Unsolicited Weight Gain Advice

Chapter 1

A/n: WARNING. The following story contains mentions of depression, dietary abuse, and death feedist ideation. Also, consider this a prequel to B&B 1?

-----

gregslist.com > greater blackwater area > missed connections

***

I guess you could say I went to the science museum to try to make sense of it all. Everything made sense there, or maybe I just felt that way because I used to spend so much time there in my youth, being dragged around by my mom and having my little face shoved into each of the rotating exhibits in the hope that I'd learn something...anything.

Some good it had ever done. Here I was, barely 21, with a BS in comp sci, no job, no prospects, no girlfriend, and no discernible way out of this labyrinth, as in, "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" You know Bolivar, right?

But I guess there were only so many things to do with your child as an unemployed woman on food stamps: the museum didn't charge a cover on Thursdays after 2 PM, so that was where I ended up every week. As an added bonus, it gave Mom an opportunity to fill up bottles with filtered water from the fountain in the cafeteria, so that was a win-win.

So I'm sitting in the planetary theater, right? It's dark, and packed, and the woman next to me (maybe in her mid-thirties but other than that, bearing a striking resemblance to my would-be female self: dark, curly hair, though hers fell to her shoulders in a way that looked deliberate whereas I just needed a damn haircut; thick-rimmed glasses resting on the brim of a nose that was prominent but not inelegantly so, wide and curious dark eyes, thin through the figure with spindly limbs, and a seemingly habitual bounce in her left leg that mirrored the intermittent tremor in my right wrist) had the armrest between us pulled up. Her posture was spread such that her elbow jabbed me in the ribs each time she reached into her bag for something. After a few sideways glances I identified a metallic flask, like in those old cowboy movies.

"You're not allowed to drink in here," I told her.

"What are you, a cop or something?" she drawled back, low and slow. I shrank back into my seat.

Onscreen, there was a blast of light.

"Here we see a dying star as it goes supernova," said the narrator of the picture.

All I could think was, God, I wish that were me.

All too soon, the picture ended. The lights went up, the audience began to file out of the room, me along with them...and the woman with the alcohol in her purse kept pace with me.

"Beautiful, isn't it? The enormity of the universe?" she asked.

"Yeah. Enormous." I shrugged. "Wide. Vast. Expansive."

She cracked a smirk. "Got any more pretty words that mean 'big', or are you done?"

"I don't know that I'd call them pretty."

"They have a connotation that inspires awe. I'd call that pretty," she said. "I'm Gemma, by the way. I tell everybody it's short for Gemini, but it's not, not really. I just like the stars and constellations. Looking up at the night sky...the utter bigness of the universe...the vastness, as you called it, the beauty...it's humbling."

"You don't see many stars at night around here," I pointed out. "Not with the city pollution being as bad as it is."

"Oh, I actually live out in Mountainport," she explained.

That was when I noticed that at some point, I had gone from setting the pace and determining our trajectory of our walk with my own steps to falling a step behind and following Gemma's lead. Her path had led us to the concessions line in the dining area, and there were now two parties behind the pair of us and a metal railing on either side of us to organize the line, so there was no escaping the conversation for either of us.

That was also when I noticed her BWC-MoNS polo shirt. "You work here?" I asked.

Now it was her turn to shrug. "As a side-hustle, when I'm not at my primary job."

That explained it. There was no way anyone could pay a Mountainport mortgage working in a Blackwater museum.

"To be honest, I started this job trying to meet men. I figured smart guys come to museums. It'd be a refreshing change from the idiot that dumped me."

Now I was intrigued. "To be honest, heartbreak is what brings me here, too," I confessed.

And while I'm in the confession booth, let me admit, I'm not usually one for talking to strangers. But she had already told me two intimate details about herself that felt like they should be secrets. In two different ways, she confessed to being a liar. She told me she lied on the regular about her name, the one thing each and every one of us has from birth, and she told me she wormed her way into a job on an ulterior motive. It seemed like a lot to unload on someone whose name you didn't know, so I thought to myself that I ought to remedy the situation.

So, I told her my name, first and last, and stated my business: that the love of my life, who I'd been pining after since our first summer at drama camp, had finally agreed to date me, only to dump me three days later with no clear reason given.

"Well, therein lies your problem," she said. "Theatre kids should not date other theatre kids. One melodramatic over-actor is enough for any given relationship, but two? That's just a powder keg. You should date someone logical and analytical, like a professional chess player or a radio traffic correspondent or one of those brooding vigilante types who hangs out on the roof sniping bad guys off. I hear Bullseye's single. Or...or you could always ask out your local part-time museum employee."

At that, I had to scoff. "Okay, first of all, there's nothing logical or analytical about putting on a costume, lurking in the dark and shooting bank robbers with arrows."

