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Jentera

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  1. Obviously the only person that can really answer this is your wife, but I think these are the key parts: I think it's unlikely she's suddenly developed a new kink out of nowhere. More likely, she's just more open to involving herself in yours than she used to be. But that's a great thing in and of itself! I'd really encourage you to talk to her about it - not in the sense of asking her to gain (I think the answer to that is fairly likely to be no), but more like: "hey, I really love that you've been doing these things for me lately, and I want to understand what parts of this kink you like/are comfortable with, and which parts are still outside of your comfort zone". Even if she doesn't want to get any bigger, there might still be more ways you can integrate that fantasy into what you do together.
  2. Figured I'd resurrect this thread for 2023 How did last year's resolutions work out for people - and does anyone have any new ones? I'll start: I couldn't come to a decision on whether to intentionally gain or not, so I ended up coming to a compromise - eat whatever I feel like eating without beating myself up about it, and whatever happens, happens. As a consequence, my weight has been slowly creeping up over the course of the year. I don't own a scale, so I've got no clue by how much - but I've had to size up all of my jeans, and I have a little bit of a belly pooch now, for the first time in a very long time. Pretty sure this is close to the biggest I've been as an adult, and I'm honestly surprised how little I'm freaking out about it! The slow and steady approach definitely seems like the right one for me. My 2024 resolution is just to keep seeing where this road takes me, I think 😛
  3. Part 11 As we stepped into the relative warmth of the bar, Cara - the woman from the queue, and our new friend, whether we liked it or not - let out a long sigh of relief. “Fuckin’ finally,” she said, giving her chubby hands a shake to get the blood flowing again. “Swear those bouncers get slower every time. They’re gonna be sliding me through the door in a block of ice next month.” I wasn’t doing much better, massaging my frozen arms to try to get some semblance of heat back into them; this was the one part of my college nights out that I hadn’t remotely missed. Well, that and the hangovers, but that was Future Jess’ problem, not mine. The only one of us who didn’t seem phased was Sam, in his irritatingly cozy-looking sweater. I’d have to try to convince him to slut it up with me next time; break out a crop top or some short shorts - it was only fair, y’know? “So,” said the goth, clapping her now slightly less numb palms together as if to call us to attention. “Plans for the evening? Happy to fuck off if I’m third-wheeling.” I shrugged noncommittally. “I mean, this was meant to be an ‘us’ night, but it feels like a waste to be at a mixer and not… y’know, mix.” I looked to Sam, not wanting to speak for him - after all, the entire reason we’d come out was to celebrate his milestone, so it only felt right that the final say was his. A little smile told me we were on the same page. “Yeah, why not,” he said cheerily. “I barely made it through the door before you cornered me last time. Kinda forgot there were other people in the room after that.” Cara gave us a Cheshire cat grin; as much as she’d said she was happy to leave us alone, it was obvious this was the response she’d been hoping for. “In which case,” she said, pointing over her shoulder with one thumb. “Let me introduce you to Zoe - trust me, you’re gonna love her.” Something about the name ‘Zoe’ rang a bell, the same vague feeling of deja vu filling my brain as when I’d first bumped into Cara - but before I could ask her about it, she’d already started striding off into the crowd. And with some speed, too; for such a ** woman, she was deceptively agile, bobbing and weaving through the sea of people as if it were barely there. Even with the extra fitness Sam and I had built up in the pool, we were fighting to keep up; if I’d still been in the state I had been before Abi’s intervention, I’d have been left in the dust. After traversing what felt like it must have been the entire length of the club, Cara suddenly stopped in her tracks, suddenly enough to nearly make me run into her (and, milliseconds later, for me to feel Sam bump gut-first into the small of my back, still not quite accustomed to how much space he took up). For a moment, I thought our leader had finally encountered a mass of people that even she couldn’t navigate her way through, but as I looked to either side of her wide frame, I realized the obstacle wasn’t human this time - there was a velvet rope spanning the width of the room, penning us and the rest of the guests in. Or out, as the case may be - on the other side, there were several tables and booths, much like the ones we’d passed to get here, but with significantly more breathing room for the people sitting around them. That was just as well, as some of those people were truly gigantic, even with Cara’s respectable size for comparison. To the left, I could see a woman with frizzy red curls, balanced precariously atop two separate barstools, a single seat not providing enough width to support her freight train of a backside. To the right, a loud man with a bushy black beard had commandeered an entire side of a booth to himself, a massive spread of bar snacks separating him from his friends; judging by the manner in which the table was slicing into his bulging beer belly, those friends would likely be helping extract him at the end of the night. If it wasn’t for the fact that there were plenty of skinny people sitting in the forbidden zone too, I could have sworn that they’d just gone out of their way to corral the heaviest attendees into the one place. As a bartender ran over and unhooked part of the rope to let us pass, I tapped Cara on the shoulder, curiosity finally getting the better of me. “What exactly is this?” I asked, as we shuffled forward. “Some sort of VIP area?” “Yeah, pretty much,” Cara shouted over the chatter and pumping music. “Zoe always gets them to corner this part off for her friends.” There was that name again, and the same familiar ring to it. There had to be something I was missing. “Sorry, but… who exactly is this Zoe?” Rather than answering aloud, Cara simply stepped to one side, revealing the corner booth behind her. Sat behind the table was - you guessed it - yet another impressively-sized woman, this one with tanned skin, flowing blonde hair, and an outfit so pink it almost hurt to look at. To my eye, she had to be at least 400 pounds; her garishly-coloured minidress clinging tightly to each of her rippling rolls; exposed thighs covered in a thick layer of cellulite; the shape of her knees and elbows barely distinct beneath so much fat. When she spotted her black-clad friend approaching, she beamed widely, leaning forward to wave. In the process, her bosom came perilously close to spilling free, the garment clearly ten or twenty pounds past its sell-by date. I felt my face beginning to flush, reminded for the first time in a little while just how not-entirely-straight I was. It was almost as if I was coming face to face with one of the models that had graced my laptop screen as a horny teenager, and my brain didn’t quite know how to react. Wait. Oh my god. No fucking way. It finally clicked into place why the name of this woman had sounded so familiar - and judging by the way that Sam’s eyes had suddenly bugged out of his head, he’d put the pieces together too. “It is my pleasure,” said Cara, sitting down to one side of her friend, “to introduce you to the organizer of this little shindig - Zoe, aka BigGirlZo! I would ask if you were fans of hers, but judging by your faces, I think I can probably guess the answer.” Zoe reached over, balled her hand into a fist, and gave the goth a dead-arm. “Car, you know I love meeting your friends, but you gotta stop springing me on them like this - you’re gonna give someone a heart attack,” she sighed, before turning back to us. “Sorry - hope she’s not been giving you too much trouble. It’s nice to meet you both!” Cara pouted, rubbing her shoulder. “I’ll have you know I’m delightful company.” I was grateful that the other woman chipped in with a sarcastic comment, as it took about that long for me to remember who the hell I was or how to speak English. “U-uh, likewise,” I stammered, standing statue-still in front of the table. “I’m Jess. This is Sam. We’re big fans of your, uh… work.” Wait, is it weird to tell someone who makes fetish porn you’re a ‘fan’? Oh god, it probably is, isn’t it? I looked to Sam for a lifeline, but he looked like his soul had completely left his body - all he could manage was a half-hearted wave. Thankfully, it seemed like Zoe was used to people being a little starstruck; she just giggled, and gestured at the empty seats. “Come, sit with us!” — “Oh my god, that was you , Sam?” cackled Cara. It had been half an hour since she’d ambushed us with her famous friend, and now that we were all a few cocktails deep, Sam and I had finally relaxed enough to make conversation. He was halfway through sharing the story of how he’d re-met me, mere meters away from where we were currently sitting. As it turned out, he’d made a bit of an impression back then. “We were up on the balcony that night - we saw you walk in, and then you just… froze . Like a damn statue. Zoe and I had a bet going on whether you’d got the wrong address.” “Oh, how nice of you to remind me,” said Zoe, tilting her head to one side as she turned to face her friend. “So that means the next round is on you, right?” The goth pushed the other woman away, and continued on as if she hadn’t heard anything. “We did come to ask if you were okay, but by the time I got downstairs, you’d gone. Honestly, I figured you just ran straight back