chapter 15

Claire was surprised by Chloe’s response, but she continued, “Have you even had friends tell you that, ‘you have such a pretty face’? Implying that if you’d only lose weight you’d be more attractive?”

“Yes.” Chloe hummed again remembering a tense conversation with her mother a few months ago.

Not wanting to let Chloe have her cake and eat it too, Claire persisted in her line of questioning like the lawyer she truly was, “Have you ever been judged by complete strangers in public for what you choose to eat?”

“I was literally walking out of a petrol station a few weeks ago outside of London with a box of donuts and some country bumpkin, yelled from his car window, ‘Lay off them doughnuts, fatty!’” Chloe shared sincerely. She noted how Claire stopped to process what she’d just said. Taking the opportunity to get a word in edgewise, Chloe added, “My husband tells me that his friends have asked him what it’s like to have sex with me because of my size. Has your husband ever told you that?”

“He has.” Claire shared completely truthfully. She could tell from Chloe’s sincerity that she understood the pain she felt as a fat woman, but why then did Chloe have the audacity to say that she loved being fat?? Claire couldn’t understand it. Recoiling back into her insecurities, Claire shed a tear and muttered, “*sniff* How can you love being fat? *sniff* I wish I could just keep the weight off.”

Wiping her greasy hands with a napkin, Chloe reached across the table and braced Claire’s shaking hands. Speaking smoothly, Chloe explained, “In my experience, keeping the weight off required hyper-vigilance. It required that I tailor my entire life around keeping the weight off. It required that I distrust my body, ignore my hunger and desires, punish myself with exercise and harsh self-talk to ‘just say no’ to basically any kind of food, or rest, that my mind and body craved. When I was at my worst, it even required that I say no to social occasions that would wreck my diet. Sure, I was able to keep the weight off, but it wasn’t much of a life, it certainly wasn’t natural. Actually, for me it was an eating disorder.”

“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry Chloe…” Claire weakly response starting to understand why Chloe was the way she was.

“Me too.” Kimmie added trying to show her support for her cousin’s wife.

“Don’t be sorry, be sorry for yourselves, because if you’re not careful it could happen to you too. My motivation to keep my weight low was 100% driven by fear. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was afraid of getting fat, scared of losing my thin privilege. I guess growing up I subconsciously, and consciously, absorbed the message that being thin is better than being fat. I mean, I saw that thinner people were treated better, and I experienced better treatment when I was thinner. But by denying my body’s needs and desires, I sacrificed my mental health. I mean, for a long time I felt powerless, insecure, unworthy… I want to do my part to build a culture that is more inclusive and fairer to thin and fat people alike. And I can’t do that if I hate my body. So, I love my body, fat rolls and all.” Chloe smiled, as the logic behind Chloe’s worldview begin to settle into Claire and Kimmie’s minds.

As the three ladies shared a little more in solidarity, they finished up their food, and started to get up from the table. By the end of the meal, Chloe and Kimmie had each grown rather bloated. There guts were stuffed to the max with calorie dense fried chicken and plenty of soda. Before the meal had finished, Kimmie had unbuttoned her skirt to give her gut more room to expand, just like Chloe had done with her jeans.

Now that it was time to leave, Chloe didn’t bother buttoning her pants, instead Chloe took the hair tie Kimmie kept around her plump wrist, looped it around her pant’s button, threaded the elastic through the buttonhole, and then looped the elastic hair tie back over the button to secure her pants. It was a fascinating little life hack that amazed Kimmie, and one which Claire resolved to save in her memory for future use.

With Chloe’s help, Kimmie used the same method to get her skirt fastened together again, and soon the three ladies were walking out the doors of KFC, although Chloe and Kimmie were made to waddle by the shear amount of excess food they’d consumed. However, by the time they exited the building and made it halfway down the street, a rumble in Claire’s tummy forced her to take drastic measures.

“I just remembered, I need to make an important call. Keep going without me please.” Claire lied, as she impulsively decided to return to the KFC alone and get enough food to actually hold her over until dinner.

“No prob!” Kimmie waved.

“It was a pleasure meeting you! I’ll be in touch about viewing your husband’s studio!” Chloe huffed, as she placed both of her hands on her lower back to brace the weight of her heavily descended gut.

“Great! I can’t wait!” Claire waved, as she pulled out her phone and pretended to dial a number.

Claire waited until Kimmie and Chloe were out of sight before returning to the fast-food establishment. Chloe’s revelations still weighed heavily on her mind. Waiting in line again, Claire instinctively thought to herself, ‘I was fine with just eating salads before Paul started cooking for me every night…’

But then she kept thinking, ‘If he’d cooked me a healthy breakfast this morning my whole day might have gone differently...’

She always blamed her husband for her gluttonous appetite, he never forced her to eat or fed her like Chloe described, but he did always make sure food was well within her reach… Claire’s mind was going somewhere, connecting dots, but before she could make a breakthrough, it was her turn to order. Unconsciously passing on her sandwich idea, Claire instead ordered the same sized fried chicken bucket that Kimmie and Chloe had been eating.

Finding a table alone toward the back of the establishment, Claire quietly got to work emotionally chomping down her chicken into oblivion. Just like Chloe and Kimmie, Claire tore into her chicken with an almost detached desire. There was an emptiness in her stomach that she needed to fill, and food was the only answer. Oddly enough the only time Claire’s insecurities about her body were forced out of her awareness were when she was stuffing her gut with the very food that had led to its precipitous expansion.

Bite after bite, gulp after gulp, her eyes brightened, and she dug in. Claire fell into a familiar trance. She’d reached the point of satisfaction a few minutes into her binge, but she didn’t stop eating, if anything, she started eating faster. It wasn’t until the bucket was completely licked clean that she could lean backward into her chair and take in some labored breaths of air. As her hands braced her stuffed belly, embarrassment began to fill her mind as she slowly came to realize what she’d just done.

She’d made a pig of herself, again… Her belly felt like it might explode! Her normally doughy stomach felt rock hard, her dress was stretching so much around her gut that the fabric was riding up around her thick thighs. Feeling thirsty, Claire reached for her soda only to realize it was empty. Gazing upward and realizing for the first time how much food she’d just consumed; Claire caught a glimpse of her reflection in the restaurant’s window.

Her stomach looked so round… The dress couldn’t hide the size of her bloated belly. She looked so fat. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be the size of Chloe by Christmas… And yet, as she sat there barely able to move from how full she’d become, Claire’s mind returned to her husband for a moment. A belly rub from him right now would be just what the doctor ordered. She could never do the job quite as well as he could by herself.

“*Burp!*” Claire belched, as her hands braced her rumbling gut, “Oh f*ck… Why do I always do this? I feel like I’m going to pop… *Burrp!*”