully proud to be with one another. Earlier in my fever dream when I apparently wasn’t making any real-world noises or motions worth recording, we were together and you were leading us around to meet all friends and family members of importance to you, proud of me and proud of us and our future.

“After that, in the dream we did the same thing, with me taking us around to introduce you to everyone who matters to me. That’s the part you recorded—not all of it which I experienced inside the dream, but it was all that same idea, which is more or less what you did with us with your peeps. Like many if not most dreams, in the dream it was as if everyone was in the same place like at the same party or something, when in reality these people are spread around the U.S. Some of them I haven’t been in touch with for years.” He began to get choked up, tears again streaming out of his eyes, “Some… in the dream… aren’t even… alive any more (sniff). Like my father (sniff).”

The deeply loving gaze between them seemed to transcend time and space.

“So exceedingly proud of having earned the honor of being your husband was I in the dream that my mind even brought back my dead father so that I could introduce you two to each other (sniff). As you captured in your recording, in the dream I always referred to you as Chonky (sniff), rather than Leigh, even though to me Leigh is a beautiful given name!”

Now her eyes were watering, not yet tearing.

“Similarly in the part which remains in my head and could not be real-world recorded, you always referred to me as Neener, not Clark. In all cases, each of our friends and relatives accepted these names as readily as they real-world would our given names. We in my dream did so as well, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.”

He clasped her hands, similar to the way she’d offered them when they’d been standing, “So here’s what I know of what’s going on, that had me all frantic here in our shared waking reality, and still has me somewhat messed up. I love you, Leigh. Real-world love you like that—I know I do. I’ve loved before over the course of my life, as you know at least somewhat from our life story sharing, to the degree we’ve made it through parts of our two long-life stories. This is different. This is more. Waaaay beyond sex, sex appeal, and all that, much as those things matter to me. With every other woman I’ve been with, I’ve felt varying degrees of tension or stress: a need to always be on my toes. The ones I was with longer, not so much, in some cases almost not at all. Almost. Others I’ve been with more briefly including very recent dates with fellow cruisers Beryl and Rebecca have been higher stress. Rewarding to be sure for what they were, in the more limited ways that drew me and each of them together, but at least some background tension nevertheless.” He gave her hands a couple of squeezes, “You are the easiest woman to be with that I’ve yet to experience in my life—easy as in the complete lack of this tension or stress, or so very little compared to all who’ve been in my life before you that it may as well be zero. So far I feel I can totally relax around you and be myself. This was not at all my experience with you at MatCon, nor until we worked through things and got to know each other better and trust each other and I no longer felt the need to be wary and ready to apologize over and over for things I wasn’t aware in the moment were offensive.

“What had me wanting to run away to places that don’t currently exist for me to run to seems to be a combination of factors, some of which remain unclear in my mind through this very moment. The one that is clear is fear: fear of making the wrong choice—the wrong choice for me. We’re igniting the fire of romantic, passionate, caring, bonding, all-encompassing love at a time when our generation was taught that everyone was supposed to already be or at least be transitioning into being sexless grandparents, doddering around minding the grandchildren until we croak. Thankfully that’s not our reality, however for me at least this is likely Last Call for immersive love, especially long-term. Being honest part of me wants to be the playboy I never was earlier in my life, flitting around tasting the amazing variety of fat women and their very different bodies, minds, and spirits. You know well from our pre-cruise past that this wouldn’t be a total first for me, but there haven’t been that many women intimately in my life, hence the reason I hadn’t done anyone other than one night with Alyssa between you at MatCon those years ago and Beryl earlier on this cruise.

“The frantic panic is largely that I don’t know what I want. As mentioned, part of me wants to try the playboy thing, and I did start along that path at the beginning of this cruise. Problem for me is that I found it a lot of work and plenty stressful to make it to the point of intimacy, then a gaping emptiness once it was over, which in both Beryl’s and Rebecca’s cases was more their choice than mine. Though as mentioned, I found it stressful to be on my toes with them, so if things had gone longer, they likely would not have made it as far as the first level of quarantine. Knowing Beryl, I truly don’t know how she’s tolerating the current quarantine level, though she’s positive enough I expect she has her ways. She might or might not have been able to tolerate me in quarantine with her, and I might or might not have been able to handle it. There is no possible way that Rebecca and myself could have been or still be quarantined together, on both our parts.

“With you, it’s all different. We’ve had some moments, but nothing severe. I welcome hearing your reality soon as I unload the small remainder of what’s on my mind. My reality is that I have seriously considered going the polar opposite of playboy: throwing everything in for you, seeking a perpetual bond with you as life partners.”

Now it was Leigh’s turn to be trembling slightly.

“You may not want that at all, and I’m almost done and want to hear whatever you choose to share about anything. At least 3 times since you invited me to move in here together with you, I’ve felt a soul-crushingly strong overpowering sense that I ought to propose to you.”

“Hhhhhh!”

“That’s pretty much how I responded! I let it go because to me that sort of commitment ought to be a mutual decision, rather than a power play by one party or the other that may put the other party in an awkward position. This is probably better, letting you know this profoundly deep, innermost overpowering feeling in this way, rather than going down on one knee with a ship-purchased engagement ring in a box in my hand. Far more than any ceremony or tradition, I do not at all know whether such a thing would be good for either of us long-term, no matter how we may feel now. By that I mean I don’t know whether when one carefully scrutinizes each of our true natures, whether both of us together are the marrying or living together ongoing as life partners type—whether that’s best for each of us as individuals. And if it is, are we each the other’s optimal partner for such an endeavor?

“All that chaos hitting me all at once a little while ago very soon upon awakening in drenched sheets, still ill with what almost has to be COVID-19 per our symptoms, was more than my brain could handle—especially my primitive brain in the amygdala, where emotions and fight/flight/freeze happen, as I understand it. That is my full understanding to this moment of what-all went down, between my fever dream and now. Soon as I kiss you, my monolog is over.”

The electrifying current of energy flowing through them throughout the extended kiss made it felt like someone had wired them up and plugged them into 120V house power. Or if not that, that the ship was being torn asunder. Despite slight ongoing achiness and light fevers, neither of them coughed.

“Saying Thank You! seems wholly insufficient for all you’ve just shared. Right now I feel like we’re together, holding onto each other as a unit as we tumble through space. There’s a vertigo slow spinning, like a satellite in orbit rotating on an axis: a unified tumble. Not that I’m an expert because I’m not and I haven’t felt anything quite like this before, but to me it feels like literally falling in love: the falling through space version.”

“Sure that’s not the next chapter of COVID-19?”

“I’ve not read of it being a symptom of anything other than love. Have you?”

“No.”

“I have very little else to say at this time of any urgency or import, other than this: I love you, Clark. Truly and deeply love you, in any and every way of which I know love. It is too soon in my opinion to seriously be talking engagement or marriage. I do want us to be open to seriously considering how we might possibly remain an ongoing very short distance or living-together romantic item past the end of this cruise, to be revisited closer to when that happens, once this new reality in which we find ourselves unfolds further.

“For right now we’re still healing, and while we may be turning the corner and out of the dire woods, we’d best keep our focus on fully healing until we know we’re safe—as safe as anyone is who’s gone through the disease, given that there’s still no official word regarding post-infection immunity, nor how long that may be effective if it exists. How’re you feeling?”

“Worn out, more from all the intense emotions than the virus. You?”

“Filled with gratitude. And love. And about as much flavorless food as I can stand at this time. Up for a shave and shower?”

“Yes. Did my stubble abrade you too much last night?”

“It’s getting there. So are my legs.”

“Is your leg stubble bothering you?”

“Yeah. I like feeling smooth down there, especially when rubbing against you or the bed sheets.”

Shaving together in the bathroom proved to be Clark’s and Leigh’s latest unexpected bonding experience. His needing to hold her belly fully out of the way whilst she shaved the far upper reaches of her thighs proved an especial highlight.

---

First Deck Officer Ellen Glenn was unsure what to think when she briefly glanced towards Captain Cranch. Her immediate instinct was to jump, seeing a vaguely pistol-like object in his hand pointed at his forehead. Very quickly her brain processed that the object was bright orange plastic, and not especially gun-shaped.

Captain Cranch rotated the IR thermometer in his hand, reading its LCD display. “38 point 5 degrees celsius. Officer Glenn, you are hereby in charge of the ship until further notice. I shall report back via an appropriate means once triaged.”

---

“We’ll change the bedding ourselves, if your quarantine policies allow that.… We both had massive sweating, and it’ll dry out, but we don’t want to wreck your very nice bed.… Oh really? What happens to them then?… I would like to please be on the list to take or, if the price is fair, buy this one then.… Yes, seriously.… Please do! You might consider working things out with senior management and making this a general offer. I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way.… OK, thanks Emmy! Bye.”

“What was that all about?” Clark asked Leigh at the conclusion of her phone call with Reception.

“They will allow us to change our own bedding under the circumstances, since we’re likely still contagious. They’re dropping off a fresh set in a bag outside the door with a knock as usual for room service and everything else. We put all the old bedding in the bag and leave it outside the door, and they’ll collect it next time one of the stewards passes through our hall.”

“What’s the whole list thing about?” CCCHHH!

“Everyone’s so worried about COVID-19 and all the unknowns of SARS-CoV-2 that once this cruise is over they’re sending the ship to dry dock for a total public interior refresh.”

“They just did one of those on this ship a year or so ago!”

“I know; I read that too when researching the cruise.”

“They can’t afford that! They’re–, this whole pandemic is going to put a huge crimp on recreational public mingling, especially the cruise industry!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Neener. What matters to me is that Emmy says that they’re gutting the stateroom interiors, or at least anything guests can possibly touch. Meaning that they’re disposing of all these amazing cloud-comfort beds. Being in love with our matrimonial bed–”

“–Hey now!”

“Oh, come on, Neen!” she purred, cuddling into him. “You know you’re as crazy-insane in love with me as I am with you. We’ve had this discussion within the past few hours, you’ve admitted you feel it, I assure you I feel it. But anyway, whether you consider it our matrimonial bed as I do, or our cruise marriage bed, or none of the above but just the nice super-comfy bed in my-now-our stateroom, if they’re getting rid of it and I can nab it for what I consider a fair price, I want it. That’s what the whole list thing and the rest of the end of the conversation was about.”

“You’d be doing them a favor hauling it away on your dime and their schedule, so I’d not rush to offer them money.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a truck capable of hauling this bed, would you?”

“You’re getting so far ahead of yourself and reality I can’t even believe it. First we have to fully survive the pandemic. Then you have to find out what Royal Prince has in mind for where they’re going to dry dock this beast, and when their crew is taking the bedding out and how that hand-off will work. To answer your question, I can help you arrange for a moving truck for this, if you want help.”

“Yes I want help. Ideally I want things to magically work out such that you’ll be sleeping in it with me back on land, somewhere where we live together, whether legally married or not.”

“What if we break up?”

She moved his hands onto her soft, fat hips, “Then I’m going to renew my gym membership and get back to the gym! But I still want this bed.”

“I take back what I just said.”

“What?”

He deep-squeezed her hip fat, migrating back to her buns with additional squeezes, “While it’s true your belly does precede you slightly, mostly you go far to the sides of yourself and trail yourself rather than getting ahead of yourself.”

“Be thankful that I’m completely lost to love with you, so pretty much everything you say sounds loving to me. Otherwise I might be ticked for you calling me out for being pear-wide pear-bottom fat. Except maybe not, because your love and your hands and all of you are making me happier being fat than I’ve ever before been in my life.”

[Sonic Purity]

Cruise On

Day 9 of Leigh Down’s illness and Day 8 of cruise husband and stateroommate Clark Barr’s was one of feeling far better. The loss of taste and smell remained, keeping meals unpleasant necessities more about temperature and texture than any sort of flavor.

“This is so discouraging, having taken this cruise with a primary goal of food immersion, then having things become better than I could have imagined bonding in love with you and you being wholly on-board with my primary goal and its side-effects, then losing all sense of taste and smell and having eating become more chore than pleasure” she lamented, getting a rise from him via squeezing her own hips to emphasize her side(-located) effects.

“Thankfully Royal Prince is compensating everyone, so you’ll be able to have another opportunity on a future cruise, once this whole COVID-19 thing and everything else related to SARS-2 is worked out.”

“Assuming I can arrange enough time off from work.”

“Be thankful you’re not amongst those who may be getting permanent time off from work.”

“There is that” she sighed, casting her defocused gaze towards the floor. Suddenly realizing something, her head quickly snapped back up, “I’m going to have to check in with work sometime today and let them know I’m stuck here, since unless things change really quickly, I won’t be in for Monday morning as planned.”

“Yeah, if you want your job, that would be advisable. I ought to do the same thing with my work, since they’re expecting me Monday as well.”

Rather than respond, she was staring at the wall.

He commenced lightly massaging her shoulders, one shoulder per hand, “Whatcha thinking about?”

“I would’ve already been off the ship and home today, if things had gone normally. Or riding with you to get off with you in L.A.”

“Except you wouldn’t have because I would have gotten off in S.F. two days ago.”

She cuddled into him, rolling and twisting around for nuzzles and kisses. “Maybe this is better (kiss). Even with no sense of taste (kiss).”

---

Coming-on-duty First Officer Glenn had an urgent question upon arriving on the Bridge for her going-off-duty peer First Officer Crunklebunk—urgent enough that Officer Crunklebunk had to stop her at an appropriate social distance. “How is the captain?”

“Unusually laconic.”

“Does he have it?”

Officer Crunklebunk nodded. “Active disease, hence his quarantining in his office.” Using a protective clean handkerchief between her hand and the bridge’s IR thermometer, she measured her forehead temperature. The results displeased her. “Up a full degree C from the start of my shift. I may have it too. Next time you see me, I’ll be wearing a face mask.”

“Measure me, please.”

“37 point 3 C. What do you normally run?”

“High 36. 37-3’s edgy for me. I’ll have to track it. Are you OK staying on until I can arrange PPE, so I don’t spread anything I might have?”

“Sure. I’ll go carefully wash my hands and do a sterile wipe-down.”

---

Officer Glenn returned a few minutes later wearing a protective mask, handing a sealed package with the same to Officer Crunklebunk.

After officially handing off control of the ship, First Officer Glenn had one final question for departing First Officer Crunklebunk. “Status update on Captain’s efforts to arrange berthing?”

“No updates, nor efforts towards them that I’ve seen. My sense is that his current greatest challenge lies within.”

---

Leigh decided that a freshly-arrived email was worth sharing, “Well… looks like I wouldn’t have been going to work on Monday anyway.”

“You look so….”

“I’m waiting.”

“Studious? Professorial? Something in your reading glasses.”

Plllllbbt! she raspberried, then coughed. “Be glad I don’t need them to read your face clearly.”

“I thought I was an easy read.” Hack! “So what’s the deal?”

“Amalgamated Composites is a non-essential business, thus closed for the time being.”

“They’re not doing work from home?”

“Not now, according to this.” She nose-nuzzled him, “I don’t feel like debating with them about this, nor anything else, presently. Anything from your place of employment?”

“Not yet” CCHHH! “I’ve been reading about Newsom’s statewide shelter-at-home order last night. Maybe it has to happen like that, but it seems pretty dire to me.”

“If the idea is to keep people from mingling and spreading this thing, doesn’t it make sense to have a uniform procedure for the whole state rather than each city or county doing its own thing?”

“Possibly” he sighed. “So many things we don’t know about this disease yet.”

Now it was her turn to sigh, as well as cuddle into him more. “It’s all happening so fast. I hope that what we’re reading is correct: that we’re on the survival side of this.” Hack!

“How long is this thing supposed to last?”

“Fourteen days is what I’m reading.”

“Ulaaaaaaagghh!”

“Tell me about it. Wanna do some marching, just to be sure, even though thankfully we’re not wheezing?”

“Yeah. But you have to do 3 cycles before you dock against my plush port for our fourth.”

“Taskmaster” he teased, cueing up the video.

🎼 Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk

Honk! t-thh Honk! t-thh HonkHonkHonk 🎼…

---

Later in the afternoon, Clark received the email response for which he’d been waiting, reading it carefully.

“Don’t keep me in suspense.” Cough!

“Same deal as your place. Which doesn’t especially surprise me, given that as you know we’re mostly a prototyping operation, and not a lot of design work seems to be going on as the impact of this body blow hits us.” Cccc! Chhhh!

“Let’s not talk about body blows, please. Nor COVID-19.”

“What would you rather talk about?”

“Nothing. Let’s go to bed early, or at least take a nap.”

[Sonic Purity]

Broken At Berth

First Deck and current Navigating Officer Crunklebunk gently bit her lip, sighing. She paged the ship’s chief engineer.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Status of repairs needed to get us back onto main power?”

“Unknown, ma’am. I’ve never seen such sudden scoring, peeling, and heat damage to nearly every bearing surface on our prime movers. It’s as if someone sabotaged our lubricant supply, yet preliminary visual and tactile examination of a fresh sample from the same batch we’ve been using indicates no problems, and per the labeling it’s the same product we’ve been using.”

“Hotel power?”

“Might be able to get one auxiliary engine going, mixing still-viable parts between the two. That’s not going to buy us much time, unless and until myself or someone can figure out how this series of cascading failures happened.”

“Status system’s showing 3 point 7 hours remaining on emergency power. Do you concur?”

“Let me run some audit numbers. One moment.”

 

It was actually closer to 2 tedious minutes before Chief Engineer Arto Noyce reported back.

“The numbers verify, so yes, that’s accurate.”

“Presuming you can get an auxiliary going, can we make it back into port under our own power?”

“As long as we here in Engine can get something going in the next hour or two before the batteries drain too low and our emergency power goes away, and as long as you keep it at a slow crawl, should be workable. We have a port that will take us?”

“This is an emergency, Arto. Coos Bay has to take us.”

“Aye. Anything else, ma’am?”

“Not at this time. Looking forward to updates.”

“Absolutely. Over and out.”

 

---

Leigh Down and Clark Barr were but two of many cruisers who awoke to quiet misty darkness, other than sounds of human activity (usually coughing) in adjacent cabins and minimal emergency lighting in the bathroom.

“Hhhhhh” she sighed. “This bodes poorly for making tea.”

His hands were already starting their morning caressing rounds of her body by the time he responded, “It does. Bodes very well for making love, however.”

The sensual pleasures she felt driven by his passions ignited her own. She freely and joyously yielded fully, contributing her part to this first stage of their mutual morning lovemaking with caresses of her own on him, hot breath, and steamy morning kisses.

 

With nothing else to do and in their latest illness pattern of feeling very close to normal first thing in the morning, Leigh and Clark indulged and immersed themselves in extended slow, multifaceted, broad-definition sex.

 

---

Up on the Bridge, Captain Cranch looked like something the cat dragged in. Exuding illness, he absolutely wore a mask to protect others from what he had, touched nothing, and assuredly kept his distance. “I fully concur with your decisions this morning, Officer Crunklebunk—excellent work. I shall remain available for remote consultation from my cabin, where I shall be self-isolating for the duration.” CCCCHHHH! he loudly coughed, wiping his eyes with his left elbow crook. “Officer Glenn: until further notice, you are in charge of this ship.”

 

Upon Officer Glenn’s agreement, Captain Cranch sent out the requisite notification notice to the other department heads, which he had pre-drafted earlier in the morning. With a little under 2 hours of emergency power remaining, Acting Captain Glenn had some significant decisions to make in her near-term future.

 

---

“You are made out of pure awesome” Clark attempted to smile between bites of the granola energy bar Leigh’d pulled out of one of her bags and given him. It may not have been much of a brunch, but it was something.

“I defer to you as the mechanical engineer with materials expertise,” she set down her own bar to make it easier to lift her fat right hip and let it free-fall drop back atop his left hip and thigh, “though I’m quite sure I’m made up of a good amount of fat.”

“That makes you even more purely awesome (kiss). Only one of us had the foresight to pack emergency food provisions, and it wasn’t me.” munch, munch, munch

“Life happens, stuff happens. I don’t like to go hungry, if I can help it.”

“Let’s hope that good stuff happens that gets our power back before your prudent packing is run down to nothing. Apropos of which: What did one of the surviving members of the Donner Party enjoy for lunch?”

“Uaaaggh! Clark!”

“It’s just a joke; don’t overthink it and it’ll be over and forgotten sooner. Any idea?”

She shook her head, hoping doing so would shake this entire discussion out of it.

“A hand sandwich” he grinned, laughing harder seeing her wince and turn away, herself struggling not to chuckle.

 

---

With the arrival of Second Engineer Wilson Wiley to the Engine Room, the Engine Department found itself in the interesting situation of all its watchstanding officers being present at the same time, along with Chief Engineer Arto Noyce hands-on digging in to the multiple engine issues. “This looks intense” was his first comment upon arriving.

“It assuredly is” Arto sighed.

“It’s a fuckin’ bay muckin’ nightmare, is what it is!” declared on-watch (had any of the engines been running) Fourth Engineer Billy Bilge, hands oily and knuckles scuffed from unbolting manifold fasteners on several engines—yes, including on their manifolds. Legally surnamed Blige (L then I), given what an incorrigible sewer mouth he was, everyone including himself went with I then L Bilge. With years of experience beyond any of the rest of them, based on skills and seniority alone he could have been Chief Engineer for several years already, were it not for his impatience, marginal people skills, and potty mouth.

Far more patient and focused Third Engineer Dawn Rizer held up one of the shafts from the port auxiliary engine towards Engineer Wiley, the most skilled, practiced machinist of the group. “D’ya think this grooving is shallow enough to turn down?”

He claimed the piece from her, studying it carefully. “Mmmm, that’s close. Lemme mic it.”

 

On his way over to the workbench for the micrometer measurement, he asked, “How the hell did this happen?!”

“That’s what we’d all like to know” replied Arto.

“It’s a desert sandpaper cunt lube failure clusterfuck, I tell ya!”

“Probably he’s–”

–Whack!

“Jumpin’ jiminy twatfoam felching pussyramen rantallion wangworm bescumbered dankvag queefqueen fetid jizz pecker-headed Trump-brained Clinton-minged smegma-surfing spooge-slurping frio fundillo suka blyád klerelijer schweinepriester incazzato nero assmunching shitspitting buttfucking cockwaffle cumguzzling dickslapping skullfucking soggy muffin clitty-littered Facebook blumpkin!”

 

As usual after one of Billy’s cursing streaks, whomever else was in the room with him waited for the reverberation echoes to die down below audibility. Those echoes could be so beautiful, none of them wanted to miss a moment. When possible, Arto recorded them, as he often sampled various mechanical and other sounds around the Engine Room for the sound collage music he made in his spare time.

 

“Wouldn’t ‘ouch!’ have been sufficient?” Wilson calmly asked.

Arto was busy totaling up numbers on the vintage mechanical cash register he kept in the Engine Room for this very necessary purpose. Kaaa-CHINNNG! the machine rang when he pressed Total. “Forty three dollars and eight cents into the Swear Jar, Billy.”

“Fucking shit” he mumbled, digging the needed currency out of his wallet and pocket.

“What was that?”

Wilson whispered into Arto’s ear, relaying what had been mumbled.

“Fifty cents more”—Kaaa-CHINNNG!

 

Billy quickly stuffed $43.58 into the Swear Jar, a very large glass former pickle jar with a metal screw-on lid, already overstuffed with paper money and coins which had once been his, from his many prior rants.

Arto couldn’t suppress his smile, thinking {We’re that much closer to Mariner Edition Apple Watches for Wilson and Dawn.}

 

Those unfamiliar with the Sapphire Prince’s engineering staff commonly assumed that as a woman, Third Engineer Rizer would be most highly offended. Little did they know the real deal: Dawn Rizer came from a long line of old salts, in a household where swearing was as common as standard American English. Her biggest problem growing up as a young child was learning that cursing was a home/family/maritime thing, not for out in the general public.

As the years went by and she grew into adulthood, she herself seldom felt the urge or need to curse, still not at all minding hearing others do so. Billy in particular entertained her. As the rest of the team learned during an alcohol-fueled shore leave evening and night where they’d held a swearing throw-down in the bar they were visiting, Dawn Rizer could—and did—out-swear everyone other than Billy Bilge himself—and even Billy was starting to feel the heat that night.

{clitty-littered… nice} she thought as she continued working. {I’ll have to remember that one.}

 

---

Proving that he was useful for things beyond vulgar entertainment, Fourth Engineer Bilge proudly rolled out a dusty drum from the back of the supply room. “This is the good shhhhhhssstuff” he just barely corrected himself. “Old date code, before all the current batches we’ve been using.”

 

Second Engineer Wiley and Third Engineer Rizer each took samples over to the test bench, spending a few minutes analyzing them in comparison to samples from the current container they’d been using.

 

Engineer Wiley reported their combined findings, “Viscosity’s identical. Coefficient of friction’s the same on the tribometer in both my and Dawn’s tests.”

“Not the same under actual load and operating temperature, damn fuuuulllllake it!”

“Billy’s correct” Arto agreed. “By all means keep the accelerated wear tests going, but we have an engine to get online now. We’re not a chem lab; there may be all sorts of differing parameters between the batches we’re not able to measure. Let’s get Starboard Aux up and running with the older lube.”

 

---

With not even half an hour of emergency battery power left, the starboard-side auxiliary engine was successfully brought back to life, so far running acceptably, with watchstanding Engineer Rizer hovering over it like a hawk whilst Chief Engineer Arto finessed power distribution and otherwise oversaw what few critical systems were able to keep running. Each, when they had time they could safely spare, assisted Engineers Wiley and Bilge in their attempt to get Port Aux back into running order. The main engines’ frictional surfaces were too cooked to quickly get going under the circumstances.

 

To write that there was unhappiness amongst cruisers on the Sapphire Prince would be an understatement: there was absolutely no spare electricity for what in the industry was called hotel power: all electric services utilized by passengers, or those catering to their needs. Stewards roamed the halls like old-time town criers, explaining that work was ongoing to get power working, and that the ship was slowly crawling back towards the nearest port: Coos Bay. A paltry 1 1/4 knots was all Engineering could deliver from the single auxiliary generator and still maintain critical infrastructure power (navigation, internal operational communications, emergency lighting).

The Food & Beverage Department did an outstanding job creating and delivering cold sandwiches and other things which could be safely prepared without power (beyond emergency lighting). While some cruisers were surly with this latest major degradation of their cruising experience, so many were ill and tired, they didn’t really care, as long as they had liquids to drink, some form of food to eat, and working toilets.

 

---

Sudden lights, muffled HVAC sounds, and the unmistakeable sight of the stateroom’s infotainment A/V system starting up mid-afternoon immediately pulled Clark’s and Leigh’s attention away from the paper-based reading materials they’d been restfully reading.

“Yaaaaay!” with a lot of clapping filtered in from adjacent staterooms.

Leigh decided she’d join in, “Yaaaaay!” clap clap clap clap clap

 

---

“Excellent work, Engineering!” Acting Captain Glenn cheerily praised the team from the Bridge, over the intercom. “Patch into the security mics on the stateroom decks and have a listen.”

“Thanks, Captain!” Chief Engineer Noyce replied, on his entire team’s behalf.

“Over and out.”

 

Arto immediately switched the audio to the Grandview Deck, the highest stateroom-centric deck on the ship. The cheers and clapping remained clearly audible. Quickly before everyone stopped, he cycled down the remaining decks, ending with the lowest stateroom deck Sea Star.

Billy took a bow in front of again-running Port Aux, wisely keeping his mouth shut to literally keep his money in his pocket. Wilson and Dawn, equally part of the repair team, followed suit.

Billy’s silence did not last long. “Time to crack a cold one.”

“Given how long the reefers have been offline, it’d likely be a lukewarm one by this point” Arto smiled.

“Oh shiiiieeuuurrrree it would. Yes, sure, certainly.”

{That’s not what Gramps meant when he spoke of reefer} Dawn thought.

 

---

“Ohhhh right, we’re not supposed to shake hands. OK,” the newest arrival to the Bridge said as he took several steps back from the on-duty officers. “Hi. Rocky Porter, Port of Coos Bay port pilot at your service” waved the portly port pilot.

“Welcome aboard Mr. Porter. I’m Acting Captain Ellen Glenn, here with Second Deck Officer and current watch keeper Aurora Carr. User interface surfaces have been sanitized per CDC recommendations, completed minutes ago. We’ll step aside as far as we safely can while maintaining control of the ship so you can have a look.”

 

What Acting Captain Glenn of course meant by having a look was reading all the ship’s instruments and related data screens.

 

“Looks great so far” he concluded. “We’ve had some mud flow off the western shore, so you’ll do well to err port about 20 meters as you round North Bend.”

 

Consummate professional beyond reproach though she was, Second Deck Officer Carr had a deep dark secret currently vexing her: fat men with soft, wobbly bellies stomped all her passion buttons. Somehow she’d never made it as far as looking into this overpowering desire online nor with a therapist nor in any other way. She had never seen nor heard the term female FA, nor FA as Fat Admirer in any context. She especially couldn’t help losing herself to men whose bellies were barely contained in whatever they were wearing.

Such was currently the case with Mr. Porter, whose tantalizingly flabby belly overhung his belt-equipped waistband with almost sufficient gravity-enhanced fold-over to be bobbling against the very tops of his meaty thighs. His white button-down dress/work shirt had its work cut out for it, containing his gut.

{Thank goodness for social distancing} she thought. {Otherwise I’d be standing so close to him, I’d be well within his personal space.}

 

“Watch your starboard side going through the railroad bridge… looking good on port….”

 

All of Acting Captain Glenn’s focus was on piloting the ship. {Going to nail this docking. I feel it.}

 

“You’re through, you’re through” Rocky smiled. “Easy peasy under the McCullough, ease to port until you’re you’re around the turn, then unless one of us spots something unusual, aim starboard of our bay islands as you can see on the map, and into port.”

 

---

Everything remained smooth sailing, following the path port pilot Porter recommended.

“OK, your berth is coming up just past the sand pits.”

 

Acting Captain Glenn made her way out onto the starboard bridge wing, quickly getting into her zone. Deftly working the wing’s control panel, she eased the ship to a standstill at what appeared to be the perfect location dockside.

THUNK!—A shockwave jolted through much of the Sapphire Prince.

 

---

Leigh and Clark absolutely felt and slightly heard the sudden impact. “What the hell was that?!” he wondered aloud, wide-eyed.

 

---

Back on the Bridge, all present wondered the same thing. “What what what?!” frantic Acting Captain Glenn exclaimed.

Second Deck Officer Carr had at least part of the answer, “Prop lockup on the starboard Azipod.”

“How?!”

“Looking at the Azipod cam aaannnnddd water’s too murky to see anything.”

 

“Cranch to Bridge” came over the intercom. “What just happened, please?”

Acting Captain Glenn took the call, “Sudden starboard Azipod prop lockup, mechanical. No viewable image on view cam.”

“Captain Cranch, this is port pilot Rocky Porter. I’ve been paging my team to get a diver down there, but so far no response. Already filling out the issue report with Acting Captain Glenn.”

“Rocky! Glad you’re on board.” Hack! “Any preliminary guesses what might possibly have jammed the prop?” CHHH!

“No sir. Channel’s been clear all week. There was one big rock that let loose at Berth 3, but I’m not aware of any such boulders on this berth. Good to hear your voice, Cam. Hope you feel better soon.”

“Me too. I’d be up there, but I’m assuredly contagious, verified COVID-19.”

“Jeez, that’s rough! Keep breathing, sir!”

“Absolutely.” Cough!

“I’ll have information for all of you soon as I can, even if it means I have to go back to the office and squeeze into my diving duds and go look myself.”

 

Second Deck Officer Carr had a sudden “special moment” sneak up on her, envisioning Rocky Porter squeezing himself into a wetsuit, and how he’d look like a sexy well-fed sea lion.

 

“Engineering to Bridge.”

“Glenn here. What do you have, Chief?”

“A clearer view of what we hit, after water-jetting the hull cams.”

“BAAHaaaah Haah!” came out of the background.

“Hold on a minute please, Captain.” He turned away from the mic to yell, “Shut up, Billy!” then turned back. “Sorry. See it?”

“I see the wooden crate shards, but I can’t quite make out all the gray mass areas.”

“Nails. 20 penny common, according to what I can read on the crate fragments.”

{Oh good gobbledygook no!}

“That’s what that was up on the dock!” said Rocky, hovering less than social distance from Acting Captain Glenn. “I thought I was hallucinating.”

“BWAAAAH HAAH Haah! Here, here Arto, take my wallet and do what the hell ever. Acting Captain Glenn, you’re a fabulous seamun—with a U!” Billy turned and yelled towards his fellow engineers, “–whom I deeply respect, but I have to say this, no matter what it costs me. Ma’am, this docking?: you TOTALLY FUCKING NAILED IT! BAAAAAAAAH HAAAH HAAAH HAAAAAAAH!”

Chief Engineer Noyce aggressively eased his misbehaving 4th. out of the way. “I’ll dock his pay. Just let me know how much.”

“Let it go, Arto” Ellen sighed. “Engineer Bilge is technically correct in this instance. Sending Port of Coos Bay port pilot Rocky Porter down to coordinate with you on inspection, insurance, repairs, and all that. Let’s the rest of us all please go through the remainder of standard docking procedures and ensure we’re fully anchored and stabilized and that our cruisers are as well off as can be.”

 

---

Thankfully the unexpected crate of nails was the last episode of drama this especially challenging day. The Sapphire Prince was securely anchored at dock, with no need (nor ability) to hover off the coast waiting for multiple levels of bureaucracy to work things out. There remained sufficient supplies for the moment. Both auxiliary generators continued to operate acceptably well on the old-stock lubricating oil, able to supply all the power the ship needed at rest for full “hotel” functionality.

Leigh’s and Clark’s editions of COVID-19 maintained the pattern: they’d felt almost normal in the morning, but now at nightfall, were again feverish, devoid of energy, and generally feeling ill. They’d done their Honks The Goose marching mid-afternoon after the exciting ship docking, and thankfully continued to breathe freely without wheezing as they had the last few days, now with far less coughing. After yet another taste-free light dinner and restful digesting and conversation, they again went to bed early to hopefully sleep well and shake this illness off.

 

---

Sunday 22 March 2020, Day 18 for Leigh and 17 for Clark of their originally 15 day cruise, started out foggy and cold outside, warm and cuddly-cozy inside. Piled under warm blankets, sharing their supremely comfortable “cloud” bed, the restful bare skin-against-skin contact from nearly head to toe supercharged the physical aspects of their deep mutual love.

Words were few—almost none. Kisses were many: gentle, calm. Hands restfully on each other’s hips, his sinking into the fat softness of hers.

{I want this forever} she thought as they kept kissing.

{I’m addicted to her, and this love} was his thought. {I don’t want this to end.}

 

---

After the day prior’s “unplugged” minimalist brunch, it felt great to have nice hot toast and hot chocolate for their ongoing cloudy misty morning, even though they still couldn’t taste anything. She re-ran her cruise ship/seafaring playlist from the beginning and hopefully without loss-of-power interruptions through the high fidelity stateroom audio system, so happy to be lost to love sharing it and sitting-up blanket-covered bare cuddles with her cruise husband.

Nearly all the songs were ones they both knew, being close in age thus having grown up in the same time frame with the same musical sources and cultural forces. Once in awhile one of them would start singing, with the other often joining in. Despite not having great singing voices, it pleased them both that neither of them wound up coughing, going hoarse, nor wheezing. Whether or not they were singing at a given moment, many songs triggered individual memories forged on this cruise: happy memories, most of which kept the flame of their affectionate romantic love running high.

 

She felt Clark’s mood suddenly shift, along with his body stiffening up like a retriever or pointer dog fixating on prey, soon as the distorted spoken introduction of the next song began:

What really went on there?
We only have this excerpt:

Entire song on YouTube

She saw and felt goosebumps on his arms during the opening electric guitar chorus.

In their time, the vocals arrived:

🎼 There's a party going on down around here
Cruiser’s Creek yeah
Watch the shirt-tails flapping in the wind
Sidewalk running
See the people holding from the back
Hat-boaters tilting
There's a party going down around here
Cruiser’s Creek now 🎼

Tears began dribbling out of his eyes. Whatever was going on with him she sensed it was best to cuddle him snugly and let the experience unfold.

His crying intensified as the song continued, reaching river level near its intense conclusion.

 

Quickly, she paused her music player before the next song started. He held her tightly, still crying.

 

After over a minute of musical silence and slightly lesser crying, she dared to ask, “What does that song mean to you, Neener?”

“It’s one of my favorite Fall songs” he managed to speak through his tears and sniffles. “It’s been over 2 years, but I’m still not over Mark E. Smith’s death.”

“Seems to me from what I read online that he didn’t have an especially healthy lifestyle. The picture of him with 50+ lit cigarettes all stuffed into his mouth at one time is memorable.”

He nodded, his crying subsided down to occasional sniffles. “Is that in your playlist based on it’s title?”

“I read that Cruiser’s Creek is based upon a cruise ship trip Mr. Smith once took with his parents or family or somesuch.”

“Never knew that (sniff). But then with his lyrics it can be tough to tell to what he’s referring. Thank you for letting me cry it out; I think it helped.”

“Of course, Neen!” she replied with a sweet kiss.

 

Restarting her music playlist led to happier times. Having marched so often to Honks The Goose, they decided today instead they’d hands-holding jump-around dance to a song from their young single-digit-age childhood:

🎼 Come on down to my boat baby
Come on down where we can play
Come on down to my boat baby
Come on down we'll sail away 🎼

 

---

The Sapphire Prince wasn’t sailing anywhere anytime soon. Beyond needing to wait on parts to repair the main engines, beyond the starboard Azipod damage (propeller proper and the device itself) being significant enough to require full dry dock servicing, personnel across all departments on board the ship were succumbing to what seemed to be COVID-19, verified so far only in a few cases such as Captain Cranch, via the very few testing kits the medical team had been able to obtain. The ship remained anchored in the Port of Coos Bay under quarantine, with no one boarding and none other than the severely ill allowed to disembark, for emergency or urgent treatment in the nearby local hospital.

 

---

After their cruise-themed dancercise session and prior to lunch, Leigh declared it was time for another mutual shaving session in the bathroom, with a nice comfortably hot shower together afterwards—hot water and hot passions each hoped, though they only spoke of the water.

Each of them needed a toilet opportunity before getting started. Leigh took hers second.

“You look so pretty sitting there” he couldn’t help noting with a lusty grin.

“You just like the way my fat hips spread so far and wide on hard surfaces.”

CRACK!

“Oooh!” she exclaimed.

“What just happened?”

“My fat ass just cracked the toilet seat. Thankfully there wasn’t anywhere to fall, beyond barely 2 centimeters down.”

“Lemme see that.”

“Let me finish wiping and all that first, please.”

 

He was right there checking out the broken seat soon as she flushed and moved aside to wash up at the sink, being sure to lather her hands up nicely with soap including on the back side and between her fingers, and wipe and rinse for a full 20 seconds at least.

 

“What do you conclude?”

 

He said nothing, stepping intimately close to her then suddenly doing something she never expected: throwing his arms around her, grabbing her tightly, then briefly lifting her up.

“AAAGGH! Clark! What are you doing?!”

“You’re heavy alright, but not heavy enough that any reasonably-designed seat should have broken in normal usage.”

“You could hurt yourself! I weigh more than you!”

“Yes, and I expect we’ve both read of slight-build mothers who’ve briefly lifted up corners of heavy automobiles to save their children. I’m not saying I’m up to carrying you over any threshold nor hauling your succulent fat ass and the rest of your magnificence from here to our cruise nuptial bed, but just barely lifting you off the ground for a second or two is still within my ability. Come look at this hinge.”

She decided a gentle swat of his butt was in order as she sidled up to him.

“What do you see?”

“A broken hinge. What should I see?”

“A total lack of reinforcing ribbing or any other reinforcement and insufficient thickness for this low grade plastic to withstand entirely reasonable tensile forces. To me this shouts aesthetics having trumped sound engineering.”

“Should I even bother getting with Facilities to have them install a new one, if it’s likely to be the same garbage? I mean, it still works as a seat, if we’re careful.”

He was back leaning over, studying the failure more closely. “I would. Looks to me like fine cracking from chemical degradation on top of the poor design, implying that a brand new one will likely buy us enough time to make it through the rest of our bizarre cruise.”

 

She called in the problem right away, hoping that doing so might lead to a repair sometime this same day. Clark horned in to emphasize that if they had any stronger seats in stock, or even any of a different design, such a replacement would be preferred.

 

---

Leigh and Clark dared going ahead with their shave and showering, spending less time in the shower than they otherwise might have. It worked out: the knock on their door didn’t come until nearly 2½ hours after they’d called in the problem, well after they were dried off and back into clothes.

 

Knock knock knock “Plumbiiinng!”

 

Clark, closest, opened the door.

“Step back as far as possible, please, since you’re contagious.”

 

He did as advised, all the way back next to Leigh near their bed.

 

The cloth-masked plumber discreetly closed the door, waving over the distance as he said, “Thanks, folks. Hate to be so stand-offish, but this COVID thingie isn’t the ordinary flu, or even norovirus cruise ships tend to get hit with.”

Clark’s eyes gravitated to Walt’s (per his name tag) heavy toolbox in one hand and the fancy and big-looking boxed toilet seat in his other. “Bidet seat?”

“Yep. On deck to be deployed across our suites and other higher-end staterooms during the next refresh, upcoming sooner than any of us had imagined. Word from the front desk is that you all or at least one of you may be in engineering, talking about stress fractures and reinforcement and all that good stuff.”

“I am a mechanical engineer, and Leigh’s a tech writer at my firm’s preferred composite materials supplier. The firm where I work, not that I in any way own it” he quickly clarified.

“Excellent. I had a hydraulics focus in my undergrad work. Hands-on always appealed to me far more than sitting at a desk doing math and CAD designing things, so I went the technician route and became a licensed plumber instead. Love going places, so cruise ship work proved appealing.

“But enough of my life story. You’ll understand more than most cruisers that our regular seats are shit I never would have specced, if I’d been part of the process. Beyond that, we’re nearly out of stock on those, and with things all crazy, resupply could be a problem.”

“Might there be more failures at the present time, due to cruisers such as myself fattening up during quarantine?”

Walt swallowed nervously at this passenger’s forthrightness. “Given what I consider to be a design and/or quality problem which has the regular seats on the edge of usability for those of average weight, we have to allow that your theory may be a factor. Without having done any rigorous, formal analysis, to me this combo multifunction seat seems vastly better designed structurally. The reason I’m carrying tons of tools is so I can do a full bidet hookup, not just a seat changeout. The hope our hotel department and I have is that you two will be able to handle the general concept and the UI without any of our usual formal documentation, and will be willing to be beta testers giving us, or at least me, your honest, informed feedback.”

