Fate on the Fat Side
He met her at the candy store: a tall brunette in her early twenties dressed in jeans and tee-shirt, the kind of woman still fetchingly ridged with teenaged babyfat. He knew she was the woman for him just from the way she so unapologetically looked into the candy case, eyeing a tray of turtles lined in edible formation. Her face was smooth and round, her breasts full and straining against the bra whose lines shown through her Illinois State U. tee. He walked up to her and asked if she could recommend any of the displayed candies.
A half hour later, they were at Garcia's Pizza. He was admiring the way she tucked into her second slice of stuffed pizza, the way the mozzarella slipped down onto what looked to be the start of a second chin, her gleeful appreciation of the food placed before her. He knew he had to have her. Her name was Sarah; she was a grad student in Library Science at I.S.U.
That evening, after a long dinner at Alex's Steak House, they returned to his apartment. He put some Mamas and the Papas on the Bang and Olufsen, and they made love on the carpet. He loved watching her take off each piece of clothing, the way she peeled her tight jeans off her upthrust buttocks, her clear round thighs pressed slightly against each other. He lover her upper arms, which were also full and round, and he proceeded to kiss them first, trailing down over her breasts and small protruding stomach into the mound between her fulsome thighs. Afterwards, they went out to Baskin Robbins for ice cream.
Two months later, she moved in with him, and they went out to celebrate the event at their favorite Italian restaurant, a family-run eatery decorated in rec room paneling with flimsy wooden tables and chairs. (The place resided over a local bar and grill and served the best homemade pasta dishes in town.) He was in awe of her appetite; her ability to work through two entrees and still have room to share an anchovy pizza, and he found it hard to keep up with her. But he tried, for the longer they sat at a restaurant table, the more he was able to watch her eat. She had started to fill out wonderfully in the two months since they'd met, her stomach transformed into a pronounced belly, her rear spreading over the restaurant chair, her chin clearly duplicating itself. When they made love, her breasts rolled out towards both her sides, jiggling with every thrust. He'd place his face between them and push her bosoms together, tasting the sale between them. Seasoned sale, he thought.
By their one-year anniversary (commemorating the day he'd first seen her in all her potential), she was truly magnificent, still expanding divinely. Every other week he had to take her out to Lane Bryant in the mall to buy something that fit, though for his part he enjoyed watching her in clothes that struggled against her weight, encasing her evergrowing layers of pastas and potatoes and cakes. Their evenings out dining had gotten long enough to assure them places in the hearts of every local restauranteur: they even had their own table at the Italian restaurant, one with reinforced chairs. (After six months of living together she'd finally admitted hating anchovies, eating them only because he seemed to like them so. She graduated to her own pizza that night, a family-sized pepperoni and olive. He stuck to the fish pie.) They ate there three or four times a week, seated close to the kitchen smells of tomato sauce and grilled steaks.
She was into the size forties now, her cheeks round and red, her chins and shoulders obscuring her neck (one more prize to dig for!) Her skin was smooth and clear, untouched by blemish or cellulite, and every part of her undulated when she moved. When they went shopping, he'd sometimes drop back just to watch her walk down the mall rows, the way she broadly swung her vast hips, the way her lower arms moved with each sway. Her belly hung before her as she walked, ridged into two mounds by the seam of her jeans, which gave the illusion of an exaggerated vulva. Her rear shelved out excitingly over thighs that individually were larger than most women's waists.
She was going to school part time now, in order to spend more time out with him. They made love at all times during the day: he'd put some Sarah Vaughan on the boom box in the bedroom and admire her naked body in the slat light of the window. With her clothes off the press of gravity was even more apparent, the way her vast belly hung and nearly obscured her vagina. He'd stand before her and reach under, pushing his finger in and cupping her stomach in the palm of his hand. Then they'd fall onto the king-sized Serta with a loud crash. Afterwards they'd eat sandwiches in bed. Their bedroom was full of bread crumbs and the odor of sex.
He was in gourmet paradise, he thought, his days and nights an unending round of good food and sex.
Two years later, on the eve of her graduation, she said goodbye to him. They were at their Italian restaurant and he was, as usual, finding it difficult to keep up with what she was saying in the face of her huge beauty. She was the largest woman he had ever known, a monument to amplitude. Her face was round and sleek, held up by jowls that quivered every time she spoke or took a bite. Her globular shoulders led to arms that spread majestically on both sides of her mammoth torso, which billowed before her begging to be climbed. Her belly was so large she was unable to sit with her legs closed, a constant invitation thrilling with every adjustment of her body. Her thighs pushed out even further, scraping both walls of the restaurant's stairway on their way in. Their dinner table groaned with a multitude of entrees: she gave him the bad news through the handmade ravioli.
She was going to Colorado, she said: a job waited there and she had to go for it. She'd packed all the clothes that fit her into two soft-sided suitcases and was going to leave the next day; her folks were going to take care of her moving expenses. She'd loved all the time they'd spent together, but there was no used pretending it would last. He no longer turned her on sexually: he was just too fat for her.
He took this last with amazement. He knew his weight (in excess of 300 pounds); there was no way he could help but be so big trying to keep up with her. But he'd always thought he carried his weight well. Now here she was, waddling out of his life.
He lived through it, however: he was a big enough man to know that life had its occasional setbacks and that you lived through them. Two months later, he was dating a clerk from Lane Bryant, a Rubenesque redhead who wore large-framed glasses and favored plaid skirts over her plump buttocks. She was the kind of girl who spent much of her conversational life talking about diets without possessing any of the willpower necessary to make them work.
At least he hoped she didn't.
