The private exhibition

Chapter 2 - part 2

A little further to the right on that wall, the changes start. Slowly, my perfect frame starts to soften, my boobs lose their former firmness and start, ever so slightly, to sag. I watch as my belly starts to bulge, as my wasp waist is lost under a pair of wobbling love-handles, as my buttocks turn juicy and soft, losing their solid shape, as the space separating my thighs is filled in with layers of loose dough.

I turn my eye to his portraits and watch as my goddess-like face grows rounder, turning soft and cherubic, with a pair of chubby cheeks and a slight second chin. As they sit amidst my new layers of plush flab, my eyes no longer seem quite as large and startling as they once were. My smile has lost a smidge of its old, easy confidence.

At first, my gain was slow. A couple of pounds here, a couple of inches there. It all happened so gradually that I hardly noticed. But, then again, perhaps I didn't want to notice. He made it so easy for me to stay mired in denial, to ignore what he was doing to me.

Once the two of us had moved in together, only a few months after we had first started dating, he started, swiftly, to spoil and pamper me like no one ever had before. He treated me like his precious little princess, and I was only too happy to go along with it, only too happy to sit on my well-padded posterior, browsing the internet and watching TV as he brought me one sugary snack after another, as he stuffed me with rich meals and creamy deserts.

I knew that I was putting on weight, of course. I could feel only too well as my body turned heavier and softer, as my flesh started to jiggle and sag, as my chubby thighs started to rub. But it took me a long time to realise just how bad things had gotten. After all, he was always there to reassure me, to tell me how gorgeous I was. And on his canvas, I still looked so very pretty.

Though his paintings showed perfectly well how my figure had swelled, he made all my excess flesh look so alluring, so tempting and luxurious. He still made me feel like the most special girl in all the world.

Rather than as a wildcat, as a haughty, challenging sex goddess, his art gradually started to depict me as a sleepy little princess. A tame, contented housecat whose once perfect body had been softened by indolence and indulgence.

Looking at all those old pieces now, I can see, clearly, in a way I couldn't quite then, the pleasure he took in what he was doing to me, the passion with which he depicted my changing body. His fascination with the way my once firm flesh was starting to ripen, with the way in which my sleek and solid curves were starting to sag and lose their shape.

Looking at the girl in those old paintings, at her plump frame and her drowsy, blissful gaze, I wonder what she would do if only she knew where her lazy lifestyle would lead her.

As happy as I was in my cocoon of denial, I couldn't ignore my growing body forever. But, by the time the true extent of my gain finally dawned on me, I was already too far gone, too huge and hungry to turn back.

My gaze drifts further to the right. The girl depicted in the many drawings on that wall is no longer simply chubby, no longer pleasantly plump. Her love of food has turned her into an obese ball of a woman. Her belly is a shapeless, sagging mass that droops down to cover most of her pelvic area, her pert buttocks have turned into a pair of loose cushions that spread under her as she sits. Her face is full and flabby, her features framed by round cheeks, puffy jowls, and a wobbling second chin. Her once vivid eyes are drowsy and tired. Her gaze has turned timid and meek.

As I look at those old sketches and paintings, at the self-conscious manatee of a woman that they depict, I remember only too well what it was like to be her. I remember my discomfort as my tree-trunk-thighs started to chafe, as my fat started to shift and shake with each step I took. I remember my embarrassment as my dangling belly started to brush against tables and countertops, as, from time to time, my wide, wobbly shelf-butt would knock things over when I turned. I remember as my once carefree life came to be filled with a cornucopia of tiny humiliations. I remember how dejected I was when all those people who had once admired me stopped paying attention, when they started to treat me like an unassuming fat girl rather than the beauty I'd once been. I remember what it felt like to no longer see myself in my own reflection, and, worse yet, to wish that I didn't see myself in the shy, slovenly girl in his drawings.

As my body continued to swell, his life studies, once dedicated to capturing the sleek lines of my sensuous figure, took great pleasure in exploring the sagging, shifting rolls that had buried them, in depicting every blubbery inch of my 230-pound body. His croquis' no longer showed me as nimble and full of energy, but as clumsy and out of shape, weighed down by my flab and impeded by my vast layers of excess flesh. In his portraits, I would gaze shyly out at the viewer, as though wishing that they wouldn't look at me, my eyes robbed of their former power by the fat that had gathered on my face.

Though these drawings are still filled with a great deal of love and affection, the worshipful quality of his earlier work is long since gone. These pieces depict neither a goddess nor a gorgeous princess, but, simply, an unremarkable, obese glutton. A weak young woman whose appetite has buried her former beauty under a thick, formless coat of inert flesh, a mass of flab that has robbed her of her confidence and replaced it with a healthy heaping of self-consciousness and shame.

Once, his art had used to make me feel like the most beautiful woman in all the world, now it just made me feel like a hopeless, fat failure. Looking at his creations, I could no longer see any hint there of the timeless beauty that I'd once so admired, of the gorgeous goddess that I'd so badly wanted to be.

In the end, it all proved too much. In a rare moment of determination, I decided that, no matter what, I was going to get my old self back.