chapter 2 (pt. 2)

Following suit with the prior sequence's progression, the next image portrayed the same attractive woman from before. Once again, the woman in the picture had given up athletic traits in favor of a round, chubby belly with flabby extremities. Her skin, still the same shade of bronze, was now crisscrossed with stretchmarks. The same sports bra, which had previously flattered her slim figure, now struggled to keep the woman's body in check. Fat now seemed to spill outwards in every direction.

"Yes. Very."

Dr. Thrace made a "hmmm" sound following Eric's reply and penciled a few more notes onto her pad. Eric had more than caught on to the routine, so Dr. Thrace, without comment, advanced to the next slide. The monitor now displayed a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal, coupled with fries and an extra large soda.

Eric, puzzled at this image's inclusion, replied in the form of a question, "Umm...no. Why?"

Dr. Thrace offered no answer and continued immediately to the next slide, a more than a generous slice of frosted chocolate cake.

"Now?"

"No." Eric still didn't understand what, if anything, Dr. Thrace was attempting to assess or otherwise be getting at by showing him pictures of food. Eric got turned on at how fat indulgent food could make him, that didn't mean he wanted to have sex with a cheeseburger.

Dr. Thrace once more noted Eric's response and went on to the next slide. Eric now saw a pleasingly plump woman with full, rosy cheeks. From the angle of the picture and from its quality, similar to those before, Eric could tell the picture was by no means shot with a professional lens. The full figured women held a large bowl filled with an ice cream sundae littered with sprinkles and chocolate syrup. A look of intense pleasure dawned across the woman's face as she wolfed down a heaping spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

"Yes. I mean probably a little, yeah."

"And what about now, Eric?"

This woman was then swapped for a heavy set man with the clear, spherical outline of a fat gut. This man was not not alone in the image, however. Also depicted was a new woman altogether, adorned in a flattering two piece lingerie. She sat on the man's lap, her face just out of frame. A stacked tray of cupcakes in one hand, one of the single cupcakes held in the other. The woman seemed on the verge of shoving the cupcake into the man's mouth.

The image really got Eric going, just as Dr. Thrace had anticipated. Eric could not help but wonder where in the hell she was getting these images from, as they hardly seemed like stock photos. In particular, the last image seemed taken directly from one of the fetish sites Eric perused online. How did Dr. Thrace know where to look? Had she prepared these images exclusively for Eric?

"Ahem," Dr. Thrace interrupted Eric's train of thought.

"Oh, sorry...yes. That one's very sexy to me."

Dr. Thrace made additional notes and returned the room's lighting to normal.

"Very good, Eric. Just a few more," Dr. Thrace advised. "You'll do exactly as you did before, but instead of imagery, I'd like you to respond to auditory stimulus."

"You mean like music?"

Cute and dumb, Dr. Thrace observed. Too perfect.

"More along the lines of literature, but yes, I will need you to listen."

Reaching for a stack of three sheets of paper with printed text, Dr. Thrace began to read aloud:

"Would you like them here or there? I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like Green Eg..."

"Okay! I see where that's going. No! Not sexy in the least," perhaps the most confident answer Eric had made thus far.

Dr. Thrace laughed audibly. "Sorry, just having a little fun." Shortly, after regaining her composure, Dr. Thrace began to read from a second excerpt:

"The fire in the bedchamber had burned down to embers, but the room was still warm. She had kicked off her blankets and sheets as she slept. She lay nude atop the featherbed, the soft curves of her body limned in the faint glow from the hearth. He stood in the door and drank in the sight of her. How could a whore look so clean and sweet and innocent, he wondered?"

"Outstanding writing, and a breath taking rendition, Doctor," Eric mused. Growing suddenly somber, Eric added "But truthfully, it doesn't...that can't turn me on anymore."

Dr. Thrace reassuringly placed her arm on Eric's wrist. "I commend your honesty, Eric. The more comfortable you are sharing sincere thoughts and feelings with me, the more likely we are to make genuine progress." Or at least, the sort of progress that she wanted, Dr. Thrace reflected.