“Can you leave the box where I can see it, so I can look up data on this model online?”

“Sure thing, soon as I get it out. Either of you two need to go? This is gonna take the better part of an hour, if all goes to plan.”

 

Neither of them needed to use the toilet, allowing Walt to get directly to work.

 

“316L stainless, I’m likin’ that” Walt called out over the distance from the toilet to the bed where Clark and Leigh sat.

“I would hope so!” Clark called back. “Any lesser grade would be silly in this application.”

“Eh, it’s not that corrosive in here. There’s more than one reason the bathrooms are farthest away from the windows and outside doors.”

 

Leigh enjoyed listening to the conversation and accompanying tool work sounds. {Wish I could at least watch.}

 

“How’re you gonna power that thing?”

“Every stateroom on this ship is wired to the toilet position. Someone thought they might use electric-assist flush models when this ship was built, I suppose.”

 

Conversation ceased, with nothing more to be said at the moment, and from the sound of things, Walt needing to focus.

 

A few minutes later Clark asked, “What’s the word regarding the rough ending of the docking maneuver?”

“Don’t know. Every time I ask Engineering they bust up laughing and go all incoherent. Deck doesn’t want to talk about it until the official report is out. For sure it was one of the roughest ones I’ve ever experienced.”

 

---

Standing in the bathroom doorway, plumber Walt Waters no longer needed to raise his voice to be heard. “OK folks, all tested and good to go, as you at least partly heard. Bidet and drying functions all seem to work as per the startup checklist procedure. Paper copy of the operating instructions is atop the new seat.”

“Don’t you need that?” asked Clark.

“No. We’ve got another 3 of these in stock, if anyone in Docs needs a copy. Please kindly leave yours somewhere visible in the bathroom when you finish your cruise, and it’s all good.”

“What about our report?”

“It’d be great if you could email it to me at w waters at royalprincecruiselines dot com. Any reasonable format, any of the usual software programs works for me. Also email me there directly if there are any issues with this thing that you can’t easily work out on your own without tools and supplies. Take care you two!” he waved, heading for the main door. “Hope you feel better.”

“Thanks Walt!” they called out together, just before he closed the door behind him.

 

---

“My tush says Yes” Leigh grinned, having tried her first full pee/wash/dry bidet seat cycle.

“I’ll have to wait until the next time I have to drop something to get the full experience.”

“Ya never know. Might be stimulating to have it wash other thangs” she giggled, playing with his.

“Isn’t that what whirlpool tubs are for?”

“Don’t make me sad, Neener.”

“What’s sad about that?”

“I’d love to be in a whirlpool tub with you right about now” she purred, wrapping her arms around him then kissing him.

“I’d love to have this illness over.”

She couldn’t help sighing along with him. “Yeahhh. Maybe it’s time for a light something for dinner, rest and digest, then bed.”

“I’m there.”

 

---

“What the hell is a Class C misdemeanor?” Clark asked Leigh mid-morning Monday 23 March 2020, Day 18 of his cruise and 19 of hers.

“I have no idea. What’s the context?”

“Charge for violating Oregon Governor Kat Brown’s stay-at-home order. I understand what they’re trying to do by ensuring that people actually stay far enough away from each other to keep COVID-19 from spreading, but dang that seems draconian.”

“Does it say whether that’s a maximum charge, or whether there’s a warning first?”

“Not that I’m seeing, but I haven’t looked up the actual original order or proclamation or statute or whatever it legally is.”

“I’ll polite non-money wager that that’s a maximum charge, warnings happen first, and discretion is allowed.”

“I’m all for leniency and to a point discretion, but too much discretion and one has discriminatory enforcement of laws meant to apply equally to everyone.”

 

errrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrr!—the sound of the latest of all-too-many ambulance sirens ended their conversation, drawing their attention out their full-wall-height stateroom door/window.

One good aspect about Leigh’s stateroom being situated where it was and the ship being positioned as it was in port was that they had a nice view of the dock and beyond it, the city of Coos Bay. Less good was having a front-row seat for ambulances and—worse though much quieter—the coroner’s wagon. Reading the news they knew things weren’t as dire on board the Sapphire Prince as in parts of Italy or Wuhan, but as with other notorious cruise ships as far back as February, their cruise ship had made international news.

So far Leigh and Clark had done well doing what they could to put the dire circumstances in which they found themselves out of their minds, focusing on their own healing. Seeing someone being wheeled out into the pouring rain on a gurney by no less than 6 frantic medical personnel decked out in protective garb and with IV bags, an oxygen tank, and other impressive-looking equipment they could not identify as the gurney flew by unsettled them. Instinctively they sought comfort in each other’s arms as the team raced the gurney to, then quickly into, the waiting ambulance.

“Two of them that weren’t EMTs just climbed in the back!” cried Leigh, with a whimper.

“Keep healing, Chonky. We’ve got to keep healing. We can’t possibly help anyone else nor even leave this stateroom until we’re healed and no longer contagious.”

 

Panic buying. State after state locking down, issuing stay-at-home or shelter-at-home orders. Doubling or more of COVID-19 death rates in a single day in some places. All over the the United States, shit was getting very, very real in terms of this rapidly-spreading viral disease.

For Leigh Down and Clark Barr, this dark, rainy day was a day of introspection: taking stock of who and what and where they were in this rapidly-changing world in which they found themselves. Equally it was a day for supportively looking out past the immediate crisis on their cruise ship to really read and see pictures of life on land in their nation and home state. They saw pictures they never thought they’d see in their lifetime: bare grocery store shelves reminiscent of the greatest failings of the Communist Soviet Union, empty of basic necessities like toilet paper, rice, canned goods, flour, and water. Zinc and vitamin C were as scarce on land as in their ship’s infirmary. Week-or-so-old pictures of long lines at and inside grocery stores that made the worst holiday season shopping day ever look mild, from before the social distancing orders were in effect.

All throughout the trip so far at other points since working out their differences and finding love, they’d supported each other through these moments short and long of adversity. This day in particular with seemingly so many sounding very ill within their hearing and several ambulance and at least one coroner visit, the whole day was one of being supportive and taking care of each other in small ways as well as big—like life partners.

 

---

The post-sunset (invisible through the stormy weather) evening brought at least one ray of virtual sunshine.

“How’s your fever, Neener?”

“Now that you mention it, quite mild. I’m mainly dealing with the energy drain and ongoing lack of taste and smell.”

“I’m not feeling one.”

He held the back of his hand to her forehead. “You do feel about normal.”

She did the same for him. “You’re a touch warm, but nothing like you’ve been.”

“I’m ready to go to bed, in hopes my body can heal further and keep things that way. Up for moving towards sleep yet?”

“Don’t know about up for it, but I’m down for it: resting down under the covers cuddling you.”

“Makes sense you’d be more down than up come to think of it, given your surname.”

 

She briefly stuck out her tongue, afterwards nuzzling against him during a hug, inspiring him and herself to fully wrap up their day and get into bed.

[Sonic Purity]

Noisy and Stanky

“Everyone here?” asked Zoom meeting host Captain Cranch, from his cabin, coughing loudly. “Acting Captain Glenn, can you hear and see me?”

“Yes sir. You are coming through loud and clear here on the Bridge. Can everyone else see and hear myself and Officer Carr?”

“Not until she says something.”

“That’s enough, Billy” Chief Engineer Noyce chided him.

“I’m on the same mic and camera as Acting Captain Glenn, 2 meters apart” commented Second Deck Officer Carr.

“Let’s take a moment for roll call, per department, ranked highest to lowest, so we’ll all know whether we can all see and hear one another. I’ll start by virtue of being the one hosting this meeting in the software. Inactive Captain Cranch.”

“Acting Captain Glenn.”

“First Deck Officer Crunklebunk.”

“Second Deck Officer Mayhew.” CCCHHH!

“Second Deck Officer Carr.”

“Engine Department, Chief Engineer Noyce.”

“Second Engineer Wiley.”

“Third Engineer Rizer.”

“Fourth Engineer Bilge.”

“Hotel Department, Hotel Director Biltmore.”

“Woggling giant penis-head! BAAAAAAHHHH!”

 

Yes: their meeting was Zoom-bombed. In this case from an all-too-high-resolution full-frame circumcised erect glans and shaft end, waving slightly back and forth, aimed towards the camera looking like it might soon blow.

 

“Ugh” inactive Captain Cranch grunted, before again coughing loudly. “Suggestions?”

“Look on in awwwe and SUCK IT, weiners! Woggle woggle woggle woggle woggle!”

“Permission to take charge, Captains Cranch and Glenn?”

“I’m in charge! LLLllllarge and in charge! BAHAHAHAHAHAAAAH!”

“Granted”, “Yes” they replied in turn to Engineer Rizer.

“Everybody else other than Billy turn away from your screen and try not to listen, please. Hey Shrivel-Gland! What’s wrong with your weak willy?”

“Nnnnnnothing! Behold its Mighty Meaty Awesomeness!”

“You don’t have enough gland to tit-wank a tsetse fly! What’s that crusty bit all about?”

“There is no crusty bit!”

“The one right near your worm hole!”

“My Mighty Worm’s meatus cannot be defeat-us!”

“Don’t quit your day job—assuming you even have one—if that’s all you’ve got for rhyming, Loser. Not talkin’ ’bout your putrid wee-hole, talkin’ ’bout the parasite pit half a centimeter off from your vegan meatless!”

“I’m all beef!”

 

Dawn Rizer knew she was succeeding: it was obvious that the intruder was beginning to go flaccid. “Grime-sotted gristle at best! What’s your opinion, Dr. Bilge?”

“That fuckless wee wand is so soft, you ain’t got no Mohs! It’s not even worth putting in a display case at the It Died A Virgin museum as a virginal canker-cased wankless wonder ’cause the display case would need a microscope for anybody to see it!”

“I cum in rivers of fertile gllllllory!”

“You dribble less than Professor Chaos’s pathetic garden hose!” Dawn shot back.

“That pustulant twig wishes it could be as ‘hard’ as a ragged dog-chewed high-flex garden hose!” Billy piled on.

“It’s a sackless disease vector seldom succeeding at crack shack skank-banging!”

“In his dreams! Ain’t got nothing to slip in, and he’s too busy felching flea-infested donkeys and literally eating steamy shit from antibiotic-addled cattle anyway!”

 

Hearing the intruder gagging slightly, Dawn went in for what she hoped would be the close. Thinking quickly, she pulled down her pants and undies, grabbed some nearby ground-up clay, spread her legs and rubbed the clay on her genital exterior. To her surprise, there were some small worms which had somehow gotten into the ground clay. “Hey Loser, look: clitty-litter with wangworms!”

“AAAAAGGGH! You people are SICK!” he yelled, quickly disconnecting.

“Takes one to know one” she snickered, cleaning herself up and ensuring all the worms were off her.

CCCHHH! “Technically he’s correct about the sick part.”

“Please tell me you didn’t watch and listen to all that, Captain Cranch!”

“Most impressive, Engineer Rizer. You as well, Engineer Bilge. Please check internal messaging for login parameters for the new, properly secured Zoom session Captain Glenn is hosting. My apologies for this improperly configured one, which is now ending.”

 

---

The new actually private Zoom session run by Acting Captain Glenn went more smoothly. Once everyone joined and confirmed they could all see and hear each other during a new roll call, Chief Engineer Noyce presented the official report detailing findings regarding the docking incident.

“A 1 cubic meter wooden crate filled with loose 20 penny nails of Chinese origin and manufacture remained dockside, left for unknown reasons by the merchant vessel most recently docked at this pier prior to our arrival. Dock structural issues made the crate unstable enough that our upper hull vents produced sufficient air flow to perturb the crate. Vibrational energy of the combined crate and dock led to structural failure of the latter, causing the crate to fall into the bay at the precise moment and position to collide with our starboard prop.

“The combination of the water impact plus propeller contact shattered the crate, freeing the nails and creating numerous sharp shards of wood. The unexpected forces involved broke pieces off the propeller, irreparably damaging it. Enough nails happened to slip into the Azipod housing via the standard and minute gasketing gaps to get into the gearing and jam the starboard Azipod internals, thus its propeller. Further damage analysis must await dry dock teardown.”

Following his latest loud cough, acting in a position of neutrality as one not directly involved during the incident, inactive Captain Cranch asked, “Responsibility for the incident and recommendations to avoid similar incidents in the future?”

“This was a freak accident, thus the probability of similar incidents coming up in the future is minuscule. Nothing should have been left on the dock, and even if due to the emergency nature of our port call something had to be out there, it should not have needed to sit so close to water’s edge. Off the record and in confidentiality, a representative of the port confirms that the insufficient structural integrity of the dock is unacceptable, and is in the process of being addressed. Other than refusing to dock upon spotting any foreign objects dockside, there is nothing anyone on our ship could have done nor could in the future do to prevent an absolutely bizarre ‘perfect storm’ incident such as this.”

 

Captain Glenn covered her mouth, masking her sigh of great relief. The meeting wrapped up soon thereafter.

 

---

“Yes, Bridge?” CHHHHH!

Captain Cranch recognized the voice of Acting Captain Glenn immediately, soon as she started speaking. “So sorry to bother you, sir. Port of Coos Bay is demanding to know when we will clear our berth and exit the port. They are not accepting my response of ‘indefinite, unknown due to unresolved major mechanical failure’.”

“Not accepting it in what way? As you have correctly pointed out to them, this ship is not sea-worthy.”

“We’re in one of their few deep-water large ship berths, impeding the commercial shipping which is their livelihood.”

“I shall save my vitriolic responses for those responsible for triggering them. Upon your independent conclusion that it is prudent to do so, please delegate back to me authority over this ship for the time being, and connect me to them.”

 

Acting Captain Glenn proceeded to formally restore command of the ship to Captain Cranch. Once she routed the incoming call to him, it was between him and the port authority.

 

---

“Correct: unknown.… The ship is not sea-worthy, sir.… Assuredly, I can explain. Critical members of our Engine Department have fallen ill with COVID-19, creating an acute labor shortage of qualified personnel familiar with our hardware and our company’s protocols.” CCCHHH! “Beyond and apart from that, even were a full staff available, our parts suppliers are struggling to operate, again due to the COVID-19 disease. No personnel, no parts equals no moving of this ship.…

“Sorry no: we cannot and will not shut down our auxiliary generators.” KKKCCCH! “We have well over two thousand seven hundred passengers, crew, and other staff on board this ship, all needing electricity from those generators for vital survival functions, including but not limited to sanitation.… Our generators meet or exceed all U.S. national and international regulations for noise and emissions, sir. Show me your 6.6 or preferably 11 kV high-capacity shore power hookup of which there is no documentation on the port’s website and none of our crew have spotted and we’ll hook right up, shut down our generators, and work through the payment terms.… I am not making light of this situation because there is nothing about it of which to make light, sir. For a port which advertises itself as the future of U.S. west coast shipping and being in a highly environmentally-aware area, it befuddles me why you lack shore power for large reefer, tanker, and container ships your site suggests you wish to frequent the port.… 

“Correct: we are going to remain docked here at this berth on our extended emergency technical stop until the first of this pandemic emergency being over, or disembarking of all on board save our crew for repatriation or chartered return trips home, which so far for reasons beyond my comprehension, we are being disallowed to implement per inscrutable decisions at the U.S. federal level.… I dare you to send qualified individuals approved by my employer on board this ship riddled with COVID-19, Mr. Bull. Check your news sources: the eyes of the world are upon us. Most of the world has now heard of the ill-fated cruise of the Sapphire Prince, following in the footsteps of Princess Cruises’ Diamond Princess voyages last month and apparently with no lessons learned by authorities at any level.… Good day to you as well, sir.”

 

---

“Bridge, First Officer Crunklebunk. Yes, Captain?”

“Whereabouts is Officer Glenn?”

“She’s taken ill, sir. Currently being triaged in the Infirmary.”

“Very well; I’ll contact her directly. Please prepare to take command of this ship if she is unable to do so. I remain unqualified to be in command outside of dealing with severe, unreasonable issues such as stubborn bull-headed bureaucrats.”

 

---

Most of the rest of those aboard the Sapphire Prince knew nothing of the day’s drama affecting senior crew members, in large part from those crew members’ deft handling of the issues. For Leigh and Clark, the 20th. day of her no-longer-going-anywhere cruise and 13th. day of presumed (not tested) COVID-19 illness (one less on each of those day counts for Clark) had been another cold intermittently light rainy drizzly gray day—perfect for being stuck inside a cozy, well-appointed stateroom under the plush covers of a “cloud” bed bare with one’s lover.

By late afternoon it had become particularly windy inside Leigh’s and Clark’s stateroom. Not because they had any exterior doors open, nor because of any structural air leaks or failures. Rather, it was the sort of human-generated wind one might expect to find amongst members of a rowdy fraternity, partying in their frat house.

Specifically, the super burritos they’d shared for lunner (late lunch + early dinner) gassed up their digestive systems sufficiently that they were currently having a blast (repeated ones, actually) holding a farting contest.

 

Fluuurrrbbbbt Clark’s butt sounded off, to his smile.

“Oh yeah, check this out!” declared Leigh, shifting her body around to draw her fat, flabby buns closer together, holding them tight that way as she sat back down. FLOT FLOT FLOT FLOT FLOT her butt slowly, repeatedly popped, the delay related to the longer distance from anus to exterior along with having to sneak out of a far tighter crack.

“Ah, here we go.” FrrrrAAAAAAZZZZZZ!

 

Leigh sniff-inhaled a few times, studying what she was sensing. “I’m smelling that! That’s the first thing I’ve smelled in over 2 weeks!”

“May you forever more be that excited smelling my farts.”

“I never said it smelled good” she giggled, poking him playfully. “More that smelling anything at all, good, bad, or otherwise, gives me hope that this illness ordeal is finally winding down.”

 

The farting contest itself wound down at this point. In terms of illness, the tiredness and general malaise remained.

As the course of their evening went on, another sign of hope: neither of them had fevers.

[Sonic Purity]

Cabin Rage

“WHAT DOES IT MATTER IF WE SAVE A FEW HUNDRED OR MAYBE A THOUSAND MORE PEOPLE IF WE BLOW THE ECONOMY UP AND PUT THE WORLD INTO THE WORST DEPRESSION SINCE THE 1930S?!?!”

“ARE YOU PUTTING PROFIT BEFORE PEOPLE?! YOU ANIMAL!”

 

13 days confined to a small stateroom could and likely would be challenging for most people, whether individuals, families, or as with Leigh Down and Clark Barr, couples. Some might claim that the prior day’s New Moon further contributed. Illness, though no worse and seemingly still getting better, likely contributed as well. Stress related to ongoing world events and the sudden explosion of COVID-19 cases across major cities in the U.S. absolutely contributed.

Whatever the precise cause or combination of causes, the raging discord exploded suddenly Wednesday morning 25 March, escalating from nothing to total blowout in less than a minute.

 

“TWO TRILLION DOLLARS IN NEW DEBT! THE DEBT’S ALREADY KILLING US, MAKING AMERICA SHITTIER THAN EVER!” Clark ranted at full yelling volume. “FUTURE GENERATIONS HAVE NO HOPE!”

“WHAT DO YOU CARE ABOUT FUTURE GENERATIONS, YOU CHILDLESS SCHOOL-KILLING CREEP?!”

 

The only good news about this altercation was that it remained a verbal argument, not in any way a physical fight. Plenty of stomping around and posturing to be sure, but no contact, and no throwing things other than occasionally a bed pillow tossed hard down onto the top of the bed neither of them were currently on.

Actually there was a second piece of good news: their lungs were working great. So well in fact that riled occupants of adjacent staterooms occasionally banged against the wall to try and get the ragers to shut up.

So furious were the argument combatants, they either couldn’t hear the demands to quiet down, or, more likely, were ignoring them.

 

“PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE PROPAGANDA CAMPS FOR GENERATING MORE SHEEPLE!”

“YOU’RE A PRODUCT OF THEM, YOU HYPOCRITE!”

“SO ARE YOU, AND LOOK WHAT YOU STAND FOR!”

“COMPASSIONATE HUMANITY IS WHAT I STAND FOR, NOT DOLLAR SIGNS!”

“THE STOCK MARKET IS CRASHED! WE’VE HAD THREE BLACK DAYS IN THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS!—NOT ONE A GENERATION!”

“PEOPLE NEED TO LIVE!”

“PEOPLE NEED PAYING JOBS! THIS ISN’T PLAY MONEY! WE’RE GOING WEIMAR, I JUST KNOW IT!”

“OH RIGHT, LIKE YOU JUST KNEW THAT SARS-CoV-2 WAS A HUMAN-MADE RUSSIAN PLOT, UNTIL YOU SUDDENLY DISAVOWED IT!” She barely avoided jabbing him in the chest at the last moment.

“I ADMIT MY MISTAKES, UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE.”

“THOSE OF US WHO AREN’T UNHINGED AND GO WITH SCIENCE AND RELIABLE SOURCES TEND TO MAKE FAR FEWER MISTAKES!”

“PROPERLY DONE SCIENCE IS WHAT I’M ALL ABOUT! CORRUPTED SCIENTISTS WORKING UNDER THE JACK BOOTS OF BIG PHARMA OR GOVERNMENT OR OTHER THUGS AREN’T DOING LEGIT SCIENCE!”

“BIG PHARMA SAVED YOUR LIFE!”

“BIG PHARMA PERMANENTLY DAMAGED ME!”

“WHAT?! THEY MADE YOU THINK ALL CRAZY LIKE THIS?!”

“YOU WELL KNOW WHAT THEY DID TO ME!” he loudly hissed. “AND WHAT ABOUT THE GATES INTERVIEW WITH TED CURATOR CHRIS ANDERSON YESTERDAY?! ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR BODY-EMBEDDED DIGITAL DATA STORE AND SERIAL NUMBER, REQUIRED SO YOU CAN WORK OR TRAVEL OR HAVE ANY TEENY TINY SHARD OF FEIGNED WATERED-DOWN FREEDOM WHATSOEVER?!?! IT’S ALL PART OF HIS FORCED VACCINATION AGENDA!”

“YOU AND I DIDN’T DIE FROM SMALLPOX BECAUSE WE HAD VACCINES AS CHILDREN! VACCINES WOOORRRRK!”

“NOT ALL VACCINES ARE THE SAME! THE SHIT THEY USE NOW ISN’T WHAT WE GOT! BIG PHARMA DOESN’T EVEN HAVE ANY LIABILITY FOR KILLING PEOPLE WITH THEIR SHITTY UNDER-TESTED NEWER VACCINES THEY’RE FORCING PEOPLE TO TAKE!”

“BULLSHIT!”

“LOOK IT UP! UNLESS YOU’RE TOO MUCH OF A LACKEY TO THE CULT OF THE OMNIPOTENT STATE!”

“PEOPLE COME TOGETHER IN SOCIETIES AND FORM GOVERNMENTS TO HELP EACH OTHER, IF YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS!”

“GOVERNMENTS USURP POWER, BECOME CORRUPT, AND NEED TO BE REPLACED!”

“SO YOU’RE CALLING FOR THE OVERTHROW OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT?!”

“I’M CALLING FOR PEOPLE TO WAKE THE HELL UP, SMELL THE SHIT, AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE BROKEN ONE WE HAVE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! WHICH IT ALMOST IS, OR MAY ALREADY BEEEEE!”

 

Seeing his eyes look more than momentarily at her wobbly fat hips sent Leigh’s rage into a whole other direction: exercise. She commenced stretching, marching (twice as fast as she and Clark had been doing to Honks The Goose), running in place, and otherwise furiously burning off calories. Had she been allowed out of her stateroom, she’d likely already be fully dressed, in her running shoes, and heading for the Sports deck to run laps.

 

At first Clark ignored her, even as she broke into running around in circles. Soon, a better idea came to him.

 

“Put that down!” hhhh, hhhh she panted, out of breath.

“Why?”

hhhh “YOU can’t make videos of me without my permission!” hhhh, hhhh

“Who’s going to stop me?”

“DAAAAGGGGHHH!” she screamed, “I’m gonna run your memory out!”

{I look forward to that} he thought, making no effort to suppress his grin.

 

Having been spending the vast majority of their time together in their stateroom with no clothes on, such was the situation all morning so far today. Leigh remained in too much of a rage to get into any clothing. More than that, she knew her body needed all possible freedom of movement to exercise as deeply and thoroughly as she intended. She satisfied herself with cursing him, flipping him off, and otherwise being as nasty to him as possible as she went about her burst of athleticism.

 

---

Credible exercise though Leigh managed, her stamina ran out well before Clark’s iPhone memory did. She established a force field of rage around herself atop the bed. He was left to take refuge on the couch. Given that he’d been sitting on it for much of his videography of her snarling bare exercise routine, he didn’t mind.

 

Tension between them remained thick enough to cut with a chain saw. At least at this point they became and remained quiet, to the great relief of those locked down adjacent to them.

 

---

The silent independent staying-apart rage continued well into the early afternoon. A new wave of anger crashed on his emotional shoreline, once he realized that she’d ordered her own lunch without including him at all, making more work for the overburdened room service delivery staff.

 

Half an hour later, she first felt hurt then anger once he took delivery of his lunch: the fragrance of his bacon cheese sandwich was making her hungry again already. As much or more than that, part of her wanted to share that she could again smell things far closer to normal, with the rest of her remaining furious that she’d let herself bond deeply in love with such an antisocial cretin. Worst of all, he’d ordered a vanilla cupcake with sapphire blue frosting, which not merely called out to her, but yelled for her to savor, enjoy, and ingest it—seemingly nearly as loud as Clark had been yelling at her earlier… and her at him.

 

---

The many wordless and near-silent (apart from breathing) hours apart gave Clark plenty of time to take stock of his life. The more often he replayed their blowout argument in his mind, gradually over time the more he felt that he’d let emotions suppress his reason. He wasn’t feeling a need to apologize to her to get something from her or even necessarily for them to make peace and get along, nice as these things would be. The deeper motivation was the principle of owning his mistake or mistakes—he still wasn’t sure if it was singular or plural—whether or not things between them would be, or could be, patched up.

Knowing how important it was to communicate correctly the first time, he spent the first half of the next hour clarifying in his mind what it truly was that he wished to convey, then another quarter hour optimizing his wording.

 

After several deep, slow, near-silent calming breaths, he stood up and approached the bed.

 

“I’m sorry, Leigh–”

“–Oh no!: You can’t apologize your way through life! I’ve seen your true colors, and they’re not pretty!”

He resisted the momentarily strong urge to light into her anew, instead taking a breath, relaxing the muscle tension he could feel throughout his body, and calmly walking back over to the couch.

 

---

As afternoon became evening, Leigh needed a bathroom visit. She’d had her own several hours since blocking his apology attempt to more calmly reflect on what all had happened this morning, and life in general. Their eyes briefly directly met as she passed: one of those timeless moments etched into memory, clear in the memory mind as the moment it happened, many years after the fact. She continued on her way and undertook her business, making use of the full bidet seat washing and drying cycle.

She averted her gaze on her return trip, leading him to figure nothing had changed between them.

 

A minute later she was back. Carrying one of several of the stateroom’s soft microfiber blankets, she headed directly towards him, draping it over him with care as he sat on the couch, as though she cared. “It’s getting cold.”

“Mmm hmm. Climate control’s working well in here though, thankfully.”

It surprised him when she reached over and placed the back of her hand against his forehead. “Your temperature feels normal. How do you feel overall?”

“Still feeling run down, otherwise closer to normal healthy. What about you?”

“I’m feeling basically recovered, other than worn down. But that might not be the illness.”

“May I please share with you the grand, gigantic, biggest mistake I made today?”

 

She scanned his face, whether looking for tells or truth or what, she was not sure. Almost immediately she regretted doing so, feeling her romantic self pulled back into his spell. “Alright.”

“I epically failed one of the primary rules on Wikipedia, and in life in general: Assume Good Faith. I attacked you this morning from an irrational mind place fueled by my greatest fears, treating you like an evil enemy bent on the destruction of all I believe in, rather than the inherently good, fair, kind, rational, reasonable person I know you to be. Driven by fear and anger at scary things beyond my control, I attacked you and your belief system, rather than entering into a calm discussion which might have allowed me to better understand why you believe the things you do about people, society, government, and so on which differ from my beliefs. I lost the opportunity to learn and grow in my desperate attempt to bludgeon my views into you rather than calmly offering them in an understandable, measured fashion for your consideration, or at least information. Personal attacks don’t do anyone any good—no, wrong: they don’t do me any good. I can’t speak for anyone else. I regret having launched so many this morning.”

“May we please order dinner together as usual? My biggest regret of the day at the moment is engaging in discussion of any form of belief system, which we know politics and economics are, before we had breakfast. One of my biggest fears, mostly irrational, is terror of having no food to eat. That’s behind why I remembered to pack the energy bars, and why there’s currently a month’s worth of dry and canned and aseptic and related goods at my home, so I’ll hopefully survive the Big One until societal infrastructure can recover.”

“Seems to me we’re having a dress rehearsal for that right now, with the lockdown.”

She gently doodled on his chest, the microfiber blanket between her fingertip and his skin. “I want to talk about that and many other things, but not until dinner’s in me and digesting, please.”

 

It felt really good to have her join him on the couch under the blanket as they surveyed the evening’s offerings, then agreed upon and placed their order.

 

“What shall we do until dinner arrives?”

“I dunno” she softly sighed, clunking sideways against him. “We could sing an apropos Tom Petty song.”

“The Waiting is the hardest part?”

“That’s the one.”

“I think I’ve already hurt the ears of everyone within 2 rooms of us in any direction this morning, which my singing would only exacerbate. Hungry?”

“Usually.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“If you don’t mind starting with dessert, I have something for you.”

“I don’t want to get into sex now, please. Else we likely won’t make it to our discussion after dinner.”

“I’m flattered, but I meant what nearly everyone considers edible food… at least in our nation. Will starting with dessert spoil your dinner?”

“Not unless it’s on the order of magnitude of a sheet cake.”

“Sheet no, cake yes” he grinned, retrieving a small pink paper box from under the couch, then opening it up in front of her.

“Hhhhhhh! It’s a sapphire-colored frosting vanilla cupcake, like the one you had for lunch!”

“Sapphire Prince Cupcake they call it, but yes: same as I enjoyed at lunch. I ordered two of them, knowing I was going to apologize to you at some point, and wanted you to have one.”

“Ooohhh!” she purr-sighed, nearly drooling from both sets of lips.

 

Clark had a great time watching Leigh and the cupcake make foodie love, in a manner so all-out food porny it belonged on the Food Network in that network’s heyday.

 

“Normally I’d lick the frosting off your lips” he commented once she was finished, “but given your reasonable request to postpone anything amorous, here: look into the digital mirror and lick yourself.”

She carefully licked her lips over and over, futilely hoping not to miss an atom of remaining cupcake frosting.

 

---

Dinner delighted Leigh, in large part from being the first meal she’d been able to fully taste in over 2 weeks. Clark’s sense of taste and smell was returning, though not yet all the way back. They ate slowly and peacefully, taking an additional half hour after the conclusion of the meal to be well into digestion before entering into any possibly intense discussion.

 

Equipped with mugs of soothing tea, they again sat on the couch, in slight hip-to-hip contact more socially friendly than intimate.

“Would you like to go first?” he offered.

“I don’t know how this is supposed to work.”

“Hopefully we can make our own rules, and adjust as necessary. My idea was calmly asking each other how we’ve come to believe what we believe, taking turns either back and forth, or maybe one of us going through all our questions and concerns relative to the other, then the other having our turn.”

“If your offer for me to go first still stands, I’m ready.”

“It does. Please proceed as you choose.”

“I don’t understand why during an unfolding pandemic from a new, poorly-understood disease with an accelerating death toll, your primary concerns seem to lie with the economy and financial matters rather than human lives. Why is that?”

“Lost lives are tragic, most especially to those losing them and those close to them. Both you and I are accomplices to murder, on account of having bovine cattle, sheep, pigs, et cetera slaughtered for our consumption. Personally I’m OK with that, because I have communed spiritually with plants, so going vegan or vegetarian shifts the murder but does not resolve it, in my world view. Sure, it’s different murdering a fellow mammal, with whom we have more in common and can more readily relate. Yet as has been proven over and over again as science continues its pursuit of the truth, mammals and other so-called “higher” animals we humans used to regard as lacking feelings or logic or other assumed-human attributes often have forms of these very much like our own. Who’s to say that plants don’t have equivalents, even if profoundly different than anything we humans currently understand? What I’m getting at is anything I eat is murdering something or someone. As Laurie Anderson once made into a song—at least a song title, I was born, never asked to be born. I have to eat something to survive. I’ve read that indigenous people of what we call North America express gratitude for the entities that give them sustenance as their food, whether plant, fish, meat, or any other category I may be forgetting.”

“Interesting, but how does this address my question?”

“It’s essential background information, especially so I won’t hopefully come across as so heartless and uncaring. I don’t like having things killed on my behalf so I can eat and survive and hopefully thrive, but that’s how this world into which we were born works. Even synthetic foods have living predecessors in the cases with which I’m familiar, but you’re correct that this is getting too far off on a tangent. Point is: I don’t like things—plants, creatures, animals, people—dying, whether murdered or otherwise. It’s part of life, and unless things change radically and very quickly, our destiny.

“Last statistic I saw, 684 U.S. citizens have died from COVID-19, and the experts expect those numbers are just the beginning of something much larger. For the world death count I last saw over 18 thousand. I have read that preventable medical mistakes ending in death may total 440 thousand people in the U.S. alone each year. Now I’ve not fact-checked that number and it might be bullshit, but let’s assume it’s legit, or even divide it by four and round way down and call it 100 thousand Americans a year dying from medical malpractice—dying. Where is the outrage on that? Why aren’t the authorities locking us all down and making the world stop for that?”

“That number seems way high to me.”

“It may be. I’d love for it to be. Here’s the thing: I don’t have time to fact-check every bit of information that comes along. Even if I did that for a living as a journalist, it’s too much: I’d be paralyzed, unable to live my life. So, like every human I’ve ever met, I take shortcuts, such as trusting others. We’re living through an especially awful time in terms of being able to trust sources many of us have formerly trusted, or those sources even remaining viable journalistic entities, for that matter. The same technologies that empower us to more easily communicate to a worldwide audience and help us reconnect with long-lost friends and family members and so on amplify the easy ability to generate mountains of noise: truth, deception, outright lies, and otherwise. So far everyone I’ve seen is making the logical fallacy error of Appeal To Authority: choosing their preferred information sources and trusting those, usually disregarding others that for each person’s reasons we choose not to trust. Sorry world, but the New York Times and Washington Post hold no special truck with me. I don’t care how long they’ve been around, how many journalists they employ, nor what pretty noises they make about trust and honesty and why anyone should believe them. Similarly, I have no use for Brietbart, nor other usually-online sources that tend to get lumped together as ‘conservative’ or ‘far right’. I disregard the entire category of what we still seem to be calling cable news outlets of all persuasions.”

“This is interesting, but if you don’t mind my pointing it out, you seem to be way off on a tangent again. Can you give me a one-line summary of what news and information sources you dotrust, and why?”

“I don’t trust any of the major tech firms to be my news aggregator, and I do prefer an aggregator using many sources. Least-worst I’ve found for news is the Wikipedia: Current Events portal. It at least lets me know what people think are major issues going on, whether I use the links to sources provided on that page, or do my own lookups. That’s 3 sentences, so I’m already thrice over my one-line limit. I do similar things for tech news, other things for local news. Good enough?”

“Yes. I’m willing to go with your 440 thousand or 100 thousand number—your choice—so you can get back to making your main point about financial matters over human lives.”

“OK. My point is that other things kill people by far larger numbers than most estimates of what I’ve seen for COVID-19. I don’t have the numbers for suicides, but looking back to the Great Depression, we have those stories of people jumping out of windows killing themselves on account of sudden unexpected financial ruin. Hopefully our suicide prevention measures have improved since then, yet even without shutting down most of the planet’s social activities and economies, suicide rates remain high and problematic. Socially isolating people from real in-person human contact as you and I are enjoying right this moment then making them suddenly unemployed because the company for which they work or maybe even their entire industry has been forced closed and might not be able to survive to reopen are major stressors that will push a number of people over the threshold. How many? I don’t know that number.… OK, there’s this I just looked up: suicides in the U.S. for 2018 were 48,344. Then there’s auto crashes. My point is that none of these other things are being used as excuses to put people into lockdown, despite these other death numbers being much higher. This makes no sense to me, and makes me extremely suspicious.”

“To me they’re very different. Suicides, car crashes, and medical malpractice aren’t wildly contagious nor spreading rapidly in not-entirely-understood ways. Seems to me that draconian measures are being taken because we don’t know enough yet about what this is, and lack more nuanced tools with which to deal with it.”

“Fair enough. But is it therefore OK to have so much collateral damage? Millions of people have filed for unemployment in the past several weeks. Millions. I don’t want anyone to suffer, but what is the point of destroying entire careers and families to save lives of those with ‘underlying health issues’, which depending how one defines that phrase, can be anyone? That is what scares me, and that fear is what drove me towards being so loudly argumentative this morning. I fear unemployment, then poverty. In general, and personally.”

“OK. That’s foreign to me, because over here in my world view, we have a sufficiently-functioning government—stumbling and messing up, yes—able to see to the basic needs of its citizenry during the shutdown. The whole testing and medical supply situation is screwed up, beyond question. At least they’re keeping people out of poverty with the various recovery and economic stimulus packages.”

“That’s where I have a whole slew of other issues which deeply upset me. I am no master of economics—I struggled through Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations and didn’t finish, in large part because I had a helluva time wrapping my mind around and relating to the real-world examples he used, from an agrarian economy that no longer exists in the so-called western world. My understanding is that what the U.S. federal government is doing is going to dramatically increase our nation’s already far-too-high national debt, and may lead to inflation. There’s nothing magical about printing money: far as I know, the backing value has to come from somewhere. If we don’t pay it, future generations must. The can cannot be kicked down the road forever. It may not affect us all that much or it might, but assuredly it will affect younger generations during their lifetimes. Or even if they figure out a way to kick the can further down the road, the eventual reckoning will be all that much more fatal to those who come after them. Easily could cause the collapse of the U.S.A. That’s a huge, huge price to pay for saving some thousands of people.”

“My sources indicate that if we did nothing, there would be millions of deaths in the U.S., not thousands. Wholly apart from the human compassion aspects, how would that not be a huge blow to the U.S. economy?”

“It likely would be a huge blow. Again, I don’t want anyone to suffer, but suffering happens, and dying happens. Were we truly compassionate, rather than focusing so much time and so many resources onto saving every possible human life, we’d be developing or already have developed vastly better, more humane ways to make the transition from life to death tranquil and less painful, resulting in far less suffering for deaths we can’t prevent. I believe there are too many people in the world, for humanity’s own good as well as that of the world. Limiting new births is a whole other tangent, for which so far humans have dramatically failed, at the same time keeping millions more alive via what we call ‘modern medicine’. While I’d prefer to continue living an acceptably pain-free, passably healthy life, especially with you in it if we can work through our differences, I’m willing to be in line to be humanely and comfortably put down to die the next time I have some dire illness or physical failure that would require heroic efforts and gee-gobs of money to try and resolve.”

“I understand not wanting to suffer, and if death was truly inevitable and was heading towards slow, agonizing, and painful, I’d want viable hospice for myself or whomever, and I thought we already had it. But if we don’t that’s another tangent, so let’s not go there right now. I’m not thrilled with how crowded our cities are, but at the same time I’m not convinced that population reduction via allowing more deaths will meaningfully change that. That’s another tangent. I think people’s lives have worth, and should be preserved. I don’t understand why the price tag is so important to you.”

“Because we live in a world of limits. I can’t go out and buy a gigantic mansion or very high-end car without taking out a mortgage or other financial instrument, to pick two random high-ticket examples. Each of us and every individual we know has a budget. We stick to that budget, or we go into debt. We can’t legally print more money the way governments do, so we have to pay back our debts, else our credit rating goes to shit, we can’t borrow money, and creditors will likely come after us to get what is owed.

“These limits do not magically disappear when government is involved, despite so many governments pretending that they can. Everything has costs. Social support has costs. Bailing out industries and/or individuals due to shutting them down as a blunt instrument to try and stop a novel infectious disease has huge costs—at least the way the U.S. is doing it. The national debt is nothing new, and that scares me even more. Like a cancer, it’s kept growing and growing, and now with these latest COVID-19 bailouts it’s shot up in size, like a faster-growing cancer. Like a biological cancer in a human body, left unchecked it will kill us as a viable nation. The price tag for having to use exotic, wildly expensive means to save some lives is important to me because I believe it is a greater threat to our survival than SARS-CoV-2. May I please ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How do you think economies and money and all that work? How is it that you don’t seem particularly disturbed by the economic aspects of the current emergency, yet seem highly disturbed by COVID-19 itself?”

“We don’t even have to go outside this ship for me to explain that. You and I seem to have been amongst the fortunate who are surviving this disease—the vast majority of those infected, I admit. Think about how brutal it’s been. Think about all the panic we had when we were wheezing, possibly at the fork in the road where either or both of us might have gone down the path that might now have us on a ventilator, or dead. Think about the ambulances… the medivac helicopters… and most devastating of all at least to me, the coroner’s station wagon, which might as well be a hearse. I don’t know the current death count for this ship, but conservatively it’s at least 10, from what I’ve personally witnessed and counted. After I got all upset learning that cruise ships have morgues because people routinely die on them from our earlier discussion where you made that point, I looked into how many they can hold. The number I saw was 4, indicating that they never expected more than 4 people at a time to die of any/all causes between port stops. All these personal experiences inform me that COVID-19 is more impactful than most other communicable diseases within our lifetime—especially in terms of how widely and rapidly it spreads. That is what makes it so uniquely disturbing to me, and to my mind justifies draconian measures until enough can be figured out for society to gradually loosen the restraints and ease into whatever our new normal will be. I get the points about budgeting, and agree that the U.S. national debt is a huge problem, and not a new one. Much as I hate to agree with the current U.S. Presidential administration, this does seem to me like a war. As far as I know we didn’t spend a lot of time totaling up costs during World War II, postponing that reckoning until after the the war ended. I believe we have to do the same thing here.”

