chapter 6

After the war, the whole of society changed. Everyone looked forward, not back. There was an optimism that I had not seen before. Hemlines rose with the new optimism. New technologies were embraced. Everywhere I travelled, there were more motor cars, more tarmacked roads. Cinemas sprung up from nowhere, giving country folk glimpses of the city life that they had not seen before.

I did not want to travel around any more. I was tempted to return to my beloved Whitby, but if I did return, there would be people there who remembered me from before. They were bound to ask questions about why I had never aged when they had.
I decided instead to try living in the city. I headed west into Los Angeles. I rented a bungalow in the hills just outside the city. From here, I thought, I could enjoy the best of the city life without getting too involved and drawing too much attention to myself.
Many people in the city enjoyed the excesses of city life, eating too much good food. I grew plump on their excesses.
Then, there were the starlets, attracted to Hollywood by the lure of the silver screen. They were desperate to try out as actresses. Some would be spotted, their beauty and acting ability shone through. Others had to fight to be noticed. They'd work hard, auditioning whenever they could, willing to do anything to get what that wanted. Some would fall in the wrong sort, lured into having semi nude or fully nude pictures of themselves by the promise of a prestigious introduction that could lead to fame and fortune. Some were willing to sleep their way to the top.
The fashion was for a very slim boyish body that many women did not possess. A girl moving in from the Midwest could be repeatedly rejected for being 'too fat' when they were healthy for their body type.
They took drastic action in a time when exersise for ladies was frowned upon. They starved themselves until they were skinny enough and continued to restrict their food to try to get the parts they wanted. There was no such thing as being 'too thin'.

I stepped in offering an alternative way of getting thin and maintaining what they considered to be an 'ideal body', although that ideal body was being dictated by fashion and the film studios.
If they came to me for treatment, they could eat as much as they liked whenever they liked and still lose weight.
Of course, I charged for my services and they risked death if I was over zealous, but they were desperate to get thin.
My fledgeling business grew with my waistline.
It only took one of my starlet customers to finally make it onto the screen to build my reputation. As word spread about my rapid weight loss treatment, they started to call me 'doctor', although I had no qualification in that profession.
Word of mouth prevailed. I got more business from higher profile clients, struggling to maintain their onscreen persona of perfection. I could charge what I liked... and I got fatter!
Going without food for a week would shrink me down to a 'regular weight'.
That rarely happened these days. I had paying clients every single day! At first I got tubby, then I got fat and fatter.
I made sure my clients came to me as moving around became more difficult. I could afford a maid and a butler now, so they would answer the door and make them welcome.
Meanwhile, I basqued in the sunshine, my enlarged belly hung over my shorts, my fattened breasts, were floppy and hung loose over my rolls and bulges.
I had a few regular clients. These were among the hollywood elite. They had to be thin. It was written in their contract. Being slim in their early twenties was all well and good, but after that it was difficult to maintain as their metabolisms slowed down.
My work was very secretive. If the studios and newspapers found out what I was doing I would be ruined and my clients careers would be finished.
The walls around my property grew higher, I even had new electronic gates installed and employed my own security guard.
The elite clients were willing to pay me vast amounts of money, but they wanted me to get rid of relatively small amounts of fat. Some clients were already slim, but wanted to lose a couple if pounds before a film premiere or some other public appearance,
My safety margins grew smaller. i had to calculate how long I had to feed to achieve the desired loss. Two stones was half an hour. One stone was fifteen minutes, 2 pounds was only one minute. If I fed for too long, she could be dead!

It was not as idyllic at the very top as it appeared in public. The studios controlled the actors so much! They had to wear what the studios wanted to wear, mix with the people they were told to mix with. They had no private life.
Many of them told me they felt like they lived in a guilded cage.
I started hosting parties for them. Behind my high walls and substantial natural screening of various plants, they could do whatever they liked without the paparazzi and the studios finding out.
They could eat whatever they liked and I made sure there was a generous spread of everything imaginable. If they put on a pound, I was on hand to get rid if it before they left.
They could drink whatever they liked and as much as they liked. even so, I was surprised at how much champagne they could get through.
I did not provide any drugs, but many were hooked on pills of one sort or another. Others got high on cocaine. One customer hid hers in the platform of her shoes.
My parties descended into a 24 hour orgy of sex, drugs and other excesses that lasted for weeks.
I had all sorts of hangers on taking advantage of my hospitality, vomiting in my pot plants, almost drowning in my pool and threatening to jump from the balcony in a psychotic state of paranoia.

It was time to leave...