No Going Back

Chapter 1

“Oh, God! Why am I like this? Why do I get so turned-on thinking about fat? Why do I constantly daydream and fantasize about getting fat?” These are the questions I would ask myself all the time when I was young. For as long as I can remember, I have been totally fascinated by fat. Not just my own chubby knees or the way my belly softened and folded when I bent over—though I noticed those things too—but by the women around me who seemed to embody it, who wore their fatness with a kind of presence that felt larger than life. Literally. It wasn’t just their size; it was their aura, the way they seemed to take up space unapologetically, whether or not they actually meant to.

There was one woman who stood out more than anyone else in my childhood, a woman who, to my young eyes, might as well have been a goddess of size and softness: Mrs. King, my freshman year English teacher. To me, she was the pinnacle of fatness. She looked enormous to my young eyes, absolutely humongous, like she was a planet unto herself. I used to wonder how on earth she managed to get around without tipping over, rolling through the hallways like a giant beach ball. Her butt was a marvel, spilling out over the sides of her desk chair, which seemed perpetually in danger of collapsing under her weight. I remember watching her wedge herself behind that desk, the chair creaking and groaning as if it were whispering a prayer, and thinking, How does it hold her?

I wasn’t laughing at her, I was just in awe of her. It’s safe to say that I truly admired Mrs. King. I’d never seen someone so big, so round; she was so unlike anyone else I knew, and I couldn’t help but be mesmerized.

At night, when the house was quiet, I’d lie in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying images of her in my mind. I’d think about the way her arms jiggled when she wrote on the chalkboard, or how her belly seemed to rest comfortably on the desk when she leaned forward to grade papers. I’d imagine what it might feel like to be that big, to have a body like hers, to carry so much of myself wherever I went. My young mind couldn’t quite comprehend the logistics of it, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming. Would I walk differently? Would people look at me the way I looked at her? Would I feel powerful, or would it be exhausting, lugging all that weight around?

Sometimes I imagined myself swelling up like a balloon, growing rounder and rounder until I was as large and soft as Mrs. King. In my mind, it was almost like magic. I liked the idea of overinflating a balloon, bigger and bigger, seeing how big and round you could get before bursting. 

I’d close my eyes and picture my arms getting thicker, my thighs rubbing together as I walked, my stomach growing heavy and full. I’d press my hands against my belly, feeling its softness, wondering what it would be like if there were so much more of it. Sometimes I would even roll up blankets and pillows and stuff them underneath my sweatshirt, walking around my bedroom all by myself, standing and admiring myself in the mirror, just to see what it would look and feel like to be as big as I wished I could be. 

I never told anyone about these thoughts. They felt like secrets, too strange and precious to share, but I carried them with me, this bizarre fascination with fatness, a curiosity about what it would be like to inhabit a body so big it became its own kind of presence in the room. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I do now: there was no judgment in my fascination. Only wonder, and maybe, just maybe, a little longing. My name is Maya. I’m twenty-four years old, a college dropout, currently unemployed and living with my boyfriend. Grayson and I met at a party back when I was still in school. It was one of those hazy and crazy nights that started out unremarkable but ended up changing everything—though it would take me a while to realize just how life changing it would be.