 

This long interaction was only the beginning of several hours of calm discussion, where both Clark and Leigh strove to truly listen to the other, and open their minds as much as they could to understanding the other’s viewpoint. It was challenging, and at points each remained unconvinced. At least this way they could understand that the wise mind they loved which seemed to think and believe so differently from their own on these matters of belief did so from a well-reasoned, informed, integrated, plausible, compassionate perspective.

 

---

Every step of the way, as Clark and Leigh each better understood the other’s perspective and came to accept it (whether or not they embraced it), tensions and residual anger further dissipated. The vacuum left by these dissipations was filled by the swelling of their deep love for one another as quickly as it was created. By far the strongest love each was feeling was carnal, obvious to themselves, and to the other via their well-understood behavior in this familiar realm. Having been attenuated by weeks of illness and put off nearly an entire day on account of the argument it refused to be put off any longer.

 

“Are we done working things out yet?” he asked at what he felt was past the end point of the discussion. “Or is there more?”

“You’re forgetting the most important part of finishing working through an argument.”

“What’s that?”

“The make-up sex!”

 

Like a fierce lioness, she attacked him with dominant, ferocious sex-laden kisses and wanton lusty gropes. No shrinking violet, he was similarly all over her in seconds after she started. Heavy breathing, panting, and occasional gasping and moaning filled the stateroom, in the most intensely aggressive lovemaking they as a couple had ever undertaken. Indeed, they were going at it more ferociously than either had ever done in the past with any lover.

His full-mouth-and-tongue breast attack without her having had to in any way hint at such an activity poured passion gasoline on her lusty fire, moistening her innards faster than she knew possible.

Groping her fat, wobbly hips with reckless abandon had him breathtakingly banana-upped. Their activity briefly slowed both so she could more thoroughly enjoy the sensations of sliding his fully-grown neener into her, and so she could do so carefully without inadvertently hurting him and his scintillating sex stick. Once he was all the way in, each of them contributed to the wildest, most physically rambunctious intercourse they’d yet undertaken. In truth, they were likely both dissipating the last vestiges of stored anger energy together, in the most pleasurable manner possible.

This was greedy sex: not the agreeable, communicative sort they normally shared. They humped and humped to their (personal) heart’s content, right there where they’d been on the couch. She was too sexy and the stimulation too intense for him to hold back for long: his neat and clean dry retrograde ejaculation had him blowing up backwards into himself (his own bladder), remaining most of the way hard far longer after the fact than had ever been his experience pre-surgery.

 

Nice as that was for Leigh, she needed more—and she got it. Wordlessly near-dragging him over to their bed, her lying down on her back with her legs spread wide along with the context of their past sexual experiences together told him all he needed to know: go down on her.

After some preliminary licks with his tongue, he took her to the bridge… of his nose. Nose sex! His bridge and tip tantalizing her clit did her exceedingly well, in all senses of the phrase. Greedy for this sort of pleasure, she had him keep going on and on for over an hour down there: mostly nosing, sometimes licking or kissing or otherwise doing her right.

 

For their next sex act, they caressed their way together into the bathroom and into the shower. This wasn’t their first shower sex by any means. Like everything else so far on this night, it was their all-out near-porn-like lustiest.

“How are we ever going to get clean if we keep getting dirty?” she said with a giggle over the noise of the stimulating shower spray.

“What aspect of anything we’ve been doing since starting make-up sex is in any way dirty?”

“Nothing” she giggled some more, sliding him back into her.

 

---

It had been an utterly exhausting day for Leigh Down and Clark Barr in multiple ways. Once dried off from shower sex, they were ready to lay down together in bed for a restful night’s sleep. Spoon cuddling and relaxed, that is exactly what they wound up getting.

[Sonic Purity]

3 Weeks On

“Good morning Chonky.”

“’Morning Neener. How’re you feeling?”

“Well. Rested, no fever, no other symptoms of anything, far as I can tell.” Ssssnnnnnnt: he took a big whiff of her hair. “Sense of smell’s back. You smell lovely.”

Sss Ssss Ssssnnnnnt “So do you.”

“Shall we get into breakfast before possibly getting into any contentious conversations?”

“Gosh, I hope there aren’t more of those! At least not for a long, long time.”

“I don’t have anything (kiss). Just don’t want to have another day like yesterday, up to just before the point where you brought the blanket over, for which I now belatedly thank you (kiss).”

“You’re welcome” she kissed him back. “Let’s get into ordering, so we can get into breakfast all the sooner.”

 

---

Clark found himself drifting between feeling stunned and overwrought with lust. He barely managed to eat his own light breakfast, obsessed as he was watching his fat bare cruise wife completely lost to bliss, enjoying the massive feast she’d ordered, legs splayed comfortably as she sat along with him atop their bed. {It’s sex to her!} he thought, amazed. {Eating gives her as much pleasure as sex—at least! I can see it in everything about her expression and the rest of her body language. Unbelievable, if I wasn’t seeing it happening right before my eyes.}

She noticed him looking, directing her blissed-out smile his way, “This is the perfect cruise experience I wanted to be having all along”. Claiming some of his pesto spaghetti noodles, she held them over her head and dribbled them into her anxiously waiting mouth, as stereotypically done with grapes.

“It wasn’t perfect for you when I was first on board.”

Licking her hand clean, she began caressing his nearest thigh, “Think about all we’ve been through since then, Neen. We barely knew each other, and I thought for sure beyond any doubt that for you MatCon was all about tagging a plumper chick then putting me down. We learned more about each other, bonded in love to a degree so intense and deep that in some ways it still scares me, developed COVID-19 basically together, got quarantined together, proved to ourselves and each other that our love has to go beyond physical sex and stuff given what we invested in helping each other survive, just yesterday successfully worked through intense differences which break up many couples, and here we are.”

 

That was far too much talking without taking any bites of the many delicious noms all around her atop the bed, which deficit she rectified forthwith.

 

During her next breathing break she added, “I’m going to keep indulging and enjoying great food I can finally taste and smell again, as much and as often as I feel like it for the rest of this cruise.” She moved his hand over to her nearest fat hip, “You keep indulging yourself in and thoroughly enjoying the side-effects.” Another bite, this time of some hash browns, “Mmmmph… maybe I’ll start enjoying the side-effects more, from your enjoyment.”

 

---

Not even 2 hours had elapsed between the end of Leigh’s massive breakfast-became-brunch, and now, early in the noon hour, when she ordered lunch. To his amazement and beyond-his-control arousal, she ordered an equally-grand feast!

“Belly rubs, so I have space, please?” she asked of him, once the order had been submitted.

 

The dazed trance he’d been in and out of for hours waxed. “You sure you have room in here?” his mouth asked, before his mind approved.

“Oh yeah” she smiled, bat-waving her hand. “With breakfast it won’t even total out to as much as I had at the Samoa Cookhouse.”

 

Love of all forms swelled within them. Beyond sensual, the belly rub was yet another deeply bonding experience.

 

---

So lost to loving Leigh Down was Clark Barr, he barely knew who he was by mid-late afternoon and the end of her extended lunch. Yes, a great deal of what was going on was the unstoppable extremely potent deep carnal love they couldn’t stop sharing if they tried. And yet there was more, they both knew it deep within.

Currently too full to be comfortable doing much of anything other than sitting atop the bed resting her back against a stack of wonderfully fluffy pillows with her legs spread and her bloated belly resting between them, that’s the position in which Leigh chose to remain. Presently, Clark occupied himself pleasing her via sensually rolling the massage roller given to them by the ship’s spa, up and down her legs.

“It just occurred to me: I’ve been on this cruise 3 weeks now” she smiled, the expression she’d had nearly all day.

“Can we really call it a cruise, if we’re docked in the same port all the time?”

“I am having a pleasurable cruise experience, whether our Sapphire Prince is going anywhere or not. Hopefully you are too.”

“I… feel lost. To you.”

“When you tire of rolling, come cuddle up next to me and get lost in me, with me.”

 

---

“Know what you want for dinner yet?”

Clark couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re ordering dinner?!”

“Don’t be so shocked, Neener” Leigh tried (and failed) not to grin, salaciously moving his hand back onto her still-bloated belly. “You know I love to eat! We’ve been over all that and and the side-effects you love and everything else several times in-depth and more often in casual mentions on this trip already. I admit I’m no expert on Fat Admirers, but is there some reason my wanting dinner surprises you?”

“You seem to have far greater capacity for packing away food than I imagined.”

“There’re still plenty of things we have to learn about each other (kiss). Bodes well for more interesting time getting to know each other better (kiss).”

 

---

While not as extreme a feast as her two earlier meals, beyond question Leigh’s dinner was a big multi-course meal. Clark, who’d eaten vastly lighter earlier in the day, was closer to par with her for dinner. After days of drizzly wetness and cloudy overcast with occasional actual outright rain, it was a pleasant delight to enjoy an actual sunset along with their main course (they both had steak). Even with the ongoing nudity and carnal passions, this moment proved far more loving bonding affectionate romantic than lusty. The steaks were excellent; the paired rosé wine sublime.

 

---

After a string of days without (or at least without full tree trunk engorgement), Leigh awoke to the sensual sensations of her lover’s curvy flesh redwood between her chonky buns. {Ohhhh I want this forever} she silently mused. {He’s so affectionate.}

As usual, Clark didn’t fully awaken. Actually he was closer to awake than he realized, his mind assuming he was fully into dreams.

 

---

The overcast Friday morning’s full filtered daylight gave Clark’s mind no choice but to realize that he truly was transitioning swiftly from sleep to wakefulness. “HHHHH! Hhhhh! ohhhh! Hhhh, Chonky!”

“Good morning, Neener” she looked over her shoulder and smiled his way.

“I can see and feel that you’ve gotten fatter, overnight!”

“That’s how it works with me.” She borrowed one of his hip-caressing hands to kiss it before replacing it where it had been. “Food goes in, fat comes out. Along with some other stuff that goes in the toilet, and energy production, and all the usual body behaviors.”

“I’ve… never experienced this tactile and visual a fattening so quickly!”

“Hopefully you like it, because if I’m able to keep enjoying food the way I intend to, there’ll assuredly be more of it.”

“How do you feel about me… feeling it?”

“Loving. Affectionate. Happy. A little aroused. OK, more than a little aroused, especially when you do those deep squeezy gropes and push into me more.”

He gladly implemented her not-exactly suggestions. “Hhhhhh! If you ever decide to stay like this rather than exercising it back off, I want to marry you, for reals. Or at least live with you like a marriage.”

“One tasty day at a time, Neener. You wanna get off?”

“Pleeease?” he whimpered.

“Be my guest, Lover.”

 

Leigh decided she wanted to get off too. The combination of his sexy humping and very caress-like fondling, the gentle strokes her fingers gave her nub, and dreaming of what she hoped to soon have for breakfast did the trick nicely.

 

---

The happy tones of a µ-Ziq instrumental favorite of Leigh’s from the mid-1990s currently filled Leigh’s and Clark’s stateroom with sonic expressions of the bouncy happy joy of their entire breakfast experience. Taking turns suggesting what to play next, Clark worked the controls so Leigh could continue peacefully, calmly, slowly eating.

Despite the songs they chose being minimally sexy/sexual, Leigh’s breakfast was towards the other extreme. Even after all they’d shared and how deeply they’d gotten to know one another, she still felt apprehensive letting anyone else know how intimate and passionate her relationship with food was. Especially in this context and to her, actions spoke louder than words—much louder. Witnessing Clark repeatedly lose control to his lusty passions watching her eat as she lost her own control to her lusty foodie passions very gradually allowed Leigh to open up further. No one in her past life had ever been allowed into this inner sanctum of hers—the one that had her initially hoping she’d not cross paths on this cruise with anyone who knew her. Now for the first time in her life, she had an insider sharing the experience with her. Words and phrases like Lover, cruise husband, fat admirer, and other equally valid descriptors of what Clark Barr was to her individually and in any combination failed to convey the totality of what this new, exceedingly private connection was all about.

Big deal though this cruise was from the planning stages onward, it had now turned into the adventure of a lifetime: a perfect storm of events, allowing her to let her foodie lust run free. Thrilling and scary in equal measure, she knew that this was the ongoing series of moments which needed to be seized.

 

---

Elsewhere around the Sapphire Prince, things were anything but tranquil.

 

{“I don’t want any more COVID-19 deaths on this ship!”}

Captain Cranch’s exhortation, weakened and interrupted by coughing on account of his own COVID-19 illness, echoed through Acting Captain Glenn’s mind, in the heat of telephone negotiations with administrators at the local hospital. “They are human beings urgently in need of care, no matter what their nationality!… We have an infirmary aboard this ship, not a hospital. You are infinitely better-equipped than we are to deal with the critically ill.… Understood that you want to reserve your resources for local residents, but for the time being those on our ship are part of your local community.… That’s beyond both of us, ma’am. I assure you we did not choose Coos Bay to ‘inflict ourselves’ upon you. Federal authorities and other ports gave us no choice, then we happened to have a near-total propulsion failure in international waters very close to here. As the one piloting the ship at the time, I assure you that Coos Bay was our only option, not a willful imposition.”

The frantic WTF hands and face expressions of Dr. Wellington Heald directed over a more-than-social distance towards Captain Glenn reaffirmed the urgency of the situation.

“Let’s cut to the chase: either you immediately rescind your order to the local EMTs blocking their services to us, or I will arrange alternative transportation to the door of your E.R.… We have two in critical condition now. Send them now.”

 

---

“Please give me a reprieve from having to pay the Swear Jar, Chief!” A-HHHKKK! Billy Bilge coughed from behind his protective cloth mask.

“I’ve not seen any credible scientific information suggesting that swearing away SARS-CoV-2 is in any way effective against its COVID-19 influenza, Billy.”

“If I have to fuuuulllllaaaaking pay any more, I’ll have to mortgage my house!”

“You own a house?”

“No! So I’m rat-assszzzzzimuth is a fine parameter to measure!”

“What besides swearing do you think will help you get over this thing faster, or if not that, have it remain less severe?”

“Thinking with all my might about cursing this son of a biieeautiful mother to Hellllllo there ladies and gentlemen and gone!”

“If you keep the cursing totally inside your head and don’t let any of it slip out of your mouth, you’ll not owe the Swear Jar anything, and you’ll be taking the virus to task inside your mind the way you want. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

 

Immediately Billy unleashed a string of soul-scorching epithets locked inside his mind, directed at SARS-CoV-2 wherever it may be at work in his body.

[Sonic Purity]

Socially Distant Mingling

While others around the world and particularly in the U.S.A. were being drenched by the crashing-ashore tsunami that was COVID-19 in fully manifested reality, Leigh Down and Clark Barr immersed themselves in their own private reality of unbridled fat-foodie-love-sex living. Friday 27 March 2020 became Saturday the 28th., Saturday had now become Sunday the 29th., cruise Day 25 for Leigh. They noticed the changing of the days mostly from cycling between the 3 major meals Leigh had every day, though the combination of focusing on what gave them joy and would all too soon go away at cruise’s eventual end and shielding themselves from the chaos and clamp-downs unfolding across the U.S. had them losing track of the day, unless they focused on thinking through what day it was.

 

Their most recently-discovered sex move had precious little movement. Leigh Down lay face-down atop her cruise husband, himself comfortably lying face-up atop their bed, plugged into her. What blew his mind was that she’d already fattened enough on the course of this trip to go from her usual noticeably-curvy hips that would only have trouble fitting into the narrowest of chair seats to gargantuanly fat hips of which he’d long dreamt experiencing, flowing well past both sides of him down atop their bed!

In no way was she the fattest-hipped woman out there, nor the flowing-fat softest (albeit close on that latter parameter). She was, however, well into the shockingly fat range: the range where most people would take a second look, if not stare. The range where finding off-the-shelf clothes starts to become difficult, even via online/mail order. Less so now than in her youth, true, since to there now being so vastly many more vast bottom-heavy women, though still far from a slam-dunk. The range where fitting into standard chairs with arms or any other side impediments was far from a given, even with her soft, flowing, highly compliant fat. As usual for her body, very little fat landed up above: some on her chin, some on her arms (especially upper arms), and a very slight general thickening all over. Nearly all the fat action was down below: between the top of her belly and bottom of her thighs, with the vastest majority on her hips and buns.

Lost in a trance to the experience, his hands gently and repeatedly fondle-squeezed her prodigious hip fat as he stared into her very close ever-more-beautiful-to-him face—the one she still considered criminally plain, unremarkable, and boring.

She’d long liked his looks. Presently, she found him unbelievably handsome: a face into which she could gaze and a body she’d enjoy looking at for as long into the future as she could imagine. Not that she was thinking much of the future when that’s never known, and he was right here right now and so was she! Her current joy was alternating between sensually slow mouth-eating kissing him for about a minute at a time, then savoring and peacefully eating a cookie, then repeating. No humping whatsoever was needed, with the sensorial joys of his throbbing pulsing big hard neener inside her giving her all the genital stimulation she wanted at this moment.

 

Lost to love and lust as they were, there was no conversation for a long time.

 

Eventually, she broke the verbal silence. “Am I getting too heavy on top of you?”

“Amazing as you and this mind-melting joyous fattening you’re undergoing are, the mass differential between when you first laid down atop me an hour or more ago and now is minuscule.”

“I so love your engineering mind, and your precision (kiss). Being more precise, what I mean is: are you feeling discomfort from the extended duration of my having been lying atop you?”

“To my amazement, no. You are assuredly a significant weight atop me, and there will come a point where I’ll prefer shifting to another position without any significant mass being pulled down by gravity atop me. This is too amazing and I’m not ready to let it go yet” he ended with a kiss.

“We can do this again later (kiss). Today or any future day we’re together and have the time (kiss).”

No more time for kisses: it was time for her next cookie!

 

---

Clark couldn’t get enough of feeling Leigh’s fat, nor the powerful all-encompassing love between them.

Though comfortably full or near-full at any given time during waking hours and in absolutely no danger of starving, Leigh couldn’t get enough super-sensual tastebud-tantalizing foodie joy, happily grazing away the day with occasional breaks. Nor could she get enough of Clark’s reverent, doting love, nor all other aspects of the powerful all-encompassing love between them.

 

The sudden switching right about 5 PM of the stateroom infotainment A/V system from the audio playback they’d been enjoying to a silent stationary text display:

Important Announcement from the Captain
Regarding Quarantine, Disembarkation, and more

quickly pulled their attention out of their individual and shared reverie(s).

Within a minute, the program switched to a live video image of Captain Cranch with accompanying indistinct soft background sounds.

Transcript:

Good afternoon. This extended announcement provides updates on several matters of great import to all of us aboard the Sapphire Prince. As before and as always with these ship-wide announcements, any programming you may have been enjoying has been paused, for you to rejoin, restart, or otherwise re-engage with as you wish at this speech’s conclusion.

Those of you who’ve been following world events are aware of the devastating impact of COVID-19 disease, accelerating presently in the United States especially, and elsewhere around the world. Thanks to your diligent efforts and cooperation remaining confined to your staterooms, along with the exemplary work of our dedicated on-ship and visiting medical staff and all our crew and employees, we have kept the disease from being as devastating as it is capable of being. The disease is and has been widespread across the ship, as myself and the many of you who’ve come down with it and experienced symptoms well know. I am currently in Day 12 of the illness since first showing symptoms, and remain in quarantine. First Deck Officer Ellen Glenn has been ably serving as captain of this ship during the acute phases of my illness, able to fully put her years of experience to excellent use running this ship and interfacing with the outer world when I could not, for all our benefit. I urge you all to take a moment to thank her for stepping into this essential role at this critical time.

Enough thank yous were verbalized aloud for Captain Cranch to hear them from his cabin.

Acting Captain Glenn and myself have been actively engaging relevant authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere to get you all who are our guests off this ship and back home. I am pleased to report that we are days away from allowing those of you from most nations of the world to disembark, with Royal Prince Cruise Lines and representatives from your home nations working together to get you swiftly repatriated. I am bitterly disappointed to report that the situation is far messier for our many U.S. citizens traveling with us on this cruise. Negotiations are ongoing, so far making insufficient progress for me to specify any time frame. For the foreseeable near-term future, U.S. citizens will be required to remain in quarantine on this ship.

He paused to allow the heartbreaking groans he feared would happen, and did.

It is not without basis that authorities are compelling us to quarantine on-ship: while most people will develop minor symptoms if any at all, this is a very easily spread, fast-spreading disease which can be vicious to certain individuals for reasons not yet sufficiently clear. While as a sweeping generalization it is true that certain underlying health conditions, especially lung-related, and age exacerbate severity of COVID-19, individuals in their 20s with no known underlying health conditions have fallen gravely ill and died. Nurse Dana Knight of our Infirmary was barely over the threshold into her 40s, healthy as far as anyone including herself knew, with no underlying health conditions. Despite the correct use of what little personal protective equipment we had on board until arriving here in Coos Bay, she developed COVID-19. Despite her intrinsic health and wellness knowledge, healthy lifestyle, and being part of our Infirmary, she fell gravely ill. She died this past Tuesday 24 March in Coos Bay’s local hospital’s intensive care ward. Please, let us all together take a minute of silence in honor of Nurse Knight, and anyone else you may personally know who has succumbed to this terrible illness.

The captain maintained his usual commanding posture, gazing down towards the floor. The extreme sadness in his face was unsettling to many viewers.

Clearly, this is a serious life-altering disease, which experts indicate may be with us for a very long time. Your ongoing cooperation remains essential to keep COVID-19 from spreading to those not yet infected—especially those at great risk.

Striking a balance between protecting those most at risk and allowing those unaffected by the disease or who have successfully recovered from it is challenging to say the least. Were U.S. authorities more cooperative and sanely allowing all of you who are our guests off this ship so that we of Royal Prince Cruise Lines could then facilitate getting you swiftly home, such would have already happened and we would not all still be here living through this extended experience. Much as I would love to do so, neither myself nor anyone else amongst crew or staff can as of yet allow anyone off the ship, apart from being near-death and released by ambulance to the local hospital as I’ve mentioned. I do have the power to adjust the conditions of quarantine, and that is what is happening as of 0800 tomorrow morning.

Please carefully note that time: what I am about to tell you is not in effect until tomorrow morning—Monday morning—at 8 AM. I am telling you now in advance to avoid any rushing and/or misunderstanding in the understandable hurry many of you might be in to get out of your staterooms. As well a number of possible destinations outside your stateroom will require advanced reservations.

 

Starting 0800 tomorrow, we are moving from our current Quarantine Level 3 to a Modified Quarantine Level 1. This is similar to, but different from, the standard Level 1 Quarantine we all experienced back on Thursday 12 March. Actively ill people, those who feel they may be ill and/or contagious, and those at significant risk if they fall ill must all remain in your staterooms. Room service and other services to you as they currently exist under our current Level 3 Quarantine will continue. If you have any doubt about whether or not you are in this category, please be your best, kindest self and do us all and yourself the favor of remaining in self-quarantine.

There are 2 other classes of people besides those just mentioned: those who know they’ve been ill and have recovered, and those who may or may not have been ill and have had no symptoms. Starting no earlier than 8 AM tomorrow, those of you in either of these classes will be able to leave your staterooms and participate in certain limited activities elsewhere on the ship.

Because each stateroom deck consists of a mix of cruisers in each of the 3 major categories, everyone is required to wear a mask and practice full social distancing protocols outside one’s stateroom and anywhere on any of these decks, namely Grandview, Vista, Upper Promenade, Dolphin, Porpoise, and Sea Star. This is necessary even for those of you who know you have had COVID-19 symptoms and have recovered, as we remain unable to do testing and not enough is yet known regarding how long and under what circumstances people remain contagious.

Please note that beyond all ship restrooms being well-stocked with liquid soap wholly suitable for proper sanitary hand washing per the U.S. CDC, there are now hand sanitizer stations deployed on all decks, installed primarily in the highest traffic common-use areas. CDC notes that soap and water are preferred, but qualified hand sanitizer as we have deployed is sufficient.

 

The following information applies only to those of you who have never had any symptoms of illness. Without testing we cannot know whether you have yet to encounter COVID-19, may have already had it and developed antibodies against it, or may even have a subclinical case and be actively carrying it. Due to that last possibility I am taking a huge risk allowing those of you in this class outside your staterooms. I consider it inhumane to confine anyone to a limited space such as a stateroom, nice as ours are, unless there is no alternative. Given the relevant authorities’ foot-dragging, I am taking this risk, imploring you for your cooperation.

The Sun Deck and Sports Deck are reserved for those in the no-symptoms class only. Because of the hypothesized greater spread indoors and in confined spaces, the Fitness Center and Spa will remain closed—to everyone. I thoroughly understand how disappointing this is to many of you, and regret that this is necessary for everyone’s health and safety. Some sources and common sense indicate that healthful exercise and reasonable sun exposure minimize the severeness of viral illnesses in general, likely including COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2, though this has yet to be rigorously proven. My hope is that exercise on the outdoor equipment on the Sports Deck and/or sun exposure there or on the Sun Deck will aid each of your immune systems in warding off this disease, or at least the worst of what it has to offer.

Advanced reservations are required in all cases, for any sports equipment, and even for chairs on the Sun Deck. This is absolutely also true for restaurants on these decks, which will continue to have limited social distance spacing seating. The only activity which may be undertaken without reservation is walking around, and even this will be monitored by security. Staff or crew members will be stationed at all access points to these decks, checking each person’s temperature with a non-contacting infrared thermometer, and making a quick visual evaluation for lack of COVID-19 symptoms. Please cooperate with them, and it will only be a few seconds per person for these evaluations. Their word is final, should they indicate that you need to return to your stateroom and quarantine.

Those of you in this class must at all times practice full social distancing protocols, and because none of us can know whether or not you may be an asymptomatic carrier, you must wear your face mask whenever anyone outside your immediate shared stateroom or suite group is within 2 meters. It is recommended in the strongest possible terms that everyone of all COVID-19 classes practice CDC-recommended hand washing at every necessary opportunity. This goes doubly so for those of you in the never-had-symptoms class, as potential carriers.

 

The following information applies only to those of you who have without question had clear, common COVID-19 symptoms, and whose course of illness has followed the typical 14 day give-or-take pattern of those who will survive this disease, and are now fully recovered with no symptoms. It is presumed that you have immunity for some period of time, though without testing, we cannot know whether you actually had COVID-19, or some other flu or other disease with similar symptoms. I am taking the great risk of brashly assuming that it is safe for those of you in this class to interact closer to what up until this pandemic had been socially normal interactions.

The Sky and Lido Decks are reserved for those of you in the recovered class. Sky will give you sun access, as for the no symptom class. The Lido pool, while not at all the same as the exercise options on the Sports deck, does offer you some exercise other than walking. Advanced reservations are required for the pool—any pool on any deck. Same with all restaurants, including buffets. Only those in the recovered class will be able to do any self-serving at the buffet, and this will be closely monitored. It is recommended to wear a mask and practice social distancing even on these reserved decks, though for the recovered class on these decks, it will not be required. Security will be present and monitoring everyone’s interactions. As for the asymptomatic class, crew or staff will be stationed at all deck access points to check your temperature and quick-verify that no on is displaying known COVID-19 symptoms.

Open seating such as at the buffet is restricted to one group per table unless newcomers outside the group receive permission to join those at that table in advance before sitting down.

 

Finally, we come to the special situation presented by the Grand Promenade Deck. The unique nature of this deck and its facilities available nowhere else require that both the no symptoms class and the recovered class be allowed to use open facilities thereon. At this time the retail shops remain closed. Our several restaurants on this level will continue limited seating spaced-apart social distancing, as has been the case since just prior to the original Quarantine Level 1.

As with the stateroom decks, everyone at all times must wear a suitable face mask, and follow all social distancing and hand cleanliness protocols. The only exception is once you are seated in a restaurant and your food has arrived, as long as you remain seated and until you have finished your meal.

 

It cannot be overemphasized how critical this situation remains, and how essential your cooperation is to allow us to loosen up the quarantine to this degree. Patience remains a virtue. Advanced reservations are required. Please note that we are thoroughly stocked with food and supplies, thus there is no need to rush for early appointments, and definitely no need to hoard anything. The reports many of us have seen regarding empty store shelves is disturbing, I agree. Not a problem on the Sapphire Prince. We have been restocked since docking here in Coos Bay, our Portland supplies trucked down here for this purpose. This will all work out for everyone if we each go along with our usual routines in terms of time of day we normally take meals, and so on. If you find yourself frustrated getting the restaurant reservation you prefer, please consider making one for the next meal or next day, then taking the missed meal in your stateroom.

This is a great deal of information to take in all at once. Rest assured that all of it is written out in your native language on the News & Information page of the Sapphire Prince on-ship website, direct links to which follow on this screen, seconds from now. Thank you again for doing your part, so all of us can get through this. Good Health and Wellness to you, and Good Evening.

After a full minute of the end screen with links to the information and re-running the recorded announcement, the sudden switch back to the audio stream both Leigh and Clark had forgotten they’d been running startled them. She quickly turned it off. “Breakfast at Jimmy’s Buffet tomorrow?”

“Sure, I guess. What will you get there that you can’t get here?”

“A change of scenery.”

 

He picked up his handheld, checking the weather. “I’m seeing drizzle and light rain all day tomorrow.”

“They have a retractable cover with an exotic name I saw once and now don’t remember, kind of like a stadium dome.”

“How is that better than staying cozy in here?”

“First, it’s likely the only meal I’ll want out tomorrow. Second, change of scenery. Third, I love you unbelievably and love being with you and want to be with you at breakfast tomorrow, but it would be nice to mingle with other people, especially other survivors of this virus. Fourth, don’t you want to see me wiggle wobble shimmering in clothes, and be seen with me while I’m doing so?”

“Hhhhhh!” he gasped from lust, “I’m in!”

[Sonic Purity]

Note: as great a job as the Curvage system does with story presentation—and the Curvage system is the best in our fatlovesex community presently—that last chapter above and most subsequent chapters won’t be able to be presented in their fully formatted glory anywhere other than on my purpose-made story website: jigglejunkie.com. Direct link to Chapter 20 Socially Distant Mingling on my site. By all means please enjoy the story wherever you prefer, and please consider seeing the fully-formatted original.

 

~~ Thanks for reading! ~~

[Sonic Purity]

Fat Everywhere

“Uugh. Unnggh” Leigh grunted, Monday morning 30 March 2020. “Keep tugging with me, and eventually we’ll get all of me into these.”

“If it’s this tough to get you into your panties, how in the world are we going to get you into your pants?!”

“My black leggings stretch more than these.”

“More than underpants?!”

“Oh yeah. At least these. Ready?”

“Better give me a count, so I can tug up when you’re in the downward descent of your jump.”

“OK, you tug up when I say three. Ready?”

“Yes.”

She made preparatory jumping motions with each count, to get herself in sync, “One. Two. Three!”

 

RRRRRRip!

 

“Oh well” she said with amazing nonchalance, slipping the shredded bikini briefs off. “Guess I’m going to have to go commando.”

The bugle in his pants compelled her to caress it. “Need to drop your pants and get off in me somewhere with your extra-special neat and clean neener, Neener?”

“Tempting as that is, I thought you might want to have me next to you woggle toggle waggling as you wiggle wobble shimmer.”

“How sweet of youuu! (kiss). Yes, I would like that, please. OK, let’s get me packed into my super-stretchy pants so I can get some shoes on and we can get this woggle toggle wiggle wobble waggle shimmer show on the road.”

 

Seeing his cruise wife’s fat bulging and bobbling every which way in its? their? vain attempt to escape the cloth’s mild confines nearly made Clark forget to take his mask.

 

---

The hallway adjacent to Leigh’s and Clark’s stateroom was bustling with generally happy voices of people freshly freed from lockdown, sounding like they might be smiling even though it was not possible to see the mouth portion of their expressions behind their face masks.

Leigh and Clark were assuredly smiling, feeling the love as they wiggle wobble woggle toggle waggle shimmered their way along the hall.

Having spent so much time looking at each other, both of them focused on those around them. Even without having met any of these people (so far) nor having previously studied their physiques, it was obvious to Clark and even more obvious to Leigh (thanks to her greater fashion awareness) that the majority of people had fattened out of the intended range of the clothes they were wearing. Some subtly (noticed mostly by Leigh), others moderately, and a few extremely, even if not as extremely as Leigh herself. Who, while not out of her clothes, was obviously pushing their range and undeniably very fat. Clark couldn’t help noticing that other than a couple of generously-padded BHM, who may have been like that before the lockdown, nearly all the moderately to extremely fattened people presented as women.

Leigh didn’t mind Clark’s eyes on other women. Any time she wanted his back on her, all she had to do was squeeze his held hand more firmly and turn his way with her masked smile. {We know each other well enough now that I can tell when he’s smiling and he can tell when I’m smiling even with our face masks on.} This realization made her smile even more.

 

---

Off-putting as having to go through health checks was, the ones they encountered at the approach to the elevators on their Upper Promenade deck then again exiting the elevator on the Sky deck were swift and friendly. The elevator ride itself was unexpected: a hotel department staff member was inside operating it manually, with colleagues on Upper Promenade grouping and packing elevator riders based upon their COVID-19 class (asymptomatic or recovered) and their destination. Mostly on account of Leigh’s size, only one other couple plus the operator rode with her and Clark.

“Most fattening cruise I’ve ever been on, that’s for sure” the woman of the couple, by appearances roughly a decade younger, shared with a smiling voice from behind her mask, patting her then her companion’s mildly bulging bellies. “But whatcha gonna do during lockdown, with no opportunity for exercise and all this great food on board?”

“I forgot all about exercise once they closed the Fitness Center. I love eating and he loves me fat, so we’re living the dream.”

The couple didn’t need to see their mouths to know that Clark and Leigh were smiling, given the inundation of the elevator car with invisible yet palpable love hearts, the way Clark’s from-behind cuddle and gentle hip fat squeezes came off far more affectionate than sexual, and the smile in Leigh’s eyes when she craned her neck to gaze slightly up and behind her into his.

Rendered speechless at the thought that someone could be OK being as fat as Leigh had become and that someone else would love her more for being that way, the couple, too flustered to introduce themselves, made a little trivial small talk about the weather to keep the remainder of the ride from becoming awkwardly silent.

 

---

Once they passed the outbound health inspection and got a good look around, Clark and Leigh both readily saw that there were even more newly-fat people on the Sky deck than in their hallway. This ought not to have been any sort of surprise, given that they were at the second half-hour seating at the only major full-service buffet open to those in the virus-recovered class: the most compelling option for the foodie members of this virus class.

Experimentally, seatings at Jimmy’s Buffet were on the half hour, with the expectation that most diners would stay between half an hour and an hour. By design the booking system kept 2 to 4 tables open for each time slot, to allow for those who may prefer to slow dine, or long dine. Other restaurants on the ship were experimenting with entirely different scheduling, in a crash course to try and suss out what was most workable.

 

“Hhhhmmm. Oh gosh” Leigh nearly drooled, piling on a pair of the avocado tortilla breakfast mini-burritos she loved, plus sausages, toast, scrambled eggs, and hash browns, before running out of plate space. Had it not been for the mask she still wore, everyone looking her way would have seen her foodie-lusty tongue poked out of her mouth.

“I’m quite sure they’ll let you come back for seconds” Clark assured her.

“They better! I’ve missed too many cruise days unable to partake of this, or unable to taste anything when I could partake.”

 

With plates loaded up, they sought out a free table.

 

“Hey hey team!” a happy, bold and brassy voice from a familiar face not wearing a mask called to them. It was Beryl Beech. “Come each gimme a quick hug, then park thee plush and plain posteriors punctually at this here table, and let’s share our experiences.”

 

Fat as Leigh had become, she was wholly taken aback by how much more of Beryl there was. Clark was more aroused than surprised, knowing of Beryl’s hardcore gainer proclivities. She fully needed two of the movable round padded stool seats to hold her huge hindquarters, which were far from her fattest parts.

As they hugged, Leigh became outright nauseous seeing how profoundly much boob flesh Beryl had: each of her breasts looked about as big around as either of Clark’s thighs, and over half as long! So rattled was she, she barely noticed the cheek kiss Clark gave Beryl, at her request.

 

Beryl was less than impressed with Leigh leading herself and Clark to the diagonally opposite corner of the rectangular roughly picnic-sized table. {At least she’s letting him sit inboard, hence closer to me.} “You don’t have to social distance from me if you’ve recovered, and if you haven’t wrassled the beast and recovered, you’re on the wrong deck.”

“I thought that given how much you’re clearly having and how much I intend to have, we’d be better off spaced apart to allow for more plate space.”

“Brilliant! Kiss her for me would ya please, Clark?”

 

He took the opportunity to remove and stow his mask, then gently ease hers off her right ear to enable a true lip to lip kiss.

 

“Mmm… murrmpf” Beryl mumbled as she chewed, eventually swallowing to clearly say, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

“Thank you for unleashing my lips, Neener” Leigh replied with a kiss, fully removing and tucking away her face mask. “Now to redirect them towards their other primary life purpose.”

Which was, of course, acting as gatekeeper and comestible retainer for her mouth, opening up wide for her first bite of breakfast mini-burrito for the day—nearly her first ever with full senses of taste and smell.

Too busy eating her own breakfast to respond verbally, Beryl gave her a thumb(s)-up.

 

Leigh nearly choked on her first bite of mixed scrambled eggs + hash browns as a barely-familiar gigantically fat female form wobbled and sloshed into view. Making things worse for her was the hard banana-up Clark instinctively gave the newcomer upon sight, compelling her to scoot closer to him with her right hip fat lifted, then plop that part of her down atop his turgid lap.

The magnitude of Rebecca Davidson’s fattening since the last time Leigh and Clark had seen her was truly breathtaking: she’d been supersized back then. Now, like Beryl, beyond question she was ultrasized. As was typical for her body she fattened all over, though far and away mostly at upper chest level and nearby. Each of her enormous upper arms looked about as big as either of Leigh’s thighs, back when she’d been merely plump, flattening even wider when her arms were at rest, as Leigh’s thighs did when she sat. More shockingly eye-catching to anyone who looked, each of her breasts looked about as big as either of Leigh’s thighs right now, all fattened! Maybe not quite that big if measured, though through Leigh’s raging breast jealousy goggles, they sure seemed that way! By any measure or lack thereof, they were clearly and obviously the biggest at the table—saying a lot, given Beryl’s breasty hugeness!

“Hey squish sister!” Beryl chirped, “No need to look so lost: you’ve found us!”

 

The other starkly visible aspect to Rebecca beyond her dramatic fattening was her hollow shell-shocked look, experiencing some other reality somewhere deep inside her own mind far more than being present in the moment. She seemed to be in a trance as she sat across from Beryl on the same side of the table with Clark (nearest her after the gap between them) and Leigh.

She looked equally vacant and terrified to her table mates as she slowly panned her head and scanned their faces. “What is this wretched thing?” she asked in a weak voice whose tone sounded as far away as her gaze appeared.

“It’s a potent one, that’s for sure” said Beryl, popping a fried potato pillow (often trademarked with the word “tot” in its name when made and sold by other companies) into her mouth. “But you survived it, as did we.”

At least some of the terror inside Rebecca came tumbling out, loud and frantic, “It came for me and took my breath!” she breathlessly gasped, “And I’m coughing and coughing up stuff—vilestuff!—and it’s goin’ for my lungs, and I’m wheezing and coughing and cookin’ ta death of fever, and I’m feelin’ the tightness! It’s goin’ for me!—It’s goin’ for me! And the Infirmary can’t take me and they’re overbooked and there’s no ventilators on board! No ventilators!”

Everyone else at the table plus others nearby were drawn into Rebecca’s dramatic retelling of her experience. “So what did you do?!” asked Clark.

“What could I do?! We were in lockdown already! I ran ’round and ’round in my stateroom in a total panic, beggin’ Gaia not to die! Running and running—weaker, faint, hot, can’t breath! Throwing up, coughing up, having tea and throwing it up! Taking vitamins and throwing them up! Can’t sleep! Can’t breathe! No help! Gotta run away from this! Gotta run awaaaay!”

Deeply moved, as were the others, by instinct far more than thought, Clark reached over and gently caressed Rebecca’s upper arm, “It’s OK Rebecca—it’s OK! You survived!”

“Clarence Jefferson didn’t! Miles Wilson didn’t! Uncle Abe didn’t!”

“Who’re those first two?” Beryl wondered out loud, between bites of breakfast nothing and no one was going to keep her from enjoying.

“My ex-boyfriends from long ago, from my ’hood and still livin’ there! Dead! Dead from this COVID-19!”

Clark wanted to hear the rest of her story. “So you ran around and coughed stuff up and otherwise got phlegm and things out of your system, and did the breathing get better then?”

“No! It was terrifying! I cried and screamed with no breath! No one around to be with! All alone!”

“What did you do then?”

“I took a handful—a frickin’ handful!—of vitamin C pills and some Calm Clouds tea because I didn’t have any Stress Suppress. Just sipped it and cried!, because I didn’t wanna die!”

Again he instinctually caressed her arm, “You’re here with us! You’re alive!”

 

She collapsed in a pile of tears atop the table, letting out what had to come out. Being able to share with others and having one-off lover Clark lovingly and soothingly caressing her was part of Rebecca’s healing that she didn’t know she needed.

 

As suddenly as she’d collapsed, she snapped back upright. “I wanted something else something or someone else soothing—I wanted my Daddy! Or Mommy! The only thing like candy I had were some of those big zinc horse pills, and they’re supposed to be good for colds and now they tell us common colds are coronaviruses after having told us before they were rhinoviruses, and maybe if you put a crown on a rhino or give the rhino the right brand of Mexican beer they’re the same thing but whatever. I figured it couldn’t hoyt ta suck one like for a cold, and it might help. So I sucked it and cried, struggling ta breathe, sipping tea. And you’re not supposed to suck more than one zinc tablet every two hours, but I did, and I’m not sorry.”

“Thankfully that doesn’t apply to penises.”

 

Others around the table glared at Beryl as though she’d just dropped the N word or put on a Third Reich arm band.

 

Clark prompted Rebecca to get her to continue, “So did the vitamin C and zinc and tea help?”

“Apparently but I donno” she shrugged her shoulders and held out her open palms. “Not a doctor. It’s not like I got all better right quick—oh hell no!” She drifted back into reliving the traumatizing experience, “My fever was high, and I thought ‘This is it. I’m dyin’ here. Dyin’ on this cruise ship, alone’.”

 

She needed to sniffle, then decided she ought to blow her nose, doing so.

 

“I’m on fire. I can’t breathe. And I’m gonna die! So I took the chicken way out: tried to O.D. on sleeping pills.”

“Hhhhh!” Leigh gasped.

