by Wilson Barbers
Jeri was working on “Club News,” sorting through manuscripts packed with l'il old lady gossip, when she was buzzed by Features. She'd just reworded the minutes of the monthly Park View Pork and Apply Club into something resembling a news story and was only too glad to take a break. Pushing a strand of blond hair away from her protuberant lower lip, the slender young reporter stubbed out her Virginia Slim and headed for the Feature Editor's office.
“Andy's getting transferred to Springfield,” she was told upon entering - the Features Editor was a get-to-the-point kind of guy. “Writing state news.” He paused to take a sip of decaf, grimaced at the flavor and continued. “There's a vacancy in my department. You want it?”
What a question! Eight months of rewriting amateurs' news stories for The City Courier's Local News section had made Jeri hungry for the chance to produce something of her own. But she knew better than to appear too eager.
“Sounds promising," she finally said, after spending several seconds taking in the office decor. "Didn't Andy do some ongoing columns?"
The Features Editor nodded and told her, "All but one've been ferried out already. You get to start with 'The Undercover Connoisseur.'"
That made her pause. TUC was a weekend supplement column devoted to ratings of both city and suburban restaurants. Andy'd been doing it for over two years and had brought a particular voice to the column. Jeri wasn't sure she wanted to take over his role. For one thing, the column wasn't bylined to protect the mysterious food critic's identity. How was she supposed to make a name for herself under a pseudonym?
Too, having spent the last three years working to successfully lose sixty points, the thought of spending so much work time focusing on food was a little bit scary. Make that: very scary. For a moment, Jeri actually considered turning the position down.
Fortunately, blind ambition prevailed.
“Sounds good to me,” she decided, reaching across the desk to shake her new editor's hand.
“Great,” he smirked, looking straight down Jeri's cleavage. “Andy'll be taking you out tonight to show you the basics. I wanna see a sample column on my desk by tomorrow afternoon.”
"Righto," she said, turning to look for her new predecessor.
She found Andy in the office commissary. One look at the former Undercover Connoisseur, and it was clear here was a guy who appreciated his daily bread and butter. At five-ten in the mid-two-hundreds, Andy had the look of one of those wiseass reporters populating the background of thirties screwball comedies. In reality, he was both plain-spoken and laid back, the kind of man Jeri might've considered going out with if she hadn't been spending her adulthood on a diet.
They made an appointment to meet after hours and go as a couple to Antonioni's, a Northern Italian restaurant recently opened in the city.
"We'll look like a date," Andy said, proud of the fact that in over two years of undercover columning he'd managed to shield his identity.
“Sounds good to me,” Jeri said, and in point of fact, the idea wasn't unappealing at all now that she was venturing into the gourmet life. She drove home and primped for her night out, changing into a form-hugging strapless dress that accentuated the slim lines of her figure. She looked pretty damn good these days, Jeri thought, though there were times when she found herself wishing she hadn't lost so much weight in her bust area. Still, she thought Andy would be impressed by her get-up.
She thought wrong. They met outside the restaurant, and he was all business - not one single sneaking glance up and down her bod! Soon as they reached their table, he was giving her tips on how to hand her new position.
"The trick," Andy lectured in a low voice across their table, "is to get a broad overview of the restaurant's offerings without appearing too nosy. I typically make a big order to sample as much as I can. The paper reimburses me."
"I figured that," Jeri said, dipping a hunk of garlic bread in a saucer full of olive oil. There were, she noticed, no ashtrays at all in the place.
"You don't need to worry about finishing it off if you're worried about blowing a diet or anything," the food critic continued, "though you can probably tell that hasn't been one of my concerns." He indicated his spreading waistline deprecatingly, and for some reason Jeri found herself charmed by the act. "My predecessor used to make faces after tasting each main item to cover her not finishing 'em off. The problem was she made such a spectacle of herself it was impossible to return to those places that she really liked."
Jeri smiled.
"I think tonight," she said, "I'll just follow your lead."
Soon as the waiter appeared, they turned the conversation to more mundane arenas. She left the restaurant feeling stuffed, having eaten more in one night than she typically did in a weekend: slices of different breads in the omnipresent olive oil, escargot on angel hair, beef tenderloin medallions smothered in mushrooms and a creamy cheese sauce with the inevitable side order of pasta primavera, cannoli and, a rich Italian wine. She was definitely going to have to cut back in the future.
Still, the evening with Andy was fun once she got past the fact that he didn't once ogle her. Maybe he's gay, she remembered thinking at one point, and with that probability duly tagged, she'd returned to Andy's lectures. He pointed out the salient features of each item (which the young reporter mentally noted) and talked about some good resource books; Andy was both witty and a good instructor. Too bad he wasn't attracted to her.
