It's Just Bloating - XWG, stuffing, sci-fi, romance (Updated 17-07-2022)

[generic725]

Cross-posting from Deviantart. This is my first-ever published weight gain fiction piece. This one was inspired by the wonderful Cross-Crescent's piece on the Pokemon character May. Unfortunately, I cannot find the series on their Deviantart, but e-Hentai has the whole series here. It's Just Bloating is a multi-part erotic XWG, stuffing, and sci-fi story featuring a gluttonous woman, May, and her friends all grappling with the impact of changing bodies. It starts off slowly and builds to what I think are some fairly unique ways of looking at weight gain, its societal impact, and how a changing perception of what fatness is can alter not only one person's view of the world, but have widespread impacts. It primarily features a diverse cast of queer women but will intersect with other identities as well. 

At this point I think I'm about 60% of the way through the story and I'm hoping it will run in the range of 30-40 pages. I'm a notoriously slow writer, but I'm trying a few new things to try to finish this one. Hilariously, this started out as a practice "drabble" to try and force me to at least complete one story (I have about five that are floating in various stage of writing and editing). However, I fell in love with the characters and found a novel way to link together some themes and plot devices that I am interested in, so, I let this one grow into something larger and (I hope) more interesting.

Stay tuned for some more pieces in the near future. I'm going to try and keep tidying things up before I post subsequent chapters, but hopefully I can work through this piece with the added momentum to keep me going.

Appreciate any feedback and insights! 

Prologue -----

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. 

May tilted her can of Coke a little more vertically as her throat opened a little wider to finish off its last dregs. After a little shake to make sure she’d gotten the very last drop out, she plunked it down on the table, satisfied, as she held her now-rumbling tummy for a moment.

“You know you shouldn’t drink that much soda.”

May’s best friend Macey looked on with a disapproving eyebrow as May cradled her round little belly and visibly stifled a belch. Even with this mild act of propriety, Macey could still hear the deep rumble in her friend’s diaphragm as the camouflaged “urrrp” rattled through her ribcage. 

May and Macey had been friends for almost two decades now. High-school study partners turned into college roommates and now two single gals living and working together to manage the excruciatingly high rent in San Francisco.

The pair had always made an interesting sight: May was a towering, pale string-bean of a woman, just brushing against six-feet tall, with an evenly proportioned, sinewy frame. She had modest B-Cup breasts that sat on a flat (though now distended) stomach, widening out into thin but still somehow substantial hips and long legs that then narrowed into delicate ankles. 

Macey on the other hand was a chubby 5’1, with voluptuous breasts that, due to her size, looked impressive in both relative and absolute terms. Underneath her eye-catching bust, however, her body rounded out into fit-to-burst curves; a plump belly that she’d grown in tenth grade and never been able to shake and a behind that swelled out in two extremely well-rounded globes that shimmied and shook noticeably as she moved. And whereas May was tall, pale, with mousy dirty-blond hair, Macey’s mixed Ashkenazi-Puerto Rican roots gave her ruddy brown skin, vibrant freckles, and a curly explosion of thick black hair that only added to an external perception of sensuousness.

But whereas Macey had always struggled with her weight and, a general air of body positivity aside, she managed her food and drink intake carefully. May, long a “skinny fat” girl with no physical fitness to speak of, but a seemingly invincible metabolism, was her general foil in all things food and fitness: her irresponsibly lackadaisical approach to her health and weight never ceased to inflame the skinny-fat dynamic of their friendship.

Decades of little pokes and prods from Macey to be more respectful landed on deaf ears with May. Naivete and obviousness combined to make her a minor but frequent source of frustration to her best friend, especially in moments like this.

May stifled another burp and looked with wide, unassuming eyes at her friend.

“What, why?”

Macey pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Come on, dude, that shit is toxic. I hate policing others’ bodies and eating, but I just think that stuff is so bad for you. Practically anything is better than that stuff.”

She looked at May’s belly again, still rumbling and a little distended 

May smiled and replied: “I know, I know, but it’s just such a release. I take pretty good care of myself overall!”

Her eyes moved over the half-eaten bag of chips on their coffee table, but decided internally that grabbing a few would attract too much unwanted attention in this moment.

Macey rolled her eyes and thought of the number of times she’d seen her friend sneak “just a little snack” over the weekend alone. A muffin after a full English breakfast on Saturday, a venti chocolate frappuccino after their friend Ashley’s lusciously catered wedding shower on Sunday, and now her third can of Coke today alone, and they were still waiting for their takeout to arrive. And then there were her activity levels: the “skinny fat” phrase, while hardly kind, readily applied to her lanky friend. Despite her size, she had a cellulite-ridden, cottage cheese ass and thighs, given her utter lack of muscles and definition and was overall inclined to sit and eat, or play videogames, given the opportunity. 

It was easy enough to justify, as two single thirty-something women in San Francisco their social world was trending inwards, with friends getting married and the dating scene increasingly feeling like some particularly cruel version of the Truman Show. So, they spent a lot more time at home, both for their (thankfully remote) jobs as senior investment analysts at the he California Public Employees Retirement System (colloquially known as “CalPERS”) and the time they spent resting from said jobs.

For Macey, this time at home was mostly welcome. Despite an ability to conjure a vivacious presence at a social interaction when called upon, she was, for all intents and purposes, a quiet, private nerd. Outside of her intellectually stimulating work in investment, where she was proud both to be a woman of colour in the field, and generally good at the ins and outs of impact-oriented venture capital, she liked her life fundamentally simple. Her focuses were primarily books, crafts, and gentle videogames and she was, with only occasional begrudgement, happy to let May occupy some of her space so long as most of their time was of a “parallel play” nature. 

In contrast, May was fundamentally companionable and constantly sought intimate time with her close friends. Bubbly but still quite shy, Macey provided a helpful social anchor, as she had for most of her adult life. While she was undoubtedly attractive to many, she was still the ‘wrong’ type of skinny to have ever been fully taken in as one of the beautiful people that might have set her on an entirely different life path. A warm, happy person by nature, May’s somewhat goofy and naive persona sometimes overshadowed her sharp, mathematical mind. While the basics of diet and exercise continuously eluded her, her “quant” status in the investment world and corresponding ability to chart a dividend curve and crunch the believability and risk profile of a term-sheet were nigh unparalleled in their office at CalPERS. She and Macey regularly traded commendations from the senior leadership for their insight and value to the team. And yet, domain excellence aside, the idea that there would be consequences to her irresponsible lifestyle was utterly inconceivable and unworthy of attention.

Having tried to honour her friend’s warning for too long, the lanky lush finally couldn’t resist and snaked a hand into the chip bag.

At that moment, something broke inside Macey. Decades of trying to steward not only her own weight but obliquely trying to help a friend who, despite all her genetic luck, seemed dead-set on squandering it on a lifestyle that would eventually catch up to her.

The chubby woman’s shoulders sank -- her heavy bust resting more pronouncedly on her belly as her back hunched over -- as she watched her friend’s attention wander back to her snack from the conversation, smiling one last time warmly before totally ignoring the advice given to her.

Fine. If she wants to really let herself go, I’m done trying to baby her.

She pressed the full chip bag to her friend and turned back to her phone.

Before she got fully wrapped back up in the saucey fan fiction she was reading, she heard one final subdued rumble from her friend -- between crunches -- and shook her head.

 

 

[Thicktiger]

More, more, more

please! 
 

excellent start

[generic725]

Please enjoy part two of May and Macey's adventures! If you'd like to comment or otherwise engage on Deviantart, please do so! 

 

--------

 

“Hey Em! Do we have any Tums?”

 

May’s shouts echoed through the house and forced her roommate to pause a particularly productive Animal Crossing session. She had Tom Nook over a barrel, but, with a grunt, decided that she’d walk over and help her roommate.

 

As she walked over to the bathroom, Macey slowly took in the curious pose her roommate had struck amidst the chaos she was creating.

 

May was standing hunched over, rifling through the bathroom cupboards, a menagerie of the girls’ creams, medications, and beauty implements laying across the sink’s small counter. As the lanky near-Amazon turned around to face her friend, it became clear that she had been bent over the sink in such a way as to unintentionally hide her visibly distended stomach. The way she has been standing had positioned it so as to almost entirely fill their small basin sink.

 

Fully extracted from her confining situation, she scratched her bulbous belly and looked at at Macey with hopeful eyes.

 

Macey lost focus as she looked on in disbelief: May had grown. Quite a bit, in fact.

 

Whereas once her friend’s figure had been defined mostly by her height and wide, bony hips, her centre of gravity had shifted somewhat. It was impossible to say why she hadn’t noticed until now, but it was really clear now that May’s once insurmountable metabolism had finally failed her. She was getting chubby.

 

Her belly was strikingly round and tight. She didn’t look like some cheerleader who puffed up; her gravid stomach had more of the look of a beer-loving football dad who had seen one too many Superbowls.

 

It took a few moments for Macey to take all this in, and then extend her gaze to look at the rest of her friend’s body. Beyond her belly, there were far fewer changes. Her hips had a little extra cushion to them, but otherwise May looked more like she’d just won a big eating contest (entirely possible, in fact) than someone who had recently put on weight.

 

May waved her hand exploratorily in front of her friend: “Hey, you okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, sorry, my eyes were just adjusting to the light.”

 

In fairness, their offensively bright LED bathroom lights were a mild irritation, but the transformation of May from a lazy string-bean to an oddly proportioned pseudo-pregnant lady was far more arresting.

 

Returning to reality somewhat, Macey considered If she even had an answer to the question -- looking off thoughtfully to imply that she was considering the request when in reality trying desperately not to stare.

 

“Are you sure we're out? I bought some last time I went to the drug store last week."

 

May leaned against the doorway, as if standing this long was already tiring her.

 

“Yeah, I used the last of them after the Chinese we had on Tuesday.

 

Macey recalled back to that episode with some consternation:

 

That day had seemed to go on forever, May embroiled in a disagreement about the scope of research she was about to conduct on technology companies and Macey fighting HR to ensure that work from home rules were respected and not seen as a drain on company productivity. Sitting in the living room, their two small desks on either side of the couch, they both slammed their laptops closed at almost exactly the same time and looked at one another with tired eyes.

 

As the stress slowly escaped from the room like air from a cheap bike tire, a smile crossed May’s face:

 

“Let’s get some Chinese food -- I think we both need to unwind.”

 

Too tired to put up a fuss that they’d already ordered out all weekend, and Friday through Tuesday the week before, she simply let it slide. She remembered looking down at her own belly in concern, thankful, especially aftering seeing May’s full growth, that it had not borne the brunt of those calories the way she had.

 

May, as she often did, had taken charge of the ordering. She listed dishes and numbers to "confirm" the order with her friend so quickly it was almost as if she spoke Mandarin herself.

 

She called up Mama Ji’s, a local favourite for many in the Bay Aarea, and proceeded to laugh with the host, whom she knew by name, about gossip and dating stories while intermittently added details of the order. The conversation was so rapid and erratic that the smaller, considerably less hungry of the two parties was not in a position to protest that she would not be able to eat a third, let alone half, of the food just ordered.

 

A deep rumble of hunger emanented from the larger of the two women, now groaning as she stood from her desk,. She stretched and pushed out her belly enough to bump her laptop.

 

Macey chided herself in the present for not recognising just how large May had gotten earlier.

 

May then tromped somewhat ponderously towards the fridge. In almost an instant, she had a creamsicle halfway down her throat while she stuffed another one under her arm.

 

She fell back into the couch with another groan, their cute-but-not-invincible neo-modernist piece groaning lightly from the sudden influx of weight. The tension that had clouded her moments ago dissipated entirely as the brunette happily sucked away the last remanents of her first popsicle before it had even had a chance to meaningfully defrost. The second victim was consideraby gooier, having been caught in the pressure-cooker of her armpit for more than a minute, but this only allowed May to suck it back more fluidly, a python-like detachment to the shape and consistency enabling her to do so with little thought.

 

She closed her eyes for a moment and Macey could tell that she was immensely pleased with herself.

 

Trying to distract herself from yet another display of unbridled gluttony from her roommate, Macey walked over and began to boot up the Nintendo Switch the girls shared. The playful sounds calmed her as she settled herself into her own butt groove on the couch. She grabbed her weebish Card Captor Sakura-decorated controller, and then passed the more muted blue and red one to her friend.

 

The girls played some Animal Crossing together somewhat passively, adjusting little details inside the homes they’d built for their animal friends, and trying small and creative ways to annoy or otherwise defy Tom Nook. It was an absorbing, low-stakes way of playing together that involved little thinking or communication, exactly the kind of thing that suited Macey, and just enough socialization for May.

 

It surprised them both when, a few minutes later, May’s phone bleeted out that their food had arrived.

 

Though it took her another grunt, she got up rather spryly and ran to the door.

 

She returned with three hefty white, bio-plastic bags, each filled right to the tie at the top.

 

With a bizarre mixture of self-awareness and naivete, May quickly offered a defense that they would both “eat what they could” of this veritable feast and save the rest for later. Macey sincerely doubted much would be left after her human-vacuum of a friend was finished.

 

And indeed, the second the bags were unpacked and a minor buffet was laid out across their living room table, a now-familiar process began of May’s unrestrained gluttony being set free.

 

May, ever the maximalist, had ordered from almost every category on Mama Ji’s menu: she had a range of items from the deep fried menu, including fried ** stickers, crispy springrolls, and a series of meat-alternative balls. She had a few steamed Shanghai vegetarian buns, as well as two containers of chive “pancakes,” and, finally, as a true entre, a chicken wonton soup for her, and vegetarian chow mein for Macey.

 

Not even bothering with individual plates, May wielded her chopsticks like a sniper rifle and took rapid fire shots into each container, bringing buns, rolls, and clumps of rice and veggies to her mouth in quick succession. Her character languished on the screen, staring blankly at the ocean, as its master chomped and swallowed loudly, occasionally stifling a burp and frequently swigging from her cartoonishly sweet boba.

 

Though she’d been around it for years, Macey was still blown away by the sheer speed and intensity of May’s appetite. She could devour anything in sight with barely a thought, and, after grabbing her own modest plate, she watched their table slowly empty like a stop motion video -- each time she looked back another container was empty.

 

Eyes now starting to glaze somewhat, probably only fifteen or twenty minutes after starting, the bloated brunette had propped a final container of spring rolls on her stomach and was using the final few pancakes to wrap around them and in order to finish them more efficiently.

 

Having slowed down somewhat now and returned to a more recongisably human form, May began to casually chat again to her roommate, licking her fingers between bites in order to better make contact with her phone, while noting details from her perusal of Reddit and Instagram. Investment details of interest, a little celebrity gossip, nothing that seemed to indicate she had just devoured a meal fit for a family of three.

 

Absent-mindedly, her fingers hit the bottom of the container and May looked down with disappointment to see the last food vessel now empty. Twisting her lips to one side in gentle indignation, she bent over with some difficulty and put the container on the table. A veritable graveyard of a feast stood in front of her, but she remained completely unphased.

 

Macey finished her meal a few minutes later, having only eaten part of her her chow mein and a single xao lin bun. As she did, May hoisted herself up and began to collect the containers and bring them to the recycling. From the kitchen she called out that she was going to lay down for a little bit, and, quickly as she’d destroyed this meal, she was gone.

 

Lost in her reverie of just how much her friend could eat, Macey was only snapped back to the here and now of their bathroom upon realizing that May was pointing to two empty bottles on the counter.

 

“Wait, where did that one come from? I thought you were talking about the ones in the kitchen.”

 

“Oh, no, those are gone, too.”

 

The culprit for the disappearing antacids was clear. May’s stomach grumbled audibly as she scratched it again, oblivious as always to how a greasy feast one night and a day-long grazing spree the next could possibly upset her stomach.

 

“Well, I don’t have any more now. I can pick some more up next time,” Macey tried to offer helpfully.

 

“Yeah, that’d be great. My stomach’s been a bit upset lately. Maybe it’s stress from work or something”

 

While indeed work at the pension had indeed increased in intensity lately, May’s strange combination of naivete and being a financial savant always hung in tension. Gluttony above all else was the driver of much of her world these days, ignorant as she was, or wanted to be, of that fact.

 

Her gut once again rumbled disapprovingly.

 

Having fully given up on helping her friend’s diet and wellness, Macey could only smile.

 

“I’m sure it’s just bloating.”

 

The only affirmation she got was a nod and a muffled rumble that sounded suspiciously like a belch.

[generic725]

On 6/8/2022 at 4:48 AM, Thicktiger said:

More, more, more

please! 
 

excellent start

Thanks so much! Hope you enjoy the next installment.

[generic725]

Another chapter, this one a little longer, with May and Macey's adventures continuing. I'm at about Part 6 of 11 right now, with each chapter getting a bit longer, so, these may end up being a little out-of-balance in terms of length, but hopefully that only builds the intruige. I've also published an unfinshed story on my Deviantart about a woman who gets a tattoo with possibly magical (and fattening) powers.

Looking forward to comments and ideas on this and other work. Thanks! 

It's Just Bloating - Part 2

May felt fidgety. The chair at the doctor’s office wasn’t quite fitting right and she was not happy with how much it was squashing her sides. The more it felt like she was trapped, the more she wanted to move, and the more her skin rubbed irritatingly against the arm-rests and demanded release.
 
If she thought about it carefully – which she mostly preferred not to – she would have recognised that this was now a common occurrence. For the most part, she was content to ignore it so long as her work-from-home schedule enabled her to avoid having to move too much, or get dressed in anything other than a bathrobe. 

But as she shimmed for the fifth time in as many minutes, she had to admit that her belly, which rounded outwardly in a fashion that uncomfortably resembled pregnancy, was really becoming an issue. In the past few months, May’s food intake had skyrocketed, and, struggling under the literal weight of her appetite, her metabolism had finally broken. Perhaps shattered was more accurate.

When the nurse called her into the doctor’s office, and she carefully unwedged herself from the chair, the full extent of her body’s changes became apparent to anyone who was watching.

Even in the time since her thirty-first birthday last year, the shape of May’s body had reoriented itself dramatically from her lanky-but-hippy default. Her breasts, much to her chagrin, had grown modestly, still mostly fitting into her tighter B-Cup bras. If anything, the tightness she felt in that garment was mostly due to an increasing band size rather than a substantial growth of her breasts in and of themselves. Her back had a gradually evolving texture to it, as small rolls or creases formed whenever she moved or leaned in almost any direction. The mashing together of skin and lipidinous tissue had begun to create the impression of a soft washboard of fatty ridges, particularly underneath her bra straps and where the haunches of her lower back evolved into her ever-plusher ass. 

Never her most prominent feature, despite her hips, May’s growth had reshaped this part of her body considerably. She now had two globular buttcheeks that protruded out proudly, expressing an almost unnatural pertness even as the bottom portion of each cheek curved into heavier and heavier thighs that were widening out in all directions. The familiar “thwoosh” of her thighs spreading out every time she sat was starting to feel more and more like molasses or syrup slowly spreading out over a surface from a heavy pour. Given the number of pancakes she ate, that was hardly an unrfair metaphor, either. Her white, far too small “athletic’ shorts  were not only being devoured by her ass, but her thighs -- despite a general lack of movement -- had also already eaten through the inner fabric completely and, if you could spread her legs, you could see the angry red skin that was chafing between them.

Perhaps one saving grace that was her thick, cottage cheese-inspired cellulite-ridden thighs still tapered into comparably delicate ankles -- but the same could not be said for her belly.

Seemingly against the laws of human anatomy and physics alike, May was an absurdly belly-heavy gal now. Unending snacking and frequent binges had stretched and stretched her stomach into becoming not only her most impressive (and hard-working) internal organ, but indeed had created an external spectacle that was impossible to miss. The curvature of her belly was exactly like that of a pregnant woman’s, and, while extremely firm, it still had a certain jiggle and movement to it that quickly made you realize that she was not with child.It’s size had increased so much that it was starting to push the boundaries of what kind of pregnant she was -- a very healthy set of twins was probably the best guess for most at this point.

As May’s belly entered the office a second or two before the rest of her, her physician’s face gawked momentarily. Doctor Cristobel Yasis had not seen May for over a year since she’d put in her IUD, and the woman she’d known was a far-cry from this bloated creature slinking into view.