“They weren’t real sleeping pills, hun. Hug her for me, will ya Clark?”

 

Having someone ask him to do what he wanted to be doing anyway sped up and lengthened the sitting side embrace.

 

“They’re those Trader Joe’s ones, with the L-theanine, 5-HTP, and melatonin and stuff. Prolly not good ta take 10 at a time instead of 2, but it didn’t kill me. Thought it was, given how tranquil-dazed-pass-out it was makin’ me. Cuddled up under every blanket, sitting up against a stack of pillows so I could barely keep breathing. Drifting off, giving in t’ the land of never existing any more.”

Beryl repeatedly and insistently pointed towards Rebecca’s getting-cold breakfast.

She shook her head, continuing, “I didn’t die, obviously. Woke up drenched in sweat. Drenched, people! The band around my chest—lungs—feeling was gone, and my breathing was a little better. Still wheezing, still coughing, still had a fever.

“Got into the shower and had a nice long hot one, upset for bein’ too fat ta fit in the tub and soak. A little light-headed delirious in there, but kept it together. Shower felt good. Getting the sweat off felt good. More vitamin C, more tea, sucking more zinc tablets, but this time per instructions. Had room service bring me a new set of bedding—sheets, blankets, pillowcases—the whole nine—and put them on myself, as much ta have something ta do and keep my mind busy as to protect the ship’s staff, but obviously that too. Ordered a big bowl of chicken bone broth, which tasted great!”

This caught Leigh’s attention. “You could taste things during your illness?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you?”

“No! And it was awful! Everything tasted like cardboard! Or like anything else with different textures and no flavor whatsoever.”

“Same for me” said Clark.

“What about you?” Rebecca asked Beryl.

“Almost total loss. Didn’t stop me from eating, obviously”—blomp blomp she patted her huge belly, then briefly hefted her breasts slightly.

“So the soup was great and then what happened?”

“You really want ta know, don’t ya, Clark?”

“I’m fascinated and I care about you, so yes.”

“Days more suffering, sssllloooowwwwly getting better. It’s that thing where you’re better in the morning, then worse again later in the day.”

All 3 of her table mates nodded, each happening to have a mouthful of breakfast at that moment.

“Something like 3 days after the night I thought for sure I was gonna die, the wheezing stopped. Still coughing, but not coughing stuff up. Still feverish, more so at night. Depressed as fuck from all I’m reading about this disease—then through now. More chicken soup yes, but with my appetite coming back and feeling like it’s the end of the world or at least the human social world—the real one, not the bullshit can’t touch online one—I said ‘Screw it. I’m eatin’’. And eatin’. And eatin’. Sorry not sorry: I don’t care.”

Beryl swallowed quickly to exclaim, “That’s the spirit!”

“But whaddo we have left, Beryl? Maria Mercader died yesterday, alright?!”

 

The others looked at her and each other, uncomfortably lost.

 

“CBS News reporter, alright? Younger than me!… a little. Dead! Whacked by COVID-19! Cancer didn’t take her out, other diseases didn’t take her out, but COVID-19 did! In New York City alone we’re losing 300-some people a day to this thing—a day! Death toll is something like one thousand seven hundred! They’re puttin’ the dead in refrigerator cars!—the semi trailers, the trucks, whatever! Packing dead people in refrigerator trucks in NYC because there’re so many! How is this happening?! This should be stuff from the Middle Ages! Or Ancient Babylon or somethin’!”

“What’re the numbers where you’re calling home now? I haven’t looked.”

 

The wind vanished from Rebecca’s wound-up distraught sails. “You’re gonna take my Cali Girl cred away, aren’t ya, Native Son?”

“Not me” Clark smiled. “Can’t speak for others here.”

“You a Cali native, Beryl?”

“Nah, I’m from Ohio. Akron, specifically. Rubber Capital of the World, at one time.”

“That leaves you, Leigh.”

“I’m Cali born and bred” she modestly replied, on the soft side.

“Whereabouts?”

“Inland Empire. Born in Riverside, but my family moved around the area a couple of times.”

“Are you revoking any or all of my 20 years of living in L.A. honorary Cali Girl cred?”

“There’s a moratorium on those revocations until after this whole COVID-19 and any future related SARS-CoV-2-based illnesses are resolved” she riffed.

“Whew! I know I’m a New Yorker through and through, but I really wanna be a laid-back Cali girl.”

“Can’t find anything for City of Los Angeles, but for the entire County of Los Angeles, we’re at 37 dead as of yesterday, cumulative total.”

“Alright” Rebecca loudly and longly sighed. “Guess I should be glad to be out on this coast, working on my Cali GhD. But they’re my homies!” she whined. “So many… still live in the ’hood.… Or did.”

“Even if you’re not diabetic—and I hope you’re not, you’ll assuredly feel better about life with more food in you” suggested Beryl. She focused intensely on the troubled woman she considered her friend across the table, “Here’s a thought for you: none of us can bring them back—anyone who matters to you, or any of us, who’s died from this disease. But you—a survivor, remaining alive—can honor them. They can’t eat any more food ever again—but you can. Think what they’d want. Would they want you to be sad? Would they want you to mourn? Or would they want you to celebrate life—theirs, and yours which you’re still living, as happens at wakes?”

 

Rebecca felt a deep connection to this quirky woman (and in some ways competitor for love interests), feeling loving energy coming across from her gaze, of an other-worldly magnitude. It was almost as though Beryl Beech was in some way connected to a spirit world in which Rebecca told herself she didn’t truly believe. Very, very powerful! “They always talked about how they loved my softness… every single one of them” she said in her distant voice, as much to herself as anyone else.

 

Beryl maintained her gaze, smiling and nodding ever-so-slightly, subtly encouraging her acquaintance-friend to stay with the thought process, similar to how a parent might subtly encourage their child to take its first steps.

 

“I’m alive. And I won’t be, forever. And I’m made to be soft and fat.”

More subtle nods and ongoing eye contact.

Her voice regrew in strength, “And I love to eat. And this is great food! And I’m on a cruise ship, with you all. And we’re all loving food and getting fatter together like we did at Samoa Cookhouse, and it’s not costing me more ’cause I’m on the Pampered Gem package!”

“So am I” Leigh quickly added.

Beryl’s food-unencumbered right hand shot up, “Pampered Gem.”

Rebecca grew more excited, “And I can eat for myself, and those who aren’t with us any longer, and we stick together and surround ourselves with fat admirers who love us, and celebrate lifffffe!”

“Yes! Celebrate with us! You in on this, Leigh?”

She could only nod, given how her mouth was currently filled with breakfast mini-burrito.

 

Celebrate they all did. The table fell silent, giving way to the sounds of happy, calm, relaxed eating for all 4 of them, voraciously so for the 3 women of abundant soft size. Conversations from other nearby (but not overly nearby, with the social distancing adjustments) tables drifted through, often fragmentary and mostly unnoticed by the now-contented friends.

Having let go of so many pent-up emotions absolutely helped move Rebecca Davidson to a more balanced, serene space. So too did the food. Eating on her own whether in public where she might be judged or alone in her stateroom where she tended to feel like an addict shooting up on her drug of choice tended to be stressful and shameful for her. Here with Leigh and Beryl so happily and freely eating, she once again had one of those very rare for her opportunities to feel protected from external and internalized shame as part of a shameless group. Beyond her still-new fat female friends, her one-off FA lover Clark measurably added to her sense of security and shame-free serenity. Representing far more than merely himself, in her mind he was the living channel through whom friends and lovers past no longer amongst the living who’d always appreciated her plush softness (and very big boobs, in most cases) remained connected to her, through him, here and now in the present. She saw their smiles in his, along with his actual own. His occasional upper arm touches and caresses earlier conveyed love beyond that of a singular human, she now realized.

Leigh might well have been contented and OK happily eating with gusto had it been just herself and Clark. Much as she felt a competitive tension with far fatter and bigger-boobed Beryl and Rebecca, Clark was seated under her right hip, cuddling into her, with his arm around her, in every way fulfilling the role (in her world view) of a loving, caring, passionate husband, cruise or otherwise, no matter who in the moment may be making his carnal chemistry banana him up. There was tension within her between her romantic partner competitive sense and the wholly honest fat foodie friendship bond she could not and would not deny existed strongly between her and Beryl, and her and Rebecca.

Emotionally well-balanced, innately strong of personality and positive, and wholly owning her love of food and fatness and erotic plus purely non-erotic pleasure of fat gain, Beryl Beech was fine in nearly all circumstances, whether on her own or with others. She was a social being, so all else being equal (which it almost never is), she preferred sharing her life joys with others of a similar mindset and compatible world views. Allies were always good to have, given that even the strongest personality can have the occasional off day. For her, all of them having come out on the living side of this often-intense illness was reason for celebration, and renewing their shared interests bond.

 

“Anybody want anything while I’m up?” Clark asked as he gently and sensually caress-moved Leigh’s right hip fat off his lap so he could get up.

“I’ll take some more of the Bramble Scramble” said Beryl.

“The what?” Leigh questioned.

“The sweet-savory scrambled eggs with fruit. I don’t know what they’re calling it here, but that’s what Chef Lindgren called it at Glissando, based upon the the blackberries in it.”

“At what meal was that served?”

“Sunday Brunch in San Fran. Great meal, and great day overall” she grinned, recalling all the food and sex fun she’d had.

“I’d like some.”

“Me too, please” added Rebecca. “And if you could, a nice hot toasted bagel or two, please.”

The thought excited Beryl, “Oh yes—I want in on that, please!”

“I’d like one too, please, Neener. If there’s choices of type of bagel, you know what I like.”

“OK, let me go fetch and deliver those, and then if there’s more, I’ll go back for a second round.” He hadn’t been consciously aware that he’d had a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder as well as Leigh’s until he removed them as he departed.

 

All 3 women watched him walk away towards the buffet as they munched.

 

“There goes someone else we all have in common” Beryl noted.

“Present tense?” Leigh suspiciously questioned, raising an eyebrow.

“Well I guess that depends, doesn’t it? Maybe we’ll get into that later. What I meant was we have in common—present tense—that we’ve all had at least an intimate taste of Clark Barr—past tense for me, likely Bec, and apparently present tense for you. Is it OK if I call you Bec, Rebecca?”

“Sure. Fewer syllables for the win.”

“Saves mouth time for more eating” she smiled before taking another bite of sausage.

“Yeah, it was a time alright” Rebecca somewhat wistfully shared. “What did you call Clark just now, Leigh?”

“Neener. My pet name for him, for the obvious reason.”

She looked towards Leigh, quizzically.

“Did you forget already?” asked Beryl. “He’s part of the upward banana clan. Banana baneener, neener, I’m guessing.”

“Exactly” said Leigh.

Rebecca averted her eyes towards her frontmost plate, “We didn’t get into that.”

“Oh really? So you don’t know about the modification?”

“What modification?” asked Beryl.

“The surgery mod that gave him retrograde ejaculation. All of the hardness and then some, none of the mess.”

Her blissed-out lost to lust smile shook up Rebecca.

Beryl, it made more curious. “What does it matter if he’s in a condom anyway?”

“Doesn’t, maybe, as long as the condom doesn’t break or no one’s fertile. I find it quite wonderful that he can stick it pretty much anywhere he wants on me, per his and my prior discussions, agreement, and consent arrangements, almost any time I’m awake and good with that and he can get all the way off with no mess. My navel’s not big enough so far to take anywhere near all he has for girth in much at all just yet, but fat folds, the bagpipe thing I think it’s called under the arm, or his favorite and becoming mine slipped between my plush buns in my crack, and I can thrill to his hardness and he can get off and there’s no cleanup. Last I checked those aren’t significant STI risk areas since there’s no fluid sharing, especially with no fluid coming out of him.”

“Hold up!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Are you saying that when you put him in your mouth and he gets off that there’s nothing to choke on?!”

“We haven’t really gotten into that because it’s not anything either of us especially want to do. I guarantee you when his neener’s all the way engorged, I’d have to open full-wide and there wouldn’t be even half of him in my mouth before he’d be far enough back that I’d be gagging. But yeah, if we did that with him far enough out so it’s comfortable for me, he can take it all the way and there’s nothing squirting or dribbling out of him to gag on.”

 

Annnnd guess who was back. He’d not heard their conversation, even Leigh’s last few words, due to his focus on delivering the correct items to the correct recipients. “Ohhh kaaay… one egg one salt bagel for you” he narrated as he slid them off his carrying plate onto one of Rebecca’s empties, “with a large communal bowl of cream cheese for sharing, once you’re done with it. I went with the everything bagel for you” he explained to Beryl, “since you seem to like everything in many aspects of life. You, Chonky, get the garlic bagel.”

Rebecca had trouble believing she’d heard him correctly. “What did you just call her?”

“Chonky. It’s my pet name for her” he punctuated with a kiss on Leigh’s lips.

“They’re getting serious if they’re at the pet name stage” said Beryl to Rebecca.

“I quite like being his chonky lover” Leigh explained, encouraging him back down cuddled next to and underneath part of her, now that he’d finished serving. “If he called me that before I got to know him and know how deeply to his core he’s a fat admirer, I’d have been insulted. Knowing that a chonky woman is the only sort that gets his juices flowing, it’s absolutely a term of endearment.”

 

All the kissing, cuddling, and related affectionate PDA canoodling between Clark and Leigh was beginning to deeply upset Rebecca. Even Beryl was getting a little annoyed.

 

“Looks like I’ve come to the best place.”

“PERrrrrr!” Rebecca wide-eye exclaimed, severely jolting the big, sturdy, heavy table in her rush to get up and bear hug him.

The profoundly soft, deep impact nearly bowled him over, though given how swiftly she threw her arms around him and how tightly she held him, she likely would have held him up all on her own if it had come to that. She unleashed several passels of all-out ravaging sloppy passionate excited upset desperate kisses, drawing the attention of many at several nearby tables, and the arousal of a few.

“What happened?!” she cried out during a kissing break. “We were talkin’ an’ typin’ all the time, then nothing! I thought you were deaaad!”

A fresh round of kisses ensued, after which she dragged him over with her to the table, sitting him down cuddly-close next to and into her, nearest Clark after the one-average-width-person gap between them. Still overwrought with emotions, she crushed him deep into her left side, wantonly smashing his hand onto her fat breasts, caring not one whit what anyone else thought about it, frantically kissing him some more.

 

The others at the table snickered and smiled at each other, each feeling the heat of passion and being reunited with a love presumed permanently lost.

“I think she’s glad to see him” Beryl teased.

 

Her comment broke Rebecca out of her kiss-fest. “Hell yeaaah! He’s my guyyy!” She faced him, caressing his face, “My cruise honey!”

Leigh decided she needed kisses from her own cruise honey, especially when Rebecca went back for more soon as she finished speaking.

Beryl shook her head slightly and contentedly ate.

 

“So what happened?! Ya couldn’t-a gone out with another girl, all locked down and stuff, could ya? Ya didn’t, didja?!”

“No, not at all. I’ve been alone in my stateroom like you and the rest of us.”

“Clark got himself quarantined with Leigh, lucky devil” noted Beryl. “Though it may have cost him his freedom.”

“Why did ya stop talkin’ ta meeee?! Not even a text!”

“This is highly embarrassing for me to admit, especially given that I’m in tech.”

“What what what?! Out with it, ya cute, sexy bub!”

“Device slipped out of my hand and fell in the toilet. And the water wasn’t in any way clean, so it took awhile for me to decide whether or not it was worth retrieving. Once I did so, it was too late: bricked it, totally.”

Others around the table other than Rebecca struggled not to laugh. She stared and blinked in disbelief, still latched onto him and not letting go.

“That was the point where I regretted not packing a spare. Had I had one, we could have remained in communication. Had I had any other form of backup digicam, I’d likely have taken a picture of it floating in the bowl with everything else, scatalogically entitled ‘Bricked it and shit’.

“Please tell me ya washed yer hands after that.”

“Absolutely! Thoroughly and multiple times as part of that event, and many dozens of times since. Obviously with lockdown and everything else, I haven’t been able to get another one, hence the reason I fell out of communication.”

“They’ve got phones on this ship, ya dummy! Oy! All ya had ta do was pick up the phone and key in my stateroom number, and we coulda talked!” She again smashed him all the way deep into her side with her thick, strong, motivated left arm, “And I wouldn’t have been so flippin’ worried! I really thought ya died, hun!”

“It’s been so long since I’ve used a corded phone, I didn’t even think of it.”

“Isn’t it right there by yer bedside?!”

“Put it in a drawer when I boarded and forgot about it.”

“Oy vey! You owe me some lovin’, sir!”

“How’s he going to have the energy for that if you don’t let him get some breakfast?” Beryl pointedly asked.

“Getcher food an’ come right back here an’ siddown with me like this, alright?”

“Anything you want while I’m up?”

“More bagels, please. If they have them. Here’s your kiss, so you’ll come back.”

 

Most who witnessed the latest passionate kiss Rebecca unleashed on Per considered it closer to a marriage proposal or confirmation than a come right back send-off.

 

“Anyone else want anything else to eat at this time?” Clark asked the remainder of the group, again lovingly extricating himself from under Leigh’s right hip fat.

{A sample of your apparently-special neener} thought Beryl, {though that’s likely not in the offing right now}. She opted for more hash browns.

Leigh asked for more sausages.

 

---

“Please don’t give me grief about the mishap” Per preemptively asked of Clark as the latter approached him at the buffet.

“Not at all why I’m here, curious as I am how it happened.”

“Should’ve gone with a stickier case, is all I have to say about it. What’s this Bramble Scramble about?”

“Sweet and savory fruit and scrambled egg mix that the high-end restaurant was serving.”

“D’ja try it?”

“I’m not a sweet and savory person. The others all liked it.”

 

He went ahead and dished some up, as Clark was doing with his delivery requests.

 

“What I really wanted to do was congratulate you on finding your way into Rebecca’s heart.”

“Truth be told, it’s news to me that I’m there. We were getting on OK before the lockdown, but it ran hot and cold, and I didn’t think it was going to amount to anything of any significant time duration. The lockdown and world events obviously have her spooked, so I think that’s a large part of it.”

“A lot of people in her life from her childhood and in her family have died from it in New York City, so it’s a lot more personal to her than many of us.”

He nodded, taking note of this point.

“How do you feel about her?”

“Heaven on earth” he sighed. “I’m in her camp for as long as things work out. “How’s Leigh as a lay and in every other way?, if you’ll pardon the alliteration.”

“Epic in every way, including the lay, and far beyond physical stuff.”

“You two sure seem to have the love chemistry going on, from what I can tell.”

“Strongest I’ve personally felt” he smiled.

 

Both men knew they needed to get the food back to those they loved, while it remained fresh and hot.

 

---

Seeing the smiles on the fat foodies’ faces as the new noms were delivered, plumped-up women at a couple of other tables elbowed their significant others, urging them to be equally nice as those gentlemen and fetch them additional yums.

 

“I want ya ta eat, ya sexy rail, but I also wanna know what happened with the course of your illness” Rebecca asked of Per, once he was back into her side. “We’ll do yes/no for awhile, so you can eat. Didja have trouble breathing?”

He shook his head.

“Wheezing?”

Shake shake shake.

“Coughing?”

Nod nod nod.

“What kind? Oh never mind, that’s not a yes/no.”

“Let me just tell you. The course of my illness since we last communicated was dry cough, fever including a high fever for a night or two during the peak of the illness, and feelings of being dazed or in a light malaise fading in and out. That’s about it.”

Leigh leaned over past Clark to make eye contact, “No loss of smell or taste?”

“Maybe partial. Certainly not all the way. Honestly other than the high fever or maybe including that, without all the worldwide attention on it, I’d have assumed it was seasonal flu that ran longer than usual for me.”

“Lucky you” replied Rebecca. “It came for me, Per: came ta take me! Like all the others!”

“Tell me” he urged her.

 

The others focused on their food and each other as Rebecca reprised her NYC losses for her Love.

Per did an excellent job of being present with and connected to his love interest. Feeling his love and presence soothed Rebecca and gave her shards of hope, leading to a less dramatic repeat presentation.

 

---

“Stay with me tonight, please?” Rebecca begged Per as she wrapped up her presentation, preventing his immediate answer with several kisses.

“Absolutely, if you’re good with that.”

“I need it.” Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss

 

Over at the opposite end of that same side of the table, Clark and Leigh were mixing up nose-rub and mouth kisses, lost to each other as Per and Rebecca were.

 

“Well, guess I’d better heft myself up and get a little exercise, along with my next round of numminess.”

Beryl’s show of getting up and slowly waddling back over towards the buffet succeeded in briefly drawing the attention of her two one-off lovers, in particular to her wildly wobbling massive hindquarters as she wobbled away. Each of Rebecca and Leigh had no trouble whatsoever immediately recapturing the full attention of their chosen love interest, regaling them with their own compelling charms, not all of which were physical by any means!

 

---

With everyone’s COVID-19 sharing out of the way, conversation flowed and flitted between lighter topics. All 3 women continued light, restful noshing, at this point more for the pure pleasure than any burning hunger.

Leigh was amazed with how she wanted to keep eating, and with how despite the significant amount she’d already eaten, she comfortably had room for more, and was actually still just a touch hungry. {Hope I can get this under control before life resumes normalcy. Or maybe Rebecca’s correct and there will be no more normalcy. Hmmm… I need some more potato pillows in me.}

 

The sight of a long, flowing salt-and-pepper-haired SSBBW heading towards their table caught the eyes of Clark and Per seconds before Leigh and Rebecca, out of Beryl’s line of sight from behind her. As flowed her hair, she wore a long, flowing, loose full-length pastel floral dress with many orange and brown hues on a cream background, plodding along in gold sandals. Despite her dress not being form-fitting, her breasts were so huge and bralessly free to roam and her belly and to a lesser extent hips and thighs so wobbly fat, it was as easy to see their general shape and magnitude as it was to see her fully exposed fat chins and thick upper arms.

“Is this the table for fat failures?” the woman asked in a sad, plaintive voice.

“Nope, sorry hun: this is the rad fab fat foodie babelicious and those who love us table.”

 

Looking even more distraught and as though she was going to cry, the woman sadly turned and started shuffling away, behind Beryl, seeking her place.

“Geeeet over heeere” Beryl called out, hefting herself turning around just in time to loop the woman with her arm and stop her in her tracks. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

Deeper sadness and upset filled the woman’s baggy, forlorn eyes.

Clark could not believe what he was hearing. “That’s our DJ Swash Buckle!” he exclaimed, stunned that none of the others seemed to recognize her. “From Club Troposphere, right over there!” he pointed. “The one who played all that great dance music from across the decades, including things I’d never thought of as dance music! The one who had us all shaking our stuff and so flirty that in various combinations on different nights, we excused ourselves to go off together and get to know each other better!”

“Oh you wonderful man!” she exclaimed, nearly tossing her plate onto an empty area of the table on Beryl’s side, rushing around the end of the table where Leigh was—her fat, sexy body parts very much bouncing all over the place—throwing her arms around Clark on his right side (opposite of Leigh on his left), squishing into him for a deep, very affectionate standing-sitting side hug. “You recognize me and remember me!”

“I don’t know why the others aren’t.”

“Prolly ’cause I’m hella fatter and look like shit and my hair’s all white.”

“But you still have your same beautiful face with your sunny marble green mischievous eyes and your squared-off jaw line, which for lack of a better term I’ll call the rocker chick jawline.”

He didn’t just call it that, he tenderly caressed her there. She very much wanted to kiss him.

“Hey hey hey!” Leigh objected, reaching over and forcefully pulling his hand away. “Aren’t you forgetting something, cruise husband?!”

“Awww, Claaark!” Beryl double face-palmed. “What sort of monog ridiculousness did you get yourself into?!”

“It’s like going steady for the duration of the cruise” he elucidated. “Didn’t I mention this already?”

“Not that I remember.” She tossed a potato pillow over her head in frustration, “There goes our orgy.”

“What orgy?!” Rebecca shot back, once again pulling Per tightly back against and into her.

“The celebratory one I was going to suggest we all get into once we’re done here, with this celebratory foreplay munch-fest.”

Still steamed, Leigh kept her man pinned against her as well.

“I apologize for touching you without your consent, Swasssh….”

“I’m Jayne” she sadly barely smiled, limply shaking his hand, then Per’s. “With a Y, as if that or anything else matters any more.”

“I apologize to you, Chonky, for unwittingly going outside our cruise marriage boundaries to ensure that Jayne knows that at least I recognize her and know who she is.” He emphasized his apology with a long, tender kiss.

“You looked vaguely familiar soon as you arrived, but my mind’s image of you is as you appeared on stage” shared Per, with Beryl and Rebecca nodding.

“That’s all gone now (sniff). Along with everything else (sniff).”

“Why?” asked Clark.

“Is there some part of cruise husband you’re not understanding, Jayne?!” Leigh glared at her before she could answer or anyone else could say anything else.

Beryl couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. “How possessive are you, Leigh?! Jayne’s obviously hurting, she’s over there with her clothes on—her not especially form-fitting clothes, not her steaming sexy pirate’s outfit—sharing a hug with Clark. Whatever the hell a ‘cruise marriage’ is, does that mean you have him so chained down he can’t even hug other people with everyone having their clothes on?!”

“She’s too sexy! Her boobs alone will carry his instincts off and away!”

“So given that she and I look to be close in size in Breasticle Chesticle No Bird’s Nesticle Land, are you saying he can’t hug meee? ’Cause if that’s so, I have a problem with that.”

“How about you, good sir?” frustrated Jayne asked the gentleman to the right of Clark whose name she did not know. “May I hug you?”

“Yes.”

“Uncle Abe!” Rebecca yelled out, her arm still nearly squeezing the wind out of him.

“No.”

“Aaaauh!” Jayne groaned, standing back upright and shuffling around the table back towards where she’d been. “I’m not trying to be sexy!” she whined, taking a seat across from Leigh, opposite end of the table from Beryl on the same side. “These things don’t have an Off switch!” she referred to her boobs, momentarily tossing each up in the air slightly with her hands. “Sometimes a hug is just a hug—affectionate, not meant as sexy!”

 

She got into her food and soothing hot tea, on this yet another of a series of cold wintery days in what by the calendar was already springtime. The entire table ate or rested quietly for several minutes.

 

---

“Apologies to all of you” Jayne broke the silence. “I am not functioning well. The entire world I knew is gone (sniff), and I haven’t slept in well over 2 weeks.”

“At all?!” surprised Clark asked.

“Correct (sniff), between the illness and my entire life being over (sniff). Well OK, maybe a few minutes here and there, but not much! How can I sleep when the world is collapsing all around and I need to find a way to surviiiiiive!”

“Are you from the City, hun?”

“She means New York City” Clark clarified.

“Yeah whatever. ’Cause if you are, I feel ya. Hundreds dead, since yesterday! People I know, gone! At least one close relative, dead! Is that what it is, Jayne?”

“Truly sorry for your loss, uhh…”

“Rebecca. But I’ll answer to Becca or Bec too, long as no one else is using those.”

“It’s bad there I know, but I’m from this coast.”

“Whereabouts?”

“I’m a Cali girl, from L.A.”

“Oy! All you natives comin’ outta the woodwork, after years of my not crossin’ paths with any of ya. Sorry; you tell your thing.”

“Everything I’ve known and worked for is destroyed. The cruise industry already had to watch its step after decades of norovirus outbreaks, on-ship crime, breakdowns leaving cruisers stranded, and more. We were getting a handle on it—we were!—but this is the death blow. Diamond Princess, Grand Princess, Ruby Princess, now us.”

“But those were the Princess Cruises line, and this is Royal Prince” Clark objected.

Her voice became more animated, “Yes, but it’s the cruise industry that’s dead. People were already wary and calling us floating petri dishes before COVID-19. With something like 60 cruisers dead already across all cruise lines and over a thousand infected that we know of, who’s going to go on a cruise ship after this?! Look at what’s happened to us, just on this ship!: 12 dead last I checked, including one of our Infirmary nurses in her 30s with no underlying health conditions, way over two-thirds of the ship infected. It’s everywhere! Captain Cranch got it, other deck officers got it, it’s all over the hotel staff. Dancers, entertainment—you name it, that department’s got it. And we’re stuck in limbo in a commercial port that doesn’t support cruise lines and very much does not want us here, with the authorities holding everyone hostage such that the whole world knows of the ill-fated Sapphire Prince cruise ship rather than letting people off to repatriate and go home, which I completely do not understand, given how the world already went through this on this coast with the Grand Princess weeks ago!”

“There’s a lot I don’t understand about what’s happening. But you’re here, alive and on this deck with us, so that means you survived COVID-19. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“What for?! I lost everything and everyone! Peeties’s deaaaad! (sniff)”

“Awww hun” Beryl tried to comfort her, along with a friendly seated side hug. “Was he the love of your life?”

“Yes! There’s never lived another Turquoise-fronted amazon parrot like Peetie!” Her tired eyes lit up, “He was a rescue parrot, saved from an out-of-business pet shop when the owners skipped town and left all the animals behind, uncared-for! The local SPCA got the building owner to open the store on animalitarian grounds. I’d just gotten my pirate’s hat that day and I had it on when we amongst the public were allowed in to claim an animal. I went up to the parrot cage and said ‘Arrre ye me parrot?’ and some of them looked at me and a few squealed or chirped, but Peetiesaid ‘Arrrre ye me pirate?’ and I said Aye! and he flew over and tried to get to me through the cage, and they let him out and he landed on my shoulder! Right here on my left shoulder!” she excitedly pointed out, obviously very worked up. “I took him home and cared for him and he cared for me and I love him so much and he’s dead now!”

“What from?”

“COVID-19! I’m sure of it!” Her sniveling returned, “He caught it from me—had to have! (sniff)”

“How would you know?” asked Clark. “I wouldn’t even know what a bird’s symptoms would be.”

“He was trying to keep me happy when I first came down with it, after several sleepless nights watching my life implode. Then a day or so later he started acting all lethargic: far less active than usual, barely ever screeching or saying anything. Kept getting worse, kept getting worse, like me for awhile. His… his last words were ‘Feeling hot, hot, hot’ from the Arrow soca song of that name, that he loved to sing and dance to with me. But he had no energy, the way he usually did! He didn’t say anything after that for a whole day—not even a squeak! It was, it was as though he was trying to make sound, but he couldn’t! I stayed with him—I couldn’t sleep anyway, and this my Peetie! His eyelids grew heavy, then he closed his eyes and wasn’t responding at all to me. Then… and then it was about 10 minutes later he just fell over: fell off his perch and crashed to the bottom of his cage!”

 

Unsurprisingly, she needed some time to cry, to grieve.

 

“I’ll never forget Peetie (sniff).”

“How did he get his name?” asked Per.

“He named himself! Soon as I took him home, I asked him, ‘What be yer naaame, pretty parrot?’ and he said Peetie! Peetie! Peetie! Peetie! all fast like that. And I said, ‘Hi Peetie!’ and he replied ‘Hi!’ and paused, then ‘Hi!’ again.”

“Could he say your name?” asked Leigh.

“He didn’t really like Jayne, prolly because he knew I didn’t especially and still don’t like my given name. He preferred Swash Buckle, though he ran it together so it sounded more like ‘swashbuckle! swashbuckle!’. When I first started with him here on the Sapphire Prince, he and I would do a little talking intro thing where I’d introduce him and he’d say my name. But people had trouble understanding him and he got bored with it, so we stopped doing that.”

“Maybe once you’re past the rebound time frame you’ll get another parrot” suggested Beryl.

“No” Jayne shook her head. “They’re a lot of work to properly care for. I didn’t mind with Peetie, because we truly loved each other and even by the end when he was an adult when they often get aggressive, he’d still cuddle with me. That chapter of my life’s over. All chapters of my life are over!” she whimpered, pushing her plate out of the way then collapsing down atop the table.

“Why do you keep saying that?” asked Clark, in a tone sweet enough to annoy Leigh. “You ought to be able to fill the dance floor of a land-based club every bit as well as you do over there in Club Troposphere.”

“Thank you; you’re too kind. It’s not like that on land, unfortunately. Too many DJs as good or better than me. Too cutthroat. There’s competition for cruise ship jobs but there’s less of it—wasless of it, when we still had a cruise industry. Fewer qualified DJs are willing to sign on for weeks or months at a time out at sea. Also the mix of people in cruise ship clubs is a better match for those like me who prefer dancing across the decades and genres with our dance music. As you may have noticed, land-based DJs tend to have tighter niches: one or maybe two of genres like house, reggaeton, breakbeat, drum & bass, Detroit techno, electro, jungle, dubstep—on and on and on, but only specializing in one or two. I’m good with most of those, but I’d rather mix it up: more of a challenge for me, and I think it’s more fun to hear.”

Most of the others nodded. Beryl and Leigh seemed lost in different thoughts.

“Besides, will we even still have any dance clubs going forward?! The way people are writing and talking about permanent changes freaks me out! I’m a people person: I thrive around people together in real life, as we all are right now.”

“Thank you for that!” said Rebecca. “This whole society’s too carried away with filtering life through technology. In my opinion.”

“Tech filters can be helpful” Beryl countered. “I use them liberally, for winnowing down the men I want to get with.”

“Can’t cuddle through tech” noted Jayne, catching a clear spark of understanding from Clark’s momentary direct glance. “No, I think life as we knew it is over. Not only is my DJ career here dead, I’m now sitting on right about 50 thousand dollars of inventory I can’t move.”

“Of what?!” asked Per.

“During the day most days when we’re at sea and tax laws are less messy, I run Gold ’N’ Gems, the jewelry store in the shopping district on Grand Promenade. Normally I’m pretty good at reading what people want and keeping the inventory flowing, but not any longer” she ended with a big sigh.

“Sell it online.”

“Oh no. That world’s even more cutthroat than land-based live DJing. Fewer people in it, but the serious players have more resources. Trust and branding matter, particularly when there’s big money involved.”

“I thought nearly every town and city of every size below huge metropolitan had its own independent jewelry store, where people actually go in and look and try things on.”

“Had them, Clark. That’s not going to be happening if social distancing becomes a permanent way of life. Not that I could survive that” she ended in a mutter.

“I’m reading that someone needs to feel better about herself before she can feel positive about life at all” Rebecca posited, in a more friendly Jewish mothering tone adding, “So ya fell a little behind on the hair dye thing—that’s reversible, easily. Life’s different in your 50s.”

The sudden look of shock then umbrage on Jayne gave Per an idea. “Since this is supposed to be a celebratory COVID-19 survival meal, let’s play a party game.”

Clark snickered and occasionally snorted, seeing what Per was pulling out of his pockets. “Do you usually carry around little sheets of paper and small mini golf pencils?”

“You and everyone other than Jayne at this table know why!”

 

Beryl leaned over and whispered the explanation in Jayne’s ear. It was the first time she’d smiled or laughed all morning.

 

“Dead tree and processed carbon technology is the fallback.” He handed each of them a small piece of paper and a pencil. “This game is called Guess and Tell Ages. Write down everyone’s first name on separate lines, including your own. Write your actual age next to your name. Write down your prediction of every other person’s age next to their name. Go for accuracy, not flattery.”

“Where in the world is this a fun party game, mister?!” Rebecca ranted.

He folded his arms, looking at her defiantly, “In my homeland. We do not have to do this if it’s a problem.”

“Do you not already know that in this culture, women are devalued once they hit 30? Thus we may tend to be sensitive about perceived age?”

“Colder winters make for thicker skin, I suppose. Go ahead and vote on whether we’ll play this game or not. I’ll abstain, so there can’t be a tie.”

Jayne raised her hand first, “I need to know.”

 

The vote was 4 to 1 in favor, with Rebecca being the 1. “You owe me an extra-special massage, mister Haugen” she commented as she filled out her paper, along with the others.

 

“OK, circle your name and age, so we know whose paper is whose. Now we all put them in the middle of the table together where we can all see them.”

 

With everyone having randomly ordered the names, it took awhile to parse what each person had written down.

“Whaaat?” Jayne screeched (not unlike Peetie might have), hurling her upper body down prostrate atop the table.

“Really?!” along with a brief huff was Beryl’s response.

“I’m good with this” Rebecca smiled.

Leigh gleefully grinned. “I like this game.”

Jayne sat back up to rant, “I’m only 47, but I already look 59?!”

“Someone put that as a high number” noted Rebecca. “Your average is lower.”

“I’m getting 54.5, averaged” said Per, who’d scribbled through the math.

“Seriously people: my hair just went white these past 2 weeks!” Jayne whimpered. “I only had a few white strands before that, not a dye job!”

“Severe stress can do that” noted Clark. “Think about U.S. presidents, and what their hair looked like going in versus coming out.”

Per didn’t understand the upset. “Why get worked up over appearances? It’s not like you’ve developed early-onset dementia.”

“Were you not listening?!” Rebecca chided her lover. “We. Get. Judged on our appearance. Harshly. It’s wrong, it’s bullshit, but so far it’s reality. Maybe we can convince COVID-19 to kill that too? Anyway… thank you all for the span of 42 to my actual 56. Stop it with the giggles Leigh, and tell us how you pulled off a low of 38 and high of 51 when you’re actually 62.”

“Fat to fill out the wrinkles and otherwise keep my skin moisturized, coconut oil on my face once a day at home for years, sleeping well more often than not, loving Clark Barr” she cuddled into him.

Beryl pulled the distraught whimperer into a side hug, “I’m only 4 years older than you at 51, but they put me between a low of 52 and high of 59, so we’re very definitely cruising on the same ship. Have some more food, get some sleep, and you’ll be fine.”

“It’s not just my hair and appearance stuff, shitty as that is: my eyes can’t focus up close any more!”

“Welcome to presbyopia” said Rebecca, slipping her reading glasses out of her bra and waving them back and forth.

“Not so fast” Clark interjected, asking Jayne “May I please tell you about when that happened to me at age 23?”

“Twenty three?!”

“It wasn’t permanent! May I tell you?”

She nodded, a faint glimmer of hope briefly twinkling through her despair.

“I was standing with my then-love, early in the morning before sunrise, after an all-night argument, which for her and I were far too frequent. Standing right in front of her, faces a normal close embrace looking into each other’s eyes distance apart. Could not focus on her face! Upset, started crying. Know what it was?”

She shook her head.

“Severe lack of sleep. With sleep deprivation, the body has to prioritize its functions, to keep the organism—you, me, anyone—alive. Eye muscle focus wasn’t a top survival priority. After a night’s sleep, my eyes could focus up close again.”

She blinked innocently, somewhat like a frightened girl being told a happy story by her older brother.

“Yeahbut you were 23 and she’s 47” countered Rebecca. “Mine started to go around then. 47, 48… somewhere in there.”

Jayne dropped back down onto the tabletop, again feeling defeated and hopeless.

To Leigh’s annoyance, Clark claimed and held one of her hands, “If it happened suddenly, it’s the lack of sleep. If it’s been getting gradually worse, that’s likely presbyopia. There are now ways to handle that too, other than reading glasses.”

“Bud thus cus mrnr.”

“Sorry, can’t hear you.”

She dragged herself back upright, speaking normally rather than into the tabletop beneath her arms. “But those cost money. And I’m not going to have money. No career, no income, no hope, no future.”

“Insufficient logical thought processes without sleep.”

“How can I sleep when the world is crashing and burning all around me?!”

“What do you normally accomplish when you’re sleeping at night? From before all this pandemic stuff started happening?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Worrying and productive thinking and more than that taking productive action are very different things. I lost a number of nights of sleep in my 30s, sitting starkly wide awake in bed at night worrying and waiting, just in case there was a major earthquake. Total waste of time! Earthquakes still can’t be predicted more than some number of seconds in advance last I read, and they couldn’t even do that back when I was losing sleep over the fear of one rumbling through in the deep of the night and totally crashing my entire life, maybe even life as we knew it back then.

“Eventually I figured out it was a waste of time and stopped losing sleep over it. The sensible response was imagining an earthquake happening right now—during the daytime on a weekend or other day off, when I had the time and mind focus to act. What would I do? What would I need? Then I could make rational decisions about emergency flashlights and toilet paper and water and other supplies. Then I could actually in reality do something: obtain the supplies I didn’t already have, relocate some of them to be more readily accessible in case the house collapsed, and so on. Years later, a moderate earthquake rumbled through. No issue, but I again feared a bigger one. I realized most of my fear at that time was that my water plans had proven unworkable. Instead of bottles of water I never remembered to change or integrity verify often enough, I needed one of those filters that hikers and those in areas with no clean water use to process brackish water into potable water in the moment, rather than depending solely on stored water. Researched them during the day, ordered one, received and tested it, stowed it away in an accessible location, and again stopped worrying about The Big One.

“Put bluntly and more succinctly, fear and worry do not lead to solutions to problems. Losing sleep creates a slew of additional problems, including some of the un-health issues you’re currently experiencing. As run-down as you seem to be and tell us you are, your most impactful immediate option for your future is as much healthful, restful sleep as you can manage, as soon as you can arrange for that.”

{If you didn’t have a jealous cruise wife, I’d be taking a nap cuddled into your side right now} she thought.

Per hoped to be more helpful with his comment than with his age guess of 59 for her when he said, “It’s not just you who has to deal with this, Jayne: the whole world is in chaos right now over this disease. OK, the whole industrialized world… or at least most of it. I don’t think they’re sweating it much in Africa right now.

“Anyway, the point is that you are far, far from alone. I have several things going, so I will probably have work, but I can tell you right now that at least 2 of the projects I’d hoped to get going when I was making connections a couple weeks back when we were in San Francisco are now not happening at all. Dead, like the people and Peetie who’ve died. While not as tragic as those deaths, it’s partial economic death to me. I am far from alone, and doing better than some, or many. You are far from alone having possibly lost it all, depending what happens going forward, which none of us know yet.”

“Wouldn’t you agree, Per, that given that so much of the world remains closed up and that we in particular on board the Sapphire Prince are in a special kind of advanced limbo that Jayne can take a breather from worry and get some sleep without any additional shoes dropping?”

He gave Clark a confused look. “Shoes?”

“It’s an idiom. Pretend I said ‘without any additional problems?’.”

“People are afraid, and people tend not to spend money outside of essentials when they’re afraid, so even if your jewelry store was open, sales might be awful” he told her. “Now if you could get some nice-looking inexpensive pins in the shape of that SARS-CoV-2 spike ball illustration that we cannot seem to escape which is somewhere on nearly every web page discussing COVID-19 and have a banner on it that says ‘I Survived COVID-19’ or similar, maybe you could have a plastic box of those you carry around to places like this on the decks for recovered people where we can actually interact from sub-social distance, and sell them.”