out the way you came.” “I nearly did,” Sam laughed sheepishly. “Especially when Jess started sprinting towards me like the Terminator.” I grinned at the memory - that was probably the fastest I’d moved since I left the track team. “You had your chance to escape, dude,” I said, reaching over and proudly patting him on the gut. “No way you can out-run me now.” It felt weird to be so open about my kink in front of total strangers; to basically say “ hey look, I made this guy fat, and it’s fucking hot, right? ” I’d spent a lifetime training myself to not let those kinds of things slip, to the point where it had been a struggle to even open up to Abi about it - and this was the same Abi who knew every one of my other darkest secrets; the same Abi who had seen me make a fool of myself in just about every conceivable way possible back in college. But there was something different about being in this room. I knew for a fact that every single person in this room got it, in a way that my ‘normal’ friends never would, and that felt… liberating. It made me wish I’d come back here sooner; that I’d treated it as a place to make friends, rather than just a place to find people to feed and fuck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam’s legs fidget in his seat; he tugged at the hem of his sweater, taking precautions against the effect that my touch had had on him. “And what a shame that is,” he said, with a bashful smile. “So, yeah - that’s how Jess and I started dating. I guess I have you to thank for that, Zoe, huh?” The enormous woman flapped her hands. “Oh, stop, you’re gonna make me blush,” she said. “We wouldn’t say no to a wedding invite, though.” “W-wedding?” Zoe just winked at him, making not-so-subtle gestures in my general direction as my boyfriend turned a deep shade of pink. Part of me wanted to leave him swinging in the breeze a little longer, but I decided to show mercy. “So, how about you two?” I asked the big women. “Did you become friends through the meetups?” “No, actually,” smiled Zoe, a nostalgic twinkle in her eye. “It was way before that - and ‘friends’ might be selling it a little short.” It took me a second to figure out what she meant by that. “Oh. Oh! So you’re…” “Big fat lesbians in luuurve ,” Cara hollered, wrapping one chunky arm around her girlfriend’s shoulder. It wasn’t clear if she meant for those adjectives to be in reference to their size, or just the magnitude of their feelings for one another. “Five years, and counting. That’s why she’s got wedding bells in her head.” Zoe rolled her eyes. “God, you’re never going to let that go, are you? It was an innocent question…” The goth grinned; clearly this was a button she’d gotten used to pressing. “You wanna tell the story? Or shall I?” “Eh, you tell it better. Plus you’ll just butt in every five seconds if I try to do it.” — Before we even got to the story of their meeting, Cara insisted, we had to understand how their paths had come to cross in the first place. And to do that, we had to go back to her high school years. (“Here we go,” snorted Zoe. “I hope you haven’t got anywhere to be - we’re gonna be here all night.”) As it turned out, Cara’s prodigious size wasn’t entirely down to her kink. Even before she’d discovered that side of herself, she’d been a fat country girl from an equally fat family, and had never been even remotely interested in changing that. Why should she? Her parents were the kindest, gentlest people she’d ever met, so clearly there wasn’t anything ‘wrong’ with being on the heavier side. If anything, she looked at her increasingly soft body as a point of pride; it meant she was more like them, and there was no way that could be a bad thing. In fact, that stubborn confidence had been what had set her on the path of the goth in the first place. When her friends finally started to shed their puppy fat, she suddenly found herself the odd one out; still getting wider while everyone else seemed to be getting taller; being called names by people she’d known since she was a baby; finding herself all alone every lunch break. But did the thought of dieting cross her mind? No, she just fell in with the rest of the misfits instead, a group of metalheads from the year above taking her under their wing. While she cringed to admit it now, the extent of her musical taste back then was mass-produced pop sung by skinny starlets; her new friends opened her eyes to an entirely different world. Who knew there were girls in metal bands? Better still, girls that looked like her, and still had the crowd eating out of the palm of their hand? Fast forward a decade, and Cara - twenty six years old, and her weight easily ten times that in pounds - had moved to the city, graduating from going to gigs to promoting them herself. Damn good at it too, she hastened to mention; local bands spoke about her with reverence, her ability to fill a room unmatched. It was at one of those small shows that Zoe finally entered the story. One of the Roxy’s bar staff, she was a fellow fat girl (by most people’s standards, at least - Cara had at least 15 pounds on her, and stacked up against the Zoe of the present day, she would have looked downright skinny). This, she’d said, was entirely down to her university meal plan; she’d noticed her jeans feeling tight by the end of her induction week, she’d had to replace her entire wardrobe at the end of her first semester, and at the rate things were going, she was pretty sure they’d have to roll her onto the stage for graduation. If you looked closely enough, you could see the signs of how quickly her body had changed, too; tiger stripes creeping up from under her arms when she reached for bottles behind the counter, faded bruises on her hips from misjudging distances. But the similarities started and ended with their bodies. In just about every other regard, the two of them were total opposites; Zoe’s hair was bleached blonde, her clothes invariably some variation on bubblegum pink, she didn’t seem to have a cynical bone in her body, and she absolutely, truly, could not stand the racket that Cara brought to her place of employment. By all rights, they shouldn’t have gotten along. But there was something about the bartender’s chirpy demeanor that always seemed to calm Cara’s pre-show jitters. Without really realizing it, shooting the shit with Zoe became part of her routine - and then something to look forward to in and of itself. The tipping point came when she arrived at the Roxy for a show, only to find some random spotty teenager staring back at her from behind the bar. For a second, she assumed the worst; that Zoe had been fired, or had quit without saying goodbye. Thankfully, it wasn’t anything quite so drastic - just a day off. But still, it was the first time their schedules hadn’t aligned, and Cara was a little shocked at how much that bummed her out. With a sigh, she resigned herself to her old pre-gig routine of pacing outside the green room - then she felt a tap on her shoulder, turning to find a beacon of bright pink amongst the black-clad crowd. Zoe had bought a ticket to the show, despite her total disinterest in whatever bands were playing that night. Clearly that disinterest was infectious, as they both missed the headliner, making out in a bathroom stall barely big enough to fit the two of them. (“Did you have to tell them that part?” groaned Zoe.) It was Zoe that introduced Cara to feedism, not long after they started dating. Her sudden explosion in size wasn’t quite as accidental as she’d made it sound; like Sam, gaining weight was something she’d fantasized about her entire life, waiting for the day she’d finally be free from her fatphobic parents. She was impressively well prepared for that day, too - locked away on the laptop she’d brought with her from home, she had everything from spreadsheets of calorie goals to recipes for gainer shakes. Her goal had been to double in size by the end of the first year; she’d hit that milestone and blown right past it, to the point where she’d actually had to force herself to slow down slightly, her body needing time to re-acclimatize to its new bulk. By the time she explained this all to Cara, their positions had flipped - now Zoe was the fat one, over three hundred pounds and loving every ounce of it. But getting that big didn’t come cheap. Pouring drinks at the Roxy had been one side hustle she’d taken up to fund her ever-increasing food bills - less temporary than she’d originally intended, thanks to her burgeoning crush - but there was no way she’d have been able to meet her ambitious goals on tips alone. Enter: BigGirlZo, her online alter-ego. Using the DSLR camera her parents had bought her for Christmas one year (back when she’d been insistent that she wanted to be a photographer), Zoe started documenting her gain in video form - and as it turned out, there was an eager audience willing to pay to watch her grow. Cara had scrolled through the videos on her profile page, and it was striking how different she had been at the start - a perfectly average girl with mousy brown hair, doing her best to push out her stomach so that it looked like there was more than a micron of fat covering it, her nervous mumbling barely audible unless you cranked the volume to the max. But with every click of the ‘next’ button, that girl began to transform. There was one video where she showed off her newly dyed hair, and a pink dress that clung to a perky ** belly, giggling shyly at how she’d never have gotten away with wearing it at home. In another, she was in a bikini a size too small, tracing the raw red stretch marks that had begun to cover her thickening thighs. As her confidence - and her body - grew, the videos became more professional, more elaborate, with Zoe acting out scenarios that her customers had requested; she woke up a hundred pounds fatter than when she went to sleep; she giddily described her parents’ horrified reaction to her sudden gain; she even met up with other models, trying on each