Collecting herself, she smiled at May and they began the usual pleasantries and basic questions. May’s cushy insurance (the benefits of working for a decent employer) actually afforded her an annual physical, so, the appointment was to be wide-ranging -- stethoscope, blood-tests, the whole works. 

As they worked through the basic questions and tests, both Cristobel’s (bi-)curiosity and her profession required her to start to ask the hard questions. 

“How’s your diet been lately?” 

Cristobel’s eyes focused directly into May’s as she asked, careful not to stare at her client’s body that made the question moot. 

“Oh, you know, it’s okay. I’m probably snacking a little too much, but I try to stay active.”

Memories of grunting while getting off the couch earlier swirled in her mind as she desperately tried to find a moment of actual, prolonged physical exertion in the past year. You could almost hear the tumbleweeds blowing through her mind as she failed to recount a single example. She began to sweat a little. 

“OK. What kind of activities are you involved in?”

Cristobel had to hold back a bemused smile as her chubby client struggled to form a believable story about the “walks” and “yoga” she was doing. Somehow she doubted May was doing much of any of that.

“I know these are usually sensitive topics, May, but as your physician, please know that I’m not here to judge you.”

May’s expression grew a little more dire.

“Can you please take off your clothes now so we can complete the physical?”

Abject horror now crossed the chubby brunette’s face as she froze in place.

“Are you sure that’s absolutely necessary?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is. I’d like to do a quick visual inspection for any skin irritations and do a quick breast exam.”

The next two minutes featured the laborious work of May removing her clothing, stripping down to her over-taxed bra and panties, her belly now bulging out in all its glory. Cristobel was shocked how much larger it looked without her simple tank top to cover it. Her constricting shorts, as well, removed the only constraint that was keeping her soft, squishy thighs from filling up even more space, their gelatinous structurelessness jiggling occasionally as she stumbled and adjusted herself.

Standing nearly naked now, the newfound immensity of May was fully on display.

Trying to hide the hunger in her eyes, Cristobel expertly inspected her patient’s modest breasts, noting the red marks and inflamed skin along the band of her bra. Thankfully, there was nothing to be concerned about there.

As she did a series of other small checks, looking at May’s skin for any concerning irritations or otherwise, she finally came to her belly. She knew she needed to feel it. The medical reasons for doing so faded into the back of her mind as she lightly poked and prodded prodigious hips and inched her way towards the main event. What started as professional, evalutory touch slowly became increasingly hands-on and intimate. She pushed inwards from just above May’s bellybutton and felt the strange mixture of firmness and give that enabled this belly to maintain its gravid shape and dominate the figure of her patient so totally. Pushing inwards now more strongly, she could feel that, while the external layer of visceral fat helped keep the belly in its globular shape, the internal fat was almost like some kind of cream-filled egg. When you pressed in, or shook it, if you dared, you could see that this belly - despite appearances to the contrary - was simply big and fat.

As she began to heft the belly now, decorum slipping a little more, her face grew red as she spoke in as tight a doctor-ese as she could:

“May, I think we can both be honest with one another in noting that you’ve put on a significant amount of weight.”

She continued to squeeze as she spoke, entirely disassociated from the words she was saying as she continued her hands-y motions. May continued to stand as still as a soldier during a military inspection.

“Your belly has obviously grown considerably, and, what’s more, most of what’s here is what we call ‘visceral fat,’ meaning that it rests in this solid, bulky kind of way in the belly.”

Words were really failing her now as she tried desperately not to simply lose herself and take a big, greedy squeeze of the whole thing. In all of her career, she’d never felt so profoundly corrupted by seeing one of her patients and she struggled to maintain control in the face of this hypnotic appendage of her patient. 

“It can be, uh, associated with cardiovascular disease and other health problems.”

She knew she had to cut her losses before something went really off the rails. As she slowly made to pull herself away, however, she took one last outlandishly large squeeze of the underside of the belly and closed her eyes so deeply that she had to blink herself back into the moment, trying desperately to make it look like she had been a moment of deep thought.

“I definitely…” She paused again, unintentionally, trying still to collect herself. If it weren’t for her dark caramel skin, Cristobel’s face would have read like an open book on arousal. But she just barely managed to come back to her sentence:

“I definitely recommend you look at reducing your caloric intake. If you are a fan of soda or other highly processed or sugary foods, I recommend you cut them out altogether if you can.”

She was regaining her sanity now as she stepped back and considered her patient’s fullnessonce again:

From head to toe, May was covered in a thin sheen of dewey sweat, likely from the exertion of removing her clothes and the nervousness of getting a semi-perverted patdown from her doctor.

The words seemed to ring in May’s ears as she slowly put on her clothes, inching her shorts up her thighs that seemed to run away from clothing with something approaching consciousness. A shimmy or two shook her belly heartily and it had to have been divine intervention that kept her from simply bursting into flames in that very moment. Studiously avoiding her doctor’s eyes as she awkwardly stretched her shirt over her arms - which were only minimally more pudgy -- her red tank top came down smoothly over her bust, and then valiantly began the fool’s errand of making its way over as much of her belly as it could manage. Due to some cosmic cruelty, the shirt, which had mostly fit before (from a certain, denialist point of view), she could see in the mirror now still left a good six inches of exposed pale white flesh after the shirt’s hemline. 

The appointment ended with forcibly polite goodbyes and -- she thought, but could barely remember -- a half-hearted promise to eat more healthfully to her doctor. 

Belly swinging wantonly side-to-side as she left, May hurried out of the office without even bothering to book her next appointment. She was convinced that Doctor Yasis had lost her train of thought out of sheer disgust at her body, comments to the contrary merely an attempt at professional placaction. 

As soon as her wide, swaying ass left the her office, Cristobel immediately closed the door and sat down on her small stool, struggling to catch her breath as all of the pent-up emotion in her body could finally surge forward explosively. She closed her eyes and leaned her back against the wall, hand against her breast, desperately trying to ground herself after nearly sexually assaulting on one of her patients. 

Thoughts of consequences, however, quickly turned back to the memory of holding May’s belly in her hands - the feeling of that final squeeze visiting back upon her and sending a shiver down her spine. She looked at her computer and saw she had a rare reprieve of 10 minutes before her next appointment. Seemingly infected with her patient’s sensuous disregard for propriety and control, she locked the door and went to the cupboard for lubricants used in vaginal exams. 

This isn’t strictly off-label, I guess, she thought as she squirted some in her hands and rubbed them together.

And before she plunged her fingers into herself, she briefly wondered how hard it was for May to masturbate with that big belly. Contemplating that thought meant she had time for two near-cataclysmic orgasms before her next client was ready. 
 

[generic725]

 

Part three of It's Just Bloating, where the measurement-oriented of us finally get some pay-off. As I think a lot of writers in the WG genres struggle with, getting the weight right for a tall person is really, really hard. I've watched dozens of TikTok videos with weight/height reveals, read articles on BMI, and I even regularly consult the WNBA's weight and height charts to gauge a sense, but it's really hard. If the numbers strike you here as somewhat high, remember that at 5"11, even with a relatively thin frame, she'd probably be closer to Macey than you think right from the start. 

Otherwise, I'm excited that this chapter starts to bring in more of May's work, which starts to build us towards the larger set-pieces of this project. Looking forward to getting to those in the next chapter. Sci-fi fans, stick around! 

-----

In the weeks and months that followed, the anxiety over her rising weight had the exact opposite effect on May’s eating habits than the vague intentions of change she had made after seeing Dr Yasis. Instead of scaling back her caloric intake, she did two related things: 

Firstly, she poured herself into her work. CalPERS’ Chief Investment Officer was starting a new plan to expand the pension plan’s investment in US-based advanced technology opportunities, especially aerospace and robotics, and had asked May to lead a sector-wide study to understand the space better. As one of the largest public pension plans in the world, this meant May was in a unique position to ask for almost anything of the funds and companies that her team might wish to invest in. This was both intellectually stimulating and a significant time-sink, meaning she had less and less time, and interest, to do much else than work and rest from home.

Very much relatedly, the second thing that May did was eat more. A lot more. 

Late-night research reviews and early-morning company interviews from Europe threw off her circadian rhythm and meant that she nearly always had an excuse to grab a snack or stuff herself relentlessly. As the mind-numbing stream of numbers, technology overviews, and investment précis flowed into her inbox, soda, chips, candy, and pretty much everything else flowed through her mouth and down into her ever-expanding waistline.

Five months of backbreaking work later, May received a promotion for her diligence and “exemplary” investment plan for the fund that the CIO would “implement word for word.” 

The promotion afforded the bloated new investment manager a few unique privileges that she was more than happy to take advantage of: a more flexible work schedule, given her unique needs to engage with international partners, and the right to continue to work fully remotely. Her team of fifteen analysts would have to call or video-chat her for their meetings. Coming from the quant side of the business, both May and her team were quite happy to embrace a no-pressure culture of cameras being off and working primarily via the internal messaging system. 

Despite her preference to ignore her looks and focus on her work and pastimes, even May had to begrudgingly admit that this non-visual work culture also afforded her the helpful privilege of being able to wearing whatever she wanted at any given time. 

This privilege was, in practical terms, also something of a necessity. 

As she pulled her head up from the release of the investment plan and being onboarded as a new manager and considered the prospect of engaging with the outside world again, May had to take stock of the changes her body had undergone over the past few months:

Standing in the bathroom one morning, gigantic stomach fully obscuring the scale, May grimaced and, in a voice that cracked a little with anxiety, asked Macey for help reading the numbers somewhere below. 

Her belly had grown so large and wide that it was impossible for her to see anything below it. Frustratingly, her breasts had only grown modestly. Despite the rapid expansion of most other parts of her body, if anything her boobs looked smaller in comparison to the rest of her, even while they’d gone up a full cup-size and pressed unhappily against the short-hemmed sports bra that she’d taken to wearing around the house most days. Slightly more generous C-cups still were outshone by her growing band-size, with her increasingly lumpy rolls of back-fat mashing to create an angry-looking red aura of skin irritation where the back straps were stretched to new limits almost every day.

As always, her bust was the least impressive part of her gain: ungainly and shapeless rolls under her arms flowed from above still-(comparably) narrow waist into heavy-set haunches and love handles. They now formed an innertube-like ring of fat that began at the “small” of her back and then rounded out into her growing ass cheeks. Both of her rounded buttocks were increasingly meaty and seemed to add more dimples and cellulite every day.

Her thighs made a mockery of the string-bean she had once been. Even at her boniest, May had always had somewhat out-of-proportion hips to her size, but this was very obviously the fundamental shape of her body and not a sign of fattness. Now, however, May’s hips had grown and grown outwards to mask any hint of the bones that had once been one of her defining features. In the place of a bony obtrusion, heavy saddlebags now hung -- and indeed they did hang -- from each hip at acute angles. From the back May still had a strangely narrow waist, if you ignored where he belly bulged outward from the front of love handles. A small rib-cage and wider bones provided the scaffolding for a tranche the saddlebags. They ran out from just above her hips and then flared out into wide, mushy parabolas on either side, tapered off through her narrow lower thighs and thin-ish calves.

Finally, and from any angle, May’s belly truly dominated, one might even say conquered, her form. It had now grown so large that no only could she no longer see her feet, but no longer see all parts of her belly. It’s rounded horizon was so large that angles below the widest point of her belly on all sides were completely invisible to her. In some ways that was perhaps for the best, because the ever-increasing number of white and red stretchmarks that splayed dendritically across all of the lower areas of her belly.

When Macey finally made it into the room, having once again extracted herself from a particularly smutty Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fic , she was, yet again, struck by the vastness of her roommate.

How the fuck does she keep gaining weight like this? Doesn’t she see just how huge she is getting?

Although she didn’t think of the tums incident as the “beginning” of this weight gain, she could reflect vaguely back to that time last year and again was washed over just by how much she had grown -- and how quickly.

It was abundantly clear to Macey, and, she suspected even May, that their unique lifestyles created a glide path for this kind of change; remote work, comparably high incomes, and rather narrow, inward-looking social lives all created little outside feedback on her friend’s changes and, therefore, effectively no pressure for her to change.

And it wasn’t only her body changing now: there was some sort of bizarre inverse relationship to her weight gain and her productivity at work. In some strange way, her endless justifications around “brain food” might have been true. Her physical lethargy only seemed to grow more pronounced over time, bringing larger and larger piles of snacks to her desk to avoid having to make multiple trips (perversely, this led to a vicious cycle of needing ever-larger snack hauls). And yet she worked longer hours, and, occasional food naps aside, seemed more engaged and focused than ever.

These perverse forces at work only confused her friend, but, true to her original intention, she refrained from intervention.

Macey walked around the edge of May’s bulbous hips and ducked around the edge of her bulging belly to see, with some craning, the number flashing on the scale. She looked, looked again, grimaced, and then stood up to face her friend.

“Three hundred and thirty six pounds.”

May’s face sank and a pause settled in that was nine months pregnant with triplets. 

“That…. That can’t be right.”

Macey, simultaneously shocked and unmoved by her friend’s predicament, tried not to shake her head too visibly.

“I double-checked before I read it out.”

“It can’t be right,” May protested again, “You go on and see if it works for you.”

Rolling her eyes, Macey silently motioned for her lumbering friend to move, and quickly jumped onto the scale herself.

While her breasts were large enough to obscure some of her vision, it only took a slightly craning of her neck to see familiar numbers staring back up at her: 182.

She stepped on and off twice, and got the same result within a pound or two.

She looked back at her friend gravely: “It seems pretty accurate to me.”

What little colour remained in May’s face drained quickly. Memories of every recent binge and moment of over-indulgence washed across her mind, the guilt and shame of each instance weighing her down almost as much as her fluff.

“I can’t believe it. Last year I was almost half this weight.”

Lost in her spiral was also the fact that last year, as her weight finally really started to take off, she’d only been five or possibly ten pounds heavier than her friend. Now was nearly double.

It took every muscle in her body and every spiritual iota of her being, for Macey not to scream “I told you so!” at the top of her lungs at her friend. Maybe it was the utter shock and horror on May’s face, or the disbelief that ventured on delusion, but in that moment the friend formerly known as “the chubby one” lost even more sympathy for the naive chubster in front of her. A decade of May’s thick-headed inability to recognise the forthcoming disaster of her diet (or lack thereof) sapped her friend of any willingness to help.

Macey debated for a moment what she would say next -- and later came to question just how much of an inflection point this might have been for what May became -- but settled, with some moral consternation, on something… less than helpful.

“I’m sure some of it’s just bloating. You had a big meal today and you have been working a lot. Maybe you’re retaining some water or something.” 

She concluded her statement with what she hoped was a warm, if somewhat distant, supportive-looking face.

The comment seemed to soothe May somewhat, who began, following her friend’s lead, generating a list of other excuses that, while not entirely explaining away her obvious weight gain, at least softened the blow.

Sagely, she concluded her soliloquy with another vague recognition of the need to “eat better” and “be more active.” 

Unintentionally pushing her friend against the wall as she lumbered out of the bathroom, May’s obliviousness continued and cemented her roommate’s indifference to helping her any further.

[generic725]

This is a big one. Part 4 marks the move to longer-form chapters (hopefully a good thing!) and there's a large-ish (though hopefully not jarring) tonal shift here from the first few chapters in that the plot really starts to pick up here. Rather than just a glutton run wild, we start to see the bigger context that May's growing fatness is taking place amidst. On a personal level, I've always found it strange that more fatfic doesn't draw on research about weight gain and obesity, so, I've tried to add something new with the way this is written. I'll be very curious to see how it lands.

A few notes:
- The quotes in this are from real scientific and social science research. I added hyperlinks where relevant and in general tried to actually create a convincing case for why the world was getting fatter.
- I fuckin' love a good powerpoint presentation.
- We start to see some of the shift's in May's personality, too, as a result of the her weight gain - I never want a character to feel static, but it's hard to show these subtle shifts over time without being too on the nose.
- In the next chapter, a range of new characters will be introduced - very excited for everyone to meet these folks! 

Overall, I hope this somewhat different format and some of the new ideas in here are exciting and resonate with folks! And if you like what you're reading and care to share thoughts or comments here or on DeviantART, that'd be hugely appreciated.

-------

As before, any vague intention by May to “do better” quickly fell by the wayside. In no small part, this was because there was a strong, and growing, inverse correlation between her productivity and the healthiness of her food and the serving-size appropriateness thereof. As the new advanced manufacturing strategy for CalPERS gathered steam and May collected further responsibilities to research and develop further, sub-sector related strategies, her appetite only increased.

Another eight months flew by and May had been redirected into the healthcare file. Any coworker commentary on the irony of this posting was strangled in the crib for two reasons: firstly, because her immense weight gain remained an effective secret to almost everyone on staff, and, secondly, because of her incredible performance at her job. The outputs of her advanced manufacturing work paid early and strong returns for the fund, and afforded her yet more trust - and responsibility - from the senior executives.

Her next project, however, brought her to a topic that was frighteningly close to home: the healthcare implications, and investment opportunities, of obesity.

May, having grown more and more complacent with her ever-growing size, looked at the statistics and research in the field with personal experience that provided some novel insights. 

Having sworn off the scale after an interlude a few months after her last weigh-in, showing another thirty-poun gain, she knew, at least abstractly, that she was continuing to get larger. However, she continued to show less than zero interest in changing any of her behaviours. Her bras grew tighter, she traded up two sizes in her chair (“just to be extra comfy”) and carried on eating to her heart’s content.

Her body was finally starting to adjust to the fact that she was truly fat. While her belly remained an outlandishly large part of her body, it had finally woken up to the fact that it was made of fat, not some bizarre gravity-defiying human rubber. While the top rounded out from the bottom of her breasts with a spectacularly smooth curve that still suggested (an outlandishly large) pregnancy, it now extended so far out from her torso that it indeed succumbed to gravity, and fluffier, looser fat had begun to hang towards the floor. It was as if, slightly below her belly button, the visceral fat of the top of her belly was melting at the bottom. It was extending far enough now that, despite her height, the entirety of her genitals were hidden if you stared at her head-on.

Much to her chagrin, her body’s betrayal felt particularly cruel in this context. As if being absurdly belly-heavy wasn’t bad enough, her mons venus had now decided it wanted to join the party. From the fluffier “lighter” parts of her belly that obscured everything below them, a whole new biome of her body was developing.

Her public mound now had grown to obscure more and more of the entrance to her vulva, joining the bottom of her belly in a pantomime of the larger appendage’s shape. It created many a strange feeling, particularly when she was trying to masturbate, as it made it harder (than her belly made it already)  to reach inside of herself. 

The only solution to that particular problem -- particularly since she had little interest in, and, she suspected, few opportunities to, date -- was to purchase a considerably larger wand, with an extender that allowed her to reach particularly hard-to-get-to spots. 

Perhaps the only main upside to the continuing onslaught of pounds was that her breasts had finally decided that they wanted to join the party. They had now rounded out into almost-impressive honeydew-sized orbs that necessitated several bra upgrades. Comfortably into DD territory, she breathed a sigh of relief that between her expanded bust and wide hips, she’d passed through the Bear-like territory she’d inhabited for a few months with her huge belly and thick thighs, but few other curves.

Maybe it was the shift in her body type towards something more recognisably feminine that changed her attitude somewhat, but the more she dug into the research, the more her interest in, understanding of -- and, crucially, respect for -- fat shifted.

She poured over the recent scientific and cultural literature, seeing herself more and more in the evolution of society towards fatness. And indeed, while her shape was somewhat peculiar, her trajectory was hardly novel. A 2017 report put it as starkly as one could:

Quote

Since 1991 the prevalence of obesity has increased by 65% in men, and 25% in women. It was estimated that in 2010, England contained 6.6 million obese men (33% of the population) and 5.9 million obese women (28% of the population). The proportion of men predicted to be obese was greater than the proportion of women. It has been estimated that on current trends, by 2050, 60% of males and 50% of females will be obese.

Interestingly, back then, obesity still had a fairly clear class separation. Back in 2017, research had shown that:

Quote

Adults working in unskilled manual professions are over 4 times more likely to be classified as morbidly obese compared with those in professional employment, with women showing a larger difference than men. It is estimated that by 2050, 15% of females belonging to [highly professionalized and wealthy classes] and 62% for the females belonging to [lower-income, less-skilled households] will be obese. However, the predicted difference is lower for male adults, 52% of males belonging to[highly professionalized and wealthy classes] will be obese compared with 60% of [lower-income, less-skilled] males.