The idea excited Beryl, if not so much Jayne, “Wouldn’t that be great? To have something more interesting than some stupid arm band or felt pen mark on the arm or similar to show who’s in the Recovered class, instead of having to be tested each time?”

“How would you prevent fraud on that?” asked Rebecca.

“How would you do it with a felt pen mark or cheap plastic arm band, as I’ve heard discussed as options?”

“All sorts of bar and QR-style coding options for the arm bands, as in hospital settings” noted Per. “If we’re going for ID rather than something Jayne can sell, that’s a different topic. If the ship has a 3D printer and enough raw materials, the Infirmary or whomever’s doing the testing could just as well print out a pretty pin, or most of it other than the pin mechanism, with an individual’s embedded code. If it looks nice people might be more inclined to wear it and do so prominently, unlike an icky arm band that might remind them too much of a past hospital visit, or a present pandemic.”

Clark was skeptical. “They lack the personnel and probably the scanning hardware to implement that with either bands or fancy pins.”

 

“Fancy Pins was a neo-folk-psych band I appreciated, of whom too few people are aware” the new voice of a lanky younger middle-aged man in a maroon t-shirt and dark blue jeans with obviously thinning light brown hair declared as he approached, pulling up directly behind Jayne.

Looking even more tired, Jayne tilted her head slowly backwards, eventually making eye contact. “How benevolent of you to mention something outside of your usual EDM universe.”

“Not everyone feels the need to reach back to the ancient melodies of pre-electronic music yester-millennium. Of which, good day, Sunshine.”

“Wasn’t it Good Morning, Starshine?”

“Five points for Leigh” Jayne announced.

The man politely dipped his head in Leigh’s direction, as an affirmation in place of a formal introduction.

Jayne wasn’t done with him just yet, “Electronic music was for sure born by the 1950s, arguably earlier.”

“Yes, but it didn’t dance for a few decades after that.”

“Perry & Kingsley! 1960s! One decade later!”

“I won’t argue with somebody who so severely outweighs me” he evilly grinned, poking her belly fat. “Boobs be boomin’ though.”

He reached for her right one, swatted away by her before he made contact.

“I take it you know him?” asked Rebecca, noticing that he didn’t move away once his hand was swatted away.

“This is Brent, my ex-boyfriend. Known in Club Troposphere as DJ Alien Groove, looking as he does with his alien head off.”

His evil grin returned in part in the form of a cheeky half-smile, “Oh I’m your ex again now? You sure about that?”

 

She again tilted her head up and made upside-down eye contact with him, looking at him and sighing dejectedly. Next she redirected her gaze towards Clark and Leigh. Then she panned over to study Per and Rebecca. Sensing no give between those couples, she let out a very deep, long sigh, gently and tentatively wrapping Brent’s arms part-way around her. “We’ll talk.”

“About your impending diet?”

She tossed his arms aside, jabbing him with her elbows almost immediately thereafter.

Beryl directed a confusing mix of smiling friendliness and harsh intensity Brent’s way, “This is a body autonomy and positivity table, for those interacting with us as well as those seated here.”

“The only body positivity he recognizes is positively huuuuge boooobz” Jayne harshed.

“Then he’s missing one third of his potential.”

“What do you mean?” Brent questioned Rebecca.

“Whaddaya think, Team Succulence? Is he qualified to know about the Third Boob?”

 

Clark giggled. Beryl grinned along with Rebecca. Per pretended he knew, his smile growing. Leigh knew. She pursed her lips, struggling to stifle a laugh.

{If this is something else I lack, I am going to cry for a week} thought Jayne. “No. He hasn’t earned it.”

“Thanks, Squish Buckle. How’s Peetie?”

“Dead!”

 

For the first time since his arrival, Brent’s smugness vanished, replaced by a look of genuine concern. He shifted around to her side towards the ground, kneeling down so that they could be nearer the same height without him having to negotiate for a seat. Looking as if he truly cared as he looked into her eyes he said on the soft side, “I’m sorry”, touching the back of her hand.

Their wordless gazes with subtle movements akin to tics communicated in a way familiar to certain groups of loving intimates who’ve gotten to know each other on a deep enough level that words aren’t always necessary. At the end of this mysterious exchange he stood back up, returning to where he’d been standing behind her, this time massaging her shoulders.

Jayne looked relieved, even if not entirely satisfied.

 

“How hard did COVID-19 hit you, Brent?” asked Leigh, out of curiosity.

“Asymptomatic: didn’t even know I had it.”

“Then what the heck are you doing up on this deck with those of us who’ve recovered?” Rebecca challenged him.

“Tested by the Infirmary: I have the antibodies, but no active disease, so I’m not contagious. Ergo I had it and didn’t know it, thanks to my pumped immune system.”

Jayne rolled her eyes, invisible to him.

Leigh struggled to figure out what he meant. “Your immune system works out?”

“Basically yes, in a way. Maybe more accurately I give it all I can that it needs to do its job. Exercise is a part of the equation to be sure. Vitamin D generation from sunshine when we have that and if necessary from a supplement when we don’t is critical, with annual blood tests to ensure it’s north of 60 nanograms per milliliter and for sure under 100, with some sources advising 80 tops. Balanced diet with healthful foods goes without saying.”

She more gently removed his hand when he grabbed and shook some of her belly flab, because he’d done so in a kinder, gentler manner.

“Supplementation may be necessary if what’s available to eat is substandard, and is necessary for nutrients not found in food, or at least not readily absorbable. I’m currently looking into the best way to ensure my melatonin level is optimal, given that I just learned how dramatically it declines from a surprisingly young age: adolescence.”

“Bully for you, Mercola-breath” Jayne taunted.

“He’s not my only source, even though he’s a good one.”

“He’s quack-blocked!”

Brent pulled his hands off her shoulders, “Those who believe that Alphabet slash Google and their big corporate and government cronies should be ultimate arbiters of truth get what they deserve.”

“Truth is truth!”

“Gatekeepers like that fall under the logical fallacy of Appeal To Authority. I prefer using my own mind to process information from disparate sources, none of whom are always correct, including Mercola.com. Each of our immune systems is going to be way faster and better-equipped to deal with SARS-CoV-2 and anything else that has already come along and assuredly will continue to come along than any lab anywhere in the world making druuuuugs. We wouldn’t be in this mess if we promoted health rather than having a pharma-based sick-care system.”

“Not everyone is capable of having a ‘pumped’ immune system!” Rebecca raged.

“Understood. But if those of us who have that option and can optimize our health and immune function do so, there’ll be far fewer illnesses going around, thus fewer people jamming up the orthodox medical system, thus space in that system for the unavoidably immunocompromised: beds, ventilators, and so on.”

“They need a vaccine!”

“Oh don’t get him started!” Jayne pleaded, double face-palming.

 

Too late.

“Think about how crappy the annual flu vaccine works!”

“Oh bullshit!”

Jayne continued to face-palm, shaking her head in her palms as Rebecca and Brent went at it.

“Consider: for adults over 50, the 2018-2019 flu vaccine overall adjusted effectiveness was 24 percent against all influenza types, and a whopping 8 percent against the most common A(H1N1)pdm09 that season. Those don’t sound like winning numbers to me.”

“What’s the harm?!”

“If you want to spin the vaccine roulette wheel and find out if you’re the lucky winner getting Guillain-Barre Syndrome as a result of your next flu shot, be my guest. Odds are low, yes: 1.7 in a million, but for a 76 percent or higher chance of failure of the flu vaccine to prevent the flu, not a gamble I personally wish to take.”

“Then whaddo we do?!”

“I just shared that: enhance the immune system. Get detailed blood tests, find out what’s missing or otherwise out of range, talk with your doctor if your doctor is woke about this and you feel the need, do what you need to do, and stay healthy and out of hospitals.”

“The experts tell us this quarantine stuff can’t end until there’s a vaccine!”

“You already know my opinion of experts: respect their expertise, listen to and thoughtfully consider what they have to say as being an informed opinion, but treat them as fallible humans, not Gods Who Must Be Obeyed. Yes sure, by all means pursue all reasonable options, with researching a vaccine being one of them. But for the whole world to be held hostage waiting for The Doctors to Saaaave us all with their heroic Vaccine as the One And Only True Solution to this pandemic is a steaming mountain of bullshit!”

 

Several around the table huffed, hemmed, and hawed, their minds busy assembling cogent counterarguments.

 

Jayne surprised everyone when she said, “I think we have to take him seriously, at his word.”

“Why?!” Rebecca shot back.

She looked skyward, not truly attempting to make eye contact with him, “Brent’s Ph.D level at generating steaming mountains of bullshit.”

“Consider who amongst us was asymptomatic and my approach, versus what each of you did and how you fared. The truth will become self-evident.”

“May we change the subject, please?” asked Beryl.

Rebecca immediately yelled out “Second!”

“All in favor?”

 

Unanimous, including Brent.

 

“Are we all certain that the fun, playful orgy I believe we all need is wholly off the table?”

“She can’t be a part of it” Brent smirked, patting Jayne’s shoulders.

“Why not?”

“Crew and staff get fired for getting it on with guests. Except when they don’t” he added with intense bitterness, clearly from his gaze directed at Jayne.

“Who amongst us even has a job here any longer, fool!”

“We do, or at least I do, ’til the end of this cruise at a minimum. Did you not get the memo that we’re being compensated as though things are going normally?”

“That doesn’t apply to my inventory I can’t sell at the store.”

“Yeah, well, if you want a reason to be sad, you’ll find one.” He resumed massaging her shoulders, “I understand about Peetie: that’s a legit reason to be sad and grieving. Physical retail has been in a Twilight Zone for years now, so the fact that something would take it out ought not to be a big surprise.”

“Cruise ships are—were—great for in-person retail: captive audience! Amazon never made it to the point of dropping packages from drones shipboard.”

“Thank goodness for small favors.”

“So OK, maybe the rules mean you two have to do your own thing and the rest of us stay amongst ourselves rather than including either or both of you. But wouldn’t it be fun to at least watch?”

“Oy! Let it go, Beryl!” said Rebecca. “Is the concept of ‘couple’ meaning two not getting through to you?!”

“Why not have your own orgy with others not amongst us?” suggested Clark.

“Female-attracted FA shopping has been off-limits until this morning, and remains partially clamped down. Either of you two have any buds of whose existence you’re holding back on sharing?” she motioned towards Per and Clark.

Both men looked at each other, then shook their heads. Clark suggested “Ask Brian O’Brien maybe?”

For the first time any of them could recall, a pallor came over Beryl’s face. “No one’s asking Brian O’Brien anything about anything, ever again. He was one of the first off the ship, last time we pulled into this port.”

 

The entire table (including Brent) grew quiet.

 

“COVID-19?” Rebecca softly asked.

Beryl nodded. Color slowly returned to her face as she said, “All the more reason to celebrate life and love together, don’tcha all think?”

“Just leave this one out” Brent patted Jayne’s shoulders, “and me too. Much as I might want to get to know at least a couple of you intimately better, in a limited upper-deck context.”

“Since you’re so health-conscious and clearly well-connected to those sorts of resources, please consider reviewing the composition of human female breast tissues, then consider opening your mind to analogous body parts. You might find worthwhile excitement on other decks.”

“Never found any on this here vessel in front of me” he grinned, grabbing Jayne’s belly fat from both sides from his position standing behind her until she again tossed his hands off and attempted to elbow-jab him. “You do realize the elbow jabs are actually kinda pleasant with all the fat padding you have around there.”

“G’bye Brent. Maybe you’d better go find out if Bassnectar has dropped anything new today.”

“After his last ‘non-political’ screed in which he reiterated the Two-Party Myth, I’m taking a break from him.” He took his maybe-ex’s suggestion, waving and saying as he departed, “Nice meeting you all! Stay healthy!”

 

The table again fell silent as they variously ate and/or watched Brent disappear off in the distance. Jayne again looked sad and tired, letting go of yet another deep, long sigh.

 

“Why do you bother with him, when he treats you so badly?” Rebecca asked with gentle sincere curiosity.

“He’s all I have” she sighed anew.

“Buncopasties!” exclaimed Beryl. “Where’s your self-esteem, girl?! Did you pack it away with your sound gear after your last show?!”

 

She didn’t respond, spinning her now-cold toast fragment on her plate with her index finger.

 

“You can and will do better than him! You’re on a damn cruise ship!”

“She can’t get with passengers” Rebecca reminded her.

“There’s a whole thousand-something staff and crew here!” She turned back to Jayne, “Or are they technically off-limits too?”

“No actually we’re encouraged to be open to romance amongst crew and staff, prolly to keep fewer of us going for passengers, or in my case passengers repeatedly and vigorously trying to get with me… hhhhhhhh… back then. No passenger would want me now.”

“Wrroonng!” Clark and Per responded in unplanned unison.

 

Beryl bit her tongue so she wouldn’t laugh out loud watching the insta-hot umbrage from Leigh and Rebecca towards ‘their’ respective man play out. {Elbows be jabbin’ today! Wonder if anyone would even feel either of my plushly padded elbow bones any more?}

 

“Sorry for being the source of trouble yet again. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. What I meant to finish saying was that besides crew and staff new romances, marriages and married people are encouraged when appropriate for the individuals involved. Families where the children are adults or nearly so are encouraged to all be part of the team, as those in charge know that life at sea for long stretches of time can be rough when… separated….”

She was again getting tearful. Beryl and others silently urged her to go on.

“From loved ones.” As the tears rolled out, her gaze and voice became distant, “No hugs. No cuddles. No kisses. No one real… to feel. They know that. They know it hurts, so between that and preferring that staff and crew bang each other rather than passengers, those are the rules.”

“Per the 0.7 percent rule of FAs amongst the general population, if there’s how many staff and crew on this ship?”

“I don’t have that number. Last I checked it was around 1100.”

“OK, so point zero zero 7 times 1100 gives us mmm mmm mmm mmm 7 point 7 and one quarter of those will be male-attracted FAs, so that leaves us right about 5 or 6 female-attracted FAs amongst the crew.”

“Where’d you get that point 7 percent rule?”

“Experienccccee!” she gleefully replied to Per. To Jayne she asked, “So out of those 5 or 6, how many are being ridiculous and going monog with someone other than you, or otherwise out of your playlist?”

“Monogamy is legitimate, wonderful, and safe” insisted Rebecca, New Yorker burn-staring across at Beryl for emphasis.

“Let’s stick to Jayne’s situation. Too bad Brent had to turn Squish Buckle into an insult. I think it has a nice ring to it.”

“I don’t mind being squishy!” Jayne clarified. “Left to my own devices, I don’t mind being fat—and this certainly isn’t my first time, even if it’s far and away my biggest-ever peak. Whether any of you noticed or not, I was past plumper or thicc or any other sub-BBW size category into fully BBW fat at the start of this cruise. Seriously, I like my curves. Most of the time I’m good being a sex symbol and most of the time I’m down with having huge boobs. Boobs are power and hella fun to have and play with, as we know.”

Leigh bit her lip, feeling one of her self-esteem crash buttons being pushed.

Jayne noticed. Unable to think of anything to say or do to walk back her comment in Leigh’s mind, she plunged ahead, “I just wish the sexy had an Off switch, so I could be the non-threatening friendly affectionate person I truly am inside and feel the love without it having to be about sex!”

The sympathetic understanding look she received from Rebecca helped. {She knows} thought Jayne. “There are a few things you’ve gotta know about Brent. First of all, he’s insanely jealous that I’ve been sexually intimate with 12 passengers and 11 crew members during our not-exactly-matched-but-close careers on this ship, and his score—as he frames things—is 2 and 6.”

Beryl couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That’s all?!—either of you?!”

Neither could Rebecca. “That many?!”

“That’s over the past 3 years, not all on this trip! He’s one of my 11 and I’m one of his 6. Beyond the jealousy and despite both being DJs, we don’t have a lot in common. Or at least not enough. Or at least not enough of what’s important. But he’s alright, so, hhhhhhhhhhh, I go back to him. He gets his gropey boob fondles that I truly don’t mind unless he’s overly pinchy—and I do make him stop… usually—and I get survival-level cuddles, enough to get by.”

“Well he’s obviously not amongst the 5 or 6 woman-attracted FAs on the crew and staff, so back to my question: how many are actually available to you?”

“I don’t know who any of them are, Beryl.”

“Oh come on! You never see anyone looking lustily at you below upper chest level?”

She shook her head.

“Average statistics tell us nothing about the actual number in a given specific instance or context” noted Per.

“That may be, however it’s damn hell not zero out of 1100! If things were normal in terms of being close to strangers, I’d already be scoping the decks for prey– uh, I mean fine Fat Admirers!”

♫ Bird of preyyy
Bird of preyyy
Fly-ing hiiiiggh
Fly-ing hiiiiggh ♫

“You have a nice voice, Jayne. Doubly so to be able to sing that well after weeks of no sleep!”

 

Clark’s sincere comment and his endearing smile made her again weepy. They made Leigh decide she needed some kisses and her own cuddle, which did nothing to improve Jayne’s mood.

 

“Are we quite 100% double-donkey sure there’s not going to be a healthful, healing, wonderful, loving, sexy, cuddly orgy amongst us?” Beryl prodded, with her usual smile. “Eh? Eh?”

“No!” Leigh and Rebecca shot back.

“Alright. You know what that means, don’t you?”

The others shook their heads, Jayne just barely and sadly.

“With no extant immediately available cuddle options to heal squishy cuddly Swash Buckle, we have to work with what we have… at this table.”

 

Leigh immediately slid further atop Clark’s lap burying that much more of it under her warm fleshy softness. Taking no chances, she additionally slipped his left hand down under her waistband atop her fat belly.

Rebecca squished Per deeply against and into her yet again, plunging his right hand deep beneath her waistband, where she’d never, ever let him nor anyone else go in any recent decade, to his shock. Taking no chances, in his ear she whispered, “We’re going there when we’re alone in private. You’re my man.”

 

“Listen up!” Beryl raged. “We are Team Succulence. We are all in this together” she banged her fist on the table. “Just like rice and flour and toilet paper on land, there’s currently a shortage of male FAs until we can identify more and replenish stock.”

“Toilet paper?!” Clark exclaimed in umbrage.

“OK, bad analogy: male FAs are valued people just like female FAs and BBW and BHM, none of us disposable like toilet paper or any other use-once-and-discard item.”

“That’s not how I heard it” he suggestively grin-glared at her.

“I’m still open to sex with you!—you too, Per. I just don’t want to spend all my time with any one person.”

“Unavailable!” yelled Rebecca.

Leigh waggled her finger and shook her head towards Beryl with a stern glare to convey the same message.

“Moot! Back to the present! In a sane world we’d already all be at least heading to one of our staterooms for the celebratory orgy I firmly—no, squishy succulent softly—believe we all need, if not already there and naked and consensually doing it and each other. But obviously we’re not in a sane world, which explains why we’re all still confined here on this ship when other cruise ship passengers who aren’t actively ill have been let off and transported home. Everybody including my potato pillows both eaten and as yet uneaten know that you two”–she pointed to Leigh and Clark–“are going home together, by which I mean to one of your staterooms. You two”–she pointed towards Rebecca and Per–“explicitly arranged to go to her stateroom right in front of all of us within the past half hour. Jayne, a Team Succulence member in good standing, as we all are so far, needs hugs and cuddles. Having personally tested my own on her and with you all as my witnesses, we know these need to be male FA hugs and cuddles, and we of Team Succulence do not judge! At least not amongst our own. Unless absolutely necessary. Restrictions may apply void where prohibited which isn’t here ask your doctor if Team Succulence is right for you blah blah blah.

“She can’t turn off her sexy! None of us can! Jayne: get up, get over there, and sit down between Clark and Per. I’ll slide your plate over. Platonic hugs and cuddles, With. Clothes. ON!”

Jayne started to make her move.

Beryl continued, “I do not want to hear, see, nor otherwise sense one solitary gripe out of either of you scintillating SSBBW currently seated on that side of the table! No hoarding in the midst of a pandemic-induced shortage: share your woman-attracted male FA resources!”

 

Jayne felt even better than either Clark or Per had imagined: on par with the amazing women each of them loved. Feeling all their affection pouring over and into her (and vice-versa), Jayne wondered whether she’d ever been with a real FA in the past.

Even though at hip level they were all in intimate contact, and even though she’d fattened on her upper body proportionally to the rest of her body (and not just her breasts up above), there was enough space that she could only be in upper body contact with one or the other of Per or Clark at a given moment—especially the deep contact she craved.

Per felt nice: a far sight better than Brent, or any other regular lover in her life for a long, long time. He absolutely knew how to cuddle someone like her.

Clark felt magical!: everything she wanted or needed in a cuddle lover! She could feel that he almost certainly loved cuddling as much as she did.

 

Beryl watched over the group like a hawk. Thankfully for everyone, Per and Clark were on top of their game in terms of equitably splitting their affection energy focus between their main woman and Jayne, keeping Leigh and Rebecca resigned to their situation, even if not happy about it.

Jayne softly peep-sighed a few times, sinking further into a deeper cuddle with Clark, still in right hip contact with Per. Finally having found peace after far too many days, she quickly fell asleep, gravity pulling her into the deepest-possible lean with everyone in those positions. Her very soft snore and gentle restful sleeping look were adorable.

“Put your arm around her” Beryl near-whispered.

Leigh shot her a glare of rage, which she returned with an upheld warning index finger. That finger and that hand slid Jayne’s plate around Clark over to Leigh, who immediately scarfed down everything on it as her only immediate recourse to get back at Jayne for stealing some of her cruise husband’s loving affection.

[Sonic Purity]

Healing Cuddle Sleep

Jimmy’s Buffet employee Caryn Aboutu hated to play the role of enforcer, given how it was outside her friendly, accommodating nature which got her into the ship’s Food & Beverage department in the first place. With a deep breath, she girded herself and approached a table with some of the fattest people (all women) she’d ever seen, including one obviously sleeping woman who looked vaguely familiar to her. “Excuse me, folks” she tried to chirp, “We’re now over 4 seatings past your table booking, and it’s getting on towards lunchtime. Please pretty please, may we free this table for others?”

Those awake at the table looked amongst one another.

“So you’re saying we can’t just cruise right on through into lunch, since some of us are still eating?”

Caryn tensed up, wishing she could be doing something more pleasant. “We’re limited on seating, and we really really need to make room for others who signed up and are waiting.”

“I’m ready to go” said Rebecca. “You’re the only one still eating, Beryl. Let’s do it, Per” she suggested, leading him by the hand as she hefted her massiveness up.

“Last call for now on a wonderful celebratory O-R-G–”

“–No!” Rebecca interrupted Beryl. “Not us at least. Thank you all for everything. Let’s plan the next meal get-together in advance, next time there’s table space for us all.”

“Bye Rebecca! Bye Per!” those awake at the table said in different moments with varied precise wording. Fast asleep Jayne was not one of them.

 

Clark looked towards Caryn (whose name he could see on her name tag) with a pained expression not unlike her own. “I totally agree we should release this table for others. I’m concerned about the best way to wake up Jayne, leaning into me. She hasn’t slept for over 2 weeks until now, and I’m concerned about her health.”

“An air horn oughta work. Your device or mine?”

Now was Clark’s turn to elbow-jab his cruise wife.

“We’ll all be outta here within 5 minutes, hun” Beryl assured Caryn.

“Please.”

“We will.”

 

Partly relieved, partly with residual trepidation, Caryn took off.

 

“Jayne…” Clark tried to gently wake her.

“Uuuuh?” she softly peeped.

“Breakfast is over. We need to clear the table so others can use it.”

Her sad “Uuunnn” along with nuzzling deeper back into Clark’s shoulder/side strongly hinted that she wasn’t ready to deal with waking up just yet, much less parting.

 

The 3 awake table occupants fell into a heated discussion regarding how to proceed, which amazingly didn’t further wake up Jayne… or if it did, she pretended to still be asleep.

 

---

The discussion continued all the way to the present, as the group walked the inner hall of the Upper Promenade deck towards Leigh’s and Clark’s stateroom.

 

“She has her own bed in her own cabin” Leigh ranted to Beryl over her shoulder, leading the group. “Why can’t she go sleep in it?!”

“Because it’s a trauma scene of tragedy for her.”

Besides needing to look forward to avoid crashing into anything, looking directly at Beryl’s giantly fat bouncing body and especially her huge boobs from close proximity added queasiness to Leigh’s anger.

“She suffered through COVID-19 alone there, I’m wagering. For sure her beloved parrot died there. Clark’s analogy of an overly-discharged battery irrecoverably dying seems apt.”

“She survived COVID-19!”

“Shhhhh!” Clark, behind Beryl, shushed his cruise wife, steadying barely-awake Jayne steadfastly cuddled into his side like a super-amorous clingy lover.

“Yes, and there are other illnesses on board, we can be sure, and her immune system and the rest of her is in dire need of sleep. What’s the harm of letting her sleep a few more hours cuddled into Clark to get her out of the danger zone, before sending her back off to her own life?”

“I’m losing intimate alone time with him!”

“Let’s talk about it some more once we’re inside in private. I still want to see your two’s stateroom, and any of us can always change course at any time, such as if she more fully wakes up.”

{Must sleep, so I can have soothing human cuddles and affectionate love!}

“Keep going, Jayne” Clark softly urged her. “We’re almost there.”

 

---

“Oooh!” Beryl softly exclaimed upon her first sight of the interior of Leigh’s and Clark’s stateroom. “Very nice! Not very spacious, but if that’s one of the patio balconettes on the other side of the curtains, the view likely rocks.”

“Plenty of space for the two of us who occupy this stateroom” Leigh acidly noted.

“Please, Leigh: our ship’s DJ who selected and played the music that helped you and Clark dance into each other’s hearts to the point of doing your cruise marriage thing needs more quality sleep. I remind you we are all on Team Succulence together. In a few hours she’ll go back to her stateroom or cabin or whatever better rested, I’ll head back to my stateroom, and it’ll once again be you and Clark in here on your own doing your thing. I’ll leave now if you prefer, though I relish the opportunity to get to know you better as a friend, with or without actual relish in my mouth at this time, tasty as it would be.”

“I do not feel good about another woman being intimate with my man on his and my cloud bed.”

“Cloud bed! Love it!” she briefly chuckled. “These are great beds, for sure. Their clothes remain on; they’re cuddling. By all means go cuddle up to him on his free side if you feel the need and I’ll pull up a chair so we can chat softly.”

“Think that desk chair can hold you?”

She studied it. “Mmmmm… maybe not. I’ll grab one from the patio if those are sturdier and armless.”

“Armless yes, sturdier no” Clark advised.

“Hhhhhhhhh” Leigh sighed. “I give up.” Clamping one hand onto each of one of Clark’s and Jayne’s upper arms, she addressed them, “Please keep it to platonic sleep cuddles, lest you want me jealously raging. Sleep deep, Jayne: I’m not likely to be OK with this continuing. Let’s go crush the couch, Beryl.”

 

Clark was just as glad Leigh was facing away from him, unable to see his nearly-painful strong boner from the intimate lying-on-bed cuddle he was sharing with Jayne as Little Spoon, with her as cuddly sleepy Big Spoon. She truly meant to be sleeping and platonic affectionate. The problem remained that her sexy had no Off switch, as ever in her life: her big warm boobs against his back did things to him beyond his head brain’s direct control.

 

Over a slight distance on the couch, Beryl commented as she and Leigh sat down together, “Hmmm, it’s holding us without creaking. Nice. You OK with some unavoidable physically intimate contact, due to each of our spectacular plushness?”

“It is what it is. I’m tired of fighting everything and everyone.”

“Why do we have to be fighting, Leigh? Aren’t we on the same team?”

“In some ways yes and in some ways no. We’re both SSBBW, or I guess you’re ultrasized, depending on the definition. We both love food—that we have in common for sure. You love being fat to a level I struggle to fathom, especially living as you do that way full-time, I take it.”

“I’m all-in joyously living in the fattest body I can manage, ever-more excited and happy the fatter I get.”

“I can’t handle that in my everyday life, and by no means am I currently as big and fat as I’ve previously been.”

“Keeping it a secret?” she whispered back, to Leigh’s soft-spoken ending.

Leigh nodded. “Even at this level, this is far beyond where I’d intended to take things on this voyage, before the world changed forever.”

“Since it has, what are your revised thoughts?”

“I can’t think past the end of this cruise, whenever that actually is. As long as Clark and I remain an exclusive romantic item, I’m good with whatever fattening happens, which in my world I consider a side-effect of my foodie joy, not a primary goal. I’m not at peace being this fat without him lavishing his love and lust on me and it exclusively, hence my great displeasure with what’s still going on over there.”

“You don’t see or feel or otherwise discern a difference between what they’re doing and have been doing that you and I have witnessed, and sexy loving lustiness?”

She pursed her lips, struggling not to stare at Beryl’s huge boobs, directly in front of her. “Seems to me it’s a slippery slope. Especially with someone like her, who can’t help exuding sexiness at any size, amped up in his world view with her currently being an SSBBW with hyper-curves. Being honest, also you and/or Rebecca, from either of your succulent soft sexiness alone and even more as former lovers.”

“May I please have an honest, open discussion with you, to better understand your romantic belief system? I am not going to interfere with what you and Clark are doing, much as it puzzles me and limits some to-me really fun options I think we could all enjoy. Because it puzzles me, that’s what I want to discuss and try to understand, without it coming off like I’m pushing to change your world view and/or for any particular outcome. I’ve made it clear that I’m polyamorous—responsibly so: ethical slut here—and into group sex as well as one-on-one. No sales pitch; I just want to try to wrap my head around why you’re so into monogamy, and maybe related but separate in my mind, how it is that you seem to prefer ongoing 24/7 togetherness or close to that. Those things don’t make sense to me, and I’d like to understand.”

“I’m OK having this conversation, especially not having anything else in particular to be doing at the moment. One big problem for me is that my world view is so obvious and natural to me, it’s difficult for me to imagine otherwise. I don’t know how to explain what seems and feels so obvious.”

“Let’s both try and do our best.”

“To me the evolutionary difference in human mating strategies makes sense and I believe remains in play, even if the specifics are all different because we have spoken and written language, birth control, et cetera. While loving a man may not be the sort of evolutionary investment it once was in terms of bearing and raising his children, it’s nevertheless a time and resource investment.”

“I can see that for the full-time long-term loving you seem to be into, but how would that apply to short term?”

“We may be very different. I need to reach a certain level of trust before my clothes come off, much less before I spread my legs. Trust and mutual interest in each other obviously are prerequisites, but I do understand the sudden zinnng of immediate lusty attraction.”

“So when you feel that zinnng, what’s the problem with going with it?”

“I don’t know the man! Is he a criminal? Abusive? Does he have STIs or other communicable diseases?”

“If there’s nothing long-term, and you normally keep your valuables locked away or go to his place, especially being fat and having the weight and your strong leg muscles at your service, you have the strength to take down or at least temporarily incapacitate all but the most extremely brawny muscle-bound men long enough to get away.”

“Guns.”

“You’ll know. Learning how to fire them if you’re not already versed in that is good. They won’t mess with you if you know how to handle firearms, in my experience. As well a lot of this can be filtered long before you’d want to be taking anything off or pulling anything out. In my experience the violent abusive ones as a sweeping generalization tend to be more demanding. Fun as that can be in certain consensual contexts once there’s a passionate connection, for me it’s a turn-off straightaway upon first meeting or too soon thereafter. To clarify, I’m not the type who grabs a total stranger and rushes off to a corner to get it on—not that there’s anything wrong with that for those so inclined. I do filter; I just do it rapidly. Being a good judge of character helps, which comes from experience with people in general, then over time greater experience with lovers.”

“Why do I want to invest all that time and energy for something short-term?”

“Once you’re skilled enough, it’s not a great investment of either time or energy.”

“How do you even begin to handle communicable diseases?”

“I don’t date people showing signs of illness” Beryl grinned.

“STIs?”

“Barriers: no fluid sharing.”

“But what if I crave actual skin-to-skin? Or tongue to clit?” she ended with a telling subtle sexy wiggle.

“Start from the same place. You’ll have seen his tongue by then, just from talking. If his breath is weird or his tongue is coated white or some other non-pink color, I slow things down or wind them down and move on. Or if I’m especially into him and maybe there aren’t any other current good prospects, I may discuss it with him to find out if there’s an extenuating circumstance, which has happened. If you’re inclined to have him go into you, play with his penis: inspect it with your hands and eyes. Our advantage is with the parts of their genitals which will contact us being exposed, we can look for problems. If you don’t already know what to look for, that information’s online. I require a condom if he’s going into me anywhere and you should too. Anything bad that’s less overt than what one can readily see and/or feel by inspection ought to be stopped by that.”

“But I don’t know anything about his personality!”

“A: by that point, you likely already do. B: how does it matter for a one-off?”

“I just don’t feel good about someone I don’t know well getting physically intimate with me.”

“How do you handle those sudden zinnng moments?”

“Usually I let them go.”

“And when they don’t go?”

“That’s when I eat something that zinnngs me—that’s my one-off!”

“Oh how I know that! I do that too, in addition to exciting sex, rather than instead of. Other than during bizarre anomalies such as lockdowns. Ever get off when you eat?”

Leigh nodded, blushing.

“We have that in common too” Beryl grinned. “So don’t you want that frequent variety and zinnnging in your human sex life as well as your food sex life?”

“I get that with one fully-trusted man whom I love to a depth and degree I could not have imagined before this cruise, into whom I’ve invested a lot of time and energy getting to know him and vice-versa, such that I can fully relax and give in and love as well as lust.”

“Good luck keeping the zinnng for more than a couple of years. Never worked that way for me, which is why I gave up on all that.”

“So you do have long-term experience?”

“Yes, in my past. Painful lessons that taught me that monogamy does not suit me.”

“What about those open marriages I’ve heard about?”

“What about ’em?”

“That way you could have all the near-guaranteed love of someone you know deeply with whom you can wake up most mornings, and still have the excitement. Or am I wrong, given that I’ve never done this because I prefer focusing everything on one lover at a time, for a long time when things are working?”

“I like variety too much. Not into having a life partner and having to get into the division of labor and resources to run a household: planning, shopping, and all that. And don’t even get me started about his expecting me to fix his clothes or otherwise do homemaker shit. I’ll do my own, and he can damn well go back to his house and do his own, or hire a maid.”

“So you don’t do married men?”

“There’s where I require greater trust and knowing them better: not unless I’m sure they truly have an informed open marriage, not just the dream of one in their head when their wife is expecting strict monogamy. Whether they’re married or not, all too often there’s a difference in expectations if there’s a long-term steady lover in their life. That’s another area where short-term and especially one-offs work better: if the dude’s lying about his IIR status, you’ll be out of the picture before his steady finds out, so he takes the heat, not you.”

“IIR?”

“Intimate Interpersonal Relationship.”

“Why not just say capital-R Relationship? Or intimate relationship?”

“Because those aren’t specific enough. There are times and places for nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean? know what I mean? say no more say no more innuendo, but relationship status isn’t one of those. I have a relationship with this stateroom: I’m inside it. I have an intimate relationship with my bra: it and my skin are in exceedingly intimate contact for longer periods of time than my lovers. I have an interpersonal relationship with you. In my mind it needs to be all 3 of intimate, interpersonal, and a relationship to cover all bases and be clear. That’s a mouthful, so I abbreviate to IIR.”

“What about loving relationship?”

“I had that with my parents, and thankfully for all involved it was not intimate… at least apart from my mother caring for me as an infant, and moments here and there in later childhood for hugs and such. Flipping it around, I have brief IIRs all the time that are lusty but not loving.”

Leigh had trouble relating, shaking her head slightly. “The only heat I want to take is that of a hot rod connected to a man I trust and know well, and his warm, loving cuddles and massages and related physical intimacy.”

“And you’re OK with all the life partner expectations?”

“The very few times I’ve gone that far with anyone, yes. Some men”–she motioned with her head towards the bed–“innately drop right into equitable give-and-take, likely modeled by their parents.”

“Did your parents stay together as you grew up?”

“Yes.”

“That may be a difference. My dad was out of the scene around when I turned 11, in part because married life and being a father didn’t suit him. My mother dated a number of men over the years, though not as many as I’ve done since my late 30s. I got the itch for variety from both sides.”

“My parents seemed happily married in every way that I could tell until death parted them.”

 

A wistful look came over Beryl. “My mom’s gone too. No idea about my dad; haven’t had contact with him in years.”

 

Their minute or so of silence revealed Clark softly snoring along with Jayne.

 

Leigh established a quieter speaking pattern with her question, “With all the variety you enjoy, what’s the draw of multiple people at one time?”

“Exciting variety!” she struggled to keep quiet. “Same reason our plates were filled with all sorts of different noms at breakfast this morning. Consider: sex with one person at a time is like having a breakfast that’s only eggs, or only bacon, et cetera. And—get this—monogamy with one person is like having, say, scrambled eggs day after day after day after day and nothing else.”

“Not the same. Scrambled eggs won’t give me an STI, and won’t ask you to sew a button back on their shirt. I think your analogy needs an adjustment.”

“Like what?”

“Loving one man isn’t like scrambled eggs, it’s like eggs: an ingredient. Think of all the different things made with eggs! One ingredient, so many exciting, disparate, amazing foods! Cakes, cookies, scrambled, omelettes, sauces—on and on. Two motivated sex-positive lovers wholly lost to love with each other can cook and bake a lot of sexual excitement” Leigh lustily smiled.

“Yes, and most if not all those foods you just mentioned require multiple ingredients, which brings us back to group sex.”

“Are we getting anywhere with this?”

“I don’t know. I do know I like talking with you” she smiled.

 

Leigh emotionally withdrew a bit.

 

“Sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

“No. Having a moment… personal issues.”

“Thanks for trusting me enough to share that. I wish you didn’t feel a competitive tension towards me.”

“How can I not, when I want monogamy and you’re Clark’s exciting recent ex, polyamorous and loving fatness in and of itself apart from food and wanting more, as his innate desires seek? You and his other recent ex Bec, and I feel the same tension with her. I want to be friends and Team Succulence and all that, but I’ve invested a lot in Clark and don’t want to lose him.”

“Why would you lose him?”

 

Leigh paused to ensure she could hear Clark’s snoring. Only once she heard it did she proceed. “He lusts after big boobs, as you know. He can’t help it. I don’t have those.”

More to be polite than thinking it was necessary, Beryl matched her lower volume, “He’s an all-way fat-lusting woman-attracted FA. He loves fat asses—you have that. He goes nuts over fat hips, as his hands told mine—you’re the winner on Team Succulence with our current lineup for those. He was nearly in tears begging to bone my butt crack, and with your greater depth there from what I can tell, I don’t need to ask to know that you two do that.”

“I like it too. To me it’s very romantic, since he’s always cuddling me close from behind with his arms around me.”

“It is romantic, I admit it, and I do like it myself, as part of a widely diverse balanced diet of different sex acts with different people. My point is: you have nothing to worry about. He obviously loves you deeply, he’s into long-term stuff, you’re into long-term stuff, you two are into each other—all good. My issue is trying to open you two up to staying primaries with each other and from time to time having fun, sexy adventures with others. Personally, I’d prefer to have an orgy with both of you present than borrow him alone for awhile, on the presumption that there was another tasty man in the mix with whom you felt comfortable and an attraction. Whaddo you think of Per?”

Leigh bit her lip, briefly hesitating before answering. “In a hypothetical orgy situation with everyone good with it, or if Clark hadn’t captured my heart and I was openly dating, I’d do him. After getting to know him better.”

“For a one-off?”

“I don’t know” she sighed. “Based on not enough, part of me feels that he’s an exception: I feel I already know him well enough, even though I actually don’t. Here’s a question for you, about orgies: isn’t it awkward to get bare in front of another woman? Or are you bi?”

“I’m polysexual. Know what that is?”

“Different from polyamorous?”

“Absolutely. Orthogonal to it, as Clark likes to say. As in: unrelated.”

“Never heard of it.”

“First, think about there being a line between totally heterosexual and totally homosexual, rather than only those two as discrete endpoints and a third bisexual point smack-dab in the middle. You may visualize those dot points, but run a single straight line between them all. Now imagine that a person’s attractions can lie anywhere along that line, not just the middle or endpoints. I’m talking purely attraction, not what one’s own biological gender is, nor what’s going on in one’s mind in terms of personal gender identity, nor how one dresses and presents themselves. So what I really mean is a line between women-attracted and men-attracted and equal attraction in the middle. I’m somewhere in the 75 to 80 percent range near the men-attracted endpoint, meaning I go for men most of the time, but there exist women whom I find sexually desirable, at least in limited aspects if not in totality as I usually find most men I get with.”

“What sort of women sexually excite you?”

“Oh come on, Leigh: you know attraction’s not that simple! I can tell you that my love of fat generalizes to my own lovers, though obviously I love contrasts too, else I wouldn’t have been after Clark from before you two got together, or at least before I knew of you two being together.”

“What about me?”

“Given the tension you’ve admitted you already feel between us and especially not knowing to whom in general you’re attracted, I feel uncomfortable answering that.”

“On that line you described, I’m probably 95 to 99 percent near the men-attracted end. So far in my life I’ve not felt the desire to be sexually intimate with a woman, nor romantically intimate. Most of that 1 to 5 percent that keeps me off the 100% men-attracted peg is sexual rather than romantic.”

“Boobs is what that 1 to 5 percent sexual attraction is. Big ones.”

 

Leigh went wholly pale, then cycled towards bright-red blushing. “How could you know that?!”

“Come on” she smiled. “You just brought up big tas a couple of minutes ago. You’ve been staring at mine more than Clark did on his and my whoopee night. I was sitting diagonally across from you during our special Team Succulence extended breakfast-brunch—so glad Bec coined that term!”

“I like it too.”

“Sitting where I was, I not only saw you go into anguish whenever Bec or myself or Jayne brought up the topic of boobs, but also how you kept checking out theirs as well as mine.”

“Gotta know what the competition’s up to.”

“There you go again with that competition thing. No one’s taking Clark from you. Not even”—she finished her sentence motioning with her head over towards the bed. “She needs sleep and cuddles and she’ll be fine, and off to her own next loving adventure. Own your attractions, whatever they are. You’re not hurting anybody lusting after boobs, unlike some antisocial kinks I could get into. The only potentially sad part is if you truly want your own rather than playing with others’.”

“I feel defective as a BBW, because big boobs tend to be standard equipment, but mine don’t fatten.”

“At all?”

“Not more than half a cup size” she deeply sighed.

“I get that. I’d prefer having more ass and less belly—strike that—more ass and everything else at least as much. Thankfully I have some, but I’d prefer having more. They’re doing amazing things with boob jobs.”

