Round and Round With Nikki

Chapter 1

Historical note: This story was written in 2004, which is reflected in some references to pop culture and technology. Gaining weight, however, is timeless.

***

“You want me to put on weight?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. You actually want me to gain weight on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“The thing most women fight against, go on diets for, stop eating for, you actually want me to do? Deliberately?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how perverse this is?”

There was a pause.

“Yes.”

The conversation wasn’t going well. We were sitting on the edge of the bed. I’d been touching her, loving her, stroking her hair and all points south, and I’d made a remark about her bony shoulders sticking out like sore thumbs, well more like sore shoulders, and I’d dared to suggest that maybe she could eat a bit more and put on weight, that she’d look great, that I’d love it, words like that. And now she was staring at me, incredulous, as though I’d suggested she cut off her legs.

We were old friends and new friends, Nikki and me. For four years or more we’d rubbed together in the same social circles, shared the same jokes, the same smart black clothing (almost the uniform of the urban professional), the same tight band of chums gathered up from university and after, from advertising, publishing, the slick jobs, the smart jobs. There was Nikki, there was Dominic (that was me) – and there was Amanda, Jonathan, Tarzan, and Jane. The gang. The pack. You could always find us, in various combinations, once or twice a week, at some watering-hole or other, a movie, a bistro. People said we were just like the characters in ‘Friends’, except we didn’t all sit around on sofas.

And that’s how it was for ages, until something secret clicked between us. I had always thought Nikki looked stunning: medium height and build, auburn hair bouncing down to her neck, the face finely sculptured, brown eyes sparkling, honey-coloured skin smooth and flawless except for a cute teasing mole near one ear. Imagine Natalie Portman with a little of Neve Campbell thrown in. All this plus a slightly husky voice, as though the throat had been scorched – by the sun, perhaps, or too many whiskies. Anyway, she wormed her way into me somehow, and vice versa. I started going back to her place. She began to come back to mine. By now we were having an affair.

It didn’t really need to be secret – neither of us were married or chained to permanent relationships. But considering the pack’s tangled history it seemed safer to both of us. Before, Nikki had been with Tarzan – that wasn’t his real name, naturally, but with his mane of hair and brawny chest it suited him much better than Derek. He was fierce, too, possessive and jealous; and only countenanced Nikki leaving him when Jane – that wasn’t her real name either – swung through the vines into his life, a pale thin wisp in need of a strong hand. After that, behind everyone’s backs, Nikki had had a fling with Amanda, both apparently testing the lesbian waters, and when that leaked out Jonathan – we called him Jonty for a while but he didn’t have enough personality to make it stick – Jonathan got mad because he, it seemed, behind everyone’s backs, had just started a thing with Amanda too. It was a miracle they all stayed friends. But time passed. Wounds healed, or appeared to.

Even so, once a flame became ignited between Nikki and myself, neither of us felt the need, shall we say, to broadcast it to the nation. We’d been seeing each other several times a week: talk, a light meal, and then the bedroom, two trim bodies interlocked. And now we’d reached this awkward moment, the pair of us, on the edge of the bed. The disbelief. The gimlet eyes. The dropped jaw. “You actually think I’d look better heavier?” she said.

“You’re already beautiful. This would just be an extra enhancement. Extra pounds, extra beauty.” I knew it sounded lame.

Had I let the cat out of the bag too soon? Quite possible. Though looking back, I’m actually surprised I’d let the cat out at all; usually my inhibitions got in the way. The fact was, though, that any woman I was attracted to I always thought would be even more beautiful if they only weighed a little more. There is something so arousing about an attractive woman filling out, acquiring a little bit extra – love handles, a midriff roll, a bulge on the tummy, a rounder face, just something extra somewhere. It didn’t have to be a lot. Twenty pounds might do it.

“Maybe want is the wrong word,” I said.

“It’s an impolite word, I know that. Giving me orders like that.” She was still flashing the gimlet eyes. I felt they were boring right through me.

So I shuffled the words around in my head and tried it another way. “I should have said I would like it if you gained some weight. But I wouldn’t want you to do anything you didn’t want to do.”

I could see her face softening a bit. She was pondering, definitely pondering, estimating the pros and cons, and I suppose thinking about what I meant to her, and what she meant to me, and whether it was actually worth it to do something to please me. “This I don’t know about,” she said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Could you think about it while eating?”

I was incorrigible.

***

Next time we met up was on Friday night. Thank God It’s Friday Night. We, the pack, had drifted into the habit of throwing off the working week by going to one restaurant or another. Cruising the cuisines, Jonathan called it, when he spoke at all: he did some job at the Arts Council and was famous for being the quiet one. Sometimes we called him The Jonathan, in homage to his distant personality. Not all of us could make it every time. Tarzan had his sales conferences to go to, in some provincial burg or other – he worked for a garden equipment firm. Amanda, who was in advertising, sometimes phoned in sick, especially during the hay fever season when the pollen aggravated her asthma. One day Jane, PA for a headhunter firm, well she was Phoebe really, accidentally flushed her cell phone down the toilet. So we lost track of her for a while. Maybe people sloped off here and there just because they wanted a change of routine, a different set of grinning faces and arms waving wine glasses around. It’s easily possible.