Roughly a decade and a half later, post the global pandemic and, interestingly, the increasing prevalence of highly processed meat alternatives and other lab grown foods, this gap had closed dramatically. More and more, despite the sophistication of the diet industry and various “health” products bought and sold with ludicrously high margins, people of all incomes and education levels were simply getting fatter and fatter. 

And that’s where May got a simple idea that took her healthcare investment scan a few steps further: instead of trying to fight fat, why not profit from it? 

Her premise was simple: no matter what the health data said, people continued to get fatter and more sedentary. The ease of modern living, particularly as investments to fight climate change and build an overall more sustainable society layered on top of one another, had made the world a more and more comfortable place to live. And comfort, through the wide availability of low-cost, high-calorie food, was increasingly translating into weight gain.

Most importantly to her, the economics could not be ignored: in 2021, the World Obesity Federation had estimated that the average national cost of obesity was in the range of 2% of gross domestic product in many countries but projected that by 2060, that number would be more than double in high-obesity countries such as Brazil and Mexico. In India, where the number had originally been projected to double from less than 1% of GDP in 2021 to 2.75% by 2060, rates had already jumped to 1.9% and represented potential economic losses of $450 billion dollars per year. 

This meant while exact numbers were tricky, that investing in obesity-related technologies and services represented a multi-trillion market globally. 

The best part was, particularly from the perspective of the epicentre of global obesity, American productivity and economic output would only improve as a result of investments that mitigated the impacts of obesity. From the view of a pension fund that tried to improve American economic outcomes at the same time as it generated stable returns for California’s former public servants, a win-win like this was an opportunity too good to pass up.

With an entire team behind her, including consulting doctors and technologies, the contours of an investment approach started to develop. An effective investment strategy would focus simultaneously on addressing areas of consumer discomfort related to obesity and then reducing the impacts related to productivity, efficacy, and economic output. 

This meant focusing on reducing either reducing or eliminating some of the major health challenges of obesity, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, various heart disease challenges, bone,] and ** problems, sleep apnea, and general mobility issues. Each of these areas would form the basis of an area to invest in, eventually supporting companies that focused on producing technologies, services, and infrastructure that fat people would pay for to address the challenges they faced.

The idea here was to forgo the classical strategy of investing in pathways to reduce people's weight, and rather assume that they were going to get fatter -- and that technologies and services would be needed to support them as they did. It flipped the script on decades of prior investing behaviours and left behind that favourite American pastime of moralizing about fat people, and instead adopted the most evolved and enjoyable of American traditions: making money.

There was also a clear cultural dimension to this work, as well. As Americans (and the world) got fatter, the cultural perception of fat was shifting. The fascination with “thickness” in the late 2010s and 2020s had evolved into something, well, wider. The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance had shifted both its mandate and its name from “acceptance” to liberation just after the US became a majority-obese country. NAAFL, as it became known, became an increasingly important political constituency, cutting across political dividing lines in peculiar ways.

A strong majority of the United States’ largest people still lived in Southern and Republican-controlled states, despite the spread of obesity to every corner of the country. And yet the Democratic party’s late 2020’s pivot towards a more explicitly leftist stance, and a longstanding connection with America’s fattest demographics, Black and Indigenous peoples, made them a contender in many of these races. The struggle to “get out the fat vote” became a core pillar of any successful candidate’s pathway to victory.

This created fertile ground for both policy shifts and a cultural movement that was increasingly looking toward what it could do to make their country more fat-friendly. Or, put another way, a spectacular environment to invest in.

As May became more and more embroiled in her strategy development, her appetite and weight gain only increased in intensity and she began to personally experience in real-time what the needs of her eventual customers would be.

With every added pound, it seemed like new shifts or requirements for her life were required. 

The first and most obvious challenge was heat. Swaddled in hundreds of pounds of extra adipose, May’s previous challenge of staying warm had been completely reversed. Now she struggled to stay at an even moderately comfortable temperature in the comfort of her own home. Even a few shifts of her body, particularly the bits that rubbed against one another, generated even more heat. 

The only solution she really seemed to have at this point, further adding to her weight gain trajectory, was simply to move less with less on. It worked well to a point, but despite her best efforts to avoid it more and more, she still occasionally had to go out.

Which led to the second challenge: as May had gotten fatter, both moving and sitting presented new challenges. While she hadn’t weighed herself in months, she knew she was well over three-hundred and fifty pounds now. That didn’t necessarily present a problem in and of itself, especially given her tall frame, but still being so belly- and bottom-heavy meant that her mobility was already seeing some limitations and she simply had less energy to walk or move than she used to. 

And when she went to sit down somewhere, even in fatter-than-ever America, a lot of furniture simply wasn’t designed for people of her size. 

With a growing salary, May was able to overcome some of this. She ordered Uber XL’s as a rule. She got groceries and food delivered to the house constantly, and gradually furniture in the house was swapped for things more suited to her growing body. 

And yet, as each time before, the more she struggled personally with her weight, the more her enthusiasm for her work grew. And after some high-level briefings with senior staff one day, May began to consider a somewhat audacious idea: 

if CalPERS was going to pull this off, they were going to need a more nimble mechanism that would allow them to make investments quickly. Additionally, there was still some reputational risk to consider when it came to profiting from the over-stuffed average American who needed help with obesity-related illnesses and mobility challenges.

There was an obvious solution for May: start a fund specifically focused on fat-friendly products and services, signing CalPERS as a foundational (and perhaps silent) funding partner, along with other investors. 

Uncharacteristically, May actually took a week off work to fully delve into this idea further. Characteristically, however, she mowed her way through snacks, meals, “treats,” and other little assists throughout the entire process. If anything, having a new, engaging challenge only increased her appetite. 

Each day she funneled ever-larger quantities of calories down her throat. There were moments when Macey could only look on with genuine shock as she watched May devour entire family-sized meals -- whole lasagnas, an effective cart of dim sum, and more. She could navigate excel and documents with one hand while shoveling things into her mouth. 

A little rearrangement of the apartment for May’s comfort, too, meant that she was able to work in her room’s own office now, giving her ample opportunity to eat with even less grace than she exhibited around her friend.

One day, though, a little under a month after the initial idea, she was ready.  Sitting awkwardly on the couch with her laptop resting on her belly and breasts, now mostly unable to get it closer enough to the table (or her “lap” for that matter) to work, she called Macey into the living room about her idea. 

Covered in Cheetos dust, with messy, unwashed hair, the formerly lanky, formerly chubby, and now objectively fat May was not exactly the paragon of professionalism that would have suggested her work was worth taking seriously. 

But as her roommate plodded down the hallway and saw the first slide of a deck on their TV (that May had taken to using as part of her office more and more of late), there was an energy about her longtime friend that felt different. Even with her somewhat slobbish appearance and general attitude of lethargy, there was an energy that sparked and crackled around her as she busily typed away at her laptop Snacking sporadically while she worked, it was only after Macey cleared her throat that to alert her friend she was there, that she was snapped out of her rhythm of working and eating. Gears turned and she shifted from whatever she was doing into a warm smile.

“Okay! Thanks for coming.”

Macey looked at her quizically.

“I wanted to show you something I’ve been working on. Do you mind?”

Unsure but curious, she sat down.

“Yeah, I guess. You really have been deep in… whatever it is you’ve been up to.”

May smiled even larger. 

“I know, I know! And I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit reclusive about it. I just… I think I’ve got something really cool here and I wanted to pursue it to the fullest.”

After months of obsessive work where at times Macey had begun to feel like she was losing her friend, this sudden re-emergence and awareness was a welcome change.

“Well, I’m glad you’re coming up for air finally! What’ve you been working on so furiously?”

Turning like a showman opening up his circus, May gestured to the screen and flashed up the title slide. In classic pitch-deck fashion, it was simply a single word in a crisp sans serif font, on a warm green background: Lipid. 

“What’s the most pressing, expensive problem in America, Em?”

Despite her rather comically exaggerated body type and the general state of disarray of her appearance, May’s presentation voice and energy were calm, crisp, and professional.

“I don’t know, climate change?”

“Not a bad guess,” she said somewhat officiously, “but with current federal and local policy pathways, we’re on track to limit global warming to about two degrees celsius.” 

She paused, stifling a burp for a moment, and then continued: 

“More importantly, many of the societal trends we would want to see in place -- falling battery prices, conversion of vehicles, and development of local manufacturing -- are already well underway.”

Her audience of one shrugged. 

“I’m not sure then.”

The slide advanced to an image of one young woman standing next to another.

The difference between the two was striking. The one on the left was a brown-skinned, slightly chubby young woman with dark black hair who appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties. 

The one on the right had a similar skin tone but was vastly larger. Where the image on the left had comfortably large breasts that sat above a small, rounded little belly, the woman on the right had a wide, hanging gut that extended down to fully cover her groin. Cantaloupe-sized breasts extended perkily from her chest, framing a doughy décolletage that ran up into a wide-set neck, an impressive double chin, and a moon-shaped face. The body types could not have been more different, and yet the eyes were identical.

As the realization dawned on Macey, her presenter re-entered:

“This is a before and after photo of one of TikTok’s most famous content creators, ‘MegaMadelline.’ These images are two years apart, and showcase her gain of almost two-hundred and fifty pounds in that time.”

Macey let out a small whistle.

Next slide.

A series of charts showed hockey-stick graphs with headings like, “Obesity Rates of American Men by Age,” all neatly arrayed in a grid.

“America, and the world, for that matter, continue to get fatter every year. MegaMadelline is only one example of how increasing food availability and the growing convenience of everyday life, especially because of work-from-home policies, automation, and changes in city-planning, are making it harder and harder for anyone to stay thin.”

Another slide flashed.

“In 2008, scientists from the American Obesity Treatment Association published in Nature modeled that, based on trends at that time, by 2030, 86.3% adults will be overweight or obese; and 51.1%, obese.”

Next slide.

“We ended up crossing those estimates two years earlier than expected, and the pace of weight gain in this country, and around the world, has only increased since then.” 

Another slide flashed a list of medical conditions and other, related challenges associated with being overweight or obese.

And then another showing dollar figures associated with this to American healthcare costs.

Next came a series of complex actuarial equations and financial models showing the level and types of investment needed to respond to this; hundreds of billions of dollars in new healthcare technologies and services, and, in the aggregate, trillions of dollars to retrofit buildings and vehicles to suit the needs of this larger and larger population.

May’s excitement reached a crescendo:

“All of this work represents the single largest investment opportunity since reconstruction after World War Two!”

Another slide transition, this time flashing another grid, this one of photographs of technologies, inventors, and a panoply of fat to very fat people all smiling and using various pieces of equipment.

“However, to really take advantage of this opportunity, investors need to be able to move quickly and draw on specialized, in-house expertise around bariatric medicine and other obesity-related issues.”

A slide that was markedly different flashed now. A simple light blue background highlighted the word from the first slide again.

“I give you, Lipid, the world’s first purpose-built venture capital fund focused entirely on obesity-related technologies and services.”

May now dove into details around investment approaches and funding structures, highlighting how CALPers and a variety of other public sector pension plans, with both an interest in return on investment, and, having a higher share of obese beneficiaries than another type of fund, could massively benefit from a new vehicle like this.

The presentation closed with a bevy of enthusiastic graphs that talked about long-term profit projections and the overall potential of this approach. And like a conductor bringing a Mahler piece to a conclusion, she waved her hands with a flourish and a wide smile.

“What do you think?!,” she concluded, as Macey realized she was now breathing somewhat heavily, apparently the excitement of her information somewhat exceeding her lung’s capacity to release it.

“I have to admit, I’m impressed.” And she was, in a sense. 

I also can’t believe you got this fat and decided to turn it into an investment opportunity, rather than lose some fucking weight.

But she didn’t say that.

“I’m glad, because I’m actually not done yet.”

“Oh?”

Another slide came up on the TV, this one showing both of their faces inserted into little circles, with one line of text beneath each of their heads.

May Khoe, Chief Investment Officer
Macey Abelman-Martinez, Chief Operational Officer 

“May, what the hell is this?”

A devious smile crossed the mega-belly babe’s face.

“Our future.”
 

[generic725]

 

May’s outsize reputation at the pension fund created some unique opportunities for her. Few other people would have been able to bring this kind of crazy idea to senior leaders and even gotten the time of day, but with her strong successes from the advanced manufacturing play, she had the ear of some senior people.

Three weeks after an initial presentation to the investment committee (remotely, of course), she had approval to take a leave from CalPERS and begin the process of assembling a team to form the fund.

Macey, despite her reservations, was intrigued enough in the opportunity and, truth be told, eager to work with her friend more once again that she decided to take the role as COO. 

The combination of the detailed plans that May had develoepd and Macey’s organizational skill meant that they’d filed their corporate documents a month after they received permission to get started and brought on their team onboard.

May was allowed to poach a few of her analysts from the fund on a two-year secondment, and then did some other hiring to bring in outside expertise, both professional and lived.

The most important hire that they needed was a good chief of staff. Macey was well equipped to handle operations at a strategic level, but she’d need a right-hand to help her carry that out the variety of both the hum drum tasks, like organizing internal meetings, and the strategic ones, like arranging meetings with partners.

A quiet resume search through contacts at NAAFL and other, friendly organizations landed them a range of great resumes, but there was one clear winner.

Her name was Nasha Ikande. She was a second generation Nigerian-American and that alone had meaningful relevance to the work they were going to do. Nigeria was already known as a fat country in the early 20th Century, but had rapidly grown not only to build a significant amount of wealth, successfully pivoting off oil and gas into more sustainable modes of prosperity, but vastly increased overall societal plenty -- and the waistlines of practically every citizen along the way.

Her parents’ arrival in America had only accelerated a predisposition towards fatness after that.

Very tall like her parents at 6”2, Nasha was very fat . It was impossible to guess how much she weighed over the Zoom interview, but when they met her a few weeks at a cafe after hiring her, both May and Macey were taken aback at the sheer size of her. A rippling double-belly, not dissimilar in size to her boss’, dominated the front of her form, a wide strip of almost obsidian-dark skin peaking through the already-stretched buttons of a surprisingly tasteful (and immensely large) linen body-suit. Unlike her boss, however, Nasha was fat in a way that was more traditionally feminine, with a strangely hourglass figure, despite her size. She had massive breasts each easily the size of her head that always puffed slightly above whatever thin barrier a collar tried to form for her, and a proportionally massive ass that she generally needed two chairs to support. She had ripplingly jiggling thighs that moved penduously with each slow, shuffling waddle she made -- an effort she seemed to try to keep to a minimum.

Beyond her size, she also had a beautiful face, with alluring dark brown eyes, a beautiful gap-toothed smile, and lustrous nappy hair that reached outward from her head in all directions.

Her resume was impressive -- Purdue graduate with honours in business, a stint at Bain Capital, and some personal work on democratizing investment with inner city communities. However, it was her politics that really made her shine. Nasha was on the board of NAAFL and well connected in D.C. with both Democratic and Republican fat activists in both parties. She was even friends with Jaunita Munez, widely believed to be the fattest member of Congress in history and a champion of fat rights across the nation.

She brought both the political savvy and “doer” ethos that was critical to their effort.

As a sign of respect, May even started going on camera with her when they discussed their work together.

While they weren’t in a position to staff up massively in their initial run, beyond Nasha, May and Macey knew they’d need a range of other roles. Luckily, from her original team at CalPERS, May was able to bring some strong analysts without having to go to market. 

May had always prided herself on running an all women investment analysis team, and the vision of Lipid as a women-led fund somehow felt right, or at least was another plus when speaking to investors, so, while not explicit, a female ethos permeated the fund and implicitly defined their other candidates:

There was Amanda Liao, a longtime quant like May, cut in many ways from the same cloth: she was often perceived as a little ditzy on first meeting with her warm, bubbly demeanor, but savagely effective with numbers when given a concrete task.

She’d worked with May for the past few years and had been one of the first to raise her hand when the ask had gone out to join the Lipid team. And Amanda, despite sometimes jokingly referring to herself as a “coconut” for her absorption of US culture, she still hadn’t assimilated enough into American life over her two decades in California to fully buy into the wild consumption and get meaningfully fat. She was easily the smallest member of the team, standing at a meagre five foot nothing, and likely a hundred pounds soaking wet. It was sometimes joked that Amanda would be their “token thin” and that they’d have to keep her away from clients - despite her ditzy persona, Amanda was insightful enough to make sure she partook of the snacks regularly and learned the fat liberation lexicon quickly enough. She was a go-getter, and that seemed to apply to the Lipid culture, too.

Next was Bex MacLaren-Maldonado, the only non-binary member of May’s old team and more in the mold of a traditional quant:

Painfully shy and quiet, they were happy to squirl themselves away (with a steady supply of snacks, of course) to do their work and avoid human interaction as much as possible. Like Macey, they were a bit of a weeb but never in a loud way. Also somewhat like Macey, and cruelly at odds with their gender presentation, Bex had a wildly traditional feminine figure. Of a similar height to Macey, they had a spectacularly hourglass figure -- however rarely seen it actually was -- with breasts that bulged out of every conceivable outfit and restriction they could throw at it. Binders and sports bras were no match for their titanic, I-cup bazongas and anyone who had the unique privilege to look in their closet could see the graveyard of their past efforts to hide their figure.

While Bex likely had the money to consider some kind of reduction, even losing such a spectacular pair of breasts could not have change how easy it was to read them as female: in addition to immense, shapely breasts, Bex’s waist, even with a ** belly, tapered in with Rubenesque precision. It created the perfect contrast between their shapely top and their irresponsibly curvy bottom. Bex was a booty-heavy beauty, with buttcheeks that sashayed with even the smallest move of their ample hips. Hidden away for the most part in the comfort of their home, Bex’s highly desired figure rarely had to interact with anyone who might misgender them and that, even in a women-run fund, was their preference.

Finally, the last part of their time to join initially was their communications manager. While she hadn’t been on either May or Macey’s team, Azin Mirza was a communications professional par excellence and came highly recommended from CalPERS public engagement team. Every part the smooth-talking comms manager archetype, Azin was also whip smart and knew how to defuse a tense situation, digital or in-person, within moments.

Part of her ability to lower conflict levels was the fact that she looked like she could finish just about any fight: as tall as May, but built in almost the opposite form. A dedicated bodybuilder (rarer and rarer these days), Azin had rippling musculature that intimidated anyone until her warm, upbeat voice defrayed any concerns. Bulging biceps extended out from shoulders and traps that practically pulsed with unused strength. They in turn were supported by a sculpted back and thick, powerful legs that could squat as much (or more) than some of the team members weighed.

And to some of the team members, particularly Nasha and Macey, it was immediately apparent why Azin had raised her hand so quickly to join Lipid: she was an unabashed pervert for fattness. It only took one in-person meeting where Azin stared longingly at Nasha until it got uncomfortable for Macey to clock this and then had a discrete conversation with her new coworker afterwards. Keep it chill, and it wil all be fine.

And so with a somewhat ragtag team, Lipid was ready to start the hard work: finding investors.

CalPERS had indeed agreed to serve as a silent foundational partner. It was decided that at least for now that the pension would initially stay quiet about its investment, both to protect the success of the fund, and mitigate some reputational concerns. The American political and social climate at home was still too muddy with regards to how it felt about being a country increasingly defined (though not yet led) by its obese majority. A savvy investor, however, would see the leadership of former pension employees as a likely sign of implicit endorsement of the fund’s mission, a significant advantage in building out the fund’s stakeholders.

Within the initial Lipid master plan, there was already a draft list of potential investors. These ranged from high net-worth individuals, to other, larger funds like CalPERS who wanted to get a slice of the action. Naturally, all of these funds had some sort of relationship to obesity. 

Top of her list of potential investors was the Indigenous-run fund, S7ílhen (which apparently translated from the Squamish language to “Food”), from Canada. Developed by a series of First Nations groups across British Columbia, the fund was focused on impact investments that would generate strong returns, but also bring tangible benefits to First Nations groups that were increasingly significant economic players within Canada. 

With some of the highest obesity rates in the country, comparable to Black people in the US, there was a razor-clear alignment -- all that was needed was the right approach.

May had done her homework and knew that a personal touch on this one was needed.

Shockingly, the ever-fatter investor was prepared to leave her home to win over this client. With some measurement assistance from Macey, she was able to custom-order some both some maternity-inspired clothes to deal with her incredible belly and otherwise clean herself up for public presentation for the first time in well-over two years.