others clothes to compare their sizes. For the second time, Cara found herself exposed to a world she’d had no idea existed, and for the second time, it intrigued her. She’d always been okay with gaining weight, viewing it almost as an inevitability, given her genetics. But watching her girlfriend luxuriate in it; take pleasure in every added inch; thrive on the attention her fattening body attained - it was like Cara had been searching for a missing puzzle piece her entire life, and Zoe had effortlessly dug it out from between the sofa cushions. They’d filmed their first video together that night, camera strategically angled to keep Cara’s face out of frame. The two of them glutted themselves on cake till they could barely move, then strained to release the overtaxed buttons on their jeans, allowing their bellies, one tanned, one ghostly pale, to spill forth. From that day forward, there was no going back for either of them. — At this point in the story, Sam’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, I bought that video back in high school,” he blurted out. After a second, he realized what he’d just admitted to - nobody was buying those things for the cinematography - and looked slightly embarrassed. Zoe burst into giggles. “Ooh, we have a connoisseur among us,” she said, clapping her hands. “Aah, man, it’s a shame you didn’t do more clips with me, Car - seriously, people loved you.” “Eh, I’d rather be behind the camera,” Cara grimaced. “The stuff we did was fun, but it felt weird having to… I don’t know, act sexy . It ain’t me. Kinda risky with the tattoos, too.” The model nodded sagely, wrapping her pillowy arms reassuringly around her partner. “That’s fine - means I get you all to myself, right?” That was another mystery solved. It wasn’t last year’s meetup I’d recognized our new goth friend from; I’d been active on feedist forums for about as long as I’d had internet and a computer, and I was almost positive I’d seen Cara’s headless body - including her distinctively decorated arms - pop up on the homepage several times. Unlike Sam, I hadn’t watched any of those videos myself, though. I was too in denial about my sexuality back then, and by the time I felt comfortable admitting to myself that I liked fat girls as well as fat guys, all traces of Cara’s presence had been wiped from the site. Honestly, that was just as well - it was weird enough having one person across the table that I’d jacked off to, let alone two. “Hey, Jess,” mused Zoe, picking the absolute worst moment to address me directly. “Have you ever considered doing that kinda thing? Taking pics, making videos?” The color drained from my face as I processed what I’d just been asked. “Wh-what? Me?” I said, tripping over my words. “No chance. I’m not even a gainer, really. This is just… uh…” “Collateral damage?” said Cara, with a smirk. She gave the roll of flab that was bulging out over her jeans a knowing squeeze. “I feel that.” Zoe just shrugged. “So? Plenty of models don’t actually gain - it’s the fantasy you’re selling. Take me, for example! I’m taking a fitness break at the minute. Well, trying to. Somebody keeps buying me sweets,” she said, as her girlfriend whistled innocently to herself. “Still…” I mumbled, looking down at the adipose orb sitting in my lap, distorting the polka-dot pattern of my dress. I hadn’t noticed until that moment just how much of an impact the last hour of drinks had had - there was about an inch more leg on show than when I’d arrived, the outfit riding upwards to make room for my bloated middle. “I don’t think anyone wants to see… this,” I said, gesturing at everything south of my neck. “You two look like you’re meant to be fat - I look like a skinny girl that’s been blown up with a bike pump.” “I demand a second opinion,” said Cara - before spinning around to Sam, who had been doing his best to stay out of her eye line. “What does Mr. Wilson think about Jess’ new figure?” His mouth opened and closed like a fish as he tried to organize his thoughts. “You don’t have to say anything,” I said, putting my hand on his and giving it a squeeze. Silence fell upon the table for a few moments, and then: “I love it,” Sam finally admitted, eliciting drunken cheers from the other two women. “I never know if I should say anything, cause I know you don’t love it, and I wanna support you with losing weight. But… you’re too hard on yourself, I think. Skinny Jess was hot, but so is Big Jess - it’s just a different kind of hot.” I felt my cheeks starting to flush, but before I could tell him to shush, Zoe entered the fray. “Elaborate, elaborate,” she sing-shouted, clapping her hands. “I don’t know,” he chuckled. “It’s like… it’s her, but turned up to eleven. Everything’s bigger, everything’s softer, everything’s just more . It sets off the unga-bunga caveman part of my brain, I think - like looking at one of those fertility idols you see in museums. Is that weird to say?” By this point, I was completely bright red, and Cara was wheezing with laughter. “I don’t know, maybe?” she said. “Weird or not, I kinda see it. It’s the hips, isn’t it?” He nodded, before turning to me with a cheeky smile. He placed his other hand on top of mine, and said, “You say no-one would want to see you like this, but I promise you - if you’d been making videos when I was younger, I’d have defaulted on my student loan by now.” That finally got a laugh out of me, despite my near-fatal embarrassment. “Dude, you nearly do that every other month anyway. That’s why I gotta bring home the bacon.” He shrugged. “It’s the thought that counts.” As the other three started to go off on a tangent about Sam’s finances, I sat quietly thinking over what they’d said to me. As nice as it was to know that my boyfriend was just as into me as he had been sixty pounds ago, it didn’t change the fact that when I looked down, the body I saw simply didn’t feel like mine . In my mind, I wasn’t a fat woman, despite the fact I’d been closing in on two hundred pounds for nearly a year - no, I was a skinny woman who had fat, the ‘real’ me still waiting to reemerge from beneath the costume. It was this disconnect that had caused me such internal turmoil at the pool with Abi, being forced to confront the fact that I really had changed, in ways that I never thought I would. It manifested in other ways, too; the countless times I’d swatted Sam’s hand away from my softer parts in bed, moving them to something that was mine ; the refusal to buy new clothes or throw away ones I’d outgrown; the fact that in the happiest year of my life, I’d avoided having my picture taken even once. I was living my entire life pretending that I didn’t exist; that I was just here to keep the real Jess’ seat warm until she came back. “I’ll do it,” I suddenly shouted, interrupting the conversation a little more vigorously than I intended. The other three turned to me, caught off guard by my outburst. “Do what?” Sam asked. It took a moment for me to get the words to come out of my mouth, having to force myself not to lose my nerve. “I wanna try… making a video. Or taking some photos, or something.” Zoe rubbed her hands together excitedly, clearly having been hoping I’d come around to the idea. “Ohoho? And why the sudden change of heart?” “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I guess I just… want to see myself through someone else’s eyes, for once. Figure it might give me an ego boost.” The model nodded knowingly. “Honestly that’s kinda why I started doing the videos, too,” she said. “I didn’t expect to make any money off them - I just wanted to hear people say ‘ yes, this is a good thing you’re doing’ , y’know? Drown out my parents’ voices from my head.” “Clearly it worked,” I snorted. “Eventually, yeah! But the first few months were rough. I wasn’t selling anything, the weight wasn’t going where I wanted it to - I came really close to giving up on the whole thing. Even though it had been my dream since I was like, god, five or something.” I was a little thrown off - that aspect hadn’t come across at all in Cara’s telling of the story. “How did you get your confidence back?” “I faked it,” she grinned. “Just kept trying to make the videos better, even though my brain was screaming at me that they were trash and I looked awful. It felt shitty, but every now and again, I’d get a notification saying someone had bought something, and they’d left a comment saying how great my belly looked, or how much they were looking forward to my next clip, and that’d give me a boost to keep going. And then one day I woke up, and I realized that hey - that fake confidence wasn’t fake any more!” “Huh. Fake it till you make it, I guess.” Her face turned a little more serious, and for a second it felt like I was sat across from Abi - albeit a version of her that was about four times the size. “Seriously - that’s the only way,” she said, wagging a chubby finger at me. “If you keep telling yourself you’re disgusting and worthless, you’re never gonna stop believing it’s true. Sometimes you just gotta lie to yourself and say: hey, I’m cool, and smart, and I have a great ass. C’mon, say it with me.” I laughed for a second - then realized she wasn’t even slightly joking. “I get it, I get it,” I said, shaking my head, but her glare continued to pierce straight through me. And then the peer-pressure began – Cara started pounding her fists on the table, gently at first, before building to a crescendo. “Say it, say it, say it!” the goth chanted over and over. Before long, Zoe had joined in too - as had my boyfriend, much to the other couple’s amusement. Et tu, Sam? I thought to myself, exhaling deeply. And then, finally, I mumbled: “i’mcooli’msmartandihaveagreatass.” “What was that?” Zoe said, cupping one hand to her ear. “I’m cool, I’m smart, and I have a great ass!” I yelled - just as the DJ decided to switch records. A sea of heads suddenly turned in my direction, and the rest of my table collapsed into laughter. I take it all back - I’m never coming here again.