Anyway, we were wrapped round the table, the full complement, at this lean cuisine emporium called Euphoric Eats. The walls were grey, the chairs and tables made of glass, and the food was served with such exquisitely quartered radishes or dribbles of sauce that the plates looked like early abstract paintings. The talk went in circles as usual, nothing worth documenting, unless you’re keen to hear about Tarzan arriving in Manchester two hours late, or ten good reasons why they should have cancelled ‘Frasier’ at least three years ago. I thought of eleven myself. Since Nikki and I had been seeing each other – I almost said dating – these group sessions had acquired an extra frisson as the little nods, the winks, the secret in-jokes sprung up in cracks in the conversation. Each look I threw Nikki’s way I lingered over, hoping our eyes would connect, lock together, and smoulder, just for a moment. If we sat opposite, as we did that night, we tried to rub ankles under the table. Childish, I know, but sometimes growing up doesn’t seem a big accomplishment.

Glancing at her, I wondered as I so often did what twenty extra pounds would make of that face, or the breasts that sat astride her chest, breasts scarcely larger than the smallest lemon, or the gentle curve of her slender hips. The pounds would beautify, no doubt about it, that was inevitable, but where would they exactly fall? That was the adventure. But I was suddenly snatched out of my musings. She was speaking to me. The voice was quiet but nonchalant, as though what she said was of no importance, certainly not to the others.

“That thing we talked about?” she said. “The answer’s no, I’m afraid.” In her left hand was her fork, with half a radish speared at the end. She wiggled it. She wasn’t taunting me, was she?

“Oh! That’s OK.” I tried not to look too crestfallen.

“What answer’s no?” Tarzan’s ears had pricked up: even though he and Nikki were history he still liked to think he had monitor’s rights over her life. He adored other people’s gossip, and I wasn’t going to serve him up this morsel on a plate.

“Oh – ” I said, trying to keep my voice feather-light, “I’d asked if I could borrow her Harry Potter books. Not for me. For a nephew. And she said – ”.

“I said no,” Nikki said, eyes firm, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “I thought they might get damaged. After thinking about it…” I gave her a look suggesting that enough was enough. I could already hear eyebrows being raised, supplementary questions forming on lips.

I asked if anyone had seen the new Potter movie. Before anyone could reply, the waiter bustled by and gathered up plates. Further danger had been averted. To celebrate, Nikki slipped off a shoe – I recognised the gentle thud – and made a beeline for my left shin.

***

“I mean,” she said, on the phone that night, “I put in hours at the gym. Every day I try to get there before work, even if for half an hour.”

“It’s alright. Let’s drop the whole thing. You look beautiful at whatever weight. Do you actually have any Harry Potter books, by the way?”

“No,” she said, sounding mischievous, “so you can’t borrow them even if you wanted.” But then she went on and on, about her body image, and being slim, and being 120 pounds for years, and women always needing to watch every morsel than went into their mouths, and I wouldn’t understand, and what was so great about flesh anyway, and on and on, and I wished I’d never raised the whole thing. I wouldn’t try that again, I decided. She’d just have to join the other women I’d had fantasies about and only get heavier in my dreams.

And that, for a while, was the end of things. Life in our little circle proceeded. Each time we looked at the world outside the world looked worse, so we gave up looking, clinked our wine glasses, and sped on our way. Nikki and I continued to see each other for hot nights – her flat or mine – but both of us were beginning to feel the strain of keeping the lid on and not turning amorous in public. Amanda, I’m sure, already suspected; you can’t keep shooting one another secret looks or shaping the lips into pretend kisses without someone noticing. The others, I guess, must have been even more self-absorbed than I thought. If that were possible.

We eventually concocted a ‘coming out’ plan. We would announce that we were going on holiday together, just as friends, which was plausible – friends do go on holiday – and then, once the holiday was done, we’d announce on our return that “something happened”. Was this daft? Unnecessary? Possibly. But it made sense to us, and besides, we wanted the holiday for real. Venice was the chosen destination. It had the right romantic ring. We could come back with stories of love in a gondola, of laughter and pigeons in St Mark’s Square, and that unique light over the lagoon, soft and clear, colouring everything with enchantment.

I remember the moment vividly. “Everything here is either pasta or ice cream,” she said. She was looking at the menu, at a restaurant tucked away on one of the watery fingers leading off the Grand Canal. We found it, like everything, by accident; I’d never been anywhere before and got lost so regularly.

I made no particular comment; I’d no wish to rake over old embers. Considering the fandango she’d made recently over the importance of her slim figure I thought she’d pass up the ice cream and have a fruit dessert, or no dessert at all. I was wrong.

She had ice cream the next day too. For a few meals she also adopted the Italian habit of treating pasta as a starter, then passing on to something else, something meaty, as the main course. And then the dessert. “I know one thing,” she said on our final evening; “If I lived here for any length of time, I’d have a problem staying thin.”

“Oh God,” I prayed silently that night, “move Nikki’s PR job to Italy!” She worked for a company called B & F, Brilliant and Fab – she kept telling them they should change the name. So far it had only spread wings in London. Clients included some British video labels, advertising campaigns for Levi jeans, and an association for battered wives. Nothing with an Italian connection. That’s why I needed God’s help.

***