chapter 26

And so she tells why, soon to use words she's worried are going to fly over heads (but who cares?).

'Because this here-' She pinches a substantial roll of fat on the side of her stomach and pulls it, gives it it a tug. 'This here, is it actually harming anyone here?', kneading flesh underneath cloth, absently now. 'Is it morally wrong for me to be like this? For anyone to be like this?'

And proceeds to give the interviewer a spur-of-the-moment mouthful about the arbitrariness of the way someone looks while leaving her hand around her belly. Well now, dear me, rude girl...

Audacious behaviour aside, if you were to write a thesis on it, Melissa's ultimate point would sound like this: Societal pressures are for the most part completely arbitrary regarding how you actually ought live your life - if you're not explicitly causing harm to others by being a certain way, then there is absolutely no reason you should act as if you are. The problem with what we should do, when and why, according to societal pressure, (and here she brings in some fancy words) is that you can't really get a moral "ought" from an aesthetic inter-subjective "is". A combination of Hume and Kantian aesthetics will prove that much. So that leaves us free on an existential level to do with ourselves as we please.

All a bit academic, right?... But. Unknown to her just now, her words are a flurry of sparks provoking one of the biggest social fires the world has and will ever know, her idea broadcasted, striking right now into the heart of viewers and one of the biggest factories of cultural growth: the academic zone.

((Flashing forward now in a long blur of years - we foresee a future scene, unknown to the present Melissa, who will later be lauded, the time between then and now not yet elapsed, fat cells not yet deposited en masse upon billions of pressure-liberated bodies. What the result looks like is... By 2020 and onwards, the body paradigm has flipped, a new zeitgeist has overtaken its fathergeist. And no one saw it coming.

For example, Melissa, sitting at her desk, almost authorly and stately, except that only a set of Bonds underwear are wrapping her hips and chest, the rest of her unclothed to let out sixty additional pounds - meaty arms squashed against her ribcage - breasts oozing on all sides, particularly forwards, cleavage squeezed into the impression of a second ass, smooth and round as a baby's bottom - hips blown out of proportion - her stomach having far outgrown its cuppable-in-two-hands size, by now a large gut, deep navel squashed flat, belly girth blubbering out onto her lap where it sags soft between parted thighs - logs of dimpled chunk she can't keep shut anymore - pussy permanently swollen with fat. All brought about by a courageous letting go, a disregard of diet, a shrugging of the shoulders to ideals, an 'okay why not' in response to all the fattiest foods when they come her way ... which is very often now. But this isn't anything to frown at, not any more. There has been a silent upheaval haunting the world, almost entirely unnoticed by society until far too late, mass culture having erupted both figuratively and bodily... a great foreshadowing that everybody missed. All of it starting with the hour containing the minute holding the words uttered by none other than Melissa, here. Syllables too potent to rephrase. No one has even tried. All anyone can say for sure is: they've been hit by the effects of a culture of Sincere Indulgence.))

...

But presently, the hour has grown late.

The interview has ended and Melissa is departing. Her personal clothes have been returned to her. As a final fuck-you, she has deliberately hitched her shirt up so her belly is showing - belly button jumping up and down inside a freely jiggling paunch, slappable lovehandles getting into a bit of a dance, too - strutting down the corridor, footsteps heavy. She's thinking 'yeah fuck you, look at me and suffer if it makes you feel so queasy' as she passes a museum exhibit of stares. One day she'll have to do an experiment and catalogue all the different types of gazes she gets. Hey, at the very least, she knows Kai is going to love the shit out of her when she gets back... So into the parking lot and towards her car through rows of others. A breeze against her stomach. Opening the door and sliding down into the driver's seat, feeling the underside of her belly fighting her lap as she reaches forward to turn the ignition. Before driving she has to fondle her belly, just once - smooth flesh sliding under her hand, rolls of fat oozing between the webs of her groping fingers. Her navel lets her forefinger sink in. She wiggles it around, wondering how much deeper she could make it ... how much she would have to eat before the fat deposited around her navel, seeking to suffocate her probing finger. Bahh. She needs to save her libido for Kai.

Grazing so close to losing herself, she drives out the parking lot before anything else can happen.