“It’s more important to me to remain natural than become busty.”

“I hear ya. Ass augmentation’s a thing too, but but butt butt” she teased “I don’t want to get into anything medical like that. Not the least because most of those in that profession would think I have plenty of ass already. What about N.B.E.?”

“What?”

“Natural Breast Enhancement. Massages, especially estrogenic foods, breast pumps—all that.”

“Oh right. Yeah, I’ve read about that.”

“And?”

“Seems like a lot of work for minimal results.”

“Won’t know until you try. And at least for the duration of this cruise, you have an eager assistant.” She again motioned with her head over towards the bed. “Not that there’s enough time for anything to happen, nor that you can necessarily work out the materials you’d need. Now if you want to get your hands on my boobs as much as your eyes tell me you do, that’s entirely possible and very easy: just ask.”

“Is there anything about me you like, sexually?”

“If and only if you’re into it, I’d love to do hip stuff with you.”

“Such as?”

“Rub our fat hips together. My hands on yours. Rubbing my boob fronts on yours.”

“Hhhhhhh!”

“Looks like we have a winner” Beryl grinned. Reaching for Leigh’s suddenly-erect nipples she added, “Actually two.”

 

Leigh felt confused and even more aroused with Beryl manipulating her nips through her top and bra. Tellingly, she made no effort to make her stop, nor in any way signaled such a desire. Quite the opposite.

“Seriously, lots of boob play, whether solo by your own hands, from lovers, or both, will increase their size at least a little bit over time.” Beryl advised as she continued twiddling. “He plays with them, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Hold that thought for a moment.”

 

She turned around and leaned past the partition to see what was going on over on the bed.

 

“Her leg’s thrown up over him!” she tried not to rage.

 

Beryl had her own long look, and listen. “She’s asleep. Don’t tell me you’ve never done that to someone you’re sleeping with before Clark.”

“Only lovers!”

“Want more nipple play?”

 

Beyond nodding, Leigh removed her top and bra.

 

“Great tits!” Beryl whispered, making sincere eye contact reflecting the sincerity of her opinion. “Love them always, and preferentially choose lovers who deeply love them.”

It pleased Leigh greatly, feeling the very pleasant sensations, taking in big busty Beryl’s affirmations, and feeling and seeing her oft-disappointing-to-her breasts swell up fully to this breast expert’s touch. Like Clark with his erections since his surgery, her breasts were as engorged as they’d ever been. The sense of fullness and heaviness from the arousal pleased her mightily.

 

“Want mine out?”

Leigh nearly hurt her neck vigorously nodding.

 

It was far more exciting to her than she could have imagined, watching Beryl free her Females.

“Have at ’em, friend.”

 

Suddenly overcome with lust, Leigh thought there was something seriously wrong with her, wanting another woman’s boobs so much. {Am I really more woman-attracted than I realize? But I’m not to other part– oh don’t even think about that! Uugh! Boobs… oh gosh, big huge fat boobs!}

 

Jayne and Clark remained sleeping deeply enough that neither Beryl’s slightly heavy breathing nor Leigh’s far louder panting woke them up. Beryl gently led her now-special friend through all sorts of things two breast-equipped topless women could get into for breast-centric sexual stimulation.

{I don’t know who I am any more!} Leigh panted and thought. {This is too wonderful!}

Beryl focused on Leigh more than her own immediate pleasure, striving to track where she was and what she wanted, towards the goal of keeping the event safe, fun, and non-threatening. Doing so, she knew, could lead to a major future pay-off.

 

---

A few minutes into exciting, stimulating mutual boob play, things suddenly changed. From over on the bed Leigh heard a soft sleepy feminine groan of complaint, then Clark saying “I’ll be back. I have to go to the bathroom.”

With a frantic burst of panic adrenalin, Leigh whipped on her top in record time, shoving her bra into the crack between the couch cushion upon which she was seated and the couch back cushion.

Rather than question or debate, Beryl followed suit, about as fast, minus any panic.

 

Clark waved and smiled as he passed by, soon enough closing the bathroom door behind him.

 

“You OK?” Beryl softly asked.

Leigh shook her head.

She briefly patted her hand in a friendly manner, “We’ll talk.”

 

---

On the way back out towards the bed, Clark detoured to side-hug and kiss Leigh, then more briefly side-hug Beryl. “Thank you both so much. I really think it’s helping her. How’re you two doing?”

“We’ve had a lot of things to talk about” replied Leigh, with Beryl taking the safe route and nodding along.

“Is it OK if” his voice went away as he mouthed “I keep going?”

“Mmm hmm. I’ve come to accept that it’s for the best. Have a good nap, part 2!” she ended with a kiss.

 

Had it not been for her own intense inner situation, Leigh might have been upset anew at the latest round of feminine murmurs from Jayne, to her ear sounding like those of a lover welcoming back her mate. At this particular juncture, the best possible outcome in her mind would be for Clark and Jayne to fall back asleep as soon as possible. She didn’t look, so she didn’t see Jayne turn over for a change of position for circulation, now becoming Little Spoon with Clark easing into a cuddle behind her as Big Spoon.

 

---

{I’m liking this way, way too much} thought Clark, loving everything he could sense about Jayne: tactile and other contact sensations, her scent, her body warmth, her currently-awake affection, and her soft, wonderful fat. In terms of the latter, she’d adjusted his arm underneath her to be more in the middle of her waist notch, thus more comfortable. This lined up his hand to cradle a big handful of in-clothes flowing belly fat.

Below consciousness, his hand on her belly fat was an especial treat, after past lovers hating on it or teasing her about it—especially Brent.

 

---

Back over on the couch, Beryl struggled to keep Leigh settled until the two bed cuddlers fell back asleep. “Nice day to be inside a cozy, comfy stateroom like this, what with all the light rain and cold outside.”

“It is.” She caught herself studying Beryl’s now-braless breasts, quickly averting her eyes when she realized what she’d been doing. “Did we already discuss what you do for a living? I don’t recall.”

“Service writer at a car dealership in Cerritos. Sound familiar?”

“No. I’m a tech writer with Amalgamated Composites, based in their San Diego office. Despite both of us having ‘writer’ in our titles, I’m guessing that yours may be different.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I speak with customers and write up service orders for the techs, so it’s a combination of customer service and rudimentary preliminary service triage. A lot of it is translation and standardization. Lacking an auto repair professional’s jargon vocabulary, customers often have to say things to me like ‘It goes REE-rrrr-REE-rrrr-REE-rrrr when I first start up’ and about 20 other ways of saying the same thing with different sound effects. I translate that to the standardized ‘Engine surges when cold, OK after warmup’, which is what I type up on the work order. Then the tech does the heavy lifting to find out what the actual problem is, and types up or verbally gives me an estimate unless it’s under warranty or the customer pre-authorized up to a certain total dollar amount, in which case he fixes it immediately without having to wait for estimate approval.”

“No women?”

“Not at our shop at this time. The good ones usually go independent.”

“In terms of heavy lifting, how are they regarding your size and weight?”

“I’m too good at what I do and too friendly for them to give me too much grief.”

 

They paused, listening carefully. Jayne was again snoring, but not Clark.

 

“In a way, I’m a translator as well. A certain percentage of our customers might be able to take the raw data from engineering and make sense of it” she again motioned with her head towards the bed as she’d done earlier, indicating Clark. “Others may be less technically adept, and benefit from a brief introduction to the terminology and education regarding important physical characteristics of our products that they’ll want to carefully consider in their design process, so that their own final products come out as they desire.”

“D’you do your company’s website too?”

“No” she shook her head. “That’s outsourced, so I do work with that firm and QA what they do, mainly in terms of whether all the necessary information is there, accurate, and accessible to someone new to our company and maybe our product area.”

“There’s enough vehicle failures that I’m busy pretty much every day. Are there enough products and whatnot for what you do to be full-time?”

“Oh yes. I do internal documents as well as public-facing. There’s also the category of polishing the grammar of and spell-checking research and patent documents.”

 

---

They continued chatting a few more minutes before again pausing to listen for sounds of sleep. This time, they both again heard two different people softly sleep-breathing, not even really snoring.

 

Beryl got the conversation started, whispering, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know how I feel about what we did.”

“Give it time. It is what it is, and it’ll be what it’ll be. However you come to terms with it is good by me, as long as we remain on civil speaking terms.”

“I really liked it, and I thank you for the opportunity.”

“You’re welcome. I very much liked it too. If and only if you find you’re interested in getting into something like that again, I’m down for it. Just so you know.”

“Thanks.”

“Curious: why do you want to keep what we did secret from Clark?”

She swallowed nervously. “One: I have no idea how he’d respond. Two: very hypocritical of me to be getting into that with you or anyone after so stridently struggling to keep Jayne off him.”

Beryl sensed an opportunity she felt she needed to take, “Feeling any different about that now?”

Upset and seriously messed up, Leigh leaned into her special friend’s side, collapsing into her softness quite like an affectionate lover, feeling a mess of confusing feelings. “I don’t know.”

 

Overpowering feelings quite like she’d recently experienced with Clark yet distinctly different drove Leigh’s hand to reach just slightly over and caress and gently fondle Beryl’s loose boobs within her top, gliding slowly back and forth between them with her caresses. Silent tears rolled out of her eyes at the same time.

 

Beryl sensed that the thing to do was let her go through whatever she was going through.

 

Leigh’s sad, wet eyes looked up at hers, when her hand found itself near the bottom of her top. All Beryl had to do was nod and gently smile, and up Leigh’s hand slid under her top, pleasing them both with the gentle caresses and light fondles now being skin-to-skin.

“I’d feel better about an orgy if you and Jayne had men I was as into as I’m suddenly into your boobs.”

“Thank you for sharing that! What you just said along with what you’re doing with me to me is nearly as good as an actual orgy.”

“I won’t categorically rule out an orgy, especially if we’re all still on this ship for a long time.” She again tilted her eyes upward, “As long as you’ll run it.”

---

Leigh’s sense of time slipped away, as she found herself in uncharted waters every bit as lost as anyone anywhere in the world to the uncharted waters of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her uncharted waters were far more immediately confusing and threatening: not for one moment since she’d resumed fondling Beryl’s breasts through her top had huge, succulent boobs been off her mind. Other than a brief pause during which they both again removed their tops, neither had there been more than a second here or there where her hands weren’t on Beryl’s mams… except for when her mouth was on them. Her mouth! On another woman’s breasts!

Yes it was extremely pleasurable, as in passionately exciting. No, she couldn’t stop, short of being found out. It was at the same time profoundly upsetting.

 

Beryl correctly read the existence of her upset, choosing to gingerly inquire as they kept on sexually playing with each other. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

Leigh absolutely had to whisper back, bouncing her bouncy-fat body around to get closer to Beryl’s ear, “I’m having a lot of trouble with this.”

“What part?”

“How can I be totally lost to lust to your boobs in every possible way and you playing with mine in nearly every way and at the same time feeling cold nothing at the thought of kissing you on the mouth and outright reviled by the thought of going down on you or otherwise playing with your genitals?! Where is that on the sexual attraction line?!”

“It’s right where you said you were: 95 to 99 percent man-attracted. It is totally OK to be a woman who’s a boob fanatic in terms of other women’s boobs and your own, and have no other sexual or romantic interest in women beyond that. No obligation to be a full-service lesbian, in any way. You are you: you like what you like. You lust after what you lust after. I submit that you and myself and any of the rest of us have no more control over our desires than Clark or Per have over theirs, or any other genetic males do. We all have control over how we do or do not act on our desires, but the desires are there.”

“I am not feeling in control here. I’m feeling like I could do this for weeks!”

“Good! Please work towards embracing and owning your desires.”

 

Their make-out session was once again interrupted by sounds of waking activity over on the bed. This time there was more warning: soft whispered conversation not unlike Leigh’s and Beryl’s own, inaudible beyond being recognizable as whispered speech.

With quite the look of resignation, Leigh retrieved her bra, starting to put it on until feeling Beryl’s now-familiar hand touching her arm to get her attention.

“Own it” Beryl mouthed silently, not even whispering. Setting an example, she pulled her own bra out from underneath her, setting it aside on the end-of-couch table nearest her, then slowly slipping back into her top.

 

Leigh’s top as well was comfortably back on by the time Clark and Jayne appeared together. It was difficult to tell how little or much the rest had helped Jayne, given that both of them looked shattered and were shivering.

“Hi” Leigh weakly greeted them, still looking queasy-upset herself. To no one’s surprise, she and Clark were drawn to each other. With no room on the couch, he knelt down as close to her as possible, Jayne hanging back remaining standing upright, shivering more.

 

“For cheesecake’s sake, let’s turn up the heat in here if you’re cold!” exclaimed Beryl.

None of them moved nor said anything, looking between each other.

 

Each to Beryl’s eyes looked ever-more upset. “Alright, majority of Team Succulence, listen up: each of you are projecting like billboards that you’re feeling some sort of deep shame or guilt or at least unease. Each of you are currently hurting yourselves emotionally and physically, holding inside whatever’s got your goat… or sheep, or whatever other animal you prefer. The energy must come out, for all of your health, thus the overall health of Team Succulence. Since the only place in this stateroom where we can all sit together might be the bed, let’s head over there and try to all fit on it or near enough to it to maintain the sort of close supportive proximity which has been so sorely lacking during this pandemic lockdown.”

“Arrp!” Jayne bark-whimpered, exploding into tears.

“Clark!: hug her now! You latch onto him too, Leigh. To the bed, for the first-ever Team Succulence confessional!”

 

Under other circumstances, at least one if not more than one of them would have been aroused by all the soft fat wobbling flesh sloshing around during the short stroll of a few steps over to the bed.

Beryl remained in charge, “Leigh: this is your stateroom. Pick your preferred bed position, leaving room for Clark to cuddle intimately into you and Jayne intimately into him, and ideally some space for me to park myself or at least enough of myself that the desk chair can hold the remainder of me.”

 

Studying the bed for a moment, Leigh arranged herself up against a stack of pillows against the headboard around the middle of the bed. She eased Clark into her left side, nestling him under her left hip fat. Jayne cuddled deeply into Clark’s left side for dear life, nearly but not quite at the foot of the bed, herself and Clark and Leigh forming an arc from Leigh’s centered position towards the balconette side of the bed, opposite the couch and bathroom. This left plenty of room for Beryl to let her flab flow widely outward, in touch or at least in very easy reach of all 3 of them.

 

“How is it that this bed and bed frame are holding us all without shattering into splinters or collapsing?” asked Beryl, directed mostly at mechanical engineer Clark.

Being asked a question which took his mind out of his immediate worry allowed Clark a reprieve from nervous shivering and use of his full voice, “Overbuilt: far better reinforcement and a whole different design than the typical ‘Hollywood’-style bolted-together metal frames so many people have at home.”

“And he reinforced it some more with our suitcases and some books” Leigh noted, the emotional storm within her raging so strongly that anyone looking at her would know something untoward was going on.

“It’s unlikely to hold up to bouncing or…”–his upset returned fully, ** down his voice–“sex.”

“OK, it’s confessional time. Remember: we are a team. We care about each other and ourselves, and want the best for all of us. Who wants to go first?”

 

The daggers of anguish she saw stabbing each of their inner psyches made Beryl squirm. None of them volunteered.

 

“Obviously to me what each of you is dealing with is exceedingly deep and to you scary. Remember this too: no judgement. We’re all good, each of us. Good people, just as we are. Anyone ready?”

 

Again, no volunteers and more tortured squirming.

 

“Clark: you’re first, because I’m running this confessional and I say so. Spill your guts, figuratively, please.”

“I violated the terms of our cruise marriage by waking up cumming in Jayne’s butt crack and fondling her boobs as we spoon-cuddled with me as Big Spoon behind her! I didn’t even know it was happening until I did it!”

“I’m deeply and completely in love with Clark in every way and it’s ripping me up because he and Leigh are a super-great couple and I don’t want to break them nor anyone else up but I’m already addicted to his cuddly, caring love and I need it, ongoing!” burst out of Jayne barely a moment after Clark finished confessing.

Similarly there was no pause between the end of Jayne’s confession and the start of Leigh’s, “I’m a total boob lust fanatic who can’t get enough of other women’s huge boobs nor them loving mine even though I don’t want to get into anything else sexual or romantic with them I think but I’m not sure but I’m totally certain that I still love Clark in every possible way as much as ever and don’t want any of that to change but I’m addicted to boob sex!”

 

“Good job, Team!” {Let’s hope the soundproofing kept this from being far too much of an overshare. Oh well… maybe we or at least I will get new orgy members out of it.} “You all did really well opening up and getting so much of that energy moving and out of your bodies. Anyone have any additional major confessions, ideally yelled into a pillow or someone’s arm or boob or something, out of respect for our neighbors?”

“How do I recover from this?!” “How do I go on?!” “How do I reconcile everything?!”

“OK OK good: no more new confessionals and you’re all ready for the next step, which is reconciliation. By that I mean reconciliation in your own minds and bodies first and foremost, then reconciliation with others in your life affected by what you’ve confessed. It’s natural to try and work it out all at one time together given how you all are interrelated by what all’s going on, but that winds up as unproductive cacophony in practice. Instead what we do is take each of you one at a time and keep repeatedly going in sequence, because one person’s reconciliation may affect another’s.

“We’ll do reconciliations in the same order as confessions. Clark: what do you need to do within yourself to reconcile yourself to what you confessed?”

“I’m overdrawn on apologizing to people: Leigh has said as much. I, I don’t know how to accept my failure to abide by my promises, especially since it happened at least partially when I was asleep.”

Leigh raised her hand.

“Yes Leigh?” Beryl acknowledged her.

“Would this be the time for mutual forgiveness, such as between Clark and myself?”

“Not yet, because we have to ensure that each of you is as reconciled and at peace as possible within your own beings in terms of what’s disturbing you before we get others involved. So that’s a great instinct, but premature at this moment. Back to Clark, temporarily ignoring how your butt sex and boob fondles have affected and going forward affect others, within yourself how do you believe you can come to terms with things?”

“I don’t know. Within myself, I’ve harmed my own sense of integrity and principle, as being an upstanding, trustworthy, honest person.”

“How much control do you have over what you do in your sleep?”

“Little if any. But I was awake before I finished, so I could have stopped what I was doing.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was so close to an orgasm, and everything felt too good.” He started to silently cry.

“Sounds to me like you were already over your threshold of inevitability when you awoke. True?”

He nodded.

“So then how could you have stopped?”

“I couldn’t have stopped that, and maybe it doesn’t so much matter because we had clothes on and… because… nothing actually comes out of me any more.”

Leigh instinctively caressed her man and affectionately cuddled into him more deeply. Jayne looked like she wanted to do the same thing, holding back from uncertainty regarding whether it was OK or not.

“So whether or not anything came out of you, how could you have stopped at that point?”

“I could have pulled away at the last second. And I didn’t need to be squeezing her breasts.”

“Why were you?”

“Because it seemed like it was already too late and Leigh would leave me anyway and the world’s gone insane and nothing matters any more besides honesty and integrity and I utterly failed at those.”

“Was it because it was too wonderful and you couldn’t stop?” Leigh softly asked.

He burst into tears, nodding vigorously.

Rather than feeling angry or hurt or pulling away, she cuddled into him even more, caressing him tenderly. “I understand more than you can possibly imagine. I know I’m speaking out of turn, but please forgive yourself.”

“Why? (sniff)”

“Your forgiving yourself may be a prerequisite to me forgiving myself.”

“Alright.”

Beryl retook control, “How might you avoid getting yourself into this sort of anguish in the future?”

“By not getting intimate with wonderful and wonderfully attractive BBW. But Jayne needed cuddles so she could sleep!”

“I agree that abstention would solve the issue. Abstention also sucks donkey dongs! Only you can come to terms with what’s going on with you, and it might not all happen today. I humbly submit as an outside advisor that if something like this comes up in the future that you seriously review whether your preferred outcome is realistic or not. Humans are imperfect. Occasional errors despite best efforts need not destroy honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, being an upstanding person, nor anything else, as long as they are rare and close to unavoidable. At least in my opinion, but it’s yours that matters. Beyond that, please seriously reconsider whether your self-judgments might be unrealistically confining and rigid, and consider making them malleable or even flowing. OK for now?”

He nodded, with Leigh remaining deeply cuddled into him, affection from her alternately surging then halting as she continued to struggle with her own stuff.

“Your turn, Jayne: within yourself, how do you believe you can come to terms with things?”

“Almost all of it is outside my control” she softly objected.

“That’s why right now we’re focusing on your internal experience, because that’s wholly under your control.”

“I feel like I don’t know who I am any more, because for me this whole pandemic didn’t just up-end my life, it smashed it to pieces! I thought I was a strong, capable person and an independent woman, but now I feel so lost and so needy. I’ve always been outgoing, in-person, and physical, and this isolation and having to distance and only hear and see but not be present and feel is trashingme! That’s why being with you all and really any of you is so crucial to me.”

“But as I personally found out when I reached over to share a hug with you at breakfast, we’re not all the same to you, in terms of your needs.”

“I am on the ropes, and, frankly, at-risk. That whole age game nearly made me run and take a flying leap off the ship out into the bay. Trust me: this morning wasn’t the first time since this whole pandemic thing blew up that I seriously thought about ending my life, and I assure you I know from where on the Sky deck to jump and have a high probability of making it into the water rather than smashing against the side of the ship.”

Clark cried anew, this time aloud. He grabbed Jayne, pulling her tightly into his side with enough sudden force to actually move her heavier body somewhat closer to him.

The caring love and her ongoing consternation made her weep. “This is torture to me. I need love! Need it. Every. Kind. Of. Love. I may not be the first woman in history who’s been suddenly catapulted directly from vibrant MILFy middle-aged sexy to crumbling rag bag hag, but I’m the only one I know. You, Beryl, and I know that no-strings-attached sex is easy enough to come by, even if sometimes and in some ways its own problem. My experience is that quality love beyond sex and for more than one night or day is tough to arrange. I’m desperate enough that I’ll prolly settle for Brent if there’s no better choice, and with all the social limitations currently in effect, there’s unlikely any better choice.

“All this makes it sound like my love of Clark is desperation, but it’s sooo not! So much of attraction is inscrutable and instinctual. At least profoundly deep attraction… at least for me. If I’d met Clark when he was totally single and not dating anyone and before the pandemic when my business and self-esteem were intact and somehow we’d reached the point of cuddling, I would have seriously been propositioning him to find a way for us to be ongoing all-in lovers, or at least doing some major focused steady dating to work through all the usual compatibility stuff to find out whether such would work for both of us. I need someone’s cuddly affectionate trusted ongoing love more than ever right now. For how long I don’t know, because I can’t imagine me personally making it out of this pandemic mess in any good way. Love shifts—I know. Love fades—I know. Doesn’t matter: I’m too deeply in love with him. If no one else existed, I’d want to be passionately kissing him and cuddling some more and taking our clothes off and getting sexual right now, both because I need sexual affirmation as well as cuddles and sleep, and to strengthen our love bond via all the sex biochemistry triggering the partner bonding.

“But then there’s Leigh, and I don’t say that in any way begrudgingly.” She leaned past Clark to make eye contact with her, “I really like you, Leigh!: on your own merits, even though understandably you don’t much abide me, or at least me being intimate with Clark. Can’t explain exactly why… it’s an irrational like, similar to my irrationally-strong love of Clark. My sense of integrity and ethics disallows my interfering with others’ IIRs, regardless of their formal or informal status in terms of being legal marriages or whatever else. This is true even when I feel my life is at stake. I’d rather harm myself than harm the deep bond you two have, because you’re both wonderful and your bond is so beautiful.”

 

Leigh and Jayne happened to share one of those momentary moments etched forever in one’s mind. In this case, it was a moment of mutual especially intense direct eye contact, feeling less than a second’s blast of the universe’s caring love flowing between them.

 

“So in terms of my coming to terms with things internally, maybe I already have. The primary directive is that I shall not harm Leigh’s and Clark’s IIR. The secondary directive is that I will navanax up every atom of Clark’s affectionate, caring, restful love that I can get, and, being honest, his sexual, passionate, lusty love too. For the record, the boob fondles and butt humping were very life-affirming to me, especially today given all that’s gone down.”

“Nava-what up?” asked Beryl.

“Navanax. A sea slug that can suck things up like a vacuum cleaner. That’s as far as I can go right now with my internal reconciliation.”

“Thank you; very good. Alright Leigh, your turn: how do you believe you can come to terms with things you’ve confessed, within yourself?”

She let out a deep sigh. “The struggle is real.” Again leaning past Clark to make eye contact with Jayne she said, “I so wholly relate to having one’s reality blown up in a way I could not earlier today or at any time earlier in my life. I might or might not do better with a name or label for what I am, in terms of my attractions. Loving Clark and women-attracted FA men in general is straightforward: no conflict there. I truly, truly never ever before knew that behind my raging big boob jealousy was raging lust until suddenly figuring it out with the past couple of hours with Beryl when you two were sleeping. I’m still struggling not feeling shame that my boob lust feels stronger and farther out of my control than any boob-lusting man of whom I’ve ever heard.”

“Any idea what it would take for you to let go of the shame?”

“Knowing there were others out there like me would help.”

“There are. I don’t have their names memorized, so I can’t right this moment pull up any of their sites or social media accounts or anything, and being honest all the ones I can think of whom I do know have more generalized woman-woman attractions.”

“Wish we could find some and I could talk to them.”

“Well you’re talking to one right now, though we’re different because my boob lust is more of my own and not as intense as yours is, even though mine is very real and I appreciate all we shared and hope there may be more in the future. They’re looking quizzical, so you might as well go ahead and explain.”

“I shared breast sex with Beryl while you two slept, or at least rested. Ongoing, over and over, through tops and topless. Hands, mouth, tongue. Mutual.”

“So what did you think?” asked Clark, seemingly more pleased and intrigued than upset.

“Mind-blowing and addictive. I cannot get enough!—at least so far. All that soft wobbly hugeness and the shape and the nipple texture—aaaaaghh!. What is happening to me?! Am I having some sort of testosterone overload from food?! Is this an undocumented COVID-19 aftereffect?!”

“Why ask why? If I need to accept that I couldn’t and didn’t truly want to stop being through-clothes sexually intimate with Jayne, is it too much for you to consider embracing and owning being a possibly-rare boob fanatic who happens to be a sexy SSBBW herself?”

“This is great, but we’re getting a little bit ahead here” said Beryl. “My experience has been that one has to do what one can to be OK internally before seeking external support or agreement or whatever, else the internal stuff can be undermined so a person can, for example, better fit into their social milieu.”

“But we’re social beings who don’t live in a vacuum!” Jayne objected.

“My ability to accept and possibly embrace my extreme boob lust is wholly dependent upon social acceptance” added Leigh.

 

“Alright, I’m obviously not in any sense a qualified therapist. So we’ll move on. Time to reconcile your confessions and internal coming to terms with them with others in your life most directly affected. Which, conveniently, seems mostly to be others amongst you. Once again we start with you, Clark. What do you need others to know about your confession and/or self-acceptance therefrom, or in other ways related to what hopefully past-tense was your major dilemma today?”

“I have to know that Leigh forgives me. Without that I’m shattered and lost.”

“Do I get to speak now?” Leigh asked Beryl.

“Yes. This last section is interactive, as long as the primary speaker has the opportunity to share what they need, and as long as no one gets overly worked up or spirals away too fast into some runaway thought process the rest of us may have trouble following. Go ahead.”

Turning towards Clark with watery limpid eyes, cuddling him and caressing his arm she declared, “I totally and completely forgive you for what happened. For any number of reasons or no reason, though in my mind especially because I made the same sort of violation with Beryl and took things so much further.”

“Do I get to forgive her for that?”

“Yes, but not right now, please. Let’s all focus on Clark’s perspective until we can’t, then continue through to Jayne etc. I’m thinking that once we go through the loop one last time it’ll be safe to open things up to free discussion. Clark: do you need anything else from anyone else at this point for your acceptance of what you confessed?”

“Yes: I need to know that Jayne is OK that that sexual intimacy happened.”

“Didn’t I already answer that?” she wondered aloud. “Yes. I’m actually great with that, and it helped start to rebuild my shattered self-esteem.”

“If Leigh’s forgiven me and Jayne’s good with what happened, that’s all I need.”

“Excellent. OK Jayne, what do you need to tell others, or from them, or whatever?”

“I’ve already made it as clear as I can that under no circumstances will I allow myself to interfere with Leigh’s and Clark’s love. I’ve also made it clear that I need as much of Clark’s love as possible, more about affection and cuddling, but ideally also sex. What would be perfect for me is if their IIR was open and they were both good with me being intimate with Clark, ongoing at least until the first of my putting my life back together or the end of this cruise.”

“Anything else?”

“If for any reason I can’t get the support I need from Clark, I beg for all your help hooking me up with someone able to help me in this dire time of need in some ways we’re all in and I’m in especially.”

“Tough times, especially having yet to identify the minimum 5 or 6 on-board woman-attracted male FA crew or staff members we discussed this morning, but I at least will do what I’m able, if that’s how things go.”

Clark and Leigh nodded in agreement.

“OK Miz Leigh: what do you need to share with others or get from them or whatnot?”

“As mentioned earlier, I absolutely must have total acceptance of my boob fanaticism from others close with me who know of my intimate life, which for my purposes is the rest of you here in the room with me now. Ideally I’d like it from Per and Bec too, but without it from the 3 of you, I’ll have a major struggle with my self-acceptance.” Again, she leaned past Clark, “Total acceptance does not mean that anyone with big boobs has to tolerate my staring or anything else. Rather that each of you accept that I have this desire, and that it’s so intense and extreme that it’s crushing my soul.”

“I’m totally good with your boob lust!”

“What Jayne said” Clark grinned.

“I admit being biased as I was your first, but totally honestly and even if you’d been doing it with someone else and not me, to me it is a beautiful, beautiful thing that you feel the way you do, which I 100 percent accept and embrace.”

“Even though it feels out of control to me?”

“Again we’re back to the internal desire versus external expression. Internal desire is what it is, and can feel out of control. If your behavior goes out of control, that’s on you, and that’s another matter. You do not get a free pass to wantonly stare and/or grope and/or catcall and/or do anything else boundary-crossing and/or potentially offensive just because you’re a cisgender woman. Clark may be your best ally and advisor here, given that his huge boob lust is strong too. I can easily foresee you two dating the same woman at the same time for boob sex, especially because normally as we all know the knockers come in 2s, so with consent all around, you could both go at her at the same time.”

“Nnnnggaaah!” Leigh suddenly orgasmed quite audibly, sonically burying Jayne’s softer “Hnnng!” of sudden high arousal.

“OK, I think we’ve finished the taking turns. Thank you for working with me and for your cooperation. This discussion is now freely open for random interaction.”

Leigh immediately lunged and grabbed Jayne’s right hand, “If you will be my boob lover, I will let you and Clark be lovers of whatever kind as long as he and I remain the primary couple and we all work together to satisfy each other’s needs as much as possible, for the duration of this cruise or until life requires changing this arrangement.”

“REALLY?!” she shrieked with joy.

“Yes! As long as Clark’s OK with it.”

“I’m great with it, to the surprise of absolutely no one ever.”

“What about me?” asked Beryl.

An even more potent burst of lust shot through Leigh. “Please?” she begged her now-lovers, plural (at least conditionally for Jayne).

“I’m great with both you and Clark doing Beryl any consensual way you like, and Beryl, I love you and owe you as a friend, but I don’t know that I’m feeling the sexy with you.”

“I’m down with that. Leigh’s really good with boobs and I’d very much like more samples of Clark before this cruise ends, hence my query.”

“I’m truly good with whatever you three work out, as long as I know what it is” Clark replied.

“So Leigh?” asked Jayne in a tone pitched high from worry, “May I passionately kiss Clark right now? Or should I present my boobs to you first, to seal the deal?”

“Boob lust!” Leigh stuck out her arms and made grabby motions with her hands, like a true over-the-top breast fanatic.

Beryl hefted herself off the bed, moving out of the way for the imminent boob-fest. “This calls for pizza and beer delivered to the room, don’t ya all think?”

“Yes!”

 

While Beryl got busy placing the order, Leigh and Clark got busy getting her top back off, then with Jayne’s full cooperation, Jayne’s flowing dress.

“HHHHHHHHhhhhh! Oh my gosh, you’re beautiful!”

“Heck yes! You’ve still totally got it goin’ on, Swash Buckle!”

“Squish Buckle!” Leigh countered. “Get your clothes off, Neener.”

 

The passionate loving lusting sex desire Jayne felt directed towards her in words, sight, and soon thereafter touch from Leigh and Clark at the same time profoundly helped start to reassemble her self-esteem.

 

“I get her boobs you get her lips—with her consent, of course.”

“Total consent for you two!” Jayne joyously replied. “Do me!”

 

Leigh immediately got her hands on Jayne’s orbs and plunged her face into them in between. She could tell right away that while Jayne’s weren’t quite as large as much-fatter Beryl’s, they were fuller: nice and round. Smaller nipples, seemingly even smaller than Leigh’s own, though that might have been more a matter of perspective than reality. Gorgeously huge areolae Leigh couldn’t help repeatedly kissing and licking, driving Jayne wild.

The total make-out and at the same time affectionate loving kisses she shared with Clark kept driving their love bond deeper and deeper: there was no way out now, no going back: they were and would remain lovers.

 

---

When all was said and done, Beryl Beech got her orgy, even if it wasn’t at all the wild hump-fest Clark and Leigh had imagined. It was a lot more like a bare dinner party amongst a few very close friends with aspects of sex here and there: restful, mostly about eating and pleasant conversation. All of them had all their clothes off well before the food arrived.

 

To no one’s surprise, Clark reached his point of fullness long before the others. This freed him to sexily caress or massage whomever was receptive and currently in a position to partake.

Jayne received possibly more than her fair share of attention, being a new lover to the rest of them, in practice meaning Leigh for breasts and Clark for everything (even though they hadn’t yet made it to all the possible everythings they intended to explore).

 

Down on the floor, Clark felt motivated to move over and kiss Jayne’s belly as she sat comfortably on the couch next to Beryl, peacefully enjoying her latest pizza slice.

Her eyes lit up aglow, her voice lust-addled, “What are you doinnng?!”

He immediately stopped, “Not what you want?”

“Opposite! It’s wonderful! Please give me more!”

 

“Haven’t you been lovingly belly kissed before?” asked Beryl as Clark went back to it.

“Never. Brent wouldn’t even touch me there during intimacy, other than insulting pokes, prods, or grabby shakes.”

“Don’t go out with him any more” said Leigh. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

Clark again paused his belly kisses to agree, “Absolutely true”, then got back to mutual pleasure.

“Why does this feel so amazingly good?” Jayne asked Beryl.

“Sensitive area. Stretched skin. If you’ve not been kissed there until now, I’m guessing you’ve yet to have a hard penis rubbed against you there.”

“Hhhhhh! Oh please yes!”

 

She set aside her plate to more thoroughly enjoy Clark rubbing himself back and forth across her there. At first aided by his hand, as he grew harder it was easier to merely swivel his body, freeing his hands to massage her breasts, spreading them apart somewhat so she’d have a better view of her own belly.

He rubbed her a good long while, getting off right there on her belly, making absolutely no mess.

 

---

“No, there’s no way we’re all going to fit and even if we did per Clark we risk destroying the bed from our combined weight.”

 

The orgy dinner had been amazing! Now hours later, it was time for bed.

 

“I do not at all mind returning to my stateroom” Beryl continued, as typical a smile in her voice and on her face. “You 3 are the ongoing limited 3-way per the parameters we all know quite well, which I hope you’ll all own and comfortably embrace. There’s room and weight capacity for all of you, and with Clark in the middle, you’ll all get what you need.”

They all thanked her profusely, verbally, with hugs, with kisses and butt squeezes in Clark’s case, and with parting boob squeezes in Leigh’s case.

 

Clark and, surprisingly, Leigh, wrapped one arm each around Jayne (in the middle), standing bare after Beryl left. “Need anything from your living space for the overnight?” she asked.

“I really don’t want to get dressed just to go get a toothbrush. I know it’s supposed to be unsanitary, but for one night, may I please use one of yours?”

“She can use yours can’t she, Neen? Since you two kiss?”

“Sure. I’d better get her mouth ready” he grinned.

“Yeah you better” Leigh grinned back. She wasn’t sure why she enjoyed watching them kiss nor why she continued mildly enjoying the side embrace, but she did.

[Sonic Purity]

A True Cali Girl

Jayne Plain (her actual surname, to her great dismay) awoke on the last day of March 2020 (a Tuesday) from not only the only night’s sleep she’d had in several weeks, but the best she’d had in so long—years—she couldn’t even remember when the last time was! Comfortably bare under the warm covers, waking up cuddled into sexy, romantic, and affectionate Clark Barr to her was bliss incarnate.

The gentle caresses of his upper arm and chest that she couldn’t resist giving him (or more accurately in terms of the gift of joy, herself) gently awoke him. His sleepy smile when he turned his head her direction was far too kissable, so she did, thankfully tenderly and peacefully.

Even knowing Leigh was over there, it startled Jayne to feel the sudden sensations of some of Leigh’s hip and thigh fat flowing off of Clark just barely onto her belly. “Good morning, Leigh” she said at a level she hoped was soft enough not to be jarring.

“’Morning, Jayne.”

She decided the impinging flesh needed some caressing. “That’s some nice fleshy hip and thigh you’ve got there.”

“Mmmm, you may keep doing that, please. I’m a chonky woman, which is why Neener calls me Chonky.”

“What’s my pet name going to be?”

“I think you’ve got to be Squish, because you’re nice and soft and squishy a lot of places, and I’m all about squishing your boobs.”

“OK.” One could hear the smile in her voice.

“Do I get to use that one too?”

“Of course, Neener! Same as she gets to use Neener and you both get to use Chonky for me. Any other high-level business to which we need to attend as our world hurtles onward into seemingly ever-more uncharted weirdness?”

“Uuuugh!” Jayne groaned. “Don’t remind me, please. Here I’ve had the first great night’s sleep I’ve had in far, far too long and am living the dream here with you two, and now harsh reality is back in my mind.” She immediately stared at Clark’s face.

“It’s too soon to test your focusing ability” he assured her, with a kiss. “You need to catch up on more lost sleep and heal more.”

“I’m too awake to sleep right now. And gettin’ kinda hungry.”

“Me too” replied Leigh. “Going to bed late and these cloudy mornings can lead to sleeping later, nearly into the first breakfast booking.”

“Is it that late already?”

“Yeah.”

“May I please tell you what a profound delight it is to hear the two of you having a conversation across me, cuddled into each side?”

“You’re neener’s already doing that.”

“You’re already feeling him up there?”

“Throw your leg up over him, Squish.” Leigh removed hers in order to make such a thing possible.

“Mmmmm. Now I know why you threw your leg up over him first thing.”

 

Jayne decided she needed some more kisses. Clark decided he needed to squeeze her breasts. She couldn’t help noticing that his squeezes were far more gentle than Leigh’s.

“Eh-hem. Send some love over to this side before I chonk myself up atop the both of you.”

 

🎼 Oh! Oh! Tel-e-phone liiinnee 🎼 Leigh’s generic ringtone sang out of her device, handily on the bedside table.

“She needs a newer song, don’t ya think?”

“Yeah” Jayne had to agree. “We can help her together with that (kiss). Set up some per-contact customs, too (kiss).”

“Hell-o.… Oh hey, Beryl.… Nah, we’re still in bed.… Hold on, I’ll ask.” She turned towards Clark and (out of her sight, since she remained lying down in bed) Jayne. “Beryl wants to know if we want to get all of Team Succulence together for lunch, given that she’s on her way to breakfast and Per and Bec slept in like us.”

“Any chance we can get seated at Sip And A Wink?”

“Geez Neen, that’s not really set up for a gaggle of plushies, like us women of Team Succulence. You and me and Squish could do it, but those booths aren’t meant for more than one SSBBW and one average-sized admirer per side.”

“If they’re taking reservations and someone’s setting it up now, we can try for the circular group booth in the corner.”

“Beryl and Bec may be too front-to-back thick to get in there. You do know most superchonks don’t do booths, yes?”

“Depends wholly on the specifics of the particular superchonker in both body and preferences, last I read. I think we should go for it. If not that, we could do Oasis and let them know the size of our group both in number and, well, size, and they can move some tables around if need be. If that doesn’t work we might as well go back to Jimmy’s Buffet, or pick the largest stateroom amongst us and maybe have another orgy meal.”

“Yeah I’m still here Beryl. Almost done.” She again muted her mic, “Whaddo you want to do, Squish?”

“I’ve eaten at all of those plenty of times, so I truly don’t care.”

 

Leigh explained their priorities to Beryl, who quite liked the Sip And A Wink suggestion.

 

“May we order breakfast delivered, please?” Jayne requested with a slight whine once the call was finished.

“I’m fine with that” replied Leigh.

“Sure. What do either of you want to do today, apart from meals?”

“That’s too hard a question” complained Jayne, cuddling deeper into Clark’s side, exciting him and making him very tranquilly happy at the same time.

“Don’t know that I want to be in nor on bed all day. Then again I don’t have any specific plans, and there’s a very exciting woman staying with us.”

“Squish needs more rest, and given that I too have nothing in particular planned, I want to do all I can to help her rest and recover.”

“Are you sure you mean ‘rest’, Neen?” Leigh teased.

“It would mean more to me than I can tell you to stay here in the stateroom all day and night here bare with you two today, other than lunch. Not in bed necessarily, but just being together and staying immersed in these loving feelings where I feel valued and loved and respected and sexy and attractive and have hope!”

“Alright. I’ll plan on balancing my eating so I’ll have room for lunch but can still focus on catching up with the great things I couldn’t enjoy during the 2 weeks of illness.”

“I love you more than I have words, Chonky” Clark kissed and hugged her. Turning to his other side he added, “And you, Squish, are magical (kiss). It is an honor beyond words that you’re here with the two of us, and I hope we can all have a great healing time together on this bizarre life adventure in which we all find ourselves.”

 

---

Not even an hour later, the nascent kinda-sorta 3-way love affair hit rough waters.

 

“I’m sorry!” Jayne whined, her voice muffled by her double face-palming.

“It’s alright, it’s alright” sighed Leigh, single forehead-palming as though she had a headache.

 

Swallowing her pride, she came over to the bed where Jayne and Clark had been about to get into their first-ever P.I.V. sexual intercourse, derailed by Leigh’s meltdown. “Come on… sit up next to me and let’s talk this out, please.”