A few weeks after initial Zoom conversations and establishment of some interest, May was sitting in a thankfully armless office chair in a beautiful Vancouver boardroom that looked out over the mountains and ocean.

The room was filled with ten or so staff from the fund, headed by an imposing matriarch who introduced herself as Ta7talíya (“Ta - Guh/ - Taalee - Yah”) and led the fund’s investment team. Unsurprisingly, she was a large woman, with subdued tan skin, sharp dark eyebrows, and a striking, bright smile when she laughed - which was often.

The middle-aged Indigenous woman was the fattest person at the table, other than Nasha, sitting in the same large chair without arm-rests. Despite a simple black frock-dress, Ta7talíya’s belly bulged out and formed a number of creases as she sat. Her impressive bust formed a thick shelf of fat that rose dangerously close to her moon-shaped face when sitting. She had incredibly silky black hair that cascaded all the way down her back and shimmered lightly when it caught the light in the right way. She had stood only to shake each of the Lipid team members hands, and quickly settled back into her creaking chair, her saddle-bags notably hanging off either side of the chair as May had shuffled her way over to the open seat next to her.

The initial round of pleasantries was lubricated with a spectacular spread of local delicacies, including a fascinating “West Coast Cob Salad” which was generously layered with candided salmon and other local seafood. May felt like she had no choice but to go back for seconds, and, between exchanges with her hosts, continued to nibble at a nearby plate until it was completely empty. Several of the representatives around the table smiled approvingly as she did so. 

As the conversation died down, May, Macey, and Nasha, settled into presentation mode.

May opened with a joke about asking if she could stay “comfortable” during the presentation and run things from her seat. Gesturing to her belly which, despite running parallel to it still bulged noticeably against the broad cedar table. Everyone chuckled and let her begin.

She opened with slides that positioned the human story of the rise in obesity. She referenced the racial inequalities for Black, Indigenous, and Latin people across the continent, long reviled for having larger waistlines than their white neighbours. The time was now, she emphasized, to start to rebalance that system.

The faces around the table were mostly impassive, but here and there she could see the beginnings of a thoughtful smile here and there.

The case she laid out was clear: the fund was going to not only invest in obesity-assisting technologies, services, and procedures, but, in the longer-term, it was going to focus on deploying them in the communities that needed them most. Buildings would be retrofitted to be more comfortable for the growing population; new infrastructure would be built to ease mobility; and health care systems would partner with the companies in the fund’s “family” to deploy new equipment. 

With their own First Nations healthcare system crystalizing across Canada, both reserves and urban Indigenous health facilities would benefit from the deployment of the technologies, while the S7ílhen fund would receive a healthy profit. 

The proposed arranagement both generous and transparent; no rug-pulls and the intention to function not just as a venture capital fund forever, but to expand gradually into a significant “family” of funds working on everything from R&D to infrastructure management.

Throughout the presentation May repeatedly had to pause and catch her breath, her own weight continuing to limit her productivity and basic movement through the world. Even with the air conditioning in the room, as she passed the mid-point of her deck, sweat was beginning to bead down her forehead, her upper lip beginning to glisten and, unseen to everyone else, the buffet of rolls across her back began to turn into a steamy waterfall. Trying to avoid shifting too much, even a mild gesticulation of her hands caused her belly to jiggle and, as she neared the end, more and more of the flabbiest edges of the behemoth edged towards the middle of the table. By the very end, a good six inches of her most pliant fat -- the heavier, viscous core still a tight ball beneath -- was resting on the heavy cedar table.

When she finished, all eyes on the room turned to Ta7talíya. The woman had continued to snack throughout the presentation and, seemingly like May herself, each bite reflected deeper and deeper engagement, rather than lethargy. 

The temperature in the room continued to rise -- as if the collective weight of all present, likely well above two thousand pounds, was itself generating heat. May wiped a little of the sweat from her upper lift and thanking Nasha silently for her recommendation of a sport-related makeup that didn’t run when moist.

Finally, after a breathless few seconds, wherein Ta7talíya finished chewing a final morsel, she spoke:

“I haven’t seen a presentation that was that clear and honest in a long time.”

She closed her lips suddenly and her already puffy cheeks expanded a little more. 

Come on…. Come on… May thought hopefully. 

A palpable tension hung in the air, May’s upper lip again starting to glisten with sweat and the back of the chair now began to stick against her totally soaked-through dress. 

“Based on all of this, I think we have a lot more to talk about,” she said, her big smile opening up across her round face.

Other smiles cascaded around the room and Ta7talíya gave another hearty belly laugh, her enormous bust shaking so much that what was supposed to be a modest neckline became lower and lower and a deep tranche of cleavage opened up for the whole room to see.

Macey, effectively there for emotional support, involuntarily raised her eyebrows at the sight - the sheer breadth of the woman impressive on its own, but it was clear that she and May had a rapport. This boded well for the investment opportunity, which was great on its own, but she also paused to reflect on how her once somewhat ditzy savant of a roommate was now, quite literally, at the board room table making deals.

The presentation opened up another two days of deeper review, the staff from both funds openly sharing details and working through preferred approaches and specific targets. The mood remained buoyant throughout, no doubt assisted by the endless quantities of local delicacies. 

The final day of work ended with an invitation -- uniquely provided, it seemed -- for the Lipid team to come to the crown jewel of the Squamish Nation’s impressive real estate empire, the Iy̓ál̓mexw development. It was a sprawling master-planned neighbourhood of glitzy towers and parks that was one-hundred percent Indigenous owned, and one of the reasons they and their allied Nations were able to build such a large investment fund. Seven generations investing was their fundamental principle and something that, with their population’s continuingly increasing obesity, made Lipid such an attractive play. 

The whole Lipid team, feasted and socialized with their hosts over the entire weekend, May and Ta7talíya frequently seeming to compete for who could stuff themselves more at the nearly endless series of meals, snacks, tea-times, and other food-related interludes. 

May left with the stiches on yet another custom-ordered dress stretching beyond repair and promising to come back and visit later that year to update them on her work to close the other needed investment partners.

The next few months were a flurry of much of the same, with the team slowly reaching out to potential investors for the fund, vetting their interest, and lining up meetings and presentations.

On the hit list after S7ílhen was a range of other of other funds in what the team was euphemistically calling “high potential markets,” or, in other words, places where people were already fat and getting fatter.

It was almost as simple as pulling up Our World in Data and searching countries by obesity rank. Almost. Lipid went a few steps further, however, by looking at jurisdictions and communities which were fat for starters, but then segemented by those with significant pools of capital that were also looking for a community impact and, ideally, where there was a government prerogative to address their obesity “crisis.” In any perception of crisis, May and team saw opportunity.

A perfect fit in that model were the Mexican retirement funds administrators, the Administradoras de Fondos para el Retiro (AFOREs), a group of over twenty private sector funds that managed over two-hundred billion dollars for one of the fattest workforces in the world. Since 2020s Mexico and the US were neck-and neck for the title of the most obese countries in the world and that race was still being hard-fought over a decade later.

The AFOREs representatives weren’t hard to get together and in fact, despite Lipid’s protestations, a team was more than happy to come up to San Francisco to speak in person. 

And what a team: fifteen of the twenty funds sent reps, and when they all filed into the luxurious meeting space that the Lipid team had acquired for exactly this purpose, it seemed like each Mexican investor was larger than the last. 

The procession started with several beefy dark-skinned men who represented the construction and logistics sectors. They had that curious mixture of fat and muscle of men who have worked hard at some point, but have let their bodies go to pasture as they get older. A smattering of other sectors had reps large and small, most of them on the shorter side, each unintentionally dominated by Nasha as she held the door for them. 

The final few representatives to wobble in were by far the largest, the biggest of whom introduced herself as Consuella Maria de la Cruz, chief strategy officer for Mexico’s largest private nurses superannuity. Like many of her colleagues, she had that same cheerful brown skin that glistened in the light (her sweaty forehead and upper lip definitely helped there, but weren’t the only source) and projected a gregarious, welcoming presence.

The defining feature of this woman was far and away her width; despite the fact that the double-doors of the glassed-in boardroom had both been opened, she still carefully navigated her fantastically large derierre at an angle to avoid catching either of her saddlebags on the way in. Her breasts somehow managed to maintain an overall roundness but extended as far as three-feet side to side across what was theoretically her rib-cage. They were held in place with what must have been mithril or another magical material but also had the added advantage of resting atop a slab belly that started out perfectly spherical on top and, like an artist losing interest in a portrait, gradually slumped into a gigantic, uneven hang that brushed her knees with every step. Overall, she was the spitting image of the American fat liberation pioneer, the TV chef Brandy MacIntyre, just with black hair and darker skin - a fact she likely wasn’t ignorant to.

Consuella was the last to lumber into the room and was thankful to see the armless chairs that the Lipid team had custom-ordered on the train back from Vancouver.

The assembled reps took their seats around the large table. While the room had been specifically designed to host a decent number of fat, and even super-fat folks, the AFOREs team represented a step-change in difficulty. Most of them were so wide that their hips still grazed one another wherever they sat, and Consuella was effectively granted her own corner of the table due to her incredible width.

The conversation moved briskly, the fund managers having read up on the Lipid offerings and stated their interest. This wasn’t going to be a conversatio that closed anything, but from the jump, it sounded like it would get pretty damn close.

The Mexican delegation fundamentally appreciated Lipid’s focus on local wealth building and community support. As Mexico had gotten fatter and wealthier -- strangely, the two feeling more and more interrelated over time -- the need for a wide-scale retrofitting of the country’s infrastructure and services to adapt to its obese majority was long-overdue. Nurses, Consquella was quick to point out, were seeing this first hand, both as caregivers and as those in need of assistance. Like the US, Mexican nurses were among the fattest professions out in the workforce. 

Just like it had with the other investors, the plan made sense in its unfolding. Initially a few bespoke technologies and treatments to assist with obesity, and then a wider roll-out that focused on creating fat-friendly buildings, infrastructure, and communities. Mexico’s rate of urban development had only scaled up in light of climate change and increased prosperity in the late 2020s, so, before things went too much further, now was the chance to set out a new paradigm that integrated the needs of the obese from the jump, and then work backwards to address existing assets as time went on.

The pitch made sense, the revenue projections and sharing were generous, and, despite some hang-ups on the lack of specificity on the chosen technologies, on day two of the review, the Lipid team started to feel more and more confident. 

After four days of intense meetings, expansive because of the sheer number of funders at play, the conversations concluded as they had with the Squamish: we want in.

These meetings concluded with a seemingly endless feast, this time on a rooftop in the Castro district with a notable Mexican-American family that were friends of Bex’s. (They, however, naturally declined the invitation to attend). Consuella and the entire gang ate their way through some home-cooked fare, as well as a few cheeky fusion dishes that were popular with the gringos in SF. Macey would never be sure if it was the third margarita, or if she actually saw May stuff a taco inside of a burrito and eat both in two bites, but regardless, with the team of gluttons at the trough, some truly impressive calories were put away by all. 

With the Squamish interested, the AFOREs all but confirmed, the Lipid team turned their attention to the still-fattest group in the United States, African Americans.

The potential investor here stood apart from the pensions and sovereign wealth funds that they’d dealt with to date. While the US Government had never quite figured out how to provide reparations to the ancestors of slaves, under the Warnock administration there was a tremendous amount of effort put into closing the racial wealth gap. One of the mechanisms that helped was the creation of the Black Community Investment Constellation, a network of Black-owned funds that used a generous supply of “leased” T-Bills from the Fed to catalyse local investing in African American communities across the whole US. The system had really founded its feet in the last few years and was poised for its next growth phase, presaging a clear alignment to Lipid.

Every investor required a slightly different approach and the Investment Constellation was no different. Coming from San Francisco gave Lipid some baggage from the jump, even with the team’s strong pedigree. The Constellation was extremely particular about who they invested with and they were clear that anyone who wanted to work with them came to their turf, on their terms. 

Lipid was only to happy to oblige and bought three cabins on the Amtrak highspeed Sunset Unlimited route from San Diego to San Antonio, and then the Heartland Flyer to Tulsa, Oklahoma, the once and forever Black Wall Street. 

Traveling by train as a fat person provided a few unique advantages over flying: no standing in security lines, access to a personal bathroom, and a half-decent commissary. With May’s titanic belly, any confined space was now becoming a problem, so, she had a cabin where she could sleep, eat, and work for the two-day trip to Tulsa. While she had the space, the steady supply of snacks and meals she required unintentionally turned Macey into her errand-girl for a good deal of their travel time. The restaurant staff came to know her by name by dinner-time on the first day and were cracking jokes and wishing her well by the time she left. May, ever the bottomless stomach’ed workaholic, barely even batted an eye the entire time; simply ingesting food like it was her job and working away diligently while she did.

Tulsa had grown and changed a lot over the years: the second largest city in Oklahoma, as the African American community had collectivized more and more of their wealth creation, and, as remote work and housing prices caused a reshuffling of the American population, Tulsa had exploded. It was now an unabashed capital of Black culture in the US and an emergent financial hub, building on the ashes of the original Black Wall Street. 

Not least of the benefits of this renaissance was the food. The culinary scene in the city had exploded, with Bon Appetite calling it the “new capital of American culinary culture” in 2029. From Southern-style barbeque, to innumerable style jerked meats, and every type of fusion in between, the humid August air practically dripped with flavour itself.

As the team left the train for their cab to the hotel, despite a steady stream of food over the trip, May insisted on ordering a “small” menagerie of local delicacies to their hotel room while they prepared for their presentation tomorrow.

Several hours later a warzone of food wrappers and empty containers littered the floor of May’s hotel room, her and Nasha both holding their bellies as everyone closed their laptops for the evening. Macey left unphased, the sheer gluttony of her two co-workers now an accepted regularity, as much as it still left a small part of her uneasy. 

The next day, the team wobbled their way out into the world after another hearty breakfast. The trip was relatively quick, and only gave May and Nasha a few moments to cool the sweat they had accumulated between the front door of the hotel and the cab.

The Constellation’s HQ was only a few minutes away, located on Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street, the centre of “BWS” as the locals affectionately named the neighbourhood. The building was strikingly elegant, sleek contemporary lines guiding your eyes up a vertical facade that was covered in Aninkra symbols and other Pan-African identifiers of wealth and success.

Inside, the building bustled with Black people of all shapes and sizes, though the overall trend was to the heavier side. A young secretary warmly led the group upstairs to one of their main boardrooms, her breathtakingly curvy backside swaying side to side with each long, graceful step that she took.

As the group sat down at the table, a variety of small snacks were laid out on the table, and Macey was gracious enough to offer her two obese co-workers a coffee from the espresso machine in the corner. May asked for hers with a mixture of caramel and cane sugar, while Nasha opted for a mint sweetener that left Macey grimacing at the smell.

Everyone settled in at the table for a few minutes, making idle chatter, until the solid cherrywood door to the room opened again and, with a huff, a large man in a bowtie and suit walked in, patting his head with a napkin. Heavily built with a large gut and sturdy legs, he looked every part the fatcat banker that might have once defrauded his communities - Now he was their fatcat banker, May thought to herself. 

He huffed again an introduced himself as Damian, one of the “** representatives” of the Constellation’s funds. 

Following behind him was a less rotund woman, though inarguably more eye-catching. Just shorter than May, the woman who introduced herself as Angelica, was, in a word, stunning. Long braids ran down almost to her waist, which was miraculously sinched, given the size of her breasts and hips. Her truly absurd hourglass figure somehow managed to wobble and jiggle gracefully, a simply bodycon dress hugging every curve and roll that she unabashedly put on display.

The shelf that her breasts made up nearly rested fully on the table as she sat, a large folio pushed notably ahead of her so that she could actually read the bottom of the her page.

Macey silently thanked the powers that be that Azin was not here to harass or otherwise oggle the woman, but she noted that even Nasha’s eyebrows raised, though it was unclear if this was appreciation or envy. The largest person at the rable, she had already nabbed a small collection of wrapped goodies from the centre of the table and was preparing to work through them as their hosts had arrived - Macey could have sworn she saw her swallow an entire dingdong whole as they entered, lest she start speaking with her mouth full.

Damian and Angelica listened to May’s pitch statefully. They drew liberally from the snacks on the table - mostly pre-wrapped candies and small cakes - but generally stayed focused on what she was saying, occasionally taking notes or asking clarifying questions.

The team knew that this fund was one one with some of the greatest potential, at least in the United States, but, so far, no one knew which direction they were going. They were praying that favourable word from CALPers or AFOREs might help, but the Constellation remained tight-lipped and simply asked for the full team to come and present in Tulsa.

While she had a rash of successes under her belt, this reserved attitude really began to eat at May. She was confident that their pitch would make sense to Damian and Angelica, their primary interlocutors over the past few months. The various funds of the Constellation were active in Black communities across the country and many were still in the process of rebuilding social infrastructure that, in many cases, had been destroyed, damaged, or never built since the time of the second Great Migration . In many cases, these communities had existed at the economic margins of society - the people there had (and many continued to) live on fast food diets and have little to no access to the social and cultural amenities of wealthier and whiter neighbourhoods. With these constraints, these were some of the fattest communities in the United States.

Cities like Jackson, Mississipi, or Memphis, Tennessee, were phenomenally fat, distinctively poor, and overwhelmingly Black. The Constellation was bringing in grocery stores, daycares, and other services that governments had failed to, all through various mechanisms of community ownership. For exhausted and often hopeless communities, this was a godsend in every way possible. But even with these critical investments, communities where still grappling with how to manage overwhelmingly obese populations that, despite decades of work to encourage weight loss, had never broken out of a cycle of obese poverty.

Lipid felt that they could change that. Fat bodies, with the right help, could be just as, if not more, productive than thin ones. Bariatric chairs, proper air conditioning, mobility assists, and various medical interventions could all play a massive role. 

May was careful not to hit these points over the heads of people who already knew them well, but having studied the ins and outs of American obesity so thoroughly now, it was impossible for her not to become more and more animated as she laid out the possibilities.

Unlike even a few months ago, merely her gesticulations and speaking faster were now enough to raise her fattended body’s temperature to a boiling point. Sweat began to bead down from her forehead and the thin linen blouse she was wearing, tastefully long and shapeless, began to cling to her skin. The air conditioning was just audible in the background, pumping more and more cool air into the room, but emphasising just how large and over-heated the lead investor could get.

As she neared the end of her presentation, the full contours of her breasts and the top of her belly were now visible as she sweat through everything. Her breathing was starting to become more ragged as she still continued to increase her emphasis and projection, but this only exacerbated her overheating, sweaty demeanour. 

May was starting to feel dizzy now,  and as she concluded, black spots appeared in her vision. She gripped the table, her wet-skinned belly was suddenly cut in half as her fat struggled to displace itself to make room for this sudden intrusion. The combination of the heat and the sudden positional change were too much for her and May’s head lolled and her eyes fell back to look at the ceiling. 

Most of those assembled at the table were not in a position to move quickly, so, Macey was the first up to check on May. Her friend was radiating a frightening amount of heat, so, she quickly tore open her blouse to let some heat escape. Pools of sweat had gathered between her breasts and now began to trickle down her bely more freely. Next, Macey grabbed one of the Gatorades on the table, blessedly still cool, and brought it to her friend’s lips, nursing her like a wounded animal. 

The first few sips of the sugary drink actually seemed to help way more than the cooling off had, and after a good minute of lapping the drink slowly, her eyes seemed to return into focus and she could hold the bottle herself. She slugged it back suddenly and motioned for another from the middle of the table.

After a few minutes of being fawned over, May fully came back to herself and apologized profusely to her hosts.

“This is completely unprofessional, I am so, so sorry. I think it was a combination of the heat and I was having a sugar low.” 

Carefully neglected in this story, consciously for once, by May, was the fact she’d effectively already had two breakfasts before she even left the hotel, forgetting the cookies and coffees that the girls had eaten on their way to the office.

May, after months of bullishly putting every part of herself into Lipid, finally had to take stock of just how much her body had changed and how fat she had become. If missing food for two hours was enough to cause her to faint - that was a sign of something that needed her attention. To what end, she was undecided, but clearly she needed a period of reflection.

Angelica and Damian were more than happy to accept May’s apologies and became, somewhat unexpectedly, rather effusive about how good it had been and their eagerness to continue the conversation.