  4. Totally forgot I'd been posting this here! Here's another three parts that had already gone up on DeviantArt and AO3. Part 8 CW: internalized fatphobia, self fat-shaming Thankfully, I managed to make it through the morning’s workout without any more confusing feelings bubbling to the surface. I’d love to chalk that up to my own force of will - in reality, I was just too busy trying not to drown. Embarrassing as it was to admit, swimming had never been my forte, even back when I’d been in peak physical condition. Add in the old ankle injury, and the years I’d spent being a couch potato, and it was a wonder the lifeguards didn’t have to fish me out with a net. Sam, on the other hand, was doing his best to balance things out. He was an ex-swim team captain, after all, and while his pace had been slowed somewhat by the extra sixty pounds of flab he was carrying along for the ride, his technique didn’t seem to have dulled in the slightest. As he glided gracefully to the other end of the pool, you could almost mistake him for his old skinny self. That was, until he flipped over into a backstroke, and his pale gut started poking out of the water like an island, shattering the illusion. As salty as I was at having been so thoroughly beaten, I couldn’t help but be a little impressed. Nor, as it seemed, could our would-be fitness coach. “Huh,” said Abi, treading water beside me in the shallow end. “I may have underestimated him.” “Y-you and me both,” I gasped, clinging to the steel ladder as I tried to catch my breath. “H-has… has it been an hour yet?” “You’ve got fifteen minutes left. Plenty of time to get another lap in.” “Sadist. Fiend. She-devil.” “Who was it that asked for my help again?” she grinned. “Look on the bright side - it only gets easier from here!” --- She wasn’t wrong: it did get easier. Just not anywhere near as fast as I would have liked. Those first few weeks were absolute torture - not only was I putting my sedentary body through more hard labor than it had experienced in half a decade, I still had to work full days at the office afterwards, trying desperately to keep my bleary eyes open. To my credit, I only actually fell asleep once (going to lunch with the outline of a keyboard imprinted in my forehead wasn’t something I was keen to repeat), but it was enough to make me question if the whole thing was worth it. I could hardly believe that, once upon a time, I’d put myself through this kind of exercise for fun. Slowly but surely, though, I started being rewarded for my efforts. Three laps of the pool turned into twenty; the office stairwell went from a mortal threat to a minor inconvenience; I could have even sworn I’d lost a few pounds, despite the scale’s insistence to the contrary. One thing, however, hadn’t been changing. “Jess?” shouted Abi, voice muffled by the cubicle walls. “Nearly ready?” I took a few deep breaths, and tried to steady my nerves. Not particularly successfully, but it was worth a try. No turning back now, I thought, then opened the door to the busy changing room. I immediately saw Abi’s eyebrows jolt upwards, her emotions an open book as ever, and my heart began to pound. “I’m feeling good about today,” I lied, doing my best to act like I hadn’t noticed the elephant in the room. “Think I can beat my lap time from last week?” It took the other woman a few seconds to find the words to respond. “Uh, yeah, sure, if you push yourself,” she said, before gently ushering me back into the dark stall, half closing the door behind us. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay wearing that, though?” My cheeks started to burn, and I prayed that it was dim enough that Abi wouldn’t notice. “Ugh, I know, right? I think they might have sent me the wrong size - that’s what I get for not trying it on at home, I guess…” In reality, I knew for a fact that they had sent me the wrong size - because that was exactly what I’d ordered. The thought behind it had started innocently enough (honest, don’t give me that look). After my first embarrassing experience in the changing rooms, I’d finally gone out and bought a swimming costume that fit, but after two months of workouts, that was starting to feel ever so slightly roomy. As always, money was a little tight - Sam’s post-swim appetites being a large contributing factor to that particular issue - and so I had the brilliant idea to order a size lower than I’d originally intended. Sure, it’d be a little tight at first, but with the way things were going, I’d shrink into it before long, right? As soon as the package arrived, I realized that there were a couple of problems with this plan. First of all, it wasn’t just a ‘little’ tight - I looked like an overstuffed sausage, thick rolls of fat spilling out here, there and everywhere. The bottom half wasn’t intended to be a thong, but the slightest bit of movement on my part made it look for all the world like that was what I was wearing, and I was fairly convinced that if I took too deep a breath the top half would explode, thin fabric barely keeping me contained. It didn’t matter that the size on the label was smaller; actually wearing it made me feel ten times fatter, and all the more so when I considered how easily I would have fit into something half the size even just a year or two ago. And there - there was the second problem. Because as soon as I started thinking that, the little voice in my head that had awoken on the day of that first workout came back with a vengeance. You should wear this next time, it whispered wordlessly. Show everyone what you’ve done to yourself. That had sounded like a great idea at the time (and several times later that night, while Sam was doing the dishes and I had the bed to myself), but standing there in the dingy cubicle with my old running partner, her brow furrowed with concern, I was starting to have second thoughts. “I can run and grab you a one piece from the shop, if you want,” said Abi. “It’ll make you look like a granny, but desperate times and all that.” “You’d have to get changed again - twice,” I sighed. “Our hour’ll be half gone by the time you’re done. Besides, there’s not a chance in hell they sell stuff in my size here. The girl on reception still looks at me like I’ve gotten lost every time I walk in.” Abi nodded solemnly. “Okay - do we just call it quits for today, then?” I bit my lip, and weighed the options in my mind. I could take the mulligan; pretend this whole thing never happened, and come back tomorrow with a swimsuit that didn’t make me feel like I was one stray inhale from indecent exposure. I’d get a day off working out, too; that was a nice little bonus. No matter how you looked at it, that was the sensible option. And yet, the words wouldn’t leave my mouth. I could almost feel the logical part of my brain being slowly smothered by the horny part; the part that felt faintly excited by the ridiculous situation I’d found myself in; the part that was looking forward to more raised eyebrows and hushed whispers; the part that wanted the whole world to see what a fat mess Abi’s old track rival had turned into. My eyes flitted down at the other woman’s midriff - once a mirror image of my own, give or take a little muscle that she’d always teased me for not being able to match. It was more like a funhouse mirror image now, the way that formerly-flat surface swelled outwards, dangerously close to encroaching Abi’s personal space. Thinking about the contrast almost made my knees buckle; when I was around Sam, I could almost kid myself into thinking I hadn’t gained that much, but being around an actual skinny person brought the changes into sharp relief. And oh god, speaking of Sam, he’d not seen me in this outfit yet - what was he going to think, seeing me walk out like this? The thought of his eyes looking me up and down, his face a complicated mix of lust for my thickened figure, and guilt for his role in destroying my self-control - it’d take all the self-control I had left not to fuck his brains out in the car the second we– “Hello, earth to Jess?” It was at this point I realized I’d left Abi hanging for a good twenty seconds. Oops. I had to make a decision - and the devil on my shoulder was winning. “Nah, I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince her. “As long as I can make it to and from the pool without something popping out, we’re good, right?” “Well, on your head be it,” smiled Abi. “God, Jess, I never thought I’d see you like this.” Oh my god, she’s actually trying to kill me. “What - the size of a house? Cause… yeah, me neither.” The other girl’s eyes widened as she realized how her last sentence had sounded out loud; she shook her head vigorously in denial. “No, no, that’s not what I meant at all,” she said. “I’m talking about your… I don’t know, body confidence, I guess? I remember when we did track together, you used to wear your jacket almost until the second the pistol went off - and the second you crossed the line, you ran almost as fast in the other direction to put it back on.” She wasn’t wrong; for all that I’d loved running, the tight outfits and exposed stomachs were never something I’d felt entirely comfortable with, at least on myself. The second that jacket came off, my head would fill with doubts - have I put on weight since the last race, how does my body compare with the other girls, are