“Do I have a place in this?”

Leigh redirected some of her anger into flutter-eyed annoyance towards her intermittently clueless cruise husband. “If you need either of us to explain to you that you ought to be supportively cuddling Squish on the side opposite me, I’ll really be wondering where your usual clueful caring self has disappeared to today.”

Not wishing to aggravate her further, he silently moved where his intuition had suggested he place himself anyway, before he asked and Leigh scoldingly confirmed. His loving affectionate force field directed towards Jayne (and past her onwards to Leigh as much as he could manage) amplified in Jayne’s case by direct supportive cuddly contact assuredly helped stabilize her and settle her down, as she continued to struggle to find her way back to some semblance of her former stable, balanced, secure confidence.

 

“Hold hands, please” Leigh requested of Jayne. “Eye contact, please?”

 

It was difficult to look into the face of the woman who’d not only just recently gone off on her and/or Clark and/or the world (she couldn’t be certain which), but who’d been so antagonistic to her yesterday morning around this time during the intense, oft-traumatic extended breakfast where Team Succulence was born. Yet this was the same woman for whom she had feelings stronger than she’d had in the past for other women, and more than that was letting her immersively love Clark… maybe. Until now. She pushed herself to make the eye contact.

 

“There is nothing wrong with you, nor your body. I lost it because of my insecurity and jealousy. It’s been a challenge for me to wholly embrace your having amazing breasts to die for, despite your giving me the gift of sexually loving those parts of you, thus you yourself, in the limited way with which I feel comfortable. You’ve got the boobs; I don’t, at least not at your level. You’ve got what we’re calling the 3rd. boob—a nice, fat, soft belly—and that I do have. I wasn’t prepared for you to also have a deliciously fat, round, succulent, ultra-desirable fat mound that I wish I had—a 4th. boob, in lusty sexual effect.

“You’ve mentioned your concerns with aging, so maybe you’ll understand how threatening it is to me as a woman 15 years older than you to discover more and more ways that you have the perfect body I wish I had, every time I run across some previously-unnoticed aspect of you. If we’re all being honest, Clark loves you, you love him, and you two could easily be the cruise husband and wife, or whatever different pairing nomenclature and reality you might prefer.”

“But we established yesterday at breakfast that everyone sees me as older and looking like shit, and you as the younger-looking hottie!”

“Much as it gave my self-esteem a boost, part of me wishes Per hadn’t brought out that game. Especially because of the way it trashed you.” Leigh found herself lovingly massaging Jayne’s held hand, part of her mind questioning what was going on within her. She restored more complete direct eye contact, “You’re already looking better. It won’t be long before you’re back to stunning Swash Buckle: the female DJ everyone who’s attracted to women wants to get with.”

“That’s over, Leigh” she sighed. “That whole world’s gone, and not coming back. I do want to look attractive and I do want to be judged as young rather than old and haggy, but honestly for right now and what little future I can see, I’d rather be Squish Buckle or just Squish: a member of Team Succulence in good standing—definitely including with you, because you matter to me. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard and so soon for going all the way with Clark to find out what it might feel like to have his exciting neener in me, and for that I apologize.”

“I don’t mind you two sharing sex, truly I don’t—especially when I can watch.”

“Are you certain?”

She cast her gaze downward and sighed. “No. I’m finding myself wavering back and forth wholly unpredictably between being super-excited about us being boob lovers and you, me, and Neener being together as a real-world loving living together for now 3-way in our special way, versus wondering what the hell is going on and why it’s not just me and Neener being a couple and not even any other part of Team Succulence, other than maybe an occasional meal together. It’s not even restricted to just those two poles, though I’ve yet to get clear enough in my mind to identify other wavering stopover points. I truly do want you to heal and get back on your feet for whatever the future has in store for you, and stressing you and myself and Clark with jealous rages helps none of us in any way. In conclusion for my part of this discussion, I apologize for going off on you for reasons having everything to do with me and my insecurity and nothing to do with you other than my profound envy of you on several levels and your body in particular. I apologize to both of you for trashing what likely would have been some excellent sex you both would have enjoyed. Maybe once we’ve all settled down and let go of this, the mood will come back, and you two can get back to it.”

“It’s far more important to me to have the ongoing steady healing supply of cuddly affection and to remain on good, peaceful, mutually relaxed terms with you than to bone Clark” she turned to face him, “no matter how awesome your neener seems to be.”

“It’s awesome, at least in my world.”

“It’s average” Clark objected.

“Physically that may be, though I think if we measured, you’ll measure above average. Vastly more relevant than the enticing physical parameters is the mind and spirit of you backing up your banana prong: the love that comes with the boning, and is so soothing and healing apart from boning and other lust stuff. Alright, I’ll be quiet now. Please let’s all find our way back to loving one another in all possible ways with which each of us are comfortable.”

“Chonky?”

“Yeah Squish?”

“Tell me truly: do you have any interest in doing anything at all with my 4th. boob? You know, being a boob lover and all.”

A brief shudder went through her. “I badly want to massage-squeeze you there. To know what it feels like, at least for those of us here on the outside.”

“I’d like that.”

 

It felt very good and very exciting to both of them. Beautiful heavy breathing filled the room as Leigh kept going, repeatedly slowly and deeply squeezing what amounted to the best and most amazing warm fleshy squeeze ball she’d ever felt, or even seen.

 

At one point by accident, Leigh’s middle finger slipped between Jayne’s fat lower lips. Both of them immediately froze up, Leigh more than Jayne. Their eyes locked, their faces projecting mutual deer-in-headlights freeze panic expressions.

Ever so subtly Jayne nodded, likely unaware she was doing so.

Leigh slid her middle finger back and forth several millimeters.

Jayne nodded slightly more, this time aware of what she was doing.

Leigh slid her finger about a centimeter back and forth.

Explosive passion shooting through her light lightning, Jayne nodded deeply—easy for anyone to see. “Yes please” she verbally confirmed.

Leigh’s hand took Jayne on a nice, slow, gradual, exquisitely arousing hand job ride. She quickly learned that reflecting upon what she was doing was the worst possible idea: merely starting along any such path brought on queasiness, panic, or both. Staying all the way into full in-the-moment focus on the feelings and staring lustily at Jayne’s boobs, belly, and what she could see of her fat mound she was currently deftly manipulating was absolutely the way to go, perhaps the only way to go.

Jayne’s aroused gasps and moans filled the room, more so as Leigh’s free hand move to her breasts, gently caressing them and especially their seriously engorged not-quite-so-small nipples.

 

One could imagine Jayne feeling driven to reciprocate, either in the same moment or later. That almost happened, but didn’t.

One could imagine Clark getting involved via getting into his cruise wife’s vulva with any one or more parts of his body. That almost happened, but didn’t.

What actually happened was in some ways more amazing: Clark eased up behind Jayne and gave her a shoulder massage whilst Leigh continued giving her an exquisite genital massage. The mash-up of exceedingly affectionate romantic and exceedingly lusty sexual feelings and loving gifts from her two simultaneous lovers had Jayne giving herself over entirely to both of them. In this moment, she would have done anything to please them and maintain their amazing love. Thankfully all they asked was for her to be herself, take all the love in that she could, and thoroughly enjoy.

 

---

“This way, please” masked and gloved Sapphire Prince staff member Anwin (per her name tag) directed Leigh, Clark, and Jayne.

The latter squished boob-first into Clark to whisper, “We trained together and she doesn’t even recognize me!”

The around-waist affectionate arm squeeze and nose-rub kiss he gave her and whispering back, “She’s harried and under stress. Just look at what’s going on around us, and what she’s being forced to navigate” meant a great deal to her. She knew she still needed his caring support during this ongoing critical phase of her recovery. As well, beyond any doubt she knew she loved him more than was probably good for anyone.

His other arm had been and remained around Leigh, who soon received her own unsolicited kiss from him, just because LOVE!

 

Traversing the Grand Promenade deck towards the Sip And A Wink Pub proved more challenging than any of them imagined. Loosely packed with passengers weary of stateroom confinement and wanting to go somewhere and move around, the many clusters of socially-distanced spaced-apart small groups (mostly family units), couples, and individuals, each shepherded by a different staff member, looked and felt like an uncomfortable mashup of disparate groups of unruly, boisterous school children being led by their teachers and prisoners from differing gang factions being led to or from their cells and some exercise or work area by guards.

Different groups snaked around in ever-varying paths to keep people apart and still manage to get each individual or group to their destination in some sort of safe, timely manner. Such was the tightly-controlled chaos of having a single deck of necessity in use both by those in the No symptoms (asymptomatic, never had symptoms) class and the Recovered class.

 

Spotting the Jayne/Clark/Leigh group, Rebecca waved and attempted to speed up to meet up with them, pulling Per along with her.

Her attempt was blocked by their usher Shashi. “Stay with me here, ma’am.”

“We’re in the same group!”

“Groups are limited to those residing in the same stateroom, ma’am.”

Frustrated, she ranted, “We. Are. In the Recovered class, alright? We all had it! It’s over! We can kiss and… do anything else you might imagine.”

“It has not been established by leading authorities whether or how long recovered individuals may or may not acquire immunity” Shashi explained as they slowly continued in the direction of the pub, dodging other groups by someone’s vague idea of a social distance.

“When we catch up with them, we are joining them. If you object, contact your supervisor now.”

“Heyyy!” Beryl grinned, waddling up along side Per and Rebecca.

“Ma’am! This is an established group of two–”

“–Let’s get rockin’ and get in our seats!” Beryl completely ignored the usher, easing Rebecca and Per in front of her and using her huge body as a body block between them and the relatively puny usher.

 

Shashi gave up, snapping a quick picture of the backsides of the renegade group and logging the incident, then going back towards the elevators to find another group to shepherd.

 

Before any other cruise ship authorities could get overly worked up, Beryl, Per, and Rebecca met up with Jayne, Clark, and Leigh just outside the wide open doorless doorway of the Sip And A Wink Pub, all of them heading inside together in a huge aisle-blocking mass of superlatively fat humanity.

 

---

Clark and Rebecca both recognized the twiggy young barmaid leading their group to their booth, notwithstanding her entirely (other than eyes) face-covering face mask. The protective mask looked quite out of place, clashing as it did with her semi-scanty (someone’s idea of) British pub barmaid uniform. It succeeded admirably hiding her grimace, struggling to imagine how even any one of the women of this group might fit into any of their booths, as well as how any of them could have ever become so fat, and having done so, how they possibly managed to survive COVID-19 since she’d read that obesity was a major risk factor for serious illness and (gulp!) death.

There was absolutely nothing morbid about these noticeably to significantly to profoundly obese women, puzzled though at least some of them were by the booth to which they were led: one of the standard rectangular 6-person (or 4 of what management thought were people of size) booths.

Beryl, who’d made the reservation, inquired. “Is there some reason the group booth over yonder in the corner which I thought I’d reserved isn’t available?”

“Someone with the sniffles and a fever was reported within the last hour to have been sitting there yesterday, so we’ve thoroughly cleaned it and it’s in its 3-day quarantine period” she proudly announced with an air of authority, briefly wondering why one of the other fat women looked more than vaguely familiar to her.

Feeling adventurous (and hungry), Leigh grinningly declared, “I think we can make it work”, sliding in on the left side, scrunching herself against the wall. “Neener next to me, then Squish.”

 

Clark grinned and Jayne giggled as they slid in. It was tight enough that Leigh had to lift her right hip and bun fat with leg muscles and hand as much and as high as possible for him to slide in under her. Even doing that, her right hip and Jayne’s left were well into contact: more than stand-offish people would abide, as though they were sitting intimately close with no one between them. Clark’s lap was completely buried beneath their combined hip and bun fat.

 

“Here goes nothing” Rebecca muttered.

Already shocked that this hugely-wide woman was going to even try to slide in, the barmaid barely reacted when Per snatched a pair of the plastic-coated menus she was holding from her, quickly slipping them between his beloved’s front and the table edge, forming a sliding bearing surface.

“Clever, Per” commented Clark.

“He’s quite the gentleman” Rebecca smiled and blushed, thanking her man with her eyes in a special, private way. “OK, I’m in, so now he can squish deep into me and we can all find out how Beryl’s gonna pull this off.”

He did so straightaway, placing the bearing surface menus atop the table.

Beryl eyed the geometry of the situation. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” she narrated as she plunged on in sideways. “And I have a lot of will. And luscious, glorious fat!”

 

{Luscious and glorious fat?!} the barmaid thought, in the moment glad that she didn’t have to force a smile behind her face mask.

 

Had the table not been securely bolted to the floor, Beryl might have nearly impaled her friends on the other side, none of whom had middle to upper chest below-boob fat the way Rebecca and especially she did. The table and bench seat creaked and groaned, but held.

Per was squished so tightly into her right side and Rebecca’s left, he could barely move. Like Clark, their butt and hip fat impressed well into each other’s, inundating and completely covering (and then some!) his lap. “You sure this is OK?” he asked Beryl mostly, his love Rebecca secondarily.

“Oh I dunno” the latter teased, obvious from her smirk, “You’re gettin’ a lot of another woman’s side boob action.”

“That’s not all he’s getting and you know it and we’re all better off for what each of us is getting” Beryl grinned. “Under normal circumstances in which few people on Earth are currently living, I’d be seeking something more spacious. Being here in this pub with you all of Team Succulence is far more important to me than free space right now. Beyond that, it’s turning me on like I can’t believe that I’m so fat that I can barely wedge myself in here. I’ve had this joy in the past at the end of big meals, but here the meal hasn’t even started yet!”

“Are you into stuckage?” asked Per.

“Amongst many other things, yes” she grinned, wiggling a little to further feel just how tightly packed in she was.

“I know why Beryl’s grinning, because she’s a freak” Rebecca partially teased. “What’s got you grinning and laughing, Leigh?”

“I’m the only one with any meaningful table space for food and beverages in front of me” she chuckled.

“I’ve got a workaround for that” grinned Jayne, sweeping her braless boobs off the table, letting them fall to her sides.

“So do we” Beryl countered. Amazing them all, she pulled a pair of decently-thick cloth placemats out of her inner depths somewhere near or beneath her giant boobs. First she neatly unfolded and laid one atop Rebecca’s table-filling orbs, then the other atop her own.

 

As she studied herself and the others at the table, Rebecca experienced a sense of surrealism. Meant as an internal thought, she wound up softly saying aloud, “How did I ever let myself get so big?”

The friendly smiles around the table aimed towards her were a small part of the answer. Inner feelings she definitely did not verbalize were a much larger part. When her and Per’s eyes directly and intensely met yet again, the out-of-this-world powerful love between them gave her the rest of her answer. She gently eased him over against and into her at an angle allowing his head to rest atop her placemat. This was only possible because of how profoundly soft and fat she was.

Others were studying the menu, figuring out what all they wanted. Soon enough, she joined them.

 

---

With orders placed, attention turned back to being together.

“Welcome to the second meeting of Team Succulence” Beryl smiled.

“Yeah, I suppose you are our de-facto leader” Rebecca mused (aloud).

“We can vote on that.”

Clark had a different idea, “Let’s instead award Rebecca with something for having named us.”

 

Leigh started applauding, the rest of them quickly joining in.

 

“Thank you. I don’t even remember how it happened. What I’d really like is to be a part of the vote or nominations or whatever you over on the other side apparently took to give you your special names.”

All 3 of them looked puzzled, Leigh especially.

“You know: the ones you just used when we sat down. Neener and squishy something.”

“Those are our pet names for each other” explained Leigh.

“You’re sharing your names of endearment out in public?!”

“They’re not exactly racy” Jayne countered.

“Fewer names to remember, if we use them for our Team Succulence names too” noted Clark.

“Alright, what are they?”

“Let’s each sound off with our own, starting from my left.”

“Chonky.”

“Neener.”

“Squish. As in Brent’s Squish Buckle from yesterday, improved via removing him and the Buckle.”

“Always remove the buckle” said Beryl. “Makes for more breathing and eating room.”

“Unless she’s DJing” Per mildly disagreed.

“Alright, I sit corrected: usually remove the buckle, and other restraints.”

“Yeah, I get those” Rebecca nodded. “I like mine—Per’s pet name for me—but y’all are gonna penalize me for it, and then I’ll be sad.”

“Why would we do that?” asked Clark.

“’Cause in private I’m Cali, C-A-L-I. But you all natives won’t let me be that, and nobody’s given me the rule book or the how-to or the course requirements to earn my Ph.G. And here come our beer flights” she grinned at the end.

 

“Sorry to be nosy” said the barmaid as she set the flight racks down, “but what’s a Ph.G?”

“A mythical degree I made up as an abbreviated way of saying ‘getting my Ph.D in Cali Girliness, with the girl part of Cali girl being the G. I’ve lived there 20 years—a freakin’ generation, people!” she noisily teased the natives seated across from her—“and the native son and daughters over there keep tellin’ me I’m still a New Yawwwker.”

“20 years… that’s 87 percent of my life.”

“See people?!” she again directed to those across from her. “It’s like it’s a frickin’ copyright or something! I’m not gonna live long enough ta be a Cali girl at this rate. You a Cali girl, hun?”

The barmaid nodded.

“Thought so. Can you approve me as a Cali girl? Or tell me how ta go about it?”

 

The young woman stared contemplatively towards the ceiling for nearly half a minute.

 

“Fortunately for you, we have a sufficient number of natives here today” she totally made up, sounding as authoritative as had Shashi the usher. “Unless my peers of greater experience know otherwise, last I heard in a pub setting like this, the nominee and each native-born person on the qualification committee consumes all of a drink, then the first committee member asks the nominee a general California knowledge question that only a true Cali girl—native or qualified immigrant—would know. Conveniently you’re all having microbrew flights, so consuming one whole flight glass each round shouldn’t be an especial hardship. Upon successfully answering the first question, the process repeats, moving to the next committee member in order. Once the final question has been answered correctly, the nominee becomes an official Cali girl.”

“Finally! Is this an open-book test?”

She shook her head.

“Dang! Do I get more than one guess?”

“Normally no, though by unanimous agreement amongst the members of the qualification committee, that and other rules can be adjusted.”

“Oy! These three will make it harder!”

“No we won’t” Leigh assured her, “because as she just said, it requires unanimous agreement to modify the rules.” {And you are brilliant} she thought of the clever young barmaid.

“I have to go serve another table, and because I’m working, I can’t be part of the rounds of drinking. All committee members in favor of this being an official transaction despite my not being allowed to drink nor bear witness at every moment, for which I myself vote yes?”

“Yes” “Yes” “Mmm hmm”

“OK, it’s unanimous. Let’s please start with the committee member farthest from me near the wall so I can go do my job and not get reprimanded, working in order from there towards me. I’ll be back when I can.”

 

She was already gone before Per could ask, “Do those of us who aren’t on the committee and aren’t the nominee need to drink at the same time?”

“Nooo” replied his Love the nominee. “You and Beryl enjoy your flights at each your own pace, and the show.”

 

Rebecca had to admit to herself that she felt more than slightly nervous, even though the native son and 2 native daughters seated across from her were all smiling towards her as the 4 of them enjoyed the first and lightest beer of their flights.

 

“OK native daughter and Team Succulence member Chonky, I’m ready when you are.”

“Name the band best known for songs about California life, specifically California Girls.”

“The Beach Boys!”

“Correct!”

“That’s too easy!” Clark objected, shoulder-bumping Leigh. “Those were national hits anyone could know, not something only a true Cali girl could know!”

With the force of a prosecuting attorney badgering a witness, Leigh pushed herself part-way up, leaning towards Rebecca menacingly. “Have you ever at least one time since moving to California sung along and danced to the Beach Boys’ version of California Girls, changing the lyrics to something like ‘I wish I could be a California girl’?”

“Yes Your Honor! At least once a year!”

“Irrelevant!” Clark again objected.

“First question was legitimate, and she answered it! Your turn once we have our next flight glass, where you can ask a harder question.”

 

Rebecca braced herself for what she knew was going to be a tough question, downing her second flight glass to hopefully fortify herself, or if not that at least get through the gauntlet more quickly.

Once the others and he himself finished, Clark plunged right in, “Name the California city whose motto used to be ‘Sun Fun Stay Play’.”

“Clark!” Leigh barked.

Jayne looked over at him like he was nuts. “I don’t even know that!”

“It’s a significant California city and they had that motto for years!”

Leigh was having none of it, “Not in any years Bec lived here!”

“We’re in southern Oregon.”

“Lived in California! Pick another question that at least both I and Squish can answer, please!”

 

He gave her a mildly dirty look, working through his mind seeking something suitable. Eventually he thought one up. “The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is located in which City of Los Angeles district?”

“South Central! My hip-hop homies used ta battle them.”

One of his eyebrows shot up, “Where is your true home?!”

“California!”

“Alright. Congratulations on passing stage 2.”

“Hhhhhhh” she sighed in relief, her head collapsing against the seat back.

“You’re halfway there” Per encouraged her with a smile and a very nice bare fat upper arm affectionate squeezy caressing rub.

 

{Well at least I’m getting smashed enough that I’m not gonna care if I lose} thought Rebecca, during her tasty 3rd. flight glass. She didn’t feel especially great about the evil smile on Jayne’s face, as the latter finished her current glass.

“For the true Cali girl, when is bikini season?”

“Ohhhh!” Leigh winced.

“Niiiccee!” was Clark’s response.

“Trick question! I can’t get in a bikini that fits!”

“Yes you can” declared Beryl.

Jayne restated the question, “For the sake of this qualification exam, imagine your future self, a true 100% Cali girl-certified immigrant, with a bikini right there in your closet or drawer that fits you perfectly and makes you look excellent. When is your bikini season—you and Chonky and me and our barmaid and all other true Cali girls?”

“It can be any time of the year! I’ve been toasty-warm on the beach in the sun some days in December and January even, and other years that can’t happen and even some days or weeks in June may be out. It depends on the weather; ya gotta look at the weather forecast.”

“Correct answer!”

“Hallelujah and I Love You, California!”

 

“How’re we doing here?” the newly-returned barmaid asked from behind her mask, starting to dish out the orders.

“I’m 3 for 4! I’m on a roll!”

“Looks like you all of the qualification committee and you as the nominee need to finish your 4th. flight glass before I can ask your final qualification question.”

Rebecca was almost there, and made it all the way so. “Let’s go people!” Clap clap clap “She’s got people ta serve and I gotta do this!”

Leigh and Jayne pounded theirs, to keep things moving. Clark, on the other hand, quaffed his leisurely.

“Let’s overheat his glass with stare burns so he’ll finish it faster” Leigh advised.

Before they could make any progress on that, he gulped the last 2 swallows and set down the glass.

“The official state flower of California is?”

“The California poppy! They’re usually the most beautiful vibrant orange but some are yellow and some are red and I’ve heard tell of pink ones but I’ve never seeeen those” she ended in a sing-songy tone. “I love the poppies! The poppy fields in Antelope Valley in springtime—OHHHH! I don’t know why people pick them from there and step on them when they’re so easy to grow at home. Leave the native poppies alone!—HHHHH! You have one right there!”

“This one’s farm-grown, not from a reserve, I promise you. By the power delegated in us as native-born Californians, I hereby pass this California poppy from my pandemic-enforced gloved hands through the hands of each committee member in turn, the last of whom will place it decoratively in your hair, at which point you will be a true Cali girl of the immigrant subclass, with rights and privileges equal to the native-born Cali girl subclass, apart from being able to serve on nomination committees such as this one.”

“Hhhhh! I’m cryin’ here! (sniff) I’ve waited years for this!”

Leigh’s belly briefly got caught under the lip of the table, flobbing (sic) up in a sudden jolt and landing atop the table with a pleasing thud as she stood to decorate Rebecca with the pretty poppy. Twisting her upper body as she carefully studied the different angles, she eventually chose slipping it in her hair about 2 cm above her left ear, with the peak of the bloom about 2 cm forward of it.

She couldn’t help smiling at the result: it looked beautiful!

 

Everyone took pictures, including the barmaid. Nearly all of them had to wait for Rebecca to repeatedly wipe her eyes then smile, to avoid a crying (from joy) photo.

 

The newly-minted Cali girl’s eyes suddenly grew wide, “Wait wait wait—I just thought of this: is this permanent? Or is there any way that this great honor can be taken away from me?!”

“According to the last policy update I saw, it’s permanent unless a Cali girl consistently ranks iconic aspects of other areas above those of California, especially those of an immigrant Cali girl’s native area. For example, if you routinely spoke of how New York pizza or bagels or anything else are better than those of California, you’d be at high risk of having your official Cali girl status revoked. Sports teams are even more critical, so if, for example, you root for the Mets instead of the Dodgers or Angels or Giants any other California team, you’d likely have your status revoked.”

“Oy. Glad I’m not a sports fan! And I do like California pizza, especially with arugula on it. But the bagel thing, all the bagel places I see have New York in their name somewhere. How does that work? I can’t afford ta lose this after having worked so long and hard ta get here!”

“All good, unless you routinely complain that the bagels at such-and-such place in New York City or elsewhere outside of California are better. Keep it positive, keep it Cali, and you’ll be fine.

Tension again poured out of new Cali girl Rebecca’s body. Before her emotions could again well up overly strong, she asked the barmaid “What’s your name, hun?”

“Poppy. No, just kidding! It’s Lita, L-I-T-A. I forgot my badge today.”

“Thank you so much, Lita! Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to me.”

“Cool! And congratulations again, new official Cali girl with the poppy to show the world! Enjoy your meal, everybody; I’ll be back around soon.”

 

“Whatever we’re doin’ for her gratuity, I’m doublin’ it” declared Rebecca, once Lita was out of view.

“Gonna double down on that ploughman’s lunch before it gets cold, Cali?” asked Beryl.

“Oh that’s riiiight!” her eyes lit up, “I’m Cali now! I really am!”

 

Cali and the rest of Team Succulence tucked into their hearty pub fare, sharing smiles whenever their immediate eating situation allowed doing so.

 

---

“More food and a pitcher of beer. Whaddaya think?”

 

The others of Team Succulence agreed with Beryl’s suggestion. Beyond nearly all of them having a great time most of the time, for other reasons in addition to this, none of them wanted their time together to end just yet. Eating at least one big meal together was so refreshing and pleasing to each of them for their own individual reasons, they were already secretly hoping that the others would conclude along with them that this had to become a daily event.

Both Leigh and Clark knew that she was eating joyously because that was her original cruise goal from before she first boarded the Sapphire Prince. All of them at the table knew that Beryl ate big at every possible meal and oftentimes in between for the purpose of being as fat as possible, because she freely and widely shared this information with anyone who’d listen.

Especially as a newly-minted Cali girl who’d lost so many who’d remained still living in her native New York City, Rebecca needed camaraderie and friendship as much as food. She loved to eat, had a big appetite, and never had done well keeping the weight off long ago when she’d tried. This was different. This was more. She ate for those other reasons, and also others besides: self-soothing, and fitting in. This was not a sacrifice, nor was she losing herself to groupthink. It was an adventure amongst freely fat food-loving Cali girls, native-born and immigrants, and those who loved them—and she had a California poppy in her hair to prove it.

Jayne hadn’t recovered as much as she thought she had, and certainly nowhere near enough in a mere 28 or so hours with less than half of those being restful sleeping or deep rest hours to be wearing herself down with alcoholic beverages. She was the moodiest of the group, her moods shifting almost to bipolar degrees—almost all locked inside. Outside, she was having a consistently great time. As with Rebecca, part of the eating was fitting in, and part of it was going on a fattening adventure along with them. Much as she hated to admit it and could not yet do so consciously, part of it was that her body had already developed the habit of eating a lot being the new normal. Additionally, she remained more stressed than she let on, and likely more than she knew, thus she was still stress eating to soothe herself.

Taken together, each of Leigh, Rebecca, and Jayne had their own reasons to be eating as voraciously and joyously as Beryl.

 

“OK, they’ve all got Team Succulence names and now finally that I’m really Cali I do too—llllaaaaahh!” she gleefully celebration-sang with joy. “So you two need ’em now.”

“You don’t have a pet name for Per already?” asked Leigh.

“It’s too close to Clark’s Neener.”

“We’ll be the judge of that, Cali.”

“Judging’s over! Right, Beryl? There’s no judging on Team Succulence, right?”

 

Everyone had to wait for her to finish her current big honkin’ bite of shepherd’s pie. “Correct, however you aren’t likely to make any progress on Per having a Team Succulence name until you share the pet name and we can understand why it might not work.”

“Alright.” She petted his shoulder, gazing at him dreamily as she shared, “He’s my Norwegian Wood. But that’s obviously too many syllables, so for a pet name we use Wood.”

“I’m finding no conflict” said Leigh. “One’s fruit and one’s tree fiber.”

The others agreed.

“Alright, I’m good with it.”

“The question is: is he good with it?”

“I’m fine” he answered Beryl. “I’ll be Wood.”

“That leaves you, Ms. Beech.”

“She doesn’t have a steady, so she wouldn’t have a pet name” noted Clark.

“Don’t need one, when each of Beryl and Beech already fit the terse criterion” the woman in question declared.

“It’s not special if it’s part of your given name” said Rebecca.

Clark thought it through aloud, “Beech, beached whale, Whale.”

“♫ Baahm baahm
Baahm baahm
Baahm baahm
Baahm baahm ♫” Jayne sang, stepping down in pitch with each repetition pair.

“What’s that?”

“My bargain basement rendition of an excerpt from a song titled Whale, which like an idiot, I forgot to research when I heard it. And of course searching on Whale parenthesis song close parenthesis or even songs entitled Whale gets nowhere close, bringing in actual whale songs and all that other stuff other people are legit seeking and I am not. And there really aren’t other easily understandable lyrics other than what I just sung, so can’t do a lyrics search. Just ignore me.”

 

Clark refused to ignore her, instead giving his exceedingly talented music-minded DJ lover a snug affectionate seated side hug. After that he did the same on his opposite side with his talented-in-other-ways music-minded non-DJ (at least professionally) lover.

 

“I’ll do Whale” said Beryl. “I’m fine with that. Ready to try a new beer for our next pitcher?”

 

---

Boisterous laughter amidst an air of fun and camaraderie grew louder and stronger during what was becoming an extended lunch party for Team Succulence. Bonding ever-closer as new friends and in some combinations lovers over shared interests during a time of great worldwide and on-ship adversity, this second group get-together was an outstanding opportunity to blow off steam and let go of worry and stress and loss from all each of them individually (and sometimes in pairs) had been through. Being honest, there was also at least a vague fear in most of their minds that there might not be a tomorrow, giving an even greater incentive to fully live it up today, in the moment.

The food kept coming, less so now other than for biggest-appetite Beryl, given that they’d been eating long enough that the others were full for the time being. The pitchers of beer kept coming, and somehow they all had room for that. One pitcher at a time, never lasting long, so they could all enjoy a different brew each time.

All of them were comfortably happy “buzzed” buzzed, each pleased to be that way under these circumstances, though being on the edge of weepy, Jayne from time to time feared she might fall apart if anything went badly wrong.

 

As tends to be the case as a sweeping generalization, inhibitions were lowered.

Jayne felt an arousal flutter as Clark slipped his hand in through her flowing dress’s generously-sized arm opening/short angular sleeve, claiming her very big left boob. It was exciting to be felt up right there at the table as everyone kept sipping, chatting, and celebrating—even better was having such a big, fat one hanging below table level, so he could keep doing that to her unseen!

But that’s not what happened. Soon after first getting ahold of her left one, to her adrenalin-rush surprise he slowly and carefully eased it out of her dress’s left sleeve! She was so big there, he was holding that part of her out in the open over his lap! But of course it wasn’t his actual lap surface, because that was buried by a little of her own left hip and bun fat, and a whole lot of Leigh’s.

Enthralling as this was, it got better: he eased Leigh’s right hand onto her left boob! Her breast-lusting Girlfriend with Certain Limited Benefits started feeling her up, skin-to-skin! Under the table where no one on the other side could see! Seated one whole person away from her! Thanks to how tightly together they were seated and how big her breasts were, Leftie wasn’t even truly being stretched!

It wasn’t just Jayne that was thrilled. Leigh was profoundly touched that her boob-loving cruise husband would hand Jayne’s magnificent mam over to her, for her own boob-lust pleasure! She was powerfully moved, and so was Jayne. Mostly by chance though a little bit by watching each other, she and Jayne wound up kissing lover Clark at the same time, each on his nearest-to-them cheek.

 

This was fully visible across the table.

“Lookin’ like you have two Cali girl lovers, Mister Neener” Cali saucily grinned.

♫ Two girls for ev-reee boyyyyy ♫ sang Squish, with Cali then the rest of the women of Team Succulence quickly joining in.

“We’re all set up for that over here” Whale grinned Cali’s way.

“No” she defiantly replied. “I may be one Cali girl, but I’m way more than two girls in volume!”

“So are we” replied Chonky, thrilling Squish with an extra-twiddly nipple twist.

Cali crushed her Wood deeply into her side, with a force that might have hurt had she been less well-padded. Hugely fat as she was, to him the experience felt like being squished into a multi-sided warm loving human pillow, sandwiched as he was between her generously pillowy left arm and exceedingly pillowy left side of her body.

“This just in: the women-attracted male FA shortage remains rampant upon the cruise ship Sapphire Prince” announced Whale in her best newscaster voice. “Supplies are being rationed, to be shared equitably. Share your resources!”

“You already sampled him, alright?! He’s with me—my Wood—OK?!”

Squish’s mouth ran somewhat ahead of her mind, “True Cali girls responsibly love and let love amongst trusted friends!”

Cali looked and acted cornered, pulling back somewhat wide-eyed, pulling Wood along with her.

Neener rushed to her defense, “True Cali girls come in a stunningly wide diversity of minds, bodies, behaviors, beliefs, and more! I know for an indisputable fact that many Cali girls are monogamous… likely a majority. She is Cali! With or without the beautiful poppy in her hair, she is now a true, full, 100% Cali girl, full stop. Her love is her business, no one else’s, other than Wood’s at this time. We love our way over here, she loves her way over there.”

Whale wasn’t having it, “What about the shortage?!”

 

As most of them aimlessly stared at one another else took fresh quaffs of beer, Neener used his left foot to slip off his right foot’s slip-on classic black and white checkerboard-patterned Vans deck shoe. Once it was off, with greater difficulty he slipped off his sock on that same foot.

He eased his right foot up and under Whale’s dress, caressing the lowest expanse of her belly fat with his toes and nearby bottom of the front of his foot.

 

“Alright, I’ll let it go. For now” she winked across the table at him.

 

Chonky’s bemused gaze aimed his way encouraged Neener to take his next action: one he’d planned to get into before all this opposite-side sharing contentiousness unfolded. Snaking his hand under his cruise wife’s skirt waistband, he made glorious skin-to-skin contact with her fat and full belly, gently massaging it forthwith. From this position it was easy to ease on over and include some of her becoming-voluminous right hip fat.

Squish didn’t know exactly what was going on, only able to read between the lines from lover Chonky’s expression and what little she could see of Neener’s, along with feeling a little of his body language and a whole lot of joyously scintillating and thrilling ongoing direct breast fondling from Chonky. She knew that she wanted to somehow feel Neener’s neener, and made it so: quite like he’d done with Chonk, she slipped her left hand beneath his pants and undies waistbands, right onto his partly-engorged love log. Her exquisite sensual sexual touch assuredly engorged him further, back into his true banana-curved shape.

When his right hand wasn’t occupied holding his beer glass, Neener found it easy to surreptitiously slip it under the table and, without drawing attention, pull up the bottom of Squish’s dress until he could access her deliciously fat thigh. From there it was a short journey up over and under her undies waistband to the lower expanse of her beautifully rounded and very soft fat and fattening belly.

 

Those on the Chonky-Neener-Squish side of the table did admirably well mostly keeping their poker faces as their sexual intimacy continued, easing deeper. The only “tell” was their relative silence, and sometimes missing out on conversational cues at least one of them would typically have nabbed.

 

“What’s going on over there?” Cali suspiciously asked.

 

Whale whispered an explanation amounting to “under-table sexy stuff” to Wood, who in turn whisper-relayed the information to Cali.

 

“I’m in” she told him, concluding with what some have called a “fuck me now” deep, long, passionate kiss.

 

Slow and tactful was always the way with Cali, which Wood knew well (hence his being her man). Gradually over time he caressed his way deeper into and in through her voluminous piles of belly and other mid-body fat, continually reading her comfort level.

A quarter hour later, his hand was where precious few in modern times were ever allowed to venture: her inner sanctum: down under yonder in YonLand.

 

By this point Neener was well into cruise wife Chonky’s inner sanctum on a wonderfully sexy ongoing basis, slipping into and out of Squish’s when his hand wasn’t needed for drinking.

 

A shared basket of chips (fries in ’Merican English), another pitcher of beer, and the stealth sexy times continued, gradually accelerating. It came (pun intended) to the point where they were legit having an orgy right there at their table in the Sip And A Wink Pub, looking to the few others viewing them as a group of good friends sharing a typical fun (pseudo) public house time, no one outside their table knowing otherwise.

“You have my permission to get into Whale” Cali whispered to her Wood.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. We’re all survivors in a brave new world. She’s sex-positive and horny like me, and she needs it. I’m still your Cali girl and you’re still my one and only all-the-way Wood. You’re going home to my stateroom with me tonight, but for now we’re all in this together, and I approve sharing your woman-attracted male FA resources with her as you’re able, willing, and interested, and she’s interested.”

 

It startled Wood to find Neener’s foot already enmeshed in Whale’s vulvar depths. She quickly and nonverbally made it clear to each of them that the correct path forward was for the two of them to be in that part of her working together for her pleasure. She was so beautifully, immensely fat and they were so totally to-their-core innate woman-attracted FAs of their nature and beyond anyone’s control, they could do no less than strive to please her.

 

Similar to a colony of ants, all of Team Succulence became a teamwork-driven sexual entity, individually and simultaneously giving and receiving for a glorious greater good. Orgasms, when they happened, were individual, and typically wonderful. When they didn’t happen, the ongoing arousal was so amazingly exquisite, it was as good or better for those so situated that there at that moment were no orgasms.

Most of the experience was about buzzed carnal sex. Inevitably given those involved and their existing intimate connections, other forms of love simultaneously blossomed and flowed.

 

---

As can often be the case during afterglow, biochemistry in some can lead to sad, “blue”, or depressive mood shifts. Such was the case for Squish, who simply couldn’t keep her mind’s focus entirely in the joyous present.

 

“Hhhhhhhh” she sighed, looking dejected.

Neener’s deeper and more affectionate side cuddle helped, but wasn’t enough.

“What’s up, Squish-o?” asked Whale.

“Thinking about the future. Failing to stay fully present in this amazingly wonderful moment with all of you” she sighed again.

“Why do that? Come back, come back: we’re right here!” she grinned, as was most often her way.

“As important as living in the present is, without planning, when this moment’s future becomes the present, one is likely to be unprepared. Too much of that and especially in critical areas such as earning a living can lead to significant suffering.”

“Can’t plan for everything” noted Wood. “There’s too many aspects of life to do that and still have a life.”

“Who can plan at all in the middle of an international pandemic?!” Cali ranted. “My production company—not mine, but the last one I worked for—has been laying people off right and left! Not firing mind you, but indeterminate layoffs. During the Great Depression entertainment was an escape people needed, but with this thing we can’t even gather a small team of actors in one space ta make anything!”

“Zoom.”

“Fuck Zoom!” Neener cursed.

In one of the few times so far they’d encountered a direct head-on disagreement with each other, Wood charged right back, “It’s a lifeline for people right now!”

“Pretty shitty lifeline.”

“It’ll win for the same reason Adobe Flash dominated for so long: cross-platform compatibility and ease of installation and use.”

“It’ll die for the same reason Adobe Flash did: it’s shitty arrogant software, especially deviating outside its original core design goals!”

“I don’t wanna hear about anyone’s software, you two otherwise-sexy sweeties” Cali reclaimed the conversation. “Without someone doing some serious editing, anyone’s software is a bunch of grid boxes right now, far as I’ve seen. That gets old real fast.”

Neener noticed Squish looking sadder. Cuddling into her side anew and nuzzling her upper arm he apologized, “I’m sorry for derailing your conversation.”

“It doesn’t matter” she sighed.

“Yes it does.”

“I’m just being selfish. Ignore me.”

Cali refused. “I’m not gonna ignore a fellow Cali girl in need. Especially not one who helped make me official! What about the future is vexing ya, hun?”

“How to reinvent myself in a way where I can earn a living.”

“Didn’t we establish yesterday that it’s too soon for that?” asked Wood.

“I’m feeling the need to do something besides eating and having sex. Not that those are in any way bad and I’m not judging anyone! Just that you all are here as paying passengers, expected and entitled to recreate like that.”

Chonky gave her left boob some sudden deep squeezes.

“OK: recreate like this. Better Chonky?”

She nodded, grinning.

“I’m a service provider, not providing services.”

“How can you, if everything’s locked down?” asked Whale.

“It’s not any more. Not all of it anyway. We’re here in the pub, for example.

“Yeah, but your stuff’s locked down.”

“Yeahhhh” she sighed anew.

“I understand that they don’t want people getting too close” said Neener, “but it seems like a waste to have big spaces like the Club Troposphere dance floor wholly unoccupied. That may not be your jurisdiction, but seems to me that the Recovered class of cruisers is missing out on the sunbathing opportunities the No symptoms class has on the Sun deck. Even if it meant that someone had to handle appointments and mark the floor with tape or something to keep people spaced apart sufficiently, at least it’s something.”

“Since when has there been any sun recently in which to bathe?!” Whale snickered.

“Point taken. Never mind.”

“I’ve never understood why they don’t do more stuff there in the daytime” said Chonky. “It would be great to have gentle, easy yoga sessions, or meditation, or nearly anything else to help cruisers relax and cope.”

“You especially could do it with music, Squish” Cali smiled supportively. “Nice quiet relaxing background music, ta help people’s tension melt away. You could even dress the way you are now, since to me at least ya look like a therapist or healer in your pretty, flowing, loose dress.”

Chonky liked the idea. “I can envision seeing that on the daily schedule: Meditation with Jayne!”

“With her smiling picture in the corner or to the side of the text” added Neener.

Squish liked the idea too, revealed by her dreamy gaze into the distance. “Ya think? You think people would come all the way up to the Sky deck during the day to meditate to soft, healing music?”

“I would!”

The others agreed.

“You don’t have to dress up like Swash Buckle or anything else: you’ve got the perfect Earth Mother healer look going on right now.”