It was decided they would all break for lunch and return in the afternoon to continue the discussions. Damian had to excuse himself for a prior engagement, but Angelica was more than happy to tag along with the girls. 

At a local BBQ ** that blessedly had oversized bench-seats and “healthy” portion sizes,  Angelica built rapport with the group very quickly. Macey observed that Nasha’s eye was more appreciative than lustful, and that the two Black women chatted away happily about families and personal stories.

Angelica ate considerably less than Nasha, but there was a hint of competition as the larger woman occasionally swallowed huge chunks of meat from her ribs in a single gulp and seemed to taunt her to go farther. Her ludicrous curves drew stares from the servers, but otherwise she seemed relatively uncaring about how her body was viewed.

May was pensive, rather mechanically consuming a full wrack of ribs and a jug of sweat tea on her own. She engaged with Angelica formally, laughing at her jokes when appropriate, or adding small comments to the conversation building out between her, Macey, and Nasha, but otherwise was more withdrawn than she would normally be.

Fully loaded up with food after a sprawling two-hour gluttony fest that they all agreed would be branded as a “working lunch,” they all returned to Greenwood Avenue and began presentations and discussions anew. Begging a reprieve, May handed the presentation reins over to Macey and was there more in a supporting role thereafter.

They stayed in Tulsa for two more days, the conversations proving more favourable each day, Angelica and Damian returned each time more open and eager, and, thankfully for everyone, with more snacks and drinks for the table. Stifled belches and stuffed tummies abounded as they worked through the finer points of a potential agreement. 

At the end of the third day, everyone’s buttons felt tighter and May’s semi-fugue state seemed to have dissipated somewhat. As they said goodbye, Angelica’s curves seemed almost angry to be contained, another tight bodycon dress looking frighteningly thin and seethrough. Given his size, any change in Damian was harder to see, but it was likely he had a few more strained buttons, as well. 

They hadn’t fully closed with the Constellation, in the end, the pitch was strong but they needed more time to evaluate. They promised follow up in the next few months as their analysts worked through materials that Lipid would send to them.

The whole trainride home, May was withdrawn and thoughtful, her appetite even subsiding somewhat (relative to her insatiable baseline).

Only one question ran through her mind as she got closer to her home base: what am I becoming?

------

I think this is the chapter I'm most proud of so far. I love that I had the chance to add some thoughtful world-building into this that takes the team to diverse places and further builds out the world that I want this - and other - stories to take place in. The fun part of this thinking and world-building is that it draws directly on what's already out there: Indigenous people and African Americans are some of that fattest populations in North America, and their longstanding economic marginalization has made them acutely aware of the need to have unique and resilience means of building their communities' prosperity. With a slightly novel take on it, I do think the Lipid pitch could make sense where some of the health impacts of extreme obesity had been meaningfully reduced. From a more erotic perspective, it also gives me the chance to play with different body-types, locations, and overall to open up the breadth of fat bodies and ways of being.

A few specific notes:

• The Squamish language elements are all real and, I hope, reflect a way of thinking that's representative of Indigenous peoples in Canada
• The Black Wall Street positioning was, admittedly, inspired by learning about the Tulsa Massacre that destroyed what was known as Black Wall Street. I played with some of the themes that the Watchmen TV show raised about reparations and so on, but tried to position it in an admittedly more realistic manner where the Federal Government couldn't do /actual/ reparations, so, helps African Americans create investment funds for community impact. The idea that this would spark the rebuilding of Tulsa as a centre of Black culture seemed fun and not well-explored. I hope to do more in subsequent work.
• Diversity in weight gain fiction is generally pretty abysmal, so, I've tried my hardest to meaningfull bring in characters of different backgrounds and integrate that into the narrative, not only have that as set-pieces. For Nasha, as the newest character, I hope I can do that justice in subsequent chapters. Whether or not you like diversity for its own sake, I think the erotic logic should be quite clear: more diverse casts means more diverse body-types - and that's hot!

Hope you're still enjoying this! 

[generic725]

Being tall is often an entry point to fat liberation, or at the very least -- as they used to call it -- body positivity. 

Humans generally rely on personal heuristics to determine what makes sense in the world; what is “normal” and what is aberrant are contextual to what you already know (and any limitations therein). So, when someone who is five-foot-four with 28C breasts and weighs 134 pounds looks at someone who wears the same cups-size and is six inches taller, they may, somewhat reasonably, assume they weigh something similar. It’s an easy mistake to make, and, upon learning of this misperception, most people realize that height can add a considerable number of pounds to the scale, even if someone’s body type looks exactly the same as someone shorter. Smart people adapt and make fewer of those mistakes in the future

But if you’re tall, and you’ve been tall for a long time, there’s a mundane familiarity you gain from people misperceiving your size and weight. Some people become militant about it, using their height to assert their distinctiveness and, at their best, to celebrate the diversity of body types. Then there are others who simply pull inward and see this distinctiveness as a liability, something to be mitigated and minimized.

And then, finally, there are people for whom it does not become a core part of their identity at all. For whatever reason, their disposition, upbringing, or cultural context simply makes their height irrelevant or unimportant.

Despite the fact that May’s Taiwanese family were all on the average side in terms of height, and that her diminutive po po (grandmother) was always making remarks about her body and outlying height, May’s body had always been a background concern. 

She sprouted to her adult height later in life, and while she’d always been tall, it was just late enough that it didn’t leave her open to the dangers of adolescent teasing she might have faced had it come earlier. And as a fully-grown adult, while she was noticeably tall, her warm and affectionate personality was usually what people noticed about her.

As her body had begun to change and her metabolism finally gave up the ghost, it was striking to those around her just how long it took May to realize how fat she was becoming.
Macey saw her every day, blunting the full effect of seeing her change in a more dispersed sequence, and yet she was flabbergasted by the seeming ignorance of her friend.

To May’s credit, having had the lifelong experience of being misperceived for her size created space for some significant cognitive dissonance; the excuses of bloating, or having only had a marginal gain, were easy enough to justify from there. Fundamentally, though, May had always had a fairly distant relationship with her body.

The lack of a defined feminine shape probably played into this - despite her height, she’d often felt herself to be invisible to other potential partners and, furthermore, had generally had little interest in them. She’d never thought too deeply about whether or not she was ace, demisexual, or something like that, but generally, her thoughts and interests stayed fairly far away from romantic entanglements.

It had always made for an interesting contrast between her and Macey, whose perennial struggle with her weight as a young person -- even amidst a steadily fattening world -- often centred around who she was trying (and often failing) to date. May’s general lack of interest in romance, combined with a never-noticed thin privilege always left her genuinely mystified why her friend was so obsessed with her body and diet. 

Having returned home from Tulsa, May uncharacteristically decided to take a few days off, telling her staff that she’d been “burning the candle at both ends” for too long and needed some alone time for rejuvenation. In her mind, she knew that she also needed time to reflect on that question that had continued to bedevil since the last trip: what am I becoming?

Feeling like she needed a change of scenery and some privacy to answer this question, she decided to head up to Nappa Valley and booked a cottage to host this little impromptu personal retreat. She secured an accessible suite in a vineyard’s cottages, a view looking over the fields and access to a Five-star kitchen and 24-hour room service. 

Wine in hand, she watched the sunset wash its remaining light over the vineyards that seems to ebb and flow like the tide across the landscape. She let out a relaxed sigh, topping up her glass and poked at the third entree she was just wrapping up. A slight buzz on, her mind began to wander backward, poking and prodding at that question: what am I becoming?

Creeping over two hundred pounds had been easy enough. Her height allowed pounds to sneak onto her body like stowaways on a ship, slowly but surely filing into her without raising much attention. A few tight shirts and a shuffle or two with her pants had hardly raised an eyebrow.

But the warning signs had definitely been there for a long time, even when she’d been genuinely skinny. Her ever-increasing food intake might have raised the concern of a person more in touch with their body, or more attenuated to societal pressure, but for May, the ‘push’ factors for her to do so were minimal. She loved to eat; always had. Maybe it was her ADHD, creating hyperfixation for her on food whenever she had it. Maybe it was genetics. Maybe she’d just been born an outright glutton. Nothing had ever made her love of, and seemingly endless need for, food quite make sense. But since she’d been pestered her entire life about that particular habit, just like her height, eventually the comments from Macey and others started to fade to a dull white noise. 

Yeah, yeah, I’m eating healthy, don’t worry.

I know this is my second. It’s just so good! 

I’ll be fine, just give me a little bit more.

The justifications and dismissals had flowed steadily from her, especially as she settled into her early thirties and had pulled more inward -- the pressure of starting a family and getting married the last things on her mind.

May was -- and largely remained -- fundamentally contented. She loved living with her best friend. She had a great job. She loved the food she ate. What was there to worry about? 

In the lead-up to her physical last year with Dr Yasis, around the time she suspected she’d already crested three-hundred pounds, the reality of her changing body had finally started to hit home. 

Her height couldn’t hide her weight anymore; thin legs had filled out into normal ones, and then into chubby ones; her hips had flared and flared and flared into the wide, saddle-bag-saddled force of nature that could knock over anything that got in their way (and often did by acident); and that belly, oh that belly of hers.

It took the physical and her shocking weigh-in to finally discover just how dramatically her body had changed. Doubling your body weight tended to do that. The belly was impossible to miss, but May’s cognitive dissonance -- and her never-ending love of food -- was still strong enough that the weight kept piling on, despite growing misgivings. But she did slowly but surely shed the lack of interest in and connection with her own body, the simple inconveniences of overheating, ill-fitted clothes, and difficulty of navigating furniture made it impossible not to pay greater attention.

Unfamiliar, however, with the kind of body loathing that most other women had experienced all of their lives, May’s initial reaction was counterproductive, from a certain point of view:

As the full extent of her growing body really hit home to her after doubling her weight, May’s course of action was as simple as it was self-destructive. She kept eating. In fact, she ate even more.

This was, unfortunately for her, intimately related to her other core coping strategy: work. May had always loved her work. It had helped her make sense of a world that, for whatever reason, she’d often felt disconnected from. Macey was her most faithful and long-lasting connection and, her warm and bubbly demeanor aside, her life really was happily oriented inwards. She liked a brain puzzle and she liked the elegance of the numbers and strategies that her work entailed. And as her world shifted in so many unfamiliar ways, leaving behind thoughts of her body and pouring herself into her work was both a welcome and easy fix. The endless stream of snacks that she brought into that safe space of work and thought, despite their rapidly accelerating impact, was simply a necessary part of her whole coping strategy.

Months after the weigh-in, another broken office chair and now often needing to move to sit on the couch more because of her belly’s interference with her keyboard, May’s awareness again started to broaden:

With Dr Yasis’ comments (and groping) still in her mind, one day she had simply Googled “I am getting fat” with a mushy mixture of curiosity and concern. Most of the results were filled with the usual vapid navel gazing and fatphobia, something May, for all her general thickness, quickly steered away from. There was one article, however, that had jumped out to her. It was from the National Association for Fat Liberation. NAAFL had only changed its name a few years ago from NAAFA and started to adopt a more militant position on the rights of fat people. It was really starting to draw in real political and cultural attention, particularly after the conclusion of the Paewai Commission. 

The NAAFL article that stood out was written by a woman named Melanie Nakagawa and simply titled “The Right to be Fat.”

Intrigued at the linkage between two topics that were quite separate to her, May clicked through.

Nakagawa started out by talking about her own experience as a half-Japanese woman whose family had been in the United States for two generations. After internment in WWII, they’d moved inland to the US, the trauma of being torn away from the coast too much to return to. So, they’d settled in, of all places, St Louis. It was hardly a centre of East Asian culture, and so the family, eager to prove themselves and fully assimilate into American life, had adopted white American culture with the aggression that only worried immigrants can muster. They’d gotten involved in the corn industry, her grandfather “John” eventually climbing his way up to being a notable chemist with Anheuser-Busch.

Having abandoned their Japanese roots more or less entirely and settling in wide-waisted Middle America, it didn’t take long for Nakagawa’s whole family to beef up into the average weight bracket of their peers. So equalized were they with their peers and so thoroughly Americanized, it wasn’t a shock when her father Mark did the unthinkable for most Asian men and married her white mother, Michelle, herself a portly three-hundred pound plus farmer’s daughter.

As the eldest of Mark and Michelle’s three daughters, Melanie Nakagawa was expected to meet familiar expectations in terms of her grades and lifestyle. She was a model student throughout school with one possible caveat - she was fat. Not chubby, not pudgy, fat. Melanie, veering hard towards her mother’s German genetic tendencies of broadness and heft grew rapidly in her teen years to become one of the most immense students in the school. At the time of her graduating she was thudding across the stage at an impressive three-hundred and fifty pounds on her middling 5’6 frame.

“In all honesty, I felt like an echo of my grandparents just before internment: despite doing everything right to fit in, and, in the case of my weight, over-delivering on this intent, I was still a pariah to many of my peers. Many of us were fat, but I was too fat, too embroiled in the American food culture that we all -- being in the heart of American food production -- were part of.”

The isolation had caused Nakagawa to seek greener pastures. Saying goodbye to her family was hard, but the small town thinking of her community was too stifling for her. Looking out for a place that she’d be more comfortable to explore herself without bigotry and to apply her intellectual interests, she applied and was accepted to UC Berkley. Returning to California felt like a way to honour her ancestors as well as an opportunity to join a more progressive political milieu.

The article then showed the puffy figure of Nakagowa leaning against the Berkeley law faculty’s sign wearing a simple but incredibly large floral dress. Nakagawa was one of those women who carried her weight evenly but in a way that somehow implied that it couldn’t all fit -- her arms puffed out from her sides with pronounced fluffiness, the creases at her elbow almost suggesting that the fat had been layered on sequentially. Her nearly perfectly round face was smiling, her eyes forced into a slight squint with how high her bulging cheeks perched on her face. She still had a neck, though its visibility hung by a thread, mashed between the roundness of the bottom of her chin and the rising bread dough of her breasts. German bierfrau genes rebelled, and won, against whatever remaining Japanese tendencies towards litheness remained in her body, and full, sagging breasts ballooned out from her chest. The massive mammaries were straining at her dress’ hemline and actually necessitating her to wear a separate top underneath her dress to ensure that no accidents occurred. Her belly was a large, looming dome that stretched the fabric of her dress tight and suggested a slab that hung down to fully cover what was no doubt an impressive FUPA. Finally, the very bottom of her cottage cheese thighs peaked out of the bottom of her dress and melted into doughy knees, also creasing like her elbows and feet that, whatever their delicateness, had to be profoundly sturdy to support this behemoth of a woman.

Nakagawa said that this photo was probably one of the last times she smiled for the next three years. Despite the fact that America was rapidly getting fatter, the Bay Area remained a bastion of diet culture and fatphobia. Tech bros and post-Hippies were always on hand to talk about the next quick fix and to shame anyone not eager to try it. Melanie endured an unending barrage of comments about her weight, unhelpful teachers and university staff who were almost never prepared to lend a hand to support someone with her body’s needs.

As she concluded her gender studies degree three years after arriving, she’d managed to gain another solid hundred pounds, creeping her well into the low five-hundreds by this point and cementing her loathing of bureaucratic processes that never seemed to help her or any of the other students at the school.

One day, as she struggled to move through the rows of desks and grab one of the open-desked wheelchair spots in her law class, her professor, the kindest and, she admitted to her readers, cutest of those who taught her, joked:

 “Why don’t I sue the university about this inappropriate seating?” 

This simple, harmless yuck proved a catalyst to a new direction in the budding future lawyer’s life.

The next fall Nakagawa was attending the University of Chicago for her law degree and already studying precedents around weight-based discrimination. She learned about the founding of NAAFA with Bill Fabrey in New York and the discrimination his wife Joyce suffered; and then the later work of the Fat Underground, the California feminists who had written the fat liberation manifesto, where they emphatically stated the basic humanity of all fat people and set their sights on the various forces of the diet industry and size-based bigotry. Their closing call, “fat people of the world, unite!” lit a fire in her that she said burned in her to this day. 

And there was a lot to unite around, as NAAFL laid it out, fat people faced incredible amounts of stigma and, in many cases, the denial of their basic humanity because of their weight:

Fat people could be terminated or suspended from their jobs because of their weight, despite positive performance;
Fat people experienced lower wages compared to those in a “normal weight” range, with an older study suggesting about a 15% pay difference between fat and non-fat women;
Fat children were, earlier in the 2000s at least, 60% more likely to be bullied;
Higher body mass indices (BMI) significantly predicted fewer post-interview offers of admission for universities, especially for female applicants;
Almost three-quarteres of surveyed fat people reported stigmatization amongst doctors and many reported multiple instances of rude comments, biases in treatment, and otherwise;
Almost two-thirds of surveyed women in different studies reported delaying medical care for fear of judgement and stigma by their healthcare providers, again, promoting ill-health and delayed treatments. In some cases, this had sadly proven fatal.

Fast forward a few decades, Nakagawa said, and it was sadly apparent that the work of the Underground and of (now) NAAFL was still unfinished -- many of these barriers still remained. Even as American had grown fatter and fatter, finally becoming an obesity-majority nation in the late 2020s, the rights framework had simply not kept up. “Fuckery” of the courts at the same time had not made the expansion of anyone’s, particularly women’s, rights any easier, but by the time of the Paewai Commission it was clear that tectonic shifts needed to happen.

Nakagawa then turned to a more optimistic tone and laid out the litany of court cases, legislative pushes and cultural shifts that had occurred in the last decade and a half. Fat was finally on the political agenda, even if things like Paewai showed that the amount of discrimination -- in the workplace, in travel, in healthcare, and beyond -- was still deeply rooted and widespread.

As she reached her crescendo, she showed another photo of herself, this one showing her, considerably fatter, on the steps of Capitol Hill. Her immense legs were forced outwards by the fatness of her thighs, pale skin exposed to a snowy D.C. winter day, and yet her face still glistened with sweat. She wore a simple black blazer that flared out on either side of her ever-larger belly, her incredible bust resting languidly on top and creasing and twisting the fabric trying to contain it at every turn. Despite the somewhat awkward pose, Melanie was smiling widely, holding a small plaque in her chubby hands: it signified her appointment to the Department of Justice as a special advisor on “size-informed rights.” 

She said that her appointment, and dozens of others like it, signified the growing recognition that the US constitutional order and legal system had to recognise the rights of fat people. It was, she concluded, the next generation of freedoms the country needed to secure.

May could still remember when she finished reading the article, she realised she’d been holding her breath. She had released it and felt a rumble in her diaphragm, her earlier ‘snack’ making itself known again.

Though she was larger now, she could picture her body in that moment -- perhaps the first time she’d ever really seen it for what it was.

The immensity of it was shocking when you really took it in: the way her belly rounded out so aggressively from her meager breasts and hung with that meaty heaviness. When she sat, it filled the entirety of her lap; and while it was more of a slab-belly, a notable crease formed when she sat, the fat needing to redistribute itself anywhere it could fit. She could only see the outer edges of her cellulite-cratered thighs, but even the little that was visible looked like a fleshy moonscape.

Underneath her belly, her FUPA cruelly seemed to steal the growth that might have otherwise gone to her breasts or other, more desirable parts of her body. Her belly pressed down heavily on her mound, folding the outermost edges of her labia inward as and encasing her pussy in a warm, fleshy prison. It was a greater and greater representation of the ways that her growing body was changing the most basic and intimate ways that she moved through the world. The extended wand that she now used to pleasure herself really required her to do some unique stretching, a triangle of fat now forming between her hip, back-fat, and shoulder every time she twisted the wand to try and achieve orgasmic relief.

Up until this point, May’s view of her body had been highly compartmentalized. She viewed her size through the lens of whether or not she could fit into a particular space; or whether or not a meal would be sufficient for her (almost never);  or how long it would take to walk somewhere and how sweaty she’d be by the time she arrived. 

But the idea that her body could also involve questions of rights and politics hadn’t occurred to her until she read Nakagawa’s essay. It was thought provoking, to say the very least.

With her tendency towards hyperfocus, the NAAFL article was just the starting point. Over the next week, she went back and read the original Fat Underground manifesto, and then in rapid fire started to stack up names and a reading list. Like any investment opportunity, May went deep to understand the whole of a field before she made any judgements. She built out a reading list of Debora Lupton, Sonya Renee Taylor, Francies Ray White, Natalie Ingraham, Charlotte Cooper, Sabrina Strings, and Stephanie von Liebenstein.