"One could argue that in order to do it, you'd need to be possessed of an incredible mastery of physics and geometry."

"And an utter lack of self-preservation instincts." Not that my own were any better, if anything was to be said about how my mom found me in the bathtub the day after The Dumpening...but that's a story I ought to save for the office of a professional. "Anyway, Bullseye's not really my type. I tend to be interested in, uh…" Come on, you fetishistic freak, I thought to myself. The first step is admitting you have a problem.

"...Curvier...women." The words tumbled clumsily out of my mouth like a pair of heavy grocery bags I'd fumbled with and dropped to split damningly against the pavement below.

I flinched, which didn't put her off, which, looking back, surprises me. Just two innocuous words, and yet, somehow hearing them in my own voice made me feel like a criminal and threw my flight-or-flight switch as if I expected her to pull out a badge and gun. But her steady stance gave away her complete ambivalence to my personal brand of depravity, and that was fine by me.

"So I guess I'm out of the recruitment pool, too, huh?" She sighed with dramatic deliberation before combing a hand through her hair and giving me a teasing sideways glance that could have seduced the nuclear codes out of the POTUS, or whoever it was that had the nuclear codes. "All the same. I guess I'm similarly situated. One of those feeders, you know?"

I blinked at the unfamiliar terminology. I had always prided myself on my advanced vocabulary, or at least, I'd been told to until it became automatic. "One of those what now?"

"I like big fat dudes. Bonus points if they want me to fatten them up personally."

I don't even remember how long it took me to collect my jaw up off the floor. With one sentence, Gemma had flipped the lights in the dingy, dank, infestation-ridden attic in which I had spent the entire shallow, pointless period of incarceration trying to pass itself off as my life. "Is there a word that means the opposite of a feeder?"

We had now reached the front of the line, and she bent down to examine the selection of candy and breathmints on display on the shelving below the counter. "So, like, someone that starves you? A hostage taker, I guess."

Of course, that wasn't what I meant, but I dared not elaborate as she moved on to perusing the chewing gum. The cashier was already giving us an inquisitive stare, and I didn't want him prying into a matter that had had me tormented for longer than I could remember.

Confession time: when I make the distinction of preferring 'curvy' women, rather than ones who tip the scale into the territory of truly 'fat,' it's not because I find fat women unattractive. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's just that, in the life I've always daydreamed about, a girl that big on my arm would just upstage me in the spotlight.

I was revolted by the sight of my own slight frame in mirrors. What I wanted more than anything else in the world was to weigh in at double my original size, triple even, perhaps quadruple? In my mind's eye, the final number wouldn't matter. The crux of my fantasy was to appear large and in charge, a living testament to overindulgence, gluttony, and excess, my once-trim waist ballooning in pillowy rolls over 50-inch slacks and 5-XL dress shirts that creaked audibly at the seams as if filing a personal complaint against me for what a struggle it was to contain my girth. I wanted to be the personification of a skyrocket to wealth and power: consuming in excess, clearly wanting for nothing, and undeniably fat. And at my side, I wanted a loyal, fawning girl, ever-ready to sate my heart's--and belly's--desires with her decadent, butter-laden home cooking, or else to make the drive across town, my credit card tucked snugly in the tight squeeze her own voluptuous ass made of her back pocket, if I was ever craving particularly fancy fare.

Disgusting, right? Deviant, abnormal, and smacking just a bit of misogyny, not to mention the idealization of the same corrupt capitalist dogma I spent every moment of my waking life resenting. Oh, hey, I wasn't even thinking about the hypocrisy, but I guess that was there, too.

My unfortunate desires were what colored the tense relationship I had with my mother, whose constant reminders about watching my intake for the sake of my health felt like put-downs and threats to this twisted thing inside me. They were probably the reason my relationship fell apart. I'd been playing every interaction between myself and my ex on repeat in my mind like a projectionist, trying to figure out exactly when and how I had given myself away for a nutcase. So far, I could identify nothing I'd said or done that might have tipped her off, and it was maddening. Sometimes, it was enough to make me want to slash open my--

Sorry. I'm sure listening to me bitch and moan is above your pay grade.

But at least now you have some context about why recently I could think of nothing but...you know, going supernova. Getting fattened up to such massive proportions that all the life support machines in every hospital in the state could no longer sustain me. I'd be an explosion in the worldwide news: Fattest Man in History Dies In Early Twenties, a shocking headline rubbing the face of a society that had failed me in its own vomit and forcing it to look in a mirror. And best of all, I wouldn't even have to be around to witness my own descent into infamy: with my cock utterly buried in that much fat, constantly gripped in a vise of heat and pressure and softness, I'd be able to simply fuck myself into oblivion until I was no more.