those guys in the crowd actually here for the love of athletics or just to get an eyeful? As the years went by, I got better at pushing the thoughts to the back of my head, but they never totally went away, and I always resented myself a little for not being strong enough to dismiss them entirely. How the hell had I gotten from that, to this? “Listen, I know you’re not entirely happy with the way you look now,” she continued. “But the fact you’re confident enough to go out and tell the world, ‘Hey, this is where I’m at, deal with it’ - that makes me really happy. Even if I am a little worried that top’s gonna take someone’s eye out.” A wave of guilt swept my depraved thoughts to one side as I listened to Abi’s innocent praise. Could you really call this confidence? I felt just as embarrassed and ashamed as I had back in my track days; the only difference between now and then was that some wires had gotten crossed with the kinky part of my brain. The compliments felt completely and utterly unearned. “It’s not that big a deal,” I mumbled. “Don’t sell yourself short,” said Abi, hands on hips. “Like, can I be totally honest? I almost cancelled our first workout - I was super bloated that day, my skin was breaking out, everything just felt wrong with my body. And then you and Sam came out giving zero fucks, and it made me feel stupid for worrying so much. It’s honestly kind of inspiring.” Another pang of guilt. In retrospect the signs had been there that she wasn’t feeling her best; the jacket and kit bag carefully placed to cover her middle, the one-piece swimsuit that had never been her style in the past, the way she’d rushed me into the pool before I could get a good look. All things straight out of our high-school playbook - and I’d noticed none of them, because I was too busy getting off on how much fatter than her I was. I’d been treating Abi as this vision of perfection; a measuring stick for how far I’d let myself go; an image of the past self that had slipped away. The thought that she could be having her own body image struggles had never even crossed my mind, and that made me feel like absolute garbage. “Listen,” I sighed, sitting down on the creaky plastic bench, wincing slightly as the bikini bottoms threatened to slice me in half. “I need to be honest with you about something.” Part 9 “Oh,” said Abi. “ Ooooooooh. ” Nearly half an hour had passed, but neither of us had set foot outside the changing room yet. I’d spent most of that time spilling my guts, about how Sam and I had met; about how being with him had made my weight skyrocket; about how even my attempts to get fit had been absorbed by my kink. Everything was finally out in the open - not that it had made me feel much better. “So… yeah,” I sighed, eyes firmly fixed on the floor. “If I’ve been acting kinda weird lately, that’s why, and I’m sorry.” “I have to ask… was that why you wanted me to work out with you?” asked Abi, a slight tinge of hurt in her voice. “So you could make me a part of… whatever this is?” I buried my face in my hands and groaned. “No! No. If I’d known I’d be feeling like this, there’s no chance in hell I would have gotten you involved in the first place. I genuinely wanted your help. I still do.” “Promise?” “Promise.” Abi stood deep in thought for a moment, the background noise of the locker room suddenly seeming deafening as I waited for her to pass judgment - or more likely, to storm out and never come back. But she simply shrugged, and plopped herself down on the bench (at least what little space of it remained beside me). “Okay, I believe you,” she said, her expression warming again. “That was the only part that really shocked me, to be honest. The rest of it, I was just kinda like… yeah, that tracks .” “What?!” I gasped, a little too loudly for the cramped space. “You knew?” “Not for certain! I just had my suspicions,” she smiled. “Whenever you dated someone back in college, they always looked a little more fluffy by the time you broke it off. A lot more fluffy, in some cases. Remember Greg?” How could I forget - until I’d met Sam, he was the closest thing I’d had to a genuine feedee. He was a timid little thing straight out of Catholic school, always hiding in the corner of our dorm parties, looking faintly terrified of the excess and debauchery going on around him. Normally, I wouldn’t have given him a second look, but there was something about him that intrigued me - namely, the way he never seemed to be able to take his eyes off the buffet, despite never once taking a plate for himself. One night, several beers deep, I’d all but collared the poor guy and insisted he eat something before he wasted away. He duly obliged, if only to get the scary ** woman to leave him alone. And then, without prompting, he went back for seconds - then thirds, then fourths and fifths and sixths, an entire upbringing’s worth of repression suddenly finding a release. We had sex in Abi’s bed that night - sorry, Abi - and the whole time, he couldn’t take his eyes off his own distended gut, groaning in a strange mixture of discomfort, pleasure and shame. Our fling only lasted a couple of months (and a solid thirty pounds) before he broke it off, saying that I, quite frankly, terrified him, and that if we kept dating he’d probably end up on one of those trashy reality shows about people too fat to leave the house. In all my youthful maturity, I told him to go fuck himself sideways, and that he was always going to end up fat, with or without me. This argument had taken place right in the middle of the college canteen. In front of Abi. And about thirty freshmen. And several professors. …Maybe I wasn’t as subtle as I thought I was. “Okay, point taken,” I snorted. “For the record, I saw him and his wife on Facebook the other day - hundred pounds of ‘domestic bliss’ on each of them. Vindication!” That got a giggle from Abi, and for a second I could almost forget we were having, quite possibly, the most mortifying conversation of my life. “Are you sure you were right? Or did you just warp that poor kid’s brain for life?” “Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to. The guy liked being fat, he just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.” “Kinda like you?” That brought me crashing back down to earth. “A-absolutely nothing like me,” I spluttered, crossing my arms above my belly, as if hiding it from view would make it go away. “I never asked for any of this!” “Sure, but clearly part of you likes it,” Abi shrugged. “Why would you be getting so excited by nearly popping out of your bathing suit, otherwise?” I leaned back, a sharp intake of breath as my back made contact with the cold plastic wall of the cubicle, and gave it some proper thought. What was it about those moments where I felt so exposed, so embarrassed, so huge , that flipped the switch in my brain? It couldn’t just be the shame that was doing it - there was plenty of that back when I was running, and I never felt so much as a tingle. And it couldn’t just be the extra weight, either - like boiling a frog, I didn’t usually notice how much bigger I’d gotten until something drew it to my attention, and the reaction was pretty much always one of irritation rather than excitement. This was in stark contrast to Sam, who’d told me recently he’d started avoiding the stairs at work - not because of his fitness, but because all the extra jiggling meant that he’d be rock hard by the time he got to his floor. I loved hearing these things from him, of course, but I couldn’t really relate to them; to being constantly horny simply because I was existing in a fat body. No, whatever it was that was turning me on, it existed in the middle of that venn diagram; a specific blend of being hyper-aware of how fat I’d gotten, and being in a position where it was impossible to hide it, from myself or anyone else. The feeling gave me a slight touch of deja vu, which took me a moment to pinpoint. “How do I put this…” I started, grasping for the right words to use. “Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you suddenly realize: hey, I’m having a nightmare right now ?” “All the damn time,” Abi giggled. “I think I punched my coach’s head clean off in the last one.” “It’s weird, right? Cause like… you’re still in the nightmare, and it’s still fucked up, but suddenly you have control of what’s happening, and somehow, that makes it less scary.” “Right.” “ That’s what this is like - I’m living in one of College Jess’s nightmares. I’m trying to exercise, but suddenly I’m fat and out of shape, and none of my gear fits, and everyone’s going to see and judge . I was always convinced that if I ever found myself in this situation, I’d literally just die on the spot. The Athletics Police would show up and shoot me, or the entire fucking world would suddenly explode, or something like that.” Abi grinned, starting to pick up what I was putting down. “But it didn’t.” “But it didn’t! So now I just feel like I’m, I don’t know, getting away with something. Like I’ve robbed a bank and walked out the front door. And I keep pushing my luck, thinking - surely this time, I’m going to get punished for it, right? But I don’t, and that feels… kinda exciting.” “Okay, well, first of all - we are never going to the bank together ever again,” the other girl laughed, giving my shoulder a gentle shove. “I’m not