Through her deep-dive into the world of fat studies, she learned about the debates of how fatness either emerged out of the current capitalist mindset of endless consumption, or how it reflected a combination of generic predisposition and a special kind of freedom and bodily un-encumbrance. She learned about the debates as to whether or not fat was a disability, or a public health emergency. Furthermore, she saw how these framings coincided with other forms of social marginalization and often stacked on top of one another -- particularly for fat, Black women in the United States. As the sociologist Deborah Lupton said, fat is “a bodily substance or body shape that is given meaning by complex and shifting systems of ideas, practices, emotions, material objects and interpersonal relationships,” and now May was starting to understand just how many of those shifting systems were in play.

May wasn’t really shocked that fat people faced bigotry and barriers, but the extent to which social, legal, and economic systems were predisposed (even in an obesity-majority America!) against fatness really was a genuinely confronting experience. The many conversations with Macey over the years about her body suddenly started to take on a different tenor.

Like a dog with a bone, this initial foray into trying to understand just what fat was had catalyzed a spirited need to understand that she could not let go of until she felt she fully grasped it. 

She became more reclusive, hiding away, reading obsessively. Watching hearings during the Paewai Commission; listening to fat influencers tell their stories, good and bad; even watching some fatty porn. She understood quickly that fat was highly, even fetishistically, desirable to some, but her curiosity was abstract. She kept tabs on it but the idea of entering some sort of fat or weight gain scene held no appeal to her. It was another data point, however, in her rapidly expanding understanding of how the world was getting fatter and the political and social (r)evolution that was emerging as a result.

A few weeks into her foray, her desktop research was nearing its limits. May had practically read the entire canon of the history and philosophy of fat, not to mention the last ten years of scientific and demographic research on obesity and weight gain. While it still felt incomplete, her sense of what an increasingly fatter world meant was starting to solidify. She couldn’t quite put it into words yet, but she knew what she was doing was important. 

To buttress the formal research that she’d already done, May decided that she needed to speak with people, too, who’d been on the front lines of this work. First on that list? Melanie Nakagawa.

Getting ahold of the political advocate proved difficult, primarily starting from the fact that May was a political nobody. After a few respectful emails and calls with her staff, it took more than a little leaning on her CALPers association to finally get in the door (metaphorically speaking).

A few more weeks of waiting and side-research later she was meeting with a woman who’d become both an intense curiosity and something of a hero for her.

Logging on to the video chat, May had done the uncommon and prettied herself up for the interview. She’d stuffed herself into floral cotton blouse that, while comfortable at her breasts, was tested to its absolute limits below -- where she’d carefully decided to leave the bottom third buttons fully unbuttoned, lest something untoward happen to them. She had the laptop balanced on the corner of her couch, feeling that a belly-balanced computer was somehow less professional, even though this angle was hardly flattering in the conventional sense. Her small double-chin stuck out like a sore thumb and the pinching of her arm fat into her fat sides drew in the fabric of the blouse and wetted it with sweat almost immediately.

On the other side of the screen, Melanie Nakagawa could only be described as looking immense. She was sitting in a non-descript Department of Justice office, presumably with pictures and a view behind her, but the sheer size of her prevented little else from being seen. 

There was something about seeing her in motion that hit home her size more concretely than any photo of her ever could. 

Each of her ham-hock arms was stretching the shoulder seams of a white cotton blouse similar to May’s and every little click and jostle seemed to send jiggling down the fatty tissue. As before, her supersized bust hung low and seemed to drag down the fat and skin from her shoulders, lower neck, and clavicle like a sinkhole. Despite her attempt at modesty, the shirt was stretched in every direction and both the outline of her bra -- as well as the clear indication that it no longer fit -- were directly visible under the fabric. Her boobs were so large, it was only the fact that her belly was clearly pushing them up that allowed you to understand that there was anything else to her other than the two bloated sacks of fat.

When the connection was fully established and they could hear one another, she looked up at the camera fully and you could see 

The conversation started awkwardly as May struggled to articulate the exact reason for the call. Curiosity, yes. Research, yes. Insights for CALPers? Maybe.

Fifteen minutes into some very generic questions and as Melanie prepared to sign off, May got desperate and blurted out her real reason:

“Look, I got fat, okay?”

Melanie simply raised an eyebrow and remained silent.

“I was the tall, skinny girl all my life and, while I don’t think I was, uh, ever shitty about that -- pardon my language -- I think I never got what it was like.”

Memories of her brushing past Macey’s concerns about her diet or lifestyle flashed in her mind and she grimaced internally.

“That’s pretty common, May, but if you’re looking for absolution from me, that’s not my job.”

Melanie’s cherubic face set itself in a mockery of sternness that, were it not for her tone of voice, would have been hard to take seriously.

“Lots of folks are getting fat these days. And some of those people were shitty -- and still are. I don’t have time to help you or anyone else achieve their penance.”

Chastened but unrelenting, May continued:

“No, no, I know that. I’m not looking for forgiveness. What I’m trying to say is… I want this to mean something. I don’t want to just blindly fall into a new lifestyle - I want to do something with what I have become.”

Melanie’s face softened.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I want to make a difference for the group that I am now a part of. And when I read your essay for NAAFL, I felt like you were someone who could help me understand how to do that.”

The super-fat activist pondered this for a few moments, her voluminous chest rising and falling with deep, thoughtful breaths and straining buttons already hanging on for dear life.

“You work in finance, right?”

May nodded.

“And you’re good at it?”

“Yeah, I think I am. CALPers is one of world’s largest pension plans and I just helped create one of our most successful investment strategies in the past two decades.”

Now it was Melanie’s turn to smile.

“Do you know much about the Black Panthers?”

Now the investor turned to pause and consider: “No, I can’t say I do.”

“Look up their Ten-Point Manifesto.”

She dropped a link in their chat that May clicked through to see pages of black and white photographs of Panthers out serving the community and the manifesto pastiched overtop.

She continued: 

“They were a remarkably strategic group and when they were in their hey-day, they ran health clinics, after-school daycare, and landbanks. One of the main points in their manifesto, though, was that finance was preventing Black people from ever being truly independent and prosperous.”

“What did they do about it?”

“Honestly? They tried a lot of different things, but never fully succeeded. There were attempts, including a whole movement around Black banking, but it never could fight back against the full power of white-owned banks.”

May had to interject then, feeling a little slighted unexpectedly:

“Speaking as someone in the industry, I think a lot of that has changed now. Banks are much more racially diverse now, and after the Warren Act in thirty-one, I think they’re much more contained than they’ve ever been.”

“Oh, I’m not trying to critique things right now -- although I do have critiques -- what I am saying is that Black people realized early on that money had to be part of their liberation story.”

Melanie looked somewhat wistful now and stared directly into the camera.

“Sometimes I think the same is true for fat people.”

May left that conversation with her head spinning. She and Melanie had continued for another half an hour as May began to tumble around the relationship between fat and finance. She left the conversation with reams of new reading to do, and the growing sense that she may just have found the purpose she was looking for.

Looking back on that conversation with Melanie over a year later, May could only marvel. 

She’d taken the activist’s advice to heart and had dug in with other leaders in politics, science, medicine, and technology, to understand what was actually needed by fat people, and how they could own as much of it as possible. Lipid brought all of that together in a package that, if their investor conversations were any indication, was going to go far. It was a thought that both brought her joy and left her uncertain about what would become of her next.

Comfortably taking up most of her loveseat at the vineyard, at least some of what would become of her was clear: the more she worked on Lipid, the fatter she became. It was clear that they were inextricable: she loved the work so immensely that it was impossible for her not to get sucked into day-long sprints and in turn devour ungodly amounts of calories while did it. 

May’s mobility hadn’t declined greatly in the overall sense; she could still walk and move fairly easily for someone her weight. But because of her abject lack of exercise and nonexistent cardio endurance, she got winded almost instantly and any meaningful amount of movement caused a cascade of sweat across her entire body. Where her mobility was impacted, however, was in situations like this where she needed to stand or do activity that involved her belly in any substantial way. Her massive gut now always required special attention.

Thoughts of accessible architecture and interior design vaguely tumbled through her mind as she grabbed the sides of her oversized lounge-chair and heaved herself up. Weak arms shook as she did so and an audible groan escaped her lips as she pushed herself upwards; cool air rushed underneath her ass and back, reaching parts of her body that had been almost hermetically sealed away by her fat.  

Standing, she tried to catch her breath and then a moment later began her waddle to the fridge. 

Cresting, she guessed, into the high four-hundreds these days, the sheer amount of effort each step was truly startling. She had just enough wine in her to fully inhabit her body as each shuffling step jiggled the entirety of her body. The jostling had a sway that never quite settled in one direction; first forward and back, next left to right, and thereafter who knew. She wiped a meaty arm against her already-sweaty forehead and kept moving towards her high-calorie destination.

As she’d gotten fatter, eating had taken on a fascinating new array of textures and tones. She no longer simply ate because she was hungry -- which was almost constantly -- she ate to be reflective of her moods. Concentrating on a particularly tough spreadsheet formula necessitated a particular rapid-fire bite-sized approach; going into a large staff meeting was more like a shake of some kind; hopping in to mentor an analyst could be beef jerky or something else chewy. She came to know which foods and modes of eating were best attuned to helping in any situation.

Having sat thoughtfully so long, reflecting on where she was and where she’d come from, a kind of celebratory food was in order. Something with heft and substance to it that could rest ontop of all of her other meals in some gastronomic imitation of victory. 

By the time she reached the fridge a few moments after rising, her face was already coated in a sheen of sweat. Feeling her body deeply in the moment, she reflected.

I’m losing this body, aren’t I? I can’t seem to control it or even get it to move the way I want it to anymore. 

She grimaced, leaning her forehead fully on stainless style. Her belly growled. 

I know, I know. You always get taken care of. But what about me? What am I going to do when I can’t even walk?!

As if responding, it made an angrier noise at her.

Pulling out a half a cheese cake she’d ordered last night, she jiggled over to her island. Because it was a bariatrically-sensitive unit, instead of high chairs it had a sturdy bench that extended the length of the counter. She hoisted herself up gingerly, weak arms struggling to close the gap, and feeling her ass and thighs spread dramatically outwards in all directions as she did so.

The bottle of wine was on the counter, but her glass was outside and, a spoonful of cake already in her mouth, she took a small swig from the bottle and let the warmth permeate through her body. She could only smile at herself -- bottle of wine in one hand, ** forkfull of cake in the other. Her outfit, too, was surely a sight to be seen. She’d been staying near the pool for most of the trip and so was wearing a discrete two-piece with a large linen kimono on top. Given her size, she’d never bothered with tying it off, and so now it hung fully open, each bulbuous inch of her gut now proudly on display and partially resting on the counter. She had to pivot at her waist towards the cake and wine, safely arraying her belly to the other side. 

Absent any other thoughts, and not only because of the wine, she felt truly happy.

She had built something new and unique; something she never quite expected to do on her own. But she could feel deep in her bones that she and her team were going to do something important with Lipid. That fire still burned in her after the conversation with Nakagawa. She’d meant to follow up with recently, but with he busyness of building investors, it had slipped her mind.

She made a mental note to do that. There was so much to catch-up on.

A few minutes more of reveries and cake and the warmth of the wine and the final pieces of cake had her feeling sated.

She heaved herself off the counter and was again struck by just how weak she felt in relation to her body size. At her height and weight, she was a very large person, but proportional to someone shorter, she felt she ought to have more mobility. Her legs rubbed against one another constantly and the waddle that that produced was substantial, her saddle bags always undulating in ungainly ways. But even with that and her immense belly, she still worried that her body was getting ahead of her in some meaningful way.

The sun was just tucking itself behind the mountains as she completed her too-long trek back to the patio.

In a similar spirit to that exploratory query over a year ago, she started to type in random strings of keywords related to mobility, strength, and obesity. She started a document to take notes in and quickly it began to fill up with articles and studies related to strength and obesity. As was often the case in her bariatric research, the dearth of research was striking and, in the back of her mind, further justified what Lipid was trying to do. 

Coming up for intellectual air, May noticed that the fun had fully set. It was now well into dusk and mosquitos were starting to buzz on her small patio. She closed her laptop thoughtfully and felt that familiar energy of a new project coursing through her body. 

She patted her belly thoughtfully and spoke to it aloud:
“I do like you, you know? I know it doesn’t alway seem that way, but you just took some getting used to. But I have to be honest: I think we need to do things a little differently from hereon out. Nothing drastic, don’t worry.”

May finished the last of her glass of wine and continued.

“If we’re going to keep eating like this, though -- which is my preference -- we just need to make some adjustments.”

As if to placate her belly directly, she grabbed as much of it as she could with her fingers, trying to reach its end but failed rather notably. She laughed and gave it something approximating a hug and then let go suddenly and watched the fat spread outward and jiggle for a few seconds afterwards.

All at once, she had the answer to her question: she was happy. She had purpose. And, importantly after the past few days, she had a plan.

---

Thanks for reading! You can check more of my other work on Deviantart.
 

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There’s an idea in developmental economics known as “leapfrogging.” The premise is simple: as technology advances around the world, some places are early adopters and get an initial version of a technology -- for example, landline telephones -- and iterate on it for a long period of time. Those who come later may decide to forgo the initial technology and adopt something more contemporary, like cellphones, instead of the original.

In some cases, those who adopt the newer version, the “leapfroggers,” get so far ahead of the original group that they become vastly better at something than those who even started it. The best example is often computers: started in the United Kingdom, advanced in the United States, and taken into overdrive in South Korea.

When it comes to fatness, it’s clear that America was the original innovator and inventor of a truly fat society. But while they may have been the first, they certainly weren’t the last. And one country that made the leapfrog better than almost anyone else in this category was Qatar.

A British colony until 1971, the small Gulf state became a hotbed of political and military intrigue with the first Gulf War in 1991 and then the Invasion of Iraq in 2004. Post-Arab Spring, the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, a relative moderate as far as absolute rulers went, trod very carefully. Some further liberalization was allowed, including further expansion of municipal elections and greater recognition of women’s rights, but much of this was window-dressing to maintain a fundamentally autocratic system.

At the same time as the regime tried its best to maintain the balance of power, focusing on controlling institutions through familiar connections and financial power, a vast transformation of the society was already underway:

As the country’s oil wealth boomed from the 1980s onwards, wise Emirs and their managers successively invested in their people’s comfort and placidity as a way to sidestep any meaningful political freedoms. A restful, one might even say coddled, society developed that quickly lent itself to fatness.

Earlier numbers were hard to track, but between 2003 and 2012, the number of obese or overweight adults skyrocketed from 45% to 70% of the total population. Children, even more startlingly, went from a 4.5% obesity rate in 2003, to 25% during the same period. Into the 2020s, especially post-pandemic, this had only increased, despite abortive attempts by the government to reign the population in. By the late 2020s, just as the oil economy was finally starting to falter, Qatar crossed the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world to have more than three-quarters of its population functionally obese.

This looked quite mundane at first, with people simply eating more and moving less. But over time, it started to permeate into all aspects of life:

Qatari schools began to install couches instead of formal desks, providing laptops and other implements for students instead of having to lean over to write.

The large diaspora populations, particularly those from the Indian subcontinent, often serving as the domestic help for recognised Qatari citizens, looked wildly out of place next to their bosses. Shorter, often bone-thin young Bengali women served rotund Qatari housewives, safely enclosed within what amounted to the air-conditioned arcology that Doha had become.

Scooters and other personal mobility assists became an essential part of social life, and restaurants, movie theatres, and other public venues gained larger and larger floor plans, even while their customer numbers remained largely static.

It was a wholesale social and infrastructural shift; one that in many ways suggested how the future would look for other societies that had yet to catch up to Qatar’s innovations.

In some senses, it was a miracle that a political revolution could have happened at all in such a ** society. But as the price of oil fully bottomed out and after the Emir’s subjects came to learn just how much money he spent supporting radical Islamists and, perhaps worse yet, global tax fraud, his deposition came swiftly thereafter.

Seizing a relative moment of disorganization in the Gulf, with the Saudis and many others distracted with internal affairs, a citizens coalition was able to wrest control from the royal family and send them packing. They could take whatever wasn’t nailed to the floor, but everything else was left to a nascent republic.

This also meant that the Qatar Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund with almost a trillion dollars under management, was now in the control of the people, too.

The combination of a wealth fund that large, and a country that fat, was too big of an opportunity to pass up for May and the Lipid team.

So, they hopped on a plane to Doha.

The trip to Vancouver hadn’t been easy for May (or Nasha, for that matter), but had been possible at least. Two first-class seats on the Amtrak Cascades gave each just enough room to spread out comfortably for the three hour-trip. Even to Tulsa had been OK, with the cabins-cum-staterooms having just enough room for the large women to rest comfortably. SF to Doha, however, was at least a 25-hour hour flight, forgetting any layovers, and there were very few corners to cut.

The airline industry, in addition to the scrutiny it already faced due to its role in climate change, also increasingly found itself under the gun into the late 2020s around how it treated fat people.

Flying while fat had never been comfortable, but things like the US’ Paewai Commission, the Congressional study on size-based discrimination, uncovered a truly startling range of demeaning practices:

There were weight-based ticket sales, mandatory weigh-ins prior to boarding, and the “pod” phenomenon of the cheaper airlines (though that was increasingly a relative term). Pods were used when they eliminated seats altogether and stacked people horizontally in what amounted to racks. Through all of these changes flying while fat became not just uncomfortable, but in many cases, truly impossible.

Paewai in the US, the European Union’s Azzopardi Task Force, and various other efforts around the world pushed the industry harder to rectify these concerns, and the results were varied:

Many simply couldn’t survive the cost pressures coming in from all sides, and, outside of the largest players, a massive number simply went bankrupt. Others, still in enough of a position of market dominance to invest in things like short-haul electric flights and long-haul hydrogen technologies, were able just to eke out a living, with significant government help. The help came with strings, though: redsign the planes to make them truly accessible.

May, Macey, and Nasha knew all of this -- and, eventually, planned to make some investment plays because of it -- but still had to plan their flights very carefully all the same. While they back-channeled with the Qatari Investment Authority, they waited for a connection to come up that would be suitable to their particular needs.

When they finally got on Qatar Airlines Flight DH-1256 a few months after initial conversations began, it was with wonder and appreciation that they all found their seats in first class.

The tickets had been astronomically expensive; for May and Nasha running well over $25,000 a pop, given the space and care they would need for the trip. While Macey, small by Qatari (and increasingly American) standards, got a bargain at $12,000.

As they waddled their way through the wide, welcoming aisles, Nasha’s broad form occasionally still bumping into a shoulder or seat along the way, they sank into what amounted to couches with relief. May’s belly, ever obstructionist, was within a whisper of a breath of touching the seat in front of her, filling much of the space in front of her like playdough stuffed into a box. Nasha, with her more evenly distributed fat, though with more of it, had a slightly harder time, but still eventually found a comfortable placement.

The flight attendants were still notably thin by comparison to their customers, most of them hovering in a range of chubbiness somewhere near Macey’s size.

The trip was uneventful, the only notable thing being the simply unbelievable amount of food that Macey and Nasha were able to put away. For a fifteen hour trip, they were both ate a full-sized entree every 3-4 hours. These included unique Middle Eastern - South Asian fusion dishes, like a mutton biryani that was to die for, as well as American-style cheeseburgers and fries. Each meal was so spectacular that one had to wonder what magic allowed that food to come out so fresh while flying over the Pacific Ocean. Much to her chagrin, even Macey couldn’t resist indulging more than usual, trapped in a tin-can in the sky without much to do other than watch TV and answer emails.

Knowing that they planned to go straight to their hotel before their next day of meetings, the whole team had dressed comfortably for the trip. May wore what amounted to an oversized mumu, while Nasha was wearing leggings and what seemed to have unintentionally become a crop-top. To protect her modesty, she had a thin black linen camisol, but with her incredible bust, that was always going to be virtually impossible.

Macey similarly opted for elastic, comfortable wear, ever-aware of just how much smaller she was compared to her friend and co-worker. Since working on the Lipid team, the constant eating and increasingly open celebration of obesity had indeed rubbed off on her a little. Five or ten pounds had found its way to her body, chubbing out her breasts and belly just a little further than they used to. Macey was aware of this and was monitoring it carefully; not yet freaking out (which seemed increasingly ridiculous, given where she worked) but grappling with the intersection of her job and what it meant for someone who had struggled with their weight for a lifetime.

