chapter 3

Why is she telling me this with such detail, I thought. She must have realized I'm not repulsed by her corpulence, women are exceptionally good at spotting attraction. During this whole narration she kept up a halfway factual, halfway mischievous tone, often switching from serious pondering to lighthearted self-mocking. She was also visibly relieved that it was not a topic to make me uncomfortable. Still, everything she said was quite personal and quite detailed.

"I hope I'm not boring you with all this", she inquired upon my silence.

"No, not at all. It's quite interesting, especially as most women are not that keen to talk about their weight."

"Yes, many of those who have barely any extra weight are ashamed and try to hide it", she pouted, "despite it not really affecting their lives unless they obsess about it. But there's no point in hiding or denying this", she kneaded her fat with a sarcastic tone in her voice.

There must be something else, it seems unlikely she routinely divulges so much to everyone she meets.

"Anyway, where was I?", she continued, "Yes, after I gained so much weight just by being myself, I thought that if I'm fattening up at such a rate, at least I should have fun with it. By then I was big enough to always draw stares. To not fit into smaller cars. To have to check doors if I can squeeze through or not. To have to check what chairs can hold me. To always have to plan ahead to not get caught in an embarrassing situation. Moping about it won't solve anything. So you know what I did? I decided to test the limits of my voracity. If I already have to bear the difficulties, at least I should enjoy myself for a while. So I decided that for a while I'll try eating as much as humanly possible, focusing on whatever I craved the most, without thinking about which of the foods has more or fewer calories.
One might wonder why I wasn't afraid of the consequences, of my weight ballooning out of control, but I wanted to have fun with it at least for a while. If I'm getting fat either way, at least I should enjoy the voyage. Also, I was always good at rationalizing everything.
My sisters, for example. Their gain already started to slow down, even though they still don't watch what they eat. They're still big eaters and are still getting wider, but by an ever slower rate. So I figured, genetics, I'll also reach some kind of plateau sooner or later, even if my shenanigans with my diet might have pushed it a little higher. And if not, I'll do something about it later, I decided I won't worry about it for at least half a year, a year, tops.
Maybe that's just some kind of forced rationalization on my part which I did later on, as at that time, as the thoughts formed in my head about letting myself fully go, I just craved for it, putting my worries aside. I was always like this, whenever an idea catches my fancy, I cannot shake it out of my head until I tried it out."

She stopped for a while, as if to prompt me to ask, "and...?", which I did giving it a slightly exaggerated length.

"And here I am now, after almost a year of constant engorging, another thirty kilograms heavier."


I was halfway expecting this, but it still sent shrivels down my spine, all the while feeling butterflies in my stomach. Why was I getting aroused by this? Yes, I liked when plump girls gained some weight until they got noticeably bigger, but by far not to such massive sizes. And I shouldn't really care about numbers, but I couldn't stop myself from starting to calculate. She was already above 150 kg, then she gained ten, then twenty, then thirty. Ouch, that must put her above 210 kg, maybe even 220?
If she's so open about it, without feeling completely embarrassed, let's see how far this conversation can get. The dice were already cast, anyway.

"So, every year there was something which led you to put on more weight than the last? What comes after thirty? Mathematics would say forty?", I giggled, taking care to sound friendly instead of mocking.

"No way!", she laughed it off. But she somehow was still keen to discuss it further.
"Do you have any idea what I've been doing to this body this whole year?", she started, then realized she's gotten too loud in her excitement, and lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "I was basically stuffing this tummy non-stop. Even when I wasn't all that hungry. Just to feel the pleasure of a completely stuffed belly. I just ate and ate and ate until I couldn't push a single bite through my lips, and soon after, as my stomach settled a little, I started stuffing myself again. There's no way of breaking that kind of record, even if I wanted to."

"No way to break that record?", I thought, but this time I stayed quiet. These were bizarre thoughts even without saying them out loud. Of course there could be a way. To be together with someone who adores every part of your growing body, who loves you together with your gluttony. Someone who tells you how gorgeous you look and how much more beautiful every added flab makes you, someone whose love and care will help you feel even more comfortable in your body, a body which you already accepted and embraced, but will then start to yearn growing it even more. Someone who ensures your meals are overloaded with calories, who offers you the most fattening and most addictive treats. Someone who encourages you during your feeding frenzies, who massages your gut whenever it's filled to the brim to help you consume yet another plate of food, and who feeds you with his own hands when you get too exhausted.

No, I should stop thinking like this. I should switch topic, I shouldn't have allowed it go this far. But here we are, what's done is done, and she was wrapping up her life story anyway.

"And this year of experimenting with my limits is soon over", she explained, "so after that I'll do my stuffing session only on very special occasions and in the rest of the year I'll just eat in a more mundane way." I was about to interject, but she expected and countered it: "Which is still a lot, but such a body consumes a lot of calories just to support itself, you know", she added, while moving her hands across her belly, poking it, as if she was sizing it up. "So my weight should be plateauing soon enough. It's time though, you know I like traveling, and look", she put her palm between the narrow gap separating her hips from the armrest between us, "I still have some small spare room but not too much, I hope I won't have to use up all of it. But forty more", she laughed with dismay, but still more amusement than fear in her tone, "that would be really too much. If that ever happened, which I doubt it ever will, I would really need to take drastic measures to never get beyond, I like traveling you know, and that would really really stretch the limits of being able to do it regularly."

I tried to visualize how she would look with those extra forty kilos. Her thighs would grow so much ticker, her hips would be completely wedged between the armrests of her double seat, enveloping it. My imagination just carried me away at that point. As she shifted her weight in her seat, I imagined her growing outward with every single motion, her flab inching closer and closer to me, growing until she touched the armrest separating us, then growing even further, spilling over and invading my space. Her butt growing at the same rate, elevating her in her set, her belly pressing into the seat in front of her, being flattened by it, forcing the growth to spread outward and upward, pushing her growing breasts higher up.

My daydreaming was interrupted by a loud growling from her stomach, a sound lasting far longer than I've ever heard such a sound lingering. We started descending, which must have reminded her that an opportunity for a big meal awaits her at a comfortable place, no wonder her body was getting prepared for it.

"Now I couldn't deny how hungry I am, even if I wanted to", she added, with such a casual tone in her voice, as if she was stating what time it is. It is just a fact of life, that she gets very hungry, very often, for her it's nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to be proud of. Just like day always follows the night, a big feast always follows when her stomach has settled down from the previous one.

"It shouldn't take us much more to arrive", I checked the time.

"I can hardly wait it, I haven't been eating anything since we departed".

Wait, what? She ate just before departure, and she gets so hungry after just a couple of hours? "There are plenty of fine places to dine, even at the airport", I reassured her.

"There better be. I saved a lot of space for it, that's why I didn't want to fill it with tasteless garbage". She blushed for a moment, then continued in a self-ironic tone, "but I guess you won't want to watch how much of a pig I can make myself when I'm hungry".

"Actually, I would love to accompany you, but I have to catch a connecting flight. At best I'll only be able to grab a sandwich to eat while I'm walking over to the next terminal."

"A pity, it was nice talking with you. You can offer really interesting thoughts on many topics. I shouldn't have taken so much time away, blabbering about my weight problems."

Indeed, I started remembering how many common interests we shared, and how many things we talked about before our conversation was sidetracked to her weight, during which I hardly even said anything.

"We could catch up later, we'll be living in the same town anyway", I offered, "in a week I'll be back there".

"Make it two weeks, then I'll be back home too", she smiled.

We exchanged contact information, and then I offered to invite her to dinner in a local restaurant, in two weeks.