letting you drag me into a Michael Mann film. But honestly, I think you’ve cracked it - you’ve been building up this doomsday scenario in your head, thinking it’d be the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Now that it’s come true, your brain is going: see, this isn’t so bad, is it? ” “My brain’s also telling me I look like an absolute hog - don’t know about you, but I’d call that mixed messages.” “Well, duh. You’ve spent a decade telling yourself that’s how you’re supposed to feel when you put on weight - it’s no wonder you’re all muddled up. Would you tell Sam he looks like a hog?” I pictured the puppy-dog eyes that would result from that, and instinctively recoiled. “What?! No, of course not. Unless he asked me to, I guess, but I don’t think that’s his thing.” “Right. If I got fat, would you say I looked like a hog?” That sent my mind tumbling back to Abi’s ‘thick season’, as she’d put it, when she’d seemingly manifested an hourglass figure out of thin air. The less I dwelled on that, the better. “Okay, okay, I get it,” I groaned. “Look, I know it’s a double standard - but it’s just different when you’re the one getting fat. Are you telling me you’d be totally fine if you woke up tomorrow looking like me?” “Hell no, I’d freak out,” Abi laughed. “And I think my coach would have a heart attack. But that doesn’t make any of what I’m saying wrong. You gotta show your own body the same kindness you show other peoples’, Jess. If I woke up fat tomorrow, I hope you’d be telling me the same thing.” I sighed, not really having a rebuttal to that. It was true; take any part of this body and put it on another person, and I’d have found it perfectly acceptable - attractive, even. Why was it so hard to see myself through those same eyes? I almost found myself envying Sam a little; for all that he worried about how other people would see him, he never seemed to have an unkind word about himself, having long since shed any doubts about whether being fat was right for him. “Okay. For as long as I’m like this, I’ll try not to beat myself up about it,” I said, quietly. “Thanks, Abi. Thought I was getting a personal trainer, not a therapist.” “I am a woman of many talents, I’ll have you know,” she smiled, bouncing to her feet. “You can pay me back by working your ass off for what little’s left of this session. And by buying a swimsuit that doesn’t need psycho-analyzing for the next one.” “Deal,” I grinned, heaving myself upright. — As the two of us strolled out to the pool - very slowly, very carefully, to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions - I spotted Sam in the water. Clearly, he spotted me too, as he immediately lost his rhythm, nearly sinking beneath the surface. I squatted down at the end of his lane as he doggy paddled his way to meet me. “Wondered what was taking you so long,” he said, shoving his goggles up onto his forehead. “Was it, uh… the, uh…” “The swimsuit?” I snorted, looking down at myself as if I’d only just noticed it. “Yeah, it took a team of forty men to load me into it.” “Lucky guys.” I playfully bonked him on the head with one fist, then leaned in closer to whisper in his ear. “Listen, uh… don’t get mad, but… I kinda had to tell Abi about, y’know. Us.” Sam’s eyes widened, and he sunk down into the water a bit, as if to hide. “Oh,” he grimaced. “Did the, uh, thing happen again?” “Dude, look at what I’m wearing. It’s the worst it’s ever been.” “Is she… cool with it? With us?” Suddenly, we were both hit with a splash as Abi leapt into the water beside us, nearly making me fall head first into the water. “Yes, I’m cool with it,” she said, grinning as she surfaced. “You do you, man - I’ve heard weirder. Hell, I’ve dated weirder.” My boyfriend’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly as he tried to process the sensory overload that he was currently being subjected to. It was an expression I’d seen a million times before, but in the current context, I couldn’t help but feel it made him look like some kind of very fat fish. I made a mental note to tease him for that, when the dust settled a little. When the gears finally stopped turning in his brain, he settled on: “Thank… you?" She gave him a cheerful nod. “I’m guessing you’ve only been coming to keep up appearances, right? Don’t force yourself; I know this is probably, y’know, counterproductive .” “...That was the reason, at first,” said Sam, bashfully. “But it actually kinda made me realize how much I missed swimming. Nice to do it for fun, for once. I will skip a few laps, though, if you’re offering me an out!” “I think you’ve earned it,” she smiled - before spinning round to face me, her smile suddenly appearing slightly shark-like. “You, on the other hand, need to make up for lost time. Chop chop, in you get!” “Ugh, there’s only five minutes left! Can’t we just call this one a bust!” “Sam, grab a leg and help me drag her in.” Part 10 In the weeks following our little impromptu therapy session, Abi’s curiosity was unleashed. She’d always been the nosy sort, and after a decade of harbored suspicions about me being a kinky weirdo, this was her golden opportunity to finally pepper me with questions. How long had I known I was into it; how did I find out Sam was the same; had any of my old boyfriends been into it; and so on, and so forth. At first, it was a little annoying - not least due to the fact her texts seemed to invariably pop up at the worst possible moment, leaving me scrambling to swipe the notification away before someone like my boss could see. But there was something comforting about the way she’d react to my answers, always so genuine and non-judgemental, no matter how bizarre they’d felt to type. It sort of made me wish I’d opened up to her about it years earlier, if only so she could have saved me from some of the awful relationship decisions I’d made back in college. Abigail Harding: Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one before Jessica Yates: Ha! Like anyone could stop you once you’ve gone Columbo mode. Abigail Harding: Fine, don’t then 😛 Abigail Harding: How does you and Sam’s thing like… work? Abigail Harding: Like, does he have a goal, or something? A simple question, with a much less simple answer. Sam did have a goal, but it wasn’t a number on the scale; in fact, he hadn’t stepped on one for months, a few discouraging backslides early in his gain having convinced him to just go by feel instead of stressing about statistics. Nowadays, our bathroom scales lived in the closet, only coming out when I wanted to check on my own gym progress - or lack thereof, as the case often was. That being said, Sam still wanted something to work towards, a goal to keep him motivated through his sisyphean task. And that was where The Shirt came in. The Shirt was an old relic from Sam’s halcyon days as swim team captain. The last year before graduation, they’d attended a meet in France, his first time overseas, and waiting for them at the hotel were cute little goody bags, filled with cheap mementos. A few weeks prior, the coach had gotten them all to note down their sizes for the gift’s centerpiece, a shirt with the event’s logo and the names of the schools involved; Sam had begrudgingly wrote down the letters ‘XS’, dreaming of a day when the thought of him wearing something so small would seem comical. He never did find out whether he’d made a Freudian slip while writing, or if there had been a mistake in the order, but the end result was the same: raucous laughter from his teammates as he pulled out an extra large. It looked more like a poncho when he tried it on; not a bad thing, as if the hem hadn’t hung so low, it would have been obvious just how turned on he was by the thought of filling the shirt out, letting his slender figure expand until it was skin-tight and bursting at the seams. He told everyone he was headed back to his room to change - not a lie, but definitely not the only reason he was trying to find some privacy. A few minutes later, flushed pink and more than a little embarrassed now he’d come to his senses, he’d stuffed the shirt into his suitcase, telling himself he’d swap it after the trip. Of course, he never did. Either out of nostalgia or out of laziness, it had sat in his closet for years, moth bitten and forgotten. It wasn’t until years later, when we moved in together and did a bit of spring cleaning, that the shirt saw the light of day once more. Sam had chuckled as he told the story, then moved to place it in the box of clothes for charity. I stopped him, the kernel of an idea beginning to form in my mind. It was then that the shirt finally became The Shirt - a physical reminder of what it was that the two of us were aiming towards. Someday, I promised him, it’d fit like a glove; and then, if he still wasn’t satisfied, we’d make it not fit, in an entirely different way to how he remembered. Abigail Harding: That’s kinda romantic, tbh Jessica Yates: Aha! Am I finally converting you to the one true path 😛 Abigail Harding: Kinda wish I was into chubby guys, it’d make dating easier Abigail Harding: But nope - gimme dat beefcake I snorted, recalling how many of Abi’s college ‘beefcakes’ were now firmly in the dad-bod zone, now that they didn’t have track to keep them disciplined. Jessica Yates: One day you will see the light Abigail Harding: Yeah, yeah Abigail Harding: So how’s he getting on? With the shirt Jessica Yates: You mean The Shirt, thank you very much Jessica Yates: And I will have an answer for you in three hours and twenty two minutes Jessica Yates: Not that I’m counting I placed my phone down on the desk, and went back to watching the office clock tick. It was the first of October, almost a year to the day since I’d reconnected with Sam. We didn’t actually count our anniversary until November, when we’d both agreed we meant more to each other than ex-classmates-with-benefits; but still, it was a milestone, and we’d made plans to see how his progress was coming along that evening. Last time we’d checked, he’d been oh-so-tantalizingly close, the shirt merely looking loose, rather than baggy, around his increasingly large figure. With Abi finally allowing him some respite from working out, while his eating had stayed the same (read: ravenous), I was almost certain today would be the day it would finally fit. It was exciting, but also a little nerve-wracking. Like dogs chasing a car, I wasn’t entirely sure what we’d do when we achieved our goal. He was already bigger than any guy I’d dated before, but in all honesty, I didn’t want him to stop there - far from hitting diminishing returns, every inch he grew seemed to make me want him even more, and every fiber of my being wanted to keep pushing to see where the line was. I’d tried to keep these thoughts to myself, though. After all, it was his body, and with him rediscovering his love for swimming, I’d started bracing myself for the point where he’d decide he’d hit his limit; where the cons would start to outweigh the pros; where I’d have to accept that this was the fattest I’d ever see him. I should have realized I didn’t need to worry. After all, if there was one person on earth who liked seeing Sam grow more than I did, it was the man himself. When I arrived home from work, The Shirt was already on, and there couldn’t have been a single crease in the damn thing - it was like a second skin, perfectly following the contours of his body without looking overstretched or constrictive. If I hadn’t watched him spend the last ten months filling it out, I could have easily been convinced he’d gone and bought it that very morning. Despite this, he didn’t look quite as excited as I’d expected. “I don’t know,” he said, looking pensively in the mirror. “Like, I’m happy - really happy. I just thought I’d feel… bigger, y’know?” I grinned over his shoulder, and gave his belly a bounce with my palms. “Oh? This isn’t big enough for you?” He really was looking fat these days. For the longest time, he’d managed to cling on to the look of ‘a skinny guy that gained weight’, every pound being stashed away in his growing beer gut to the point where if he really sucked in, he could almost pass for average (a tactic he’d used to great effect every time his family were in town). But lately, he seemed to have crossed some invisible threshold, and everything was getting fatter. His love handles, already plenty soft and grabbable, had suddenly exploded, fusing with the sides of his belly to create a flabby spare tyre. This in itself had immediately made him look wider and rounder, but the effect had been further enhanced by his limbs, toned thighs and arms starting to lose their definition as they thickened. Even his chest had started to get a little more plush, two little mounds of fat beginning to pool atop his still-dominant stomach, and the faintest hint of a double chin was beginning to form below his jawline. I had enjoyed the early stages of his gain - the way his little belly blobbed out felt like a trick we’d played on his body; like if we let our guard down for a second, it’d get wise and the pounds would melt away. But this was on a whole other level - his body had given up the fight, and he seemed to be metamorphosing from that scrawny high school kid I’d known all those years back into a genuine fatty, right before our very eyes, like a chubby butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. I didn’t want it to stop, and the relief I felt that Sam was in agreement was incredible. “Tell me then,” I purred in his ear, finally feeling free to be as greedy as I wanted with him. “How big do you want me to make you?” He shivered slightly and looked down at the floor, unable to hold eye contact with me in the mirror. “H-honestly, I don’t know,” he said bashfully. “Every time I set a goal, it never ends up being enough. I don’t think I’ll know what ‘enough’ even is until I reach it, so maybe we just… keep going. Until it gets too much.” I started tracing larger and larger arcs in the air in front of his gut. “Even if you get this big? Or this big? What if it’s never too much?” “Then we better start saving for a bigger apartment,” he grinned, before pausing for a second to compose himself. “Full disclosure, though,” Sam said, voice a little more serious. “There will be a ‘too much’ at some point. I still wanna get around, do stuff, y’know? I hope that’s okay.” “Of course it’s okay, idiot,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. I was surprised at how easily the words came after my earlier worries. As fun as it was to think of him endlessly growing, my very own fat blob, the thought of a Sam that wasn’t this joyous about the idea of gaining made the mental image curdle. “This is only fun if you’re having fun.” He gave my hand an appreciative squeeze. “Tons of it. And tons more to come. Just… probably not literally.” I nodded, before turning around and flopping onto the bed, grimacing as the overtaxed bed frame creaked in protest. That was another expense looming on the horizon, if I didn’t start offsetting some of Sam’s gains with more losses of my own. “Right,” I grunted, whipping out my phone and trying to pay the specter of furniture bills no mind. “What are we going to do to celebrate? Even if we’re saying no more goals, I still owe you for this one. Buy you dinner?” He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, trying not to do any more damage. “Maybe let’s mix it up a bit,” he said, giving his belly a pat, the shirt rapidly starting to creep up of its own accord. “I literally haven’t stopped eating all week - didn’t want to slack off just before the finish line…” That ‘literally’ was an embellishment, but not a big one - with the anniversary coming up, Sam had stepped his eating up into overdrive. Every evening, I’d come home to a stuffed boyfriend on the couch, sleeping off a food coma. Then he’d get up and eat dinner too, trying to act casual as he forced each bite down. I watched as the shirt rode up further to reveal the increasingly angry stretch marks on his hips, and laughed: “You, turning down food. Never thought I’d see the day.” “You and me both,” he said, unbuttoning his jeans and exhaling with relief as he laid back beside me. I scrolled around the map of the city, searching for inspiration. A smile spread across my lips as a pin popped up labeled “Rick’s” - the bar where we’d had that fateful meeting, almost a year to the day ago. “We could get drinks? I know a spot.” — The taxi’s rear axle jolted slightly as we shuffled out onto the street. The drop in temperature nearly knocked the wind out of my lungs; it was a cold autumn night, not helped in the slightest by my choice of outfit, a blue and white spotted dress that exposed my arms, shoulders, and a not-insignificant-by-my-standards amount of cleavage. I could see Sam taking a peek out of the corner of my eye as I paid the driver, who was also trying desperately to keep his eyes elsewhere. “Eyes are up here,” I smirked at Sam as the car drove away. He turned on his heel and started walking towards the club, whistling innocently. It felt nice to actually hit the town for once, like I had many a time back in college (admittedly, the less said about those nights, the better). I racked my brains for when the last time had been - not counting all the obligatory work socials, where I’d had to stand around and pretend to have things in common with my middle-aged colleagues. I could only think of one or two since Sam and I had met; none in anything close to recent months. A big part of that was down to my ever-dwindling wardrobe. I’d always been the sort of person to resist sizing up, as far back as my teens - even aside from the expense, it felt like an admission of defeat; an acceptance that the extra weight was here to stay. The thought of buying a bigger dress would have been enough to give me palpitations back then, when the most I had to deal with was a few pounds of holiday weight - now, I was nearly fifty up from my ‘normal’, only just having stepped back from the precipice of two hundred, and I was wearing something that, if all went to plan, wouldn’t fit me in a month. I had Abi to thank for that particular change of heart; when she’d heard my philosophy on clothes sizes, she’d given me a smack upside the head and dragged me straight out to the mall. “What did I say about being kind to yourself?” she’d said, rummaging through the racks. “You’d be less stressed about your size if you weren’t stuffing yourself into stuff that barely fits.” She wasn’t wrong; it was liberating to be able to breathe without being at risk of popping a seam, the outfit flattering my curves instead of trying to compress them, and it felt a little easier to