Preferring to leave that thought alone for now, she adjusted her tights and turned to open the dossier that Nasha had prepared for the trip.

They were meeting with the Qatari Investment Authority’s head of global venture investing, Kalla Al Buainain.

Kalla was something of an archetype of the current generation of young Middle Eastern leaders, particularly female ones. She was Oxford educated, having studied abroad as the economy back home started to falter. Importantly, her father, Mansour Ajran Al Buainain, formerly the Director of the Doha Municipality, had participated in the soft coup that deposed the Emir and his family, and helped establish the transitionary government for the country. He and his colleagues had created the aiftitah, the “opening,” that Kalla, her sisters, and so many young Qatari were thrilled to participate in.

The country didn’t change overnight, but there was a great deal more space for people like Kalla to take up. And Kalla needed that space -- and then some.

Nasha had been clever in her briefing note and had done some “grey” literature research to assemble a profile of their target, drawing on her social media and a few discrete phone-calls through the American embassy to local expats who knew her. Macey could tell from the rest of the note that she was indeed the perfect target for them to speak with.

Despite having lived abroad briefly for her masters, and having grown up attending “Western” schools in Qatar, Kalla was part of the generation of Qataris who had fully and somewhat visibly embraced their fatness. As the daughter of a politically important leader, Kalla and her sisters -- Sara, Nur, and Rima -- had enjoyed a certain array of privileges their entire lives. They went to the best schools, enjoyed exotic travel, and effectively wanted for nothing. Naturally, that included food. By the time Kalla had graduated from the American School of Doha, she grown into one of the single largest pupils to ever leave the school.

It wasn’t possible to get an accurate picture of her weight from her online presence, but from her social media presence one could gain an order of magnitude sense of her size and it was readily apparent that this woman was truly huge. Flicking through the PDF, every second page contained an image or two of Kalla, interspersed with information about her investing style and decisions of late at the fund.

Starting at her graduation, one could see immediately just how immense she was even at a young age. With gigantic flaring hips that no amount of loose black fabric could hide, Kalla’s short stature pushed her fat outwards, like some lipidinous spring that was collecting energy that would oneday explode upward. In her graduation photo, her hips and shelf-ass easily extended two times as wide as her father’s comparably slim (but still portly) torso. Not to be outdone, her belly bulged outward so intensively that her graduation robes creased along her sides, showing the two thick belly rolls that likely wrapped around her entire body, Michelin-man style. Her bust was incredibly wide, as well, forming a shelf of flesh and again pulling what was supposed to a modesty-protecting black garment into something considerably more sultry. Three other fat young woman were interspersed around her and her father, each about Kalla’s height but considerably less fat. Though, judging by their relative youth, that might not be true forever.

The next photo given was a little closer and you could fully take in Kalla’s beautiful face. Had it not been for her truly shocking size, one might have expected the young woman to have been a model. Though, perhaps, that career path might (re)open to her if the world kept heading the way it seemed to be. Her hair was slightly curly, worn bouncily mid-length and framed flawless light brown skin of her face, and drew out her strong, aquiline nose, thick ruby-red lips, and what remained of a cute little chin. This beautiful face was further strengthened by load-bearing eyebrows, perfectly manicured, and assisted by subtly-applied makeup that worked to amplify what appeared to be the final remnants of her cheekbones that she was still trying to pull to the surface of a gorgeous, but clearly fat, face.

The next photo was of Kalla at Oxford and, remarkably, she was even fatter here. Forgoing some of the modesty of her Qatari garb, in a photo of her in front of one of the cathedrals on campus, she was sitting on a bench, ham-hock arms exposed to the world, belly spilling into her “lap” so strongly that it had forced her legs apart. Despite wearing a long, loose dress, either sweat or just her size were pulling it close enough to her that many creases and rolls were visible. Her bust had also clearly grown and imprints of her bra could be seen through a silk button-up.

The final photo was simply from the QIA website, focused moreso on her face and neckline, which Macey suspected had had a little air-brushing to smooth out what were likely bulges and creases from her now absolutely titanic breasts. Her face, beautiful as ever, had become even fatter. You could still just make out her neck, a sliver of her first chin still visible while two copycats jiggled beneath.

Macey was so transfixed in looking at her photographs, she realized she had not been paying close attention to Kalla’s investment strategy, her most recent purchases, or the larger team she was working with. She felt something strange looking at these photos, a glimmer of something that she couldn’t quite name -- excitement? Curiosity? Attraction?

Macey buried the thought in the back of her mind and looked over at Nasha and May.

The two gigantic women were now both asleep, surrounded by a range of wrappers and other detritus from one of their many binges on the long flight there.

The “skinny” friend shook her head and took another bite of baklava and went back to her reading.

They landed with little fanfare and were able to comfortably exit the flight to the main passenger terminal. Foresightful of fatigue and generally responsive to the needs of their immense citizens, the Qataris had a veritable army of reinforced golfcarts standing by after you passed through the gate, each ready for lumbering passengers to be carted off through security and right to the door of the train that would take them into downtown Doha.

The hotel in turn had a moving sidewalk that carried them from edge of the train station the short block and a half over to the gleaming tower they would be staying in.

Each of the Lipid team members got her own glitzy room, complete with turndown service, a personal spa treatment in the morning, and a call button for any other needs (incuding help with mobility) 24-hours a day.

The next morning they all felt relaxed, refreshed, and ready to do business. In contrast to the physical lethargy that their sizes suggested, both Nasha and May were early risers and made their way to the hotel buffet first thing. They both packed away a small feast while all three women exchanged ideas and tactics on how to ace the meeting.

The trip to the office was, again, startlingly easy for the two supersized investors and their thinner colleague. An oversized electric SUV from the QIA pulled up into the air-conditioned car-lobby and all three piled in.

The QIA offices was located in the Oreedo building, a fascinating tower blending Islamic and Western architecture, with a large twisting glass dome on top. It had a sandstone exterior with extra-insulated windows to protect from the glaring sun, and an air conditioned, glass and metal “tent” wrapped around the exterior base of the building, providing an additional layer of cooling and comfort to the tiny state’s rotund population.

Even still, as they arrived, the Americans could see benches with sweating Qataris all around them. There were men in suits or white linen thobes, and women in dresses, the shirt-dress abayas, and the occasional suit all wetted to various degrees even amidst the outright chilly air of the “tent”. The entire crowd was absurdly fat, with only the occasional domestic worker, usually a dark-skinned South Asian, to provide the only point of comparison to thinness. In a nod to how quickly the world was getting fatter, even many of the underpaid and overworked Indians and Pakistanis looked on the chubbier side. For a region that was known for enforced modesty on women, many a large bosomed Arab beauty had full displays of thick, creamy cleavage on display. Many of the men oscillated from thousand yard stares into the distance and sneaking glances at their bulging wives and passers-by.

With a nod to their host’s culture, and a pragmatic recognition of their own needs, all three Lipidians were wearing Americanized caftans that used light linens and silks to keep them from getting too sweaty. The operative word for both May and Nasha was too sweaty. Both of their sports makeup thankfully held, but a dewey covering of sweat was visible on both of their top lips and their backs were visibly wet even after sitting in a car with the AC turned down to 16C.

Blessedly, the elevators were extra wide and had benches at the back, something only the two larger women could avail themselves of, given the combined width of their hips. Macey stood awkwardly in the corner, looking at her notes, as the door opened into the all-white interiors of the QIA reception area.

Another enormous woman was operating the front desk and greeted them all in beautifully accented English as they approached. She was wearing a sheer headscarf that minimally covered beautiful dark brown skin. The woman, who introduced herself as Noor, had a high forehread and piercing caramel-brown eyes and a moon-shaped face. When she sat up, after a few moments of intense exertion, it became apparent just how large the rest of her was. Noor easily had hips that were four-feet wide across, with pendulous breasts that, seemingly like most women in Qatar, chafed at enforced modesty and made themselves known anyway. As she lead them to the boardroom, she waddled ahead of them so slowly that even May and Nasha looked at one another with an eyebrow raised.

She led them perhaps ten or fifteen feet to the main glassed-in boardroom. Inside were seated Kalla and five other men, almost all in crisp white thobes, their sizes clearly necessitating non-Western dress.

Kalla rose to greet them with an even greater labour than Noor had, and walked a few tottering steps towards her guests with a hand extended. If you looked from the tips of her fingers, up her arms encased in sleeves like sausages in casing, and up to her round face, there was not a single part of Kalla now that was not enormously, almost wrecklessly, fat.

Her Oxford graduation photo, only five years old, did not prepare Macey for just how fat she was. Like many of her photos, she wore relatively chaste diaphonous caftan, but her rolls and breasts and belly projected at all angles to turn it into something that verged on sultry. Again, Macey felt the strange tingle she’d felt on the plane as she took in the full immensity of Kalla.

The introductions were warm but there was a rushed undercurrent that permeated across the room as beads of sweat began to form on Kalla’s forehead the other Qataris looked at one another with increasingly tired, semi-grimacing smiles. Their hosts quickly gestured for everyone to take seats around the large white boardroom table. Like with the Squamish, there were no seats with arm wrests, and instead there were simple a series of very wide, padded benches that were spaced around the table equally.

Everyone sat down with smiles on their face as Noor audibly panted walking out, and a young South Asian man came in to place a large cup and saucer in front of them that had at least half a litre of sachrine sweet tea in it, with an assortment of cookies and cakes around it.

In an accent that infused posh notes of Britain and the smooth lilts of Arabic, Kalla introduced the men around the table, most of whom were picking at their cookies and merely only nodded or waved as they did so.

In turn, having caught her breath a little, May did the same for her team, and then the show began.

Just like with all the other investment targets, the pitch was oriented around the needs of Qataris as a hyper-obese society and was underlaid by the simple thesis that everyone was going to keep getting fatter. This view was far more banal to this audience than it had been to Americans who, for all the growing imensity of their own country, were still partial to the idea that their national virility depended on the ability to move quickly and independently. An outdated belief in places like Qatar, and likely more and more other places soon, too.

The discussion with the team went well after the presentation. Kalla and her team asked many thoughtful questions and were impressed with the answers from each of Lipid representatives. Macey could have sworn she even smiled at her in particular more frequently than the others.

After the first round of discussion finished, the whole Lipid team was invited to a reception with the QIA and a number of other major dignitaries. It was opened by the American Ambassador, notably, less fat than some of his Qatari colleagues, but still quite large by his home country’s standards. He had a large belly that extended outward so much that his suit jacket could not quite cover it and instead he looked like a warped ying and yang sign with his fat bisected by his white shirt and black dress pants. Other staff were much smaller, but generally the room was made up of people on the larger side, particularly the locals.

The reception was fairly **, with some awkward diplomatic remarks, and then some general milling about. May and several of the Qataris were seated around a table, throwing back canapes like they were going out of style, but also clearly animatedly talking business. Nasha was embroiled in some excited-verging-on-aggressive conversation with the Ambassador, and Kalla -- Kalla was looking directly at Macey.

A shiver ran down her spine and Macey turned involuntarily from the piercing gaze of their potential client.

The rest of the evening was uneventful and everyone returned to their hotels to prepare for the next day of discussion and negotiations.

Everything went more or less as before, with Noor again wheezily leading them back to the board room -- this time not bothering to walk all the way, just enough to be polite. Kalla and her colleagues again asked hard-nosed questions about the fund’s long-term growth strategy and what role a large sovereign wealth fund could have in what was, at least for now, a comparably small play.

May, ever masterful in her delivery of the strategy, explained their phased approach in greater detail.

The first billion the fund closed would focus on technology and service development and was expected to net comfortable but not explosive returns on the consumer market with a few products. The second phase exponentially increased the investable amount, with over ten billion envisioned to be deployed across the United States as a pilot market, retrofitting buildings and other assets to be fat-friendly. The third phase envisioned at least one-hundred billion over five-years in target markets that were getting increasingly fat, but had little know-how societally to handle it. Developing markets were the top choices, with Turkey, Brazil, and Nigeria as some of the largest opportunities, given the rapidity with which each was approaching majority-obesity status. After that, phase four was much more open, but was effectively a global play, with Lipid seeking opportunities across all markets -- China, with its uncertain political situation remained the largest question mark in all of that, but May assured everyone that the world was plenty fat enough to make them all spectacularly rich.

There was excitement in the air as the numbers, sectors, and markets were batted back and forth across the table. The conversation gradually started to shift from questions on what Lipid planned to do, towards what “we” could do. Macey smiled; this was going even better than expected.

The next three days continued more or less apace, with deper dives into different parts of the investment strategy, conversations about other preferred partners. For each of their hardest questions, May, Macey, or Nasha always had a thoughtful answer and with each honest response, the Qataris smiled more openly.

At the conclusion of a week of intense negotiations, building on months of back-and-forth leading up to the meeting, the decision was made: Kalla and her committee would raise the Lipid opportunity with their board. An initial investment of three-hundred million USD was proposed for the first year, rising to five-hundred million for the following three years and, subject to performance review, one billion at year four. After that, both the QIA’s investment and partnership with Lipid would evolve into a longer-term phase wherein money could flow more easily from one to the other.

The mood in the room as Kalla made the announcement was outright jubilant. Again, Macey could have sworn she looked right at her as her crisp, beautiful accent ennunciated words that, from a career perspective, could change her life. But Macey was thinking less and less about her career with each passing moment and instead was focused on the bulge of breast flesh that was somehow escaping Kalla’s gigantic bra and was leaving an imprint on her blouse.

That night over dinner at the hotel, May received a call that unexpectedly shook her out of her eating fuge-state. It was Kalla and she was inviting them to a party at her apartment that night. Eager to please their (hopefully) new client, she committed the whole team to be there.

Exhausted from days of intense negotiations, Macey was very unitnerested in going; Nasha was cold, too, but less so from a socializing perspective, but probably moreso from the fact she’d put away a pizza and a half at the hotel restaurant. But May was uncharacteristically firm. They were going.

All of them freshened up and were ready as the sun set and the temperature outside dropped from dangerous for human existence to simply extremely hot.

Macey had chosen a simple deep green abaya with light gold trim and a belt that she synched across her belly to enhance her waist. Below that, she simply threw on some spanks below to keep her thighs from chafing too much. With the few pounds added at home, and another few here in Qatar, she was grateful for this new purchase, but still struggled a little bit with how the dress wanted to accentuate her bust and how the belt cut into her belly. She sighed with defeat as she looked in the mirror before leaving, and grabbed a candied date on her way to the car.

May had happily acquired a full suitcase of silk and linen caftans and had opted to wear the loosest, breaziest one she could find, a black and red number with various tassels that fluttered about. Her belly once again made a mockery of any attempt at a normal fit, but she was still able look relatively modest and, for the most part, felt comfortable.

Nasha again struggled to subdue her huge breasts, always straining at her shirts and reaching towards her neck. This time she’d simply opted for a large black t-shirt and another black silk camisol with a spectacular Islamic geometric design on the interior. Below, again, for both modesty and comfort, she wore black leggings that swaddled her belly, allowing it to move (read: sway with never-ending jiggles) from side to side as she walked, the smooth fabric allowing her fupa to swish somewhat pleasantly against the very bottom of her belly.

Decked out and at varying levels of readiness to party, they all decamped for Kalla’s house.

A short drive later, they were headed up an entirely glass elevator, looking over the Katarra Cultural Village and into the bay, ancient-looking dhows and modern speedboats all dancing about on the water.

Kalla owned a large thirtieth floor apartment in an exclusive building. Like everything in Qatar, it seemed to have been built for the obese. Benches in the elevators, hand-holds everywhere, and even little kiosks with water, soda, and various candies and other snacks. May availed herself of these more than once along the way.

When they arrived at the door and an attractive and strikingly lithe South Asian woman answered the door. She was tall-ish, relative to many of her compatriots, and introduced herself as Khaleeda. She breathtakingly beautiful, with quite a dark complexion, and intense blue-green eyes. She was thin, with hints of definition in her arms and shoulders that felt wildly out of place in a country that was utterly bachnalian when it came to food and avoiding exercise.

Khaleda led them into the home, pointing out a few pieces of art on the walls as she went. There were a few traditional Bedouin pieces as well some generative work that had been created by early AI from the craze back in the early 2020s that caught everyone’s eyes and did what they were indend to do: suggest, tastefully and strategically, Kalla’s own personal wealth.

Then, the walked into living room where a small group of Qataris were all lounging on various sofas.

“Welcome, everyone, to Miss Kalla’s home. Can I get you each anything while we wait the host?”

May and Macey were already eying the spread that was laid out over the room, when a server came up to the small group with a tray of champagne and other drinks.

“Would any of you care for a drink?”

Macey was the first to voice her surprise: “I thought alcohol was illegal here.”

Khaleda smiled.

“It used to be, before the aiftitah. Now it’s allowed for consumption at home, just not in public.”

A nearby server was still standing at attention with the glasses.

Each of the women took one and nodded their head in thanks.

As they took a first sip, Khaleeda looked at her smart watch and then smiled again at them all.

“Miss Kalla is ready to see you all now.”

She gestured through the living room towards the balcony and they all began to walk at Macey and Nasha’s fairly ponderous pace.

The three women headed over to the patio where Kalla was seated somewhat alone, the rest of her entourage sitting on a separate series of couches across the outdoor patio. Even outside, the air conditioning was still on, but the shaded tent-like structure that sat overtop of the patio had been opened up and a warm breeze intermingled with the cool air coming from the various chillers. Even in America this would have seemed extravagant, but the Qataris were both wealthier than the average American and had built their society -- especially as it got fatter -- around the ability to stay cool.

As always, the incredibly fat woman was enmeshed in a variety of personal comforts and this time decided not to rise when she saw her guests. After all, she had a glass of champagne in one hand and a tray of what looked to be chocolate fritters on her left. Even with the air conditioning they were quickly growing gooier by the moment; it was unclear if it was that, or Kalla’s profound hunger that drove her to pop one into her mouth every 30-45 seconds.

She’d opted to wear something more open and much brighter than what she’d been in during their negotiations. She wore some kind of altered white and gold caftan with a slit to her knees on either side, and, while her awe-inspiring belly made it hard to tell, it looked to run to about mid-thigh. The neckline was much less conservative than anything Macey had seen her wear, and an expanse of immaculate, wobbly breast flesh jiggled each time she laughed or gesticulated. Her long black hair was swept over one shoulder, and with more of her face exposed, her blue-green eyes shone even more brightly.

Eying the fritters, but not taking one directly, May was the first to re-introduce herself and thank Kalla for the excellent week of negotiations. It had been grinding at times, but there remained a shared sense of possibility that kept everyone afloat, even on that notable five-hour review of a single contract page. Luckily the snacks had flowed freely, as they did now.

Kalla’s guests all expressed their thanks for the invitation and the productive week, and throughout the amicable chit chat Macey continued to feel like their host was watching her more intently than the others.

As the buffet table was refilled and some seats opened up, both Nasha and May excused themselves and headed back inside.

As Macey turned to leave, as well, a voice called her back:

“Miss Ableman-Martinez, do you have a minute?”

Macey interrupted her. “Please, call me Macey”

Kalla smiled more deeply.

“Of course.”

A new energy swept over the conversation now, as if the desert breeze that flowed over the immensely opulent patio had suddenly changed direction.

“I hope this isn’t too personal, but I have to admit that your place on the Lipid team doesn’t quite fit together for me, and I wanted to learn a little more about you.”

Involuntarily and unexpectedly, Macey began to sweat.

“Why do you say that? I think my credentials speak for themselves for managing work like this.”

“Oh, no, no you misunderstand -- I have no doubt of your competency. It’s more a question of your…” she looked Macey up and down “...lived experience.”

In addition to little beads of sweat slowly forcing them out of her pores, Macey now also felt deep red blush extend across her cheeks.

“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

The poshness of her accent and the practiced poise with which she spoke brought her next words out considerably more gently than they might have been in any other context.

“Arabs are sometimes known for being a little blunt,” she said, adjusting her neckline lightly, a little wave of breast flesh sneaking out more, “and I hope this isn’t too indelicate, but: you’re not particularly fat to be working for the world’s first obesity-centric investment fund.”