She liked the idea even more, and the compliment. They brought her beautiful, fun, sexy smile back.

Whale’s face lit up. Reaching across the table and touching Squish’s hand, with glittery eye contact she said, “Best of all?: you can get as fat as you want! Flowing dress, no bra—unless you want one on a given day.”

It turned on Chonky anew to feel Squish’s left breast suddenly swell kinda sorta in her hand. Neener felt another swelling in a different place.

“Nice and personal and intimate” Neener continued. “You’d be one of the healers on the ship.”

 

The return of a familiar presence ended this conversation.

“How’re we doing here, Cali crew?” asked freshly-returned barmaid Lita.

“To be inclusive for those of us who haven’t gone through the official Cali girl or boy qualification process, collectively we’re Team Succulence” known-to-Lita-as Beryl explained.

“Thank you; I definitely want to be inclusive! Delighted you’re having a great time and glad to be of service to you today. We are 20 minutes past the next seating at this table, having already reassigned the one an hour ago to a different table, with limited seating due to the pandemic. Is it in any way an option for you all to be so kind as to allow another group to have at least a fraction of the fun you’ve had with us today?”

“You’re correct, and you’ve been very kind to us and that’s the best way I’ve ever heard anyone politely tell me to move on. Whaddaya think Team Succulence? Shall we call it a meal and vamoose?”

The others agreed, verbally or otherwise in various ways, often atop one another’s utterances.

 

Beryl/Whale attempted to get the momentum going via getting her hefty momentum in motion, sliding out of the booth.

The effort failed.

“Ha! I’m totally stuck!” she laughed uproariously, wholly unable to move. “I’ve gloriously fattened up so much that the only way I’m gonna get outta here any time soon is by having another whole grand meal or two and blowing this tabletop to splinters!”

 

As earlier when she didn’t want to force herself to smile, Lita was glad none of them could see her mouth twitching behind her face mask.

 

“Sorry hun. I think you’re going to have to keep feeding us noms and beer until we all together swell up further and destroy this thing.”

“But then nobody else can sit here, so what’s the point of that?” Wood questioned her.

 

Communicating non-verbally to disconnect themselves from each other, the Chonky-Neener-Squish side of the table presented an alternative, soon as Neener replaced Squish’s left Girl where that part of her belonged inside her flowing dress. Stuffed as she was, Squish managed to extricate herself with minimal trouble and (thankfully) no dress shredding. {Holy BPM! I’ve eaten and buzzed myself huuuge!} she thought regarding her obviously bigger, heavier, food-filled belly.

Neener had no trouble sliding out, other than needing to be careful given how tipsy he was.

It surprised Chonky that she’d eaten and buzzed enough that her bloated belly along with her usual fat presented meaningful friction between belly and table edge. She nevertheless managed to slide out, without the need for menu nor alternative friction-reducing shims, and without ripping clothing. {Glad I know I’m buzzed. Otherwise I’d be concerned about how much I’m enjoying these sensations of excess. Wish we could get going so I can go lie down, though.}

 

“Let’s get this Whale outta here” Neener grinned to his lovers.

“Isn’t calling her that over the line?” Lita inquired.

“No, because that’s my official Team Succulence name” exclaimed the Whale a.k.a. Beryl in question. “Good luck getting all this profoundly wonderful fat outta here!” she taunted her standing team peers, gleefully sharing with the rest of the pub.

“We have science, specifically physics, on our side” smiled Wood. “Esteemed barmaid Lita, if you will kindly loan us a pair of menus, working together here on Team Succulence we ought to be able to extricate this mighty Whale from your booth.”

“My flab precedes me! And follows me!” Whale aimlessly exclaimed, leaving many wondering how exactly her proclamation was in any way relevant to the situation at hand wedginess.

 

Lita returned with the menus, including some extras if needed.

Soft and squishy as she and it was, it took a team effort to squeeze Whale’s profoundly-expanded flab out of the way even the 1.8 millimeters from the table edge needed to slip in a pair of the menus. Neener, Chonky, Cali on the other side, and Whale herself all working together were needed to create this small gap for Wood to be able to quickly slide in the menus.

The menus were none too happy to receive the significant force placed upon them, most visible in the way her significantly bulging fat above and below the table’s edge bent them severely.

“We’re going to have to work fast” Wood advised. “OK Whale and all of us: we’re moving you out on the count of three.”

Everyone got into position, bracing themselves.

“One. Two. Three!”

 

Nothing, other than energy depletion and muscle fatigue for the helpers.

 

Whale waved off any further help at this time, “Wait, I got this.”

BuuuurrrrAAAAPPP! Flup Flup Flup Flup Flup! she released significant intestinal gas from both ends around the same time.

The invisible odiferous cough-inducing cloud barely had time to start clearing when she said, “OK, let’s try again.”

“One. Two. Three!”

Whhhomm bluh bluh blommm bluh bluh blommm: she was out, her prodigious fat gleefully expanding into the additional space.

{You are a whale} thought Lita. {Apt name.}

 

For whatever reason, Cali’s fat remained softer and more pliable than had been Whale’s, making it easy for Wood to slip the menu pair between her and the table, with her essential help pressing her own flab towards her body core. As during her ingress, the plastic-on-plastic friction reduction eased her egress. This was a multi-step process, with her and Wood each moving one position to the left with each iteration until he then finally she was out.

About as stuffed as she’d ever been (and this atop her lifetime peak fatness), Cali joined the others (apart from Whale) being taken aback by her currently-food-heavy bloated weight and dimensions. She felt the need to hug everyone in turn, including momentarily-hesitant Lita.

{Wow} thought Lita, once the hug started. As it got deeper this became {Oh my gosh WOW! You’re as soft as the beds on this ship!}

 

“OK Team Succulence: to whereabouts are we moving this party?” asked Whale, with enthusiasm.

“I really need sleep” whined Squish, suddenly feeling and looking tired.

“Let’s please all clear ourselves outta this wonderful establishment, so others can get in” urged Cali, to Lita’s great relief and appreciation.

 

On their wobbly way out, Cali and Wood declared their intention to return to her stateroom, effectively ending the Team Succulence meeting for the time being. Only Whale seemed to have the energy to even mention getting together again for dinner, making the idea a non-starter. With gratitude, fullness, and intoxication, they shared squishy hugs (to the annoyance of the ship’s ushers) then let themselves be shepherded in their separate groups back to their disparate lives (and usual names).

 

---

The moment they were back in their (originally Leigh’s) stateroom Squish (again for the moment) squished her lovers into a deep 3-way hug. “You two are wonderful” she sighed.

“So are you” Clark replied with a kiss.

 

She burst into tears.

 

“I’m sorry! What did I say?!”

She shook her head and waved his comment off. “I’m buzzed, and I’m a weepy buzzed, and life is great in the here-and-now of this moment for the most part, but I’m sad.”

Leigh found herself wanting to cuddle more into Jayne, in her mind on the pervy pretense of better feeling her current bulging fullness against her own. “Why are you sad?”

“I want to have more sex, but I’m exhausted!”

“You have a lot of sleep to catch up on.”

Clark’s hot breath during that last sentence buzzed Jayne in a manner different than the beers. “But this is all going to end soon, somehow! They’re going to have to let all you passengers off sooner than later, and the pattern so far is they force us crew members to remain on board.”

“It’s not going to be good sex if you’re tired, Squish” he ended with a kiss.

“Nor technically can any of us give consent to either of the other of us, since we’re all buzzed” noted Leigh.

Too tired to cry any more and with her mood having shifted anyway, she made pouty bird lips.

“How about a sensual shower with either me or Chonky, then you and I can lie down and cuddle so you can sleep?”

“I don’t think Squish and I can fit in there together with both of us all bloated like this, Neen.”

“Do either of you even want a shower? Or am I just projecting my wants again?”

“I want one please.” The moderately gentle, reasonably brief kiss Jayne gave him somehow dazed him to the point where his knees grew week.

Leigh was too happy with the day so far to be momentarily omitted from the kissing. Part of this may have been due to enjoying feeling each of their butts with her hands, in her inhibition-lowered state.

 

---

Jayne’s mood continued to swing during the entire shower-to-bed process. When she could keep herself in the moment, she was happy, even contented at points. When her mind drifted to the future—even the near-term future—she felt sad, upset, or otherwise discomposed.

 

Leigh had glasses of water to hand to them soon as they emerged all clean and dry from the bathroom. “Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.”

 

Bed was better, especially with Leigh gently rubbing her bloated belly along with Clark, the latter cuddled into her backside. She dropped off to sleep like a rock—a soft, sexy rock—within very few minutes after getting horizontal and being cuddled.

 

After a few minutes of being at loose ends and with soft conversation between her and Clark having faltered several times, Leigh wobbled over behind him, struggled to get atop the bed without waking up Jayne (and succeeded), then squished into her man’s backside. Originally meant as the start of some sexy time, the alcohol and food digestion ensured she and he dropped off into sleep, nearly as quickly as had Jayne.

 

---

Up in his cabin after dinner that evening, inactive Captain Cameron Cranch took his temperature and otherwise did his nightly round of COVID-19 symptom checking, which he had routinely been doing at this time given that his and many people’s symptoms tended to be worse in the evening and pre-bed night.

 

{Hmm, no measurable symptoms for the third day in a row} he concluded. {Tomorrow may be the day to be more thoroughly reevaluated by Medical.}

 

He turned his attention to his nightly newly-incoming email review. One message in particular caught his attention:

To: SPHR, Capt. C. Cranch

From: DJ Gem Jayne

Subject: Difference-Maker Nomination, March 2020

Greetings Ms. Counts and Captain Cranch,

Today, 31 March 2020, I happened to witness a Food & Beverage Department staff member going far above and beyond expectations to deliver a once-in-a-lifetime positive, memorable experience to a passenger whom, via other channels, I understand has suffered great losses of family and friends to COVID-19 disease. A recovered survivor herself, as am I, this passenger, given name Rebecca, a native of New York City, repeatedly expressed deep frustration about having been a citizen of the state of California for a full 20 years, and still feeling like an outsider.

Seated with a group of passengers whom I now count amongst my friends, including Rebecca, I can verify firsthand that Sip And A Wink Pub barmaid Lita Hudson absolutely performed her job’s core mission of fast, efficient, friendly, accurate service throughout the course of our group’s unusually extended lunch, as is expected.

During one routine serving interaction with our group, Lita happened to overhear Rebecca expressing her frustration, lamenting that there was not some process by which she could become, in her words, an official “Cali girl”. Quick-witted to a degree I envy and thinking quickly on her feet, knowing nothing more than Rebecca’s stated frustration and that myself and two others at the table were native-born Californians as is Lita herself, and knowing that there is no actual official process to become a “Cali girl”, she on-the-fly in the moment invented an entire qualification procedure based upon available resources, namely those of us present who happened to be native-born Californians. The procedure amounted to a 4 question Q and A, with each of us natives asking nominee Rebecca a question “that only a true Cali girl would know”. She cleverly worded everything to make it seem official, and as though it was some sort of actual system extant outside her creative mind. She set up the quiz in a way which allowed her to continue about her business serving other customers, checking back with us as per her standard table rounds, got us going, and was on her way doing her job.

Back in time as part of the next loop of her standard rounds, she asked the final question which would in the context of this made-up process determine whether Rebecca qualified or not as a Cali girl. Feeling all the tension of a game show contestant about to make a high-stakes choice (I verified with her after the fact), Rebecca answered correctly. Madam and sir, I have no words suitable to express the deep, heartfelt joy and pride and relief and acceptance this passenger Rebecca felt upon earning this accolade she felt she needed, created on-the-fly by our ship’s creative and quick-witted F&B employee Lita Hudson. So thoughtful was Lita, she managed to obtain a bright orange California poppy, presenting it to Rebecca as a visible physical manifestation of her success at qualifying as a true Cali girl.

No lives were saved, as our heroic medical staff had to do on a daily basis with no outside support when we were at sea, under extremely trying circumstances. No emergency repairs were made to keep us going, as our Engine department had to do to keep the power on and get us here to port, and they and our other engineering and technical departments do routinely, for all our survival and, normally, optimal pleasure. One life of one passenger was changed forever, in the best possible way, with no deleterious impact whatsoever on barmaid Lita Hudson’s assigned duties.

It is not for us to know or judge why this Cali girl concept means so much to our passenger Rebecca. As a new friend of hers and witness to the entire proceedings before, during, and after as well as one of the question-askers, I can tell you first hand that this matters to her so much that she now prefers her friends refer to her as Cali, and that she wears that orange poppy Lita gave her in her hair everywhere she goes in public around our ship. If you see a super-extremely busty very, very fat woman with an adorably sweet face with a big yet cute nose and an orange poppy in her blonde hair, that’s Cali. Please consider saying hello to her if you cross paths; she’s the sweetest real California girl with a heavy Brooklyn accent that you’ll ever likely meet.

For her rapier wit, exceptional cleverness, and ability to bring profound joy to a passenger who’s recently suffered heavy personal losses, all while doing her assigned job without missing a beat, I humbly nominate F&B department Sip And A Wink Pub barmaid Lita Hudson as our March 2020 Difference-Maker.

Respectfully,

Jayne Plain

contractor, Gold ’N’ Gems, DJ Swash Buckle (Club Troposphere)

Inactive Captain Cranch gazed blankly out the window lost in deep thought, not truly focusing on the last of cloudy daylight departing, dropping Coos Bay into the new night’s chilly darkness.

[Sonic Purity]

Ship Of Friends

[Author’s note: Curvage has the best story presentation system of any of the sites where i’m posting this story, apart from my own purpose-made website jigglejunkie.com. Nevertheless, even here the loss of essential formatting greatly dulls the emotional impact. Tools for font size control, text centering, and so forth are lacking. For the full emotional impact, please consider reading this chapter at the source. Direct link to this chapter on jigglejunkie.com. Thanks for reading!]

 

Another extended night of healing sleep did Jayne Plain well: she was healing, her body catching up on all the recovery and repair work human bodies do during overnight sleep. Critical to this for her was being cuddled into Clark Barr. bare as they were was preferable to them both, though for Jayne with nightclothes on would have been adequate, as long as the physical contact was there.

The morning’s darkness and light rain joined with the warm cuddles and ongoing need to catch up on lost sleep to keep Jayne in bed and asleep longer, into the mid-morning hours. Hunger for breakfast (which in her mind defied reason, given the huge lunch she’d eaten yesterday) and especially the scent and sounds of fresh-brewed coffee brewed to perfection by her (limited?) lover Leigh opposed the sleep-encouraging forces, urging her to wake up and start her day.

She compromised: gradually waking up in the arms of her sexy lover man, feeling so much of him and him feeling so much of her lying facing each other. The slow, tender lip kisses and very gentle slow caresses she received and soon also gave ensured that there was no other place in the universe she’d rather be at this moment, and that her full experiential focus remained in this moment, being present in it.

 

Leigh came over and joined in, getting the bed moving as her becoming-formidable hip, thigh, and butt fat and the rest of her sloshed up atop it.

“Someone just chonked up the bed” Clark teased.

“You bet I did!” she smiled, caressing and kissing him on the cheek and lips and wherever else she could easily reach.

Jayne lifted up her ceiling-nearest left breast, holding it out towards Leigh, drawing her mouth action off Clark onto this part of her.

Doing better coming to terms with her boob fanaticism, in her mind Leigh was more accepting of having a girlfriend lover, in the limited sexual ways with which they were both comfortable. Wanting ongoing easy access to Jayne along these lines and truly quite liking her as an ever-closer friend, she found herself more accepting of Jayne living with them and sharing her cruise husband Clark with her in every way it was possible to share him.

 

The coffeemaker made its usual end-of-brew-cycle blop blop pop blop pop pop sounds.

 

“Hey, didja hear that President Trump admitted he made a mistake and apologized?”

“No” replied Clark.

Jayne was far more surprised. “Really?”

“Of course not! April Fools!”

Those who’d been fooled tickled prankster Leigh with reckless abandon until she was laughing near-uncontrollably. Clark wriggled around until he could get his mouth on some of the thickest expanse of her hip fat, giving her a loudly-flupping ticklish mega-blowfish:

FlupFlupFlupFlupFlupFlupFlup

Jayne liked the idea so much, she too scrambled around to get her mouth on Leigh’s other hip.

“OK OK OK!” Leigh pleaded between laughs. “I gotta go wee, then CDC wash up and serve us coffee.”

“We could get up and get it” noted Clark.

“You could get up, but why would you do that when Squish is here bare in bed with you with her beautiful bedroom eyes, and me with my bedroom eyes will be back soon with our coffee so we can all sit and cuddle snugly sitting up in bed together and try not to get into any coffee and cats moments.”

“How could we get into that when there aren’t any cats here?”

“Are you quite sure about that?” she teased, moving his nearest hand down onto her vulva, with still-waking-up Jayne happily and slightly belatedly mirroring her. “Gotta go, kids” she said as she eased herself back off the bed. “Back soon.”

 

“What would you like to do today?” Clark asked his newest lover.

 

She said nothing. All he could see was a glittery gleam in her eyes, and her far-away, contemplative look.

 

---

“Hey Arto!” Fourth Engineer Billy Bilge called out over the distance towards his boss the Chief Engineer, the two of them at work down in the Engine Room.

“What?”

“I’ve sworn off swearing!”

“Really?!”

“FUCK no! Daaah haah haah! April Fools!” He was already inserting a dollar bill into the Swear Jar as he spoke, well knowing the price of that particular epithet in isolation, yelled at this volume.

 

---

Sapphire Prince Hotel Director Mary Biltmore looked worried as she approached her Reception desk workers Jini and Emmy, each of them wearing masks and keeping their social distance during their in-progress shift change. “There’s something fishy going on with your quarterly bonuses.”

“What do you mean?” asked Emmy, sounding as worried as her boss.

“Word from the Purser’s office is that a new employee named Orca Cetacea reporpoised the money towards a startup opening a comedy club for dolphins, starting with a series of open mic nights. But I’m thinking it might just be bilge out of someone’s blowhole. April Fools!”

 

She handed them each a pretty, colorful sealed envelope, from her gloved hands.

Opening them up, each receptionist found a bonus half again as large as usual.

 

“Thank you both for your exemplary work during this tough time—no foolin’. Wish I could hug each of you as usual. Maybe next month, or whenever things get back to normal.”

 

---

April Fools jokes similar to the above ran rampant all over the Sapphire Prince, in general serving as a distraction from the existential angst of life put on hold and ravaged by COVID-19. So many people were joking around it was challenging to know what was real without verification.

Some jokes appeared online, including internally on the ship’s announcements and messaging arrangements. A few appeared, disappeared, and sometimes reappeared, in the same or differing forms or contexts.

Generally unnoticed as anything unique amongst this milieu, one particular notice kept showing up, more and more often as the day progressed, especially from early afternoon onward. Setting it apart was that it existed both electronically and physically, the latter as terse stickers or small handbills posted or left about various areas of nearly every public (non-stateroom) deck open to the Recovered class of passengers.

Many of the terse ones were of the form:

Arrrrr!: COVID-19 Survivors’ Pirate Dance!

Club Troposphere 1 April 6:30 PM orrrr thereabouts

No Foolin’!

or:

COVID-19 Survivors’ Pirate Dance

Club Troposphere 1 April abouts 6:30 evenin’ tiiiime

Come as ye arrrrrrr

Some of the longer forms of electronic and paper messages took a different tack:

Packed on pounds during the cruise? Come dance a few off or else show them off at the inclusive, fat-positive, people-positive COVID-19 Survivors’ Pirate Dance! 1 April circa 6:30 PM, Club Troposphere (Sky Deck). Dance this Fool Day and disease away!

Variants of the latter proved especially appealing outside of the Grand Promenade restaurant area, and placed around Jimmy’s Buffet up on the Sky deck, very near Club Troposphere.

There were many, many other forms of this basic information, sometimes fragmentary reminders/teases/hints rather than complete messages as above, hidden and not-so-hidden in various places.

 

---

Up on the Sky deck, access to the Club Troposphere dance floor opened a little after 6 PM. For the time being the deck’s dome cover remained closed, related to the mildly wet, tending-chilly weather throughout most of the day. Various cruisers wandered in, looking around, sometimes chatting with one another, trying to suss out what was going on. For the latter reason some approached the lone visible security guard, armed with an IR thermometer and taking everyone’s temperature before she would interact with them. No one including this guard knew what exactly was happening, including whether the promised dance was real, or a major April Fools prank.

 

More and more people gathered as the advertised time drew near, several of them promising to play music on their devices or Bluetooth speakers they’d brought with them if no other dance materialized. There were enough people on the floor by this point that social distancing to U.S. CDC specification wasn’t happening, nor were most people wearing masks.

The guard busily rushed around taking people’s temperatures, so far with everyone passing as non-feverish. She used a wide tip orange felt pen to draw a long diagonal line on each person’s left forearm for those with no active disease symptoms who had either had and recovered from the disease (per always-colorful personal reports) or who’d tested positive for antibodies and negative for active disease. For those with long sleeves covering their forearm, she instead marked the back of their left hand with her bright orange “OK to be here” mark.

Those watching her work or directly interacting with her could see that she’d been eating well: fat to begin with, she was beyond muffin-topping out over her belted dark navy blue duck cloth pants, all the way to the stage of belly fold-over. Too tight up above and all the way down to her mid-thighs, she had no choice, owning no larger clothes. By no means was everyone so far on the dance floor fat, though a majority visibly were. She felt better seeing so many of them, and they assuredly felt better seeing her on the same ship in the same boat.

 

---

The crowd kept growing, in number and noise. Social distancing was out the window: the powers that be and those in attendance would have to hope that surviving COVID-19 would give them immunity sufficient to survive any live disease exposure at this event.

Right about 6:28, Clark and Leigh met up with Per and Cali (doing her best to leave behind her given name Rebecca) at the entrance to the club, with Beryl soon waddling over after having scarfed down some nummy goodness at very nearby Jimmy’s Buffet. Something all 3 women had in common with each other and many other people present was that they barely fit into their clothes. While not exactly a brand-new development for any of them, the last 2 days of big meals eating together as Team Succulence absolutely exacerbated the situation, visibly to others and visibly and tactilely to those so affected.

Leigh’s hips, belly, and buns all working together stretched her below-knee stretchy black skirt to its limit, figuratively laughed at by her top, which was under no duress and continued to fit her well up above as it had for years.

Beryl consciously made a tradeoff for style over comfort, stuffing herself into a 12X brightly colored party dress instead of several ultra-stretchy “fat girl” pants and tops options she had: loaded with comfort, lacking in style and meant for kicking back at home in private. The dress was tight enough that she was somewhat limited in her breathing, hiding this fact from others so she could make the visual style splash she wanted to make.

Cali felt restriction around her middle from her burgeoning and recently much fatter belly conspiring with her fat hips and buns to stretch her swirly-patterned tea length skirt and the bottom of her top to near their limits. Near the top of her top at breast level her top was stretched to its limit, limiting her full breathing more than the tightness below, which also contributed to this end. She was so happy being Cali with her orange California poppy in her hair and truly looking stunning that she didn’t care about the restrictions. She cared even less that strangers were gaping at her giant boobs, so much of their top halves and cleavage on display of necessity rather than design or intent. She was Cali now and her Wood was right there with her, as were Neener and Chonky nearby. This was a good time and place to enjoy all her body had to offer, and visually share with those interested and keeping their hands and the rest of their bodies well off her.

 

6:30 close to the dot Club Troposphere suddenly lit up with its usual lighting, with some background-level mood-setting music starting at the same time. These synchronized events launched a loud cheer and some applause from the audience.

Few if any other than those of Team Succulence recognized DJ Alien Groove without his alien head, especially as he was dressed in nothing-special street clothes and down there on the dance floor with them rather than up on the stage anywhere near the DJ position. Especially agile Team Succulence members Clark and Per joined him.

“I’m going to do no more than 15 seconds of pink noise out of all the mains” Brent explained to them, “which is going to piss people off, even at this background level. I want both of you near the center of the floor, one of you facing the stage and the other perpendicular to it. Signal me like this” he demonstrated with his hands “to indicate balance.”

“What if the front mains are off but the rears are about right?”

“Unlikely, but if that happens, signal the same way then motion forward. Once we do the mains, I’ll give them at least 15 seconds more of music, then we’ll do the same thing with the fills. Those will be softer, and that’s OK—we’re all about balance. Got it?”

They did, and were on their way into position, as was he jumping up on stage as stealthily and invisibly as he could.

 

The system was already well-balanced, barely needing even minor tweaks. Having been disused for so many days, no one involved with this event wanted to take chances.

More people were pleased than annoyed, to Brent’s surprise: all the noise suggested to them that the dance would be real, not a prank, and that it was likely forthcoming any moment.

 

Cali was in such a good mood she even posed for photographs, including a couple with especially humble and polite gentlemen who asked to be in the half-selfie picture. She agreed to all these requests, as long as they gave her a copy of each picture and labeled their pictures with her name Cali, wherever those pictures might go.

Beryl insinuated herself into this process, towards the goal of ascertaining which of these individuals (all but one appearing to be men) were woman-attracted FAs versus solely boob fanatics.

 

Around the time Leigh was starting to feel sullen regarding all the attention Cali was getting (and Beryl was a little bit getting), a cute younger man with dark hair nervously and with a bit of a stutter asked her, “Ec-excuse me, ma’am. C- could I please take a picture of you? And– and then if you’d be so kind, maybe one with you, next to you?”

She couldn’t help noticing that his very nice short sleeve collared button-down off-white shirt was loaded with pears in the fabric pattern: green, gold, yellow, a few rust brown. It was a very pretty pattern: nice without being garish. “You like pears, I take it?”

He nodded vigorously.

“What about prominently pear-shaped fat women?”

He gasped as he again nodded, blushing bright red.

Tickled to have the attention, she gave him a series of photo ops: a standard smiling front view, same thing with her hands disappearing into her soft hip fat, a full-circle turn which she let him do as a video (to his great excitement), then finally a side-cuddle half-selfie, as Cali had been offering, with him being allowed to push far enough into her side to displace her hip fat forward and aft, to be able to get his arm around her.

“Thank you so much! What’s your name, please?”

“Leigh. L-E-I-G-H.”

“Thank you so much, Leigh! You’re beautiful!”

Clark decided to ease into her side, with a smile and his arm around her, because he was in the mood more than making any kind of statement, though it did serve that purpose too.

“You two have a great night! This is going to be a great dance—I feel it!”

 

Beryl sidled on up to Leigh, “What’s his name?”

“Didn’t get it.”

 

Shaking her head, Beryl waddled off the young man’s direction to go ask. Even though she wasn’t a pear, it didn’t take much flirting on her part to get Sonny—the name he gave her—to decide that she was worth a front view and cuddly half-selfie picture set.

Right about 6:38, a (pre-recorded) pirate’s voice loudly burst out of the speakers saying:

Arrrr! Time to shove off and set sail!

at the same time the stage lights came on brightly. Up onto the stage bounced DJ Swash Buckle, (mostly) in her full pirate’s uniform, her long again-raven-black with one prominent white “skunk” stripe wavy curly hair flowing and flouncing within the back side confines of her hair clip with each bouncy step. The second she was in front of the DJ position the drum beats of her first song started up and kicked things off. Only then did she blow kisses, smile, and wave at the crowd, before looking back down to start setting up the rest of her set.

Many who remembered her from earlier on the cruise were outright shocked seeing how fat she’d become. Her boobs had always been big, but now they were so huge that there was absolutely no way any of her blouse’s buttons from one button position below her nipples could be buttoned up. She had a lot up there to show off, and was so doing, with every slight motion she made presenting plentiful eye-catching sexy sloshy wobble. Nor were the bottom two buttons of her blouse buttoned, having to make room for the big fat belly she did not have at anywhere near this scale several weeks back. Her black leather pants weren’t entirely fastened together and her big buckle belt was past its range. Indeed it wasn’t possible to see all of her big buckle, given that there was not enough room in her pants for all that her belly had become, requiring that it flow out and fold well over the buckle, its soft fat (being partially regain fat) wobbling and sloshing with dynamics nearly equal to her breasts. Her hips and butt didn’t fully have room, conspiring with her fatter thighs to force her to wear her pants slightly lower than usual, adding that much more to the side and back muffin top effect and front fat fold-over.

Shocking as this was, it made a lot of people out on the dance floor who’d fattened to levels they themselves found shocking or outrageous feel better about themselves, and life in general. She was obviously all good with it, so too could they be.

 

Leigh felt proud as she let her body get into the groove, seeing how great Jayne’s dye job looked. It was Jayne’s first, with Leigh doing most of the work. It matched her remaining natural color well, getting her hair back to the familiar look dancing cruisers would remember from her most recent prior performance. She’d been shaving off her facial hair and, like her top-of-head hair, it had been going white anyway, thus they penciled in her pencil mustache. Keeping her settled and letting go of her self-doubts had been more difficult than helping with the hair dye, along with their now-big bodies navigating Jayne’s small staff member cabin space where they chose to do the work.

 

Cali was already more into the rhythm of the current track than Leigh, in part from feeling like a new person with her new name and identity, more readily able to let go of parts of her past that weighed her down. Her prodigious fat barely weighed her down, given her strong musculature.

Her sewing/seamstress skills had been essential to modifying Jayne’s blouse and pants so they’d hold up and hold her. Nearly-invisible (especially over any distance) elastic banded extension buttons (quite like automotive seat belt extenders) on some of the upper button positions managed to keep enough of the top of her top together to keep her from entirely being in effect a topless porn star. The belt and pants each had similarly clever structural extensions to keep them together and looking as close to the way they were supposed to look as possible given her significant fattening from all those days of eating nearly continually in lieu of sleeping, beyond the last couple of days with Team Succulence. She too helped Jayne quash self-doubts about returning to the stage as Swash Buckle for this special and likely unique dance party event.

 

Beryl felt proud to see so many people in attendance. While technically as a tech writer Leigh might have been more qualified to lead the promotional advertising arm of Team Succulence’s impromptu event project, Jayne needed her in other ways, and Beryl did have some long-ago brief, minor promotional and advertising experience, along with printing and distribution experience from her high school’s and college’s student newspapers. She led the team of herself, Clark, and Per creating and creatively distributing the electronic, paper, and occasionally pen-marked graffiti materials, with some help from Jayne in terms of getting things into the ship’s internal event listing system.

Much as she liked moving her big body to the medium-slow beat amenable to her body’s dynamics, her focus continued to be scoping out so-far-unidentified women-attracted male FAs. In her mind the lockdown- and social distancing-enforced shortage had gone on too long, and ought not to be allowed to continue!

 

No matter what anyone thought of what her figure was doing, DJ Swash Buckle was at the top of her game in terms of bringing everyone together to dance and gradually building up the energy, with her rare if not unique mix of danceable music from across the now-many decades of recorded music history.

Going back several years, Club Troposphere had been equipped with several very large screens up on the stage. Usable for various purposes if used at all, performing as Swash Buckle she often had the cover or label art or a picture of the musicians on one higher-resolution more graphics-amenable screen (along the lines of Apple’s iTunes or Music app’s cover art display), or if her file was a music video file, she’d run the video on that screen. Another screen she used for lyrics, or typing out free-form text on the fly, taking the place of typical DJ talking: communicating information in real time without her or anyone’s voice having to wreck the tunes via turning on a mic—a chat box equivalent of the usual DJ talking patter, in effect.

 

At an appropriate point not that far into the set, what sounded like the start of the next song was the first musical moment of a tribute video to Peetie which she’d made, mostly on her own with Brent having helped a little bit, especially when she was falling apart emotionally at points. The moving piece presented a montage of documentary-style pans across still images of Peetie with segments of some of Peetie’s favorite songs in the background, along with brief video clips of Peetie playing around at home (mostly her on-ship cabin, though also some taken at her land home), drumming and singing and otherwise making music, and in action on her shoulder at Swash Buckle performances such as this one. It ended with a great shot of him on her shoulder in her pirate’s outfit at a performance, this image slowly zooming to full screen, with text appearing at the top:

Peetie parrot

Turquoise-fronted amazon

2007- March 2020

Complications of COVID-19

with a minute of silence as this image remained.

Technically that wasn’t actually the end of the video. The real end which followed was a brief clip of Peetie using his right foot to spin the rotary encoding “turntable” wheel of Swash Buckle’s DJ system, digitally scratching and squawking “Dance errr walk the plank!”, from which Swash Buckle popped directly into the start of her next happy dance track, making it sound like Peetie did it.

 

---

The mood kept building, those on the dance floor generally coming together in an ever-greater unified whole. Word had been spreading that the pirate dance ads were legit, and that those in the Recovered class who had any interest and were able to do so should get themselves up to Club Troposphere, hence there had been some later arrivals. Many of these individuals, couples, etc. had fattened significantly, and were embarrassed about being seen in public barely fitting into their clothes. Only after having other friends already on the dance floor sending them photos did they realize that they’d be in great company and fit right in by not at all fitting into what they were wearing. The dance floor was now pretty packed—waybeyond what any social distancing would abide, for those uninfected and hoping to stay that way.

Now, a few minutes after 7 PM, there was enough body heat and a long enough dearth of precipitation that they opened the dome to let the sky with what NOAA calls “broken” cloud cover (more clouds than scattered, fewer than total solid overcast) come in.

 

The electric guitar plunks over on the left channel of a song from 3 to 4 decades back (depending how one’s counting decades) followed by the medium slow groove of accompanying piano work over on the right channel and drums in the middle some on the dance floor immediately recognized as a 1986 hit song. To others it sounded vaguely familiar, and still others hadn’t heard it before. It was easy enough for anyone to dance to, and with nearly everyone already doing so and with this song properly beat-matched to the previous one, it was straightforward and easy for everyone to keep going.

The lyrics/text message screen lit up with the latter as the 15 seconds of instrumental intro played on:

This is a very special and in allegorical ways apropos song for what our world and we here on the Sapphire Prince are going through. A favorite of mine in high school, Peetie used to sing the first 2 lines of the chorus with me. Please dance along, for me and the memory of Peetie. By all means sing along too as I’ll be doing, should you feel so moved.

Ship Of Fools by World Party on YouTube (the regular song, not the special Swash Buckle mix described here)

 

None of the screens were showing lyrics, given that they were easy to hear for this particular song. They started almost immediately after most people finished reading what Swash Buckle had typed.

🎼 We’re setting sail
to the place on the map
from which no one has ever returrrrned 🎼

As the song intro kept going Swash Buckle typed:

COVID-19 confined us far too long, ruined our voyage, and has taken far too many lives of far too many in our world, with no near-term end in sight. Taking their breath via an ever-more-** tightness, lungs drowning in retained fluids.

Many of us are too confined by our clothing, currently ** back our ability to move and breathe fully. No more! We must Free Ourselves!

🎼 It’s the place where they keep
all the darkness you need 🎼–

No one can stop us! Free yourselves!

–🎼 You sail away
from the light of the world
on this trip bayyy-bay 🎼–

DJ Swash Buckle herself led the way. She unfastened the hair clip which had been restraining her long locks, flinging her head around like the rocker chick she appeared to be, her tresses cascading down to their full-length unencumbered freedom.

–🎼 You will pay tomor-row 🎼–

Many in the crowd watched the raven-haired DJ with their own raven-focused eyes as she undid Cali’s button extension work as well as the remaining stock buttons on her white pirate’s blouse and unfastened Cali’s on-loan 40L bra to the beat, letting her big girls tumble to freedom.

–🎼 You’re gonna pay tomor-row-ho (yeah) 🎼–

Feeling bolder than she had in a long time, Cali was amongst the first to let hers out, for all on the dance floor to see.

Beryl looked on and smiled, as she continued to dance and free hers. {Good job, Cali: ya beat me!}

–🎼 You will pay tomorrow 🎼–

Let it ALL out!

Swash Buckle undid Cali’s impressive and essential belt extension work to free her now-big fat belly from her struggling black leather pirate pants, saucily swaying as she cradled and squeezed her belly to the beat, more spiritual-rhythmically than sexually.

–🎼 whoa ho whoa ho whoa hoa hoooah 🎼–

A smiling, urbane gentleman from New Zealand—proud to be a Fat Man—was one of the first to follow Swash Buckle’s lead, pulling out and freeing his very big ball belly as he danced with his new-on-the-cruise friends from L.A. (ironically from Big Bear, which he was), S.F., and Singapore at the same time as Karl Wallinger as World Party sang:

🎼 Save me
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools
Woo hoo hooo
Noo, no no
Woo hoo hooooo! 🎼

All over Club Troposphere a slew of additional suddenly-freed bellies and more tumbled out in the open to freedom.

🎼 Ohh
Save me
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools 🎼

Ship of fools FRIENDS!

🎼 Noo, no
I want to run and hide

Right now 🎼

 

Leigh led the way amongst those constrained at a lower level: pulling her skirt and undies down and off to free herself as she danced! With one smooth, sweeping deep-bend dance move, she swooped her clothes off the floor, brashly hurling them as far as she could towards the nearest wallflower edge of the club.

Others similarly situated who’d been frustrated as she’d been quickly followed suit.

 

🎼 Avarice and greed
are gonna drive you over the endless sea

They will leave you drifting in the shallows
Drowning in the oceans of historyyyy 🎼

 

A mid-height tawny blonde woman who’d gone from mildly thicc to low-end BBW fat during the in-cabin quarantine stopped dancing, feeling a sudden tightness. She and her newly-met dance partner, a legendary denizen of the online fatosphere across its many sites and services, hailing from Laval QC (who also ceased dancing) looked on in shared amazement as her breasts and belly slightly yet rapidly and visibly expanded in a matter of a minute or so, before their very eyes.

“What’s happening to me?!” she cried out.

He sidled up to her, putting his arm around her and confidently stating, “You will likely be OK—very likely.”

“But what is it?!”

“I don’t know, but I’ve seen it before.” Looking her directly in the eyes with an intense gaze she found simultaneously frightening and comforting he added, “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.”

 

She had to fully unbutton her top and her pants, to let all this sudden new fat find freedom.

 

🎼 Using all the good people
for your galley and slaves
as your little boat struggles
through the warning waves
But you don’t
paayyyy 🎼–

A tall busty 1.8m tall woman wearing a black satin pencil skirt she was somewhat fattening out of slapped away the grabby hand of a 158cm short pale faced scary green eyed thin lipped light brown chin-length haired masculine woman in her mid 50s who’d been feeling her up.

–🎼 You will pay tomor-row 🎼–

The couple Leigh and Clark had met on the elevator on Monday freed their bellies.

–🎼 You’re gonna pay tomor-row-ho (yeah) 🎼–

Sip And A Wink Pub barmaid Lita caught Cali’s eye, smiling and waving over the distance showing off her small surprisingly jiggly rounded belly paunch none of them knew she had, thanks to having rolled up her t-shirt into a form of crop top.

–🎼 You gonna pay tomorrow 🎼–

The security guard who’d been taking temperatures tossed off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and unbuttoned her shirt and unfastened her pants, freeing herself!

–🎼 whoa ho whoa ho whoa hoa hoooah 🎼–

More members of the audience joined in, singing and yelling to the song

–🎼 Save meheee
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools
Woo hoo hooo
Noo, no no no
Woo hoo hooooo! 🎼

No one could hear Swash Buckle’s gasp, freezing as she saw Brent’s all-too-familiar maniacal gaze as he suddenly leapt up onto the stage and lunged towards a big safety-shield-protected toggle switch near the bottom of the equipment rack: the power switch for the 5 KW amplifiers and associated circuitry for skyward-aiming Sky Speakers, intended for noisy parties well out at sea.

Suddenly the music was a whole lot louder, mostly though not entirely aimed skyward.

🎼 Ohh
Save me
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools
Woo hoo hooo
Noo, no no no
Woo hoo hooooo! 🎼

BAM!: Swash Buckle seamlessly looped back to the first chorus so perfectly, nearly everyone thought she had a special extended recording of the song. Brent and she shared a look of deep admiration and respect that few other than talented DJs-also-intimates know.

Letting loose all sorts of pent-up emotions, more and more on the dance floor joined in the singing, others who had been singing now singing louder.

🎼 Save me
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools
Woo hoo hooo
Noo, no no
Woo hoo hooooo! 🎼

People in homes and businesses around Coos Bay nearer the dock opened doors or windows, some of them going outside to better hear what all this sudden, unexpected music wafting their way was about.

 

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Down in the Engine Room, as is often the case when large audio power amplification draws current, the loud music up on the Sky deck made the electrical gear in the room sing.

Curious, engineer on watch Billy Bilge turned on security audio on that deck, immediately recognizing the song. “Oh Fuck yes!” he said aloud to himself, patching the Club Troposphere direct board signal through to all public spaces on the ship at normal background music volume level.

 

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BAM!: she did another seamless hard cut back to where the song had been going, putting an animated rolling COVID-19 spike ball up on the graphic screen, rolling atop a U.S. west coast map, following the line on the map representing the Sapphire Prince’s original cruise route.

Thrown off, most people stopped singing to watch and listen.

Screen capture still image from this video:

Map courtesy Free Vector Maps.com
SARS-CoV-2 spike ball image by Alissa Eckert, MS,
Dan Higgins, MAMS courtesy CDC

🎼 Where’s it comin’ from?
Woo hoo hooo
Oh where’s it going to?
Woo hoo hooooo!
It’s just a
It’s just a ship of fool woahwahwahwah–

Amazing the audience even further (and making Brent extremely jealous), Swash Buckle used her gravity-sagging right breast in place of her hand to work the pseudo turntable digital rotary encoder scratch wheel Peetie had been manipulating at the very end of his tribute video. The software was currently set to a blending mode rather than a scratch sound mode, merging the current part of the song with just prior to the first chorus to create:

–wahwahwahwahhhwhoa hoa hoooah 🎼

The audience was back and singing along loudly

🎼 Save me
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools
Woo hoo hooo
Noo, no
Woo hoo hooooo! 🎼

As a brief crack of sunset sunlight momentarily split the clouds and shone sun onto Club Troposphere and Brent (in one of Swash Buckle’s spare pirate hats) cranked up the Sky Speakers, more and more windows and doors flew open around town as the community was bathed in music and light. Townsfolk eagerly/desperately joined the chorus, their voices merging with the sounds from the Sapphire Prince, echoing all across Coos Bay from Marshfield to North Bend, Empire to Eastside

🎼 Ohh
Save me!
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooo!
I don’t want to
Sail
With this
Ship of fo-oools
Woo hoo hooo
Noo, no
Woo hoo hooooo!

Save meheee!
Woo hoo hooo
Save me from tomor-rrow
Woo hoo hooooooooooooooooo! 🎼