"Let's try just one more:

And with that he was stuffed with a fourth donut. He felt smothered and excited by the eruption of feminine energy. The pleasure the girls took in him exhilarated him, especially Jane, as she was the one hand feeding him, her grip on his thigh tightening the more he ate.

'You're going to get so fat, Chubs,' she said so quietly only he could hear.

'I-I am?'

'Yes, baby,' she laughed. 'I've a taste for fattening you up!"


Eric's cock was practically throbbing, as it pressed between his flabby thighs. It was as if Dr. Thrace had hand-picked that specific text to drive him crazy, as though she knew how to push every one of Eric's buttons in the kinkiest, and naughtiest of senses. Again, it dawned on Eric that this couldn't have been randomly selected. He recognized the talented author's writing from one of his favorite stories on Fantasy Feeder. Dr. Thrace had to have known where to look to find something like that. A simple Google search would not have uncovered something so narrowly tailored to Eric's particular preferences.

"And what do you think of that one?"

"I think you know the answer already, Doctor."

"Couldn't stand it in the least?" Dr. Thrace asked sardonically, aware of the visible bulge in Eric's pants following her recitation.

"Did you pick that one just for me?" Eric speculated, albeit correctly.

"Purely coincidental, I assure you," Dr. Thrace lied, almost convincingly, but Eric didn't believe her for a second. While Eric knew the excerpt was anything but serendipitous, he had not the slightest inkling of Dr. Thrace's end game.

"Is that the last one?" he asked.

"It is." she answered.

"Then what's my diagnosis, Doc?"

"Nothing that's going to shock you," Dr. Thrace pronounced. "In clinical terminology, my preliminary diagnosis would be that, whether consciously or subconsciously, you are rejecting traditional sociocultural standards of sexual attraction in favor of a paraphilia fixated upon adipose tissue and weight gain."

"Say what, now?"

"My diagnosis is that you have a fat fetish, Eric."

"Oh, right."

"Your responses also tend to suggest your fetish is already deeply rooted."

Eric grew concerned, "In what way?"

"Your responses indicate little to no gratification at more...how should I put it...traditional sources of sexual stimuli. This in stark contrast to paraphilic stimuli, which, based on your responses, was strongly correlated with arousal and attraction."

"I mean, yeah," Eric chimed in, "but it's not like I got turned on by the picture of the cheeseburger!"

Once again, Eric instinctively deflected feelings of shame and insecurity with humor. Eric's observation, although meant as a joke, had not been lost on Dr. Thrace and was more relevant than he realized. Dr. Thrace was not prepared to reveal such insight to her patient, however.

"Level with me, Dr. Thrace. Is there a cure?"

Dr. Thrace disagreed with the premise of Eric's question, as a fetish wasn't a disease, per se. She might have corrected him, but Dr. Thrace saw little point, since she knew the question wasn't really coming from Eric at all. It was verbatim the question his wife had asked in the voice-mails Dr. Thrace had deliberately chose to leave unanswered.

"Eric, you have to understand, it took years of conditioning and life experiences to get where you are today," Dr. Thrace cautioned. "This isn't something where you get a flu shot and expect your fantasies to disappear overnight."

Eric at a gut level had all but accepted the reality of what Dr. Thrace said before even going into his consultation, but that didn't deter him from attempting to gain understanding of his fetish.

"What sort of experiences are you referring to, Doctor?"

"It's hard to say. Fetishism is a complex aspect of human psychology, in significant need of further research and clinical studies. Social stigmatization drives fetishes underground, making respondents and empirical data difficult to come by. With respect to your particular fetish, many have theorized that an emotional and, ultimately, sexual connection to food and being fed develops in adolescence. It may have resulted from growing up overweight, being scolded as a child for overeating, or possibly experiences later on with a sexual partner."

"Were I to venture an educated guess," Dr. Thrace continued, "I'd wager that at a subconscious level, you equate food with love and affection. When a woman offers you food, or causes you to gain weight, your mind associates it with endearment. This eventually culminated with you being unable to attain arousal unless a partner first demonstrates 'affection,' by feeding you or making you fat."

Eric let Dr. Thrace's words sink in.