It was a thought that Macey had had more than once as this whole enterprise had come together. Much like the world she was working in, her own boundaries and definitions around what constituted fat and what fat meant were clearly shifting. Her own role vis-a-vis May as the fat friend had also clearly shifted, practically speaking; that had already happened when May crossed into the 200s but as she raced past double that weight, further introspection was being provoked.

Was I ever really fat, if these people were out here all along, and America was already getting as fat as May says?

It wasn’t the first time she’d asked herself this question, but particularly after this time in Qatar, the realization was dawning on her that parts of how she’d told her own story were rather myopic. Maybe she’d been fat in some absolute sense, but in relative terms, it was clear she occupied a different role than she had thought.

Kalla gave her the space for the reverie for a few moments and, after following these thoughts to their uncertain end, she looked back at her host.

“I used to be the fat one, you know.”

The immense Arab woman laughed.

“So I have heard.”

Now it was Macey’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“You know how important it is to do your homework in this business,” she said, before popping another large, particularly gooey fritter into her mouth. There was only one left on the tray now, slowly loosing any semblance of structural integrity.

She licked her fingers sensually, and then, in a rather unladylike way, went on to lick her entire palm. Her long tongue slowly moved across every skin cell, careful not to miss a single iota of chocolate.

Sweat was now building noticeably on Macey’s upper lip.

“I don’t mean to be so mysterious, but I admit I am very curious. I can think of three reasons why someone who looks like you might be involved in something like this.”

Kalla eyed the last fritter and looked back at Macey. She hesitated for a moment, and then popped it into her mouth. Strangely, she kept talking, her large cheeks jiggling slightly as she mowed her way through the chocolate and pastry heartily.

A little chocolate still on the corner of her mouth, and before she made her final swallow, she continued:

“One reason is that you are naive, and simply got caught up in something you don’t understand. But you don’t strike me as someone like that.”

“Another could be loyalty to your friend, which feels like it’s probably partly true, but doesn’t seem quite enough, either.”

Kalla downed her glass of champagne as Macey stood frozen in place.

“No, I guess -- and I’ve thought about this a lot this week -- I guess I imagine that you have a more personal reason as to why you do this work. Am I right?”

Macey stood there, truly dumbfounded. A thousand thoughts swirled in her mind: confusion, defensiveness, nervousness, and something that felt a little too close to arousal for comfort. Macey wasn’t a particularly embodied person, but she did recognise a tingle in her lady parts when it arose -- and for a variety of reasons she preferred not to interrogate, one was rising now.

On the one hand, Macey always had known she was queer, and had dated people of all genders, very sporadically, but never quite found the right person. She wasn’t a U-Hauler, and preferred to take things slow. She found a lot of other queer women overly emotional and somehow they managed to encroach in her space and men…. Well, the list of viable candidates was effectively a black page. She managed to go on the occasional date, but otherwise preferred to keep to herself for the most part, waiting to figure out just what it was that she actually wanted.

And yet…. Something about Kalla was prompting her to let her guard down, at least a little.

She gulped. “Yes, I guess so. I’m not sure what it is, honestly, but I think we’re doing something important here and I want to know what my role in that can be.”

Without skipping a beat, Kalla asked, “Do you like fat people?”

“Excuse me?”

“I meant what I said: do you like fat people? Are you repulsed by us, or attracted to us? Do we share a common humanity, or are we piteous?”

“Of course I like fat people! I am fat!” She jiggled her small belly in protest, which only seemed to amuse Kalla, who merely adjusted herself and every sloping hill and curve of her body jiggled slightly.

“Well… I used to think I was fat.”

Macey looked down at her breasts, remembering when they used to feel gigantic and yet were now mosquito bites at best when compared to her luxurious conversation partner.

“The context of fatness is changing, I get it.”

Kalla nodded appreciatively.

“When I was at Oxford, I was the fattest person that most people there had ever seen, and the UK is not exactly a thin place. But by the time I left, things were really beginning to shift. I think Azzopardi probably helped with that.”

Realizing that she was still standing while her host was on the couch, Macey sat down somewhat demurely and was able to face Kalla more directly, though the other woman’s immense ass gave her enough cushion that she now looked slightly down on the much smaller woman.

“In my culture, it was once the case that -- and is now probably returning again -- fat women were highly sought after. It was all very patriarchal, of course, a woman’s weight tied to the wealth of the father and whatnot. But now I think it’s taking on a new flavour.”

She paused for a moment to lick her lips sensously.

“Everyone is already getting larger,” she said, looking down at her belly for emphasis, “and I think more and more of us are asking what can we do to stand out in that kind of environment? As always, particularly women.”

Macey noted her use of “us” in that sentence.

You and others are asking how to stand out when everyone’s already so fat?

As if anticipating her internal query, she answered emphatically: “And I think the answer is fundamentally simple: we get fatter.”

The words hung in the air for a few moments. Kalla looked as unmoved as ever, while Macey had to wipe the sweat from her lip as she felt it starting to bead into her mouth.

“I, uh, I’m not sure I follow.”

Kalla adjusted her bulk again, fresh rippling waves spreading across her body.

She seemed to be trying to catch someone’s eyes inside, and almost instantaneously, Khaleeda was standing next to them, a tray of desserts in hand. There was a spectacularly colourful spread that she identified as Qatari luqaimat, a golden-brown deep-friend sweet dumplings, spiced with cardamom and saffron and drenched in date syrup, interspersed with baklava; next to little dishes of sago pudding, all decorated with dates and greenery.

Macey was taken aback when Khaleeda didn’t simply reach the tray out to them to sample but instead placed it carefully on a table that was, she realized, intentionally set at exactly the right height and angle for Kalla to draw from it with as minimal of exertion as possible.

Even the slightest reaching seemed to tire her, but the huge woman’s wobbling, jelly-filled arms reached the minimal distance and began to steadily pop luqaimat into her mouth, piece by piece.

Between bites, Kalla returned to her train of thought:

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Macey, I’m trying to get fatter. I want to stand out from the herd in the hopes of signalling just what a catch I know myself to be.”

She was now looking directly into Macey’s eyes, the blue-green irises practically burning a hole through her soul.

“Based on all that I’ve observed, and what we’ve been talking about, I want to know if that, and I, interest you at all.”

If Macey had been eating from the tray (which was, she noted, not anywhere near close enough for her to sample from it) she would have spat everything out in that moment.

“I… uh… I’m.. uh… I’m very flattered, but, uh…”

Kalla’s British-inflections now slipped and her voice lowered into an earthier, more purely Arabic tone.

“Of couse you are. Look at me,” she said while smiling and gesturing, “but I didn’t ask to make you tongue-tied, I asked because I get the sense that you do. And, whether or not that’s true, I wanted to say that I certainly find you attractive.”

Macey’s head was spinning. This crossed about nine thousand different moral and ethical boundaries. It could put her entire career, not to mention the success of Lipid, in jeopardy.

“I’m sorry I just --” Kalla cut her off quickly.

“Macey, give me some credit. I’ve been at this a little longer than you have, and there’s a way these things work.”

“My team and I have already made a unanimous,” she stressed that word, “recommendation to our board, and I have no say in what happens next.”

The large woman popped the last two luqaimat in her mouth and grabbed a piece of baklava for good luck.

“If we just happen to have a little interlude this evening, no one needs to know, and I promise you that nothing will interfere with the deal we’re trying to sign.”

Kalla’s arms were starting to look tired, and she harumphed as her stubby fingers struggled to fully grasp the spoon. It was a rare moment of inaccessibility for a country that otherwise seemed utterly committed to catering to the hyper-obese.

Looking on with pleading eyes, Kalla turned to Macey, the bulging sausages that were her arms sliding down her sides limply.

As if simultaneously deciding what to do next, they both looked into the house, seeing that, while they had been speaking for some time, their compatriots were all more or less caught in a different spell of reverie.

And as part of that same spell, the smaller woman inched closer a little closer to the larger woman. She wasn’t close enough to touch her yet, but even under the breezy air conditioner, the warmth off of Kalla was noticable. She had a positively decadent perfume on that wafted up sweetness in waves. Macey was beginning to see more closely just how perfectly balanced her eyes were between blue and green.

Jerkily, Macey reached over to the tray next to her, grabbed a single, large container of sago and held it up to her host.

Pausing for a moment and with a voice far more confident than she thought she could muster, asked: “Would you like some?”

Kalla’s power play persona faded suddenly; her flabby jaw made itself known again briefly as her chin and neck spasmed momentarily; her eyelids quivered enough for a moment to make her face squint; her mountainous breasts pressed up just a little bit closer to her throat. She was, as was so seldom the case, no longer in total control.

The first spoonful into her mouth was tender, gentle, and the second as well. They both moved so slowly it was as if they were caught between magnetic forces that were nearly perfectly matched. It was only when you blinked they seemed to move.

The party internally raged on. Inside, had they known anything existed outside of them for that moment, they might have noticed that things had died down considerably. There were many happy partygoers cradling full bellies, wiping red eyes, or otherwise burrowed into some carnal comfort.

May and Nasha in particular were both fully asleep on a white couch together that, miraculously, managed to hold both of them in their massive entirety. Thick fat rolls from both of them mashed together in some organic interpretation of a zipper. One of Nasha’s large, doughy dark arms lay domineeringly atop May’s pitiable breasts, only the tips of her fingers running down far enough to just begin touching the top of her massive, sagging gut.

But Kalla and Macey were even less aware of what was going on than the faded partiers. An initial bowl of sago had been followed by another, and then another. While by name it might have been permissible to take down more than one of the desserts, but simply being ‘one’ insufficiently denoted the size and scope of each of the ‘single’ desserts. They were substantial, rounded bowls, done up in geometric patterns of Islamic calligraphy, and teemed with caloric overkill.

With increasing speed and less and less desire to hide their desire for one another, Macey helped Kalla finish all four substantial bowls of sago. As the spoon hit the bottom of the last bowl, their eyes met and there was suddenly nothing the air conditioning could do to combat the heat the lust these two were generating.

As if by magic, Khaleeda appeared and reached out a limber but powerful arm to her employer and helped her stand up. It was shocking the ease with which she did so, though Macey didn’t quite register it at that moment, her horny brain in overdrive and drool pushing at the front of her lips.

Khaleeda led both women away from the party through a discrete door around the corner of the patio. Kalla, panting, moved at an impressive speed given her size and but her waddle was truly breathtaking. Each step jostled each of her asscheeks independently and there was a silent but visible clap of them together as they walked along, as each undulated in a half-circular motion. Macey followed behind both locals with eyes glazed over in a lust she would never have expected.

The gold and white caftan swayed in the breeze and with each movement of Kalla’s gigantic behind, the slits on either side exposed rippled brown flesh from the side and behind. The bulging fat of her thighs reached outward with an unruly, entrepreneurial spirit shaking with each step and, curiously, Macey could occasionally see small pieces of plastic claw-like instruments that dug into her flesh and create small dimples every few inches.

Strange, she thought, but paid it little mind otherwise.

In spite of her sheer size, Kalla still had a remarkably straight posture and did not let her body’s weight, particularly her breasts, drag her down. Her steps were slow, but confident and sure-footed and left Macey wondering just how she was so strong at her size.

The double doors to a large, opulently decorated room were opened by Khaleeda who then excused herself and the last Macey saw of her was her closing the patio doors discretely behind her.

Kalla turned after walking midway into the room, a ludicrously large bed with linen covers and innumerable colourful pillows behind her like a dais.

“Before we go any further,” Macey’s host turned to her and spoke with a sultry but firm voice, “I need to reaffirm that this is a discrete tryst. I find you very attractive, and I would like to enjoy one another’s bodies, but this can’t be more than that.”

She paused and turned to face Macey even more directly.

“Are you okay with that?”

The once-fat, now-unsure, very horny Macey considered this for a moment with a kind of detached analysis, before nodding her head wrecklessly.

Seized internally by some force of passion that she could not explain, nor contain, she walked forward to Kalla. She took care to sashay her hips and every breath she took exuded heat that the target of her passion could feel with every inch that closed between them.

When she was within inches of the subject of her desire, she locked eyes and inclined her head slightly.

“And before we go any further than that, I need you to know one more thing.”

Kalla raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Macey said with a deep, brooding voice she didn’t know she had.

“I’m in charge now.”

And then she kissed Kalla; softly at first and then more and more vigorously.

Energy flowed through and out of both of them like a nuclear plant about to go critical. Every pinprick of contact between the two sent waves of pleasure and desire through their bodies. The newly discovered sexual yearning opened something ravenous and domineering in Macey, and Kalla began to submit to each forceful touch and caress her body was subjected to.

Kissing and groping one another, they both headed over to the bed, Kalla setting the pace even as her lover steered their collective ship.

Just as they reached the edge of the mattress, Kalla gently pushed back against Macey.

“I want to show you something.”

She began unbuttoning the clasps that held her caftan (barely) together. For fingers that were so fat they each had their own hourglass shape, they were also remarkably delicate and moved with the same sulty poise of the rest of her persona that had now so enraptured Macey.

As she did so, more flesh bulged out further, despite the looseness of the garment, and as she got to the bottom of her belly, Macey saw she was wearing phenomenally beautiful forest green lingere, made with lace that had Islamic-style geometric mandalas woven into it, with a black velvet-looking harness over top. The smaller woman looked on with awe as the caftan fell away and she could see the wonder of engineering that was Kalla’s bra, which involved a series of cantilevered straps that, while cutting into breast flesh at every turn, only enhanced the sheer sumptuousness that was her body.

Her belly, even larger than May’s, which was no small feat, was so gigantic that even the expansive coverage of her bottoms could not reach her belly button, which had a slight fold above it, creating the impression of a small wink. Macey could see there were what looked like ribs woven into the sheer fabric which appeared to help hoist the mass of flesh up her, only making her body profile jut out even further.

Macey took the whole of her now-lover in and stopped with surprise as she looked at the intricate garters she was wearing. Not only were they sleekly designed like the rest of her outfit, they had the same, but larger, “ribs” interwoven into them, which spidered out across the insides of her plush underbelly and all along the interior of her thighs. Even with the hoisting of her belly, Macey could still not see her fupa, let alone the entrance to her womanhood.

“This was made by a friend of mine. I think she’s someone Lipid will want to explore working with.”

She did a slow twirl and showed that the tendrils of velvet-covered black ribbing extended all along both sides of her legs and underneath her shelf ass, crowning in the back where a small box was tastefully tucked into the back of her lingerie.

The smaller woman could only look on with wonder.

“What is this?”

“This, little one, is the future.”

She smiled that same intense, almost predatory smile that May did when she first pitched Lipid.

“This is what we call a ‘body bra,’ which is in effect a kind of exoskeleton that helps me move more freely. I won’t get into the details and kill the mood, but suffice to say it’s incredibly effective, though short-lived.”

She adjusted herself briefly and her belly bobbed happily.

“The batteries aren’t strong enough yet for long-term use, but for a night like tonight, I thought we might need a little help.”

A million questions raced through Macey’s mind, but she quickly refocused on the matter at hand:

“Okay, big girl, show me what you got.”

Now it was Kalla’s turn to blush and play coy, and she sat down on the bed with surprising grace, looking at her mistress-for-the-night with expectant Doe-eyes.

Macey walked over sat down next to her and began to gently kiss her shoulders, running one hand along Kalla’s meaty shoulders and the other underneath her breasts. She tested their heft and was struck by the incredible weight.

“This gear must really work if this is what you normally have to carry around.”

The larger woman huffed a breathless whisper:

“Wait until you can see what it can really do.”

From here, Macey fully took charge. She almost spoke to each curve and roll and bulge to direct them where she wanted them. She showered each ripple and dimple with kisses, the still-sweet perfume of Kalla occasionally wafting out of a newly exposed niche and swirling in with their building collective musk.

Kalla laid down eventually, her belly wobbling north and south like a large tub of water jostled too suddenly.

Her skin was stunningly soft and free of blemishes, despite the fact she nearly constantly sitting. Each kiss of Macey’s seemed to discover a new area to obsess over. The rolls where her side-boob met her back fat met her upper belly rolls were particularly perfect; pools of brown flesh all teeming with warmth and a growing layer of sweat.

They kissed and touched for what felt like hours, Macey always leading the way and Kalla really only responding to each touch and firm-but-gentle guidance of the smaller woman.

As their bodies became sweatier and Macey actually had to steady herself carefully with each movement, lest she slide off the now-soaked beached whale of a woman she was on top of.

Both of their brown skin glistened in the low light as they made eye contact and there was an unspoken communication between the two of them that it was time.

Macey slid down Kalla’s belly as the latter inched back a little and propped herself on pillows. She nodded to her lover to pass her her phone, and with a few keystrokes, her futuristic exoskeleton hummed slightly and her belly hoisted itself a little further, creating just enough of an opening for the smaller woman to make her way through the incredible heat of her nether regions and on to the final prize.

Despite their immensity and the structural purpose they served, the robotic panties were tastefully crotchless and allowed Macey relatively easy access.

She stuck her head into the cavern that was Kalla’s inner thighs, careful to kiss every inch of her mons venus, the fat that made it up beautifully soft and pliant. She reached and began to tongue the exterior lips of her labia, a voluminous but soft bush her constant companion. The sweat and heat were incredible; Macey’s face began to glisten.

The probing tongue kept going deeper and deeper, as Macey had to force her head further under the belly that, while supported, still pressed down on her heavily. Time again lost all meaning as her tongue finally made contact with Kalla’s clit and an immediate small jolt ran down the large woman’s body. Fat shook all around in her carven like a fleshy earthquake, but still Macey dug deeper with slow but firm movements of her tongue.

The slow tempo gradually changed and as the tension built in both of them, Macey snaked her left hand down to her own teeming nethers and began to stroke her clit. Firm brushes with her mound became increasingly animalistic and rapid as she felt Kalla’s walls tightening and an orgasm building in both of them.

Wetness and sweat mixed indiscriminately as Macey began to feel light-headed with the lack of air and the incredible heat. This only pushed her horiness further and with one final, triumphant thrust of her tongue, she felt the rumble of an orgasm build in Kalla that started with calves and feet clenching inwards, and then thighs, enveloping her in a blank of brown fat.

Kalla’s weight on her was so heavy that Macey was actually fully unable to move, trapped by her lover’s incredible immensity. It was this that got her over the finish line as soul-tearing waves of pleasure wracked her body and she could hear, only with the faintest muffle, the scream of the gorgeous woman who had her trapped.

With one final titanic roar, Kalla’s back arched enough for Macey to quickly remove her head, even as her own body continued to writhe with pleasure. She watched as this true goddess’ legs and lower back gave way and all of her immensity came crashing down in the middle of the bed - a structural noise briefly clanged in panic but was ignored entirely by both parties.

Kalla panted unendingly, the pleasure and the exertion simply too much for her. But as both of their heartbeats calmed, without speaking, the smaller woman tucked herself under the arm (and breast) of her spent lover and the two quickly fell asleep.

/////

Early the next morning, Macey walked into the hotel with sunglasses on and a Starbucks in hand. She saw May and Nasha right away, already seated at the restaurant

Her best friend and sort-of-boss, looked up at her, swallowed a gulp of her rich Arabic coffee and popped the last of a danish into her mouth before speaking.

“I get it, okay. Please just don’t make a habit of it.”

And with that, May let the night’s improprieties go and, in an act of generosity that never ceased to amaze Macey, never raised it again.

The trip back to the US was uneventful, but Macey’s head spun with the memory of what had happened between her and Kalla -- and what this discovery could mean for her still.

--------

Who boy. This is a long one, but perhaps my favourite part of the whole story so far. Be warned, this has plenty of politics, economics, and finance talk in it, but I promise the pay-off is worth it. I was really, really happy to finally give Macey the airtime she deserves in this chapter and I hope she provides an interesting and unique ** view into the whole story. Not to mention Kalla....

Something worth saying here is how much fun (and how challenging!) it was to think about what a fat-positive, hyper-obese society would look like. Big thanks to monkiedman for their continuing help and inspiration on that front, and to Alcyander for inspiration from their work! I know I have lots more to do and the next chapter will involve a bit of a fly-by of different technologies and whatnot for the majorily fat societies of the world.

Lastly, I want to say that I'm going to be travelling for the next month, so, I don't expect to be posting regularly. I may upload some other pieces I have been working on in the meantime, but I'm not sure yet. I hope you'll forgive the delays, but I'm excited to keep going. I think there are three more parts to IBJ at this point and I really like where they're headed.

Stay tuned and thanks for watching!