accept, or at least ignore, the parts of myself I was less keen on - the chunky calves, the bulging belly outline, the flabby face - when everything else was wrapped up in such a nice package. The cleavage was a nice bonus too, if only for how easy it made teasing Sam - those particular assets were probably the only ones I’d be sad to lose when I finally got back down to my normal size. As the two of us got in line for the club, me in my dress, Sam in a much more weather-appropriate sweater, I craned my neck to get an idea of how long we’d be standing in the cold. Quite a while, by the looks of it; I pressed myself up against my boyfriend’s back to try and leech some of his heat. “Chilly, ain’t it…” I poked my head out from behind Sam, looking in the direction of the voice. It was the woman one spot ahead of us in the queue that had spoken, a somewhat gothic-looking girl with piercing eyes and flowing, coral-tinted hair - which would have been the most eye-catching things about her, if not for the fact she was about the size of me and Sam combined. Her strappy black crop-top exposed one of two enormous belly rolls, the second of which was tightly tucked away within the waistband of her equally-dark coloured jeans, the oval outline clearly visible through the overstretched fabric. As she leaned against the wall and sparked up a cigarette, my eyes traced the patchwork tattoos that covered every inch of her pillowy arms; some fresh and vibrant, others faded and stretched. There was something about her that was familiar, her presence triggering a faint hint of deja vu in my mind, but I couldn’t place it. “Yeah,” I shivered, wrapping my arms tightly around my chest. “I was gonna complain I was underdressed but… think you got me beat.” The enormous woman gave me a toothy grin, clearly used to hearing that. “I’ll take this over sweating like a pig when I get inside. This body ain’t built for heat,” she said, giving her tanker of a gut a pat. Her candor about her size caught me off guard somewhat, but it wasn’t unpleasant. “This your first time?” I cocked an eyebrow, unsure what she meant. “At Rick’s?” I asked. “Nah, we’ve been here before - just the once, though.” “Uh, no,” she said, slowly. “I mean the meetup. You… are here for that, right?” “The what ?” Sam and I both leaned around the stranger’s wide silhouette to observe the rest of the queue, and suddenly noticed how disproportionately heavy the club’s clientele was tonight. The gears started to turn in my brain. I’d meant for our evening to be nostalgic, but I’d apparently outdone myself, stumbling ass-backwards into the exact same event where we’d first met. That was what I got for not checking the website, I guess, too eager to go get my drink on. The green-haired goth grimaced as she watched me rubbernecking. “Sorry, I just assumed, since you’re both… Y’know what, never mind. You’d be better off finding another spot for your date though, unless you wanna make some interesting friends.” I looked at Sam and grinned. “Interesting is right.”
  5. I think in some ways, it's more understandable for this kink in particular. Like, it's physically impossible to keep gaining indefinitely - one of several things is going to happen: You reach a size you're no longer comfortable with. It becomes unsustainable to keep increasing the amount you're eating (whether that's physically or financially). You end up the size of a house and can't log in to Curvage any more 😛 If you're just gaining for fun of it, then you can stop and everything's fine - but if your job is selling the fact that "I'm gaining weight" to an audience, what then? You would hope that people would be understanding if you said you're stopping/slowing down (and I feel like the community is better than it used to be about this), but I absolutely can't blame someone for keeping up the fantasy in their content if that's what's selling.
  6. I'd just roll with it She seems pretty confident in her own skin, and the fact that she specifically said she wants to hit the gym sometimes to get stronger (not all the time to lose weight) seems like a good sign. In my view, there's three possible outcomes to supporting her here: She ends up happier and more confident, and that makes her more willing to try gaining a little. She ends up happier and more confident, and that leads to her putting on a little weight naturally. She ends up happier and more confident, doesn't end up gaining weight, but now you have a happier/more confident girlfriend. That's a win/win/win in my eyes 😛 I think when you're in a relationship with someone who's not actively into this kink, it's important not to get your hopes up/place too much expectations on your partner (that just leads to resentment/disappointment). Just support them, and whatever happens, happens.
  7. I can't remember exactly when I joined, but I think it was back when it was still curvage.com and Spock ran the place (wonder what they're up to these days?). I was almost certainly too young to be on here back then 😅 The golden age for me was back when people like Ayumi were posting While I do still like the site, I do kinda agree with the comments that it felt more social back then - while I think it's a great thing that people are able to get paid for modelling on here these days, it did change the dynamic a bit. But at the same time, I think a lot of that depends on the people - e.g. even though Curvage Casey is a model, her thread still feels very much like 'old Curvage' to me - lots of chat, fun anecdotes, etc. Those are still my favourite threads I also kinda miss when the site had a real-time chat - it was dead 99% of the time, but there were occasionally some really fun conversations in there.
  8. To be honest, I feel like most people who are generally understanding/accepting of kink tend to be fine with this one, at least in concept! I can't say I have much of a sample size, but everyone I've told about it has, at worst, just kinda shrugged. I think where the added friction comes is from the fact that the kink is so heavily tied to how someone looks, rather than something someone does. If you tell a skinny partner that you have a fat kink, it's very easy for them to start wondering if you don't like their body as it is. And on the flip side, if you tell a fat partner, they might start wondering if you'd stop liking them if they lost weight, or if they're just a fetish object to you. I think keeping that in mind when telling a partner is a good idea - it's really important to frame it in a way that makes it clear that you're not putting pressure on them to change to suit your tastes.
  9. I'd absolutely second this. It's not realistic to expect that your partner is going to be into everything you're into, but that doesn't mean you have to hide things from them either. By the sounds of it, they didn't react particularly negatively to the kink, so I think you're doing yourself a disservice by saying "she's losing weight, so I must retreat to the shadows" - talk to your partner! There might be things you could do together that you'd both enjoy, or that she'd at least be okay with (food in the bedroom? occasional stuffing without gaining? talking about fantasies?).
  10. This is excellent advice! I think it's good to recognize that your feelings on feedism stuff aren't always going to be static - a kink that's so intrinsically tied to your own (or someone else's) body image is always going to have its ups and downs, and there's absolutely no shame in needing to take a break from it, or deciding "this part of it isn't for me any more". And on the flip side, maybe as you explore it more, you might find things you thought you wouldn't enjoy end up being fun too!
  11. This is a really important point that I think often gets forgotten about in these kinds of discussions - while guys do face some aspects of fatphobia, it's definitely more widely accepted for them to be fat (and to be seen as more than their weight) than it is for women. I think to say "well I'm fat and people don't care, so it must be like that for everyone" is a bit naive.
  12. There definitely is a market out there, but I think less so on this site, more so on places like Tumblr and Twitter?
  13. Jentera

    Beth Ditto

    Growing up in the UK, I can't remember seeing many examples of like... unapologetically fat famous people before her? Definitely made an impression on me when I was younger 🙂
  14. 2022 is finally over - good riddance 😅 Lots of people I've talked to over the holidays have been going on about their 'get fit' new years resolutions, and it's got me considering whether I want to make any changes in 2023. I always put on a little weight over Christmas, and semi-jokingly talk to my partner (who is not into this kink, but is very supportive) about the idea of keeping the gain going. This year, I'm more than a little tempted to actually go through with it - if only to figure out once and for all if it's actually something I'd enjoy. We'll see if anything comes of that by 2024 😆 Has anyone else set new years resolutions for themselves - fat/feedism related or otherwise?
  15. I don't follow Joshi wrestling as much as I probably should, so I figured that Yuu had always been on the bigger side - apparently I was wrong: 2016: 2018: 2019: 2021: 2022:
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