Or maybe it wasn't since he was moving out of town, anyway. Jeri worked on her column into the night, nicotine and Alka Seltzer helping her along. By the time she'd finished, her gastric discomfort was replaced by a sense of authorial satisfaction.
"Not bad," her new boss said that morning, "though I wish you'd put more of yourself into the piece. I keep seeing flashes of Andy here; maybe I was mistaken sending you out with him."
"What do you mean?"
"You need a second go at this. Visit this Antonioni's yourself and write your own impressions." Turning away from her, he gestured at the manuscript on his desk as if it were something unclean that he wanted removed post haste. "I wanna second column on my desk tomorrow a.m.!"
She didn't know whether to feel embarrassed or pissed off. Grabbing her restaurant review, Jeri stomped back to her desk, lit up and phoned the restaurant for a reservation; she was told they didn't take reservations for one, but that there'd be an opening for her.
Determined to be sensible this time, Jeri ordered big but tried to pick. As the meal progressed, though, the slender food critic found herself cleaning off each plate. She savored every forkful of her cannellani, working up appropriate adjectives and descriptive phrases as she lingered over her dinner. By the time Jeri got back to her apartment, she had half her column mentally written; it was typed in one-third the time it'd taken to produce her first piece. Jeri went to bed, feeling satisfied.
The review received thumbs up from her editor.
“This is more like it!" he crowed, patting her companionably on the back. Jeri smiled and let the breath that she'd been holding free.
That Friday, The Undercover Connoisseur's glowing review of Antonioni's appeared in print. Jeri returned to the restaurant on Saturday to find it packed, her column taped next to the menu window display. Though she had to wait an hour, Jeri had her third big meal in under a week, enjoying every bite of it. This is okay, she thought.
Next week, was a Greek restaurant (saganaki, plaki and stuffed squid); the following, Hunan (onion cakes, cold glass noodle salad, steamed spareribs in black bean sauce). Jeri's evening hours at home became devoted to enhancing her culinary knowledge and cooking skill.
After so many years of diet and denial, this was luxury! She hadn't realized there was so much in the world of eating to appreciate: for years she'd seen food as a nemesis not a source of pleasure.
The results of this discovery were predictable. After close to a year of trimness, the ol' debbil avoirdupois reappeared on her frame.
She first noticed it preparing for her night at the Chinese restaurant. Where all of her day clothes were loose and somewhat form shielding, her evening dresswear was designed to show off her thin frame. Only problem was, her blue dress was quite a bit tighter than she felt comfortable wearing: her waist had gained a discernible midriff bulge; her formerly flat belly was pushing out; even her 34-inch boobs seemed to be on the verge of going up a letter.
Jeri's first response was dismay, but that didn't last long. Her practical side soon took over. This is no big deal, it told her. She could always lose the weight again. What mattered now was her restaurant reservation, the column she wanted to write. Just that morning she'd gotten her first fan letter as the Undercover Connoisseur; she couldn't give her column up now!
Peeling off her dress, Jeri hit the spare bedroom where she'd stashed her old wardrobe; there she found a somewhat more subdued dress one size bigger.
Six months later she was at the end of her old wardrobe and starting to feel depressed once more. She'd given up smoking several months ago to keep her taste buds clean, and the act had escalated her weight gain. Jeri was in the size eighteens now, on the verge of hitting twenty - a state that she'd once vowed to never reach - and the only way she saw herself getting back to her thin weight was to give up her column. The blond reporter had grown to love her job as a professional gourmet, though, and worked to prolong her dining experiences as long as possible. She'd just sold an article on the proper way to prepare clams bordelaise under her own name to a national food magazine - with a promise from the editors to look at anything else she sent them. How could she give that up?
Wracked with indecision, Jeri continued to eat, write and gain - and browbeat herself - until the day Andy reappeared at the office. It was a Friday, and Jeri was working at her desk on a Features piece about comedy clubs, when she heard a mannish throat clearing behind her. "Well," it said, "if it isn't the third and greatest of the Undercover Connoisseurs!"
Greatest? Jeri thought. Was that a crack about how fat she'd gotten? She squeakily rotated her chair to face her tormenter and discovered a beaming Andy looking down at her with an expression that was clearly not disdain. The way he was sizing up her form was more on the line of the looks she'd expected to see on his face that first night out. She wasn't so far gone that she didn't recognize male lust when she saw it!
"Andy," she smiled. "Good to see you."
"Same here!" he answered. "You look great!"
They hit the commissary together, noshing on candy bars and catching up on their last six months.
"Nice to see your entree into the world of haute cuisine hasn't ruined your taste for good junk," Andy said, as Jeri licked the chocolate from a Nestles Crunch bar off her pudgy fingers.
"Are you kidding?" she answered. "I like a good meal, but the rest of the day my body cries for lower-rent calories. As you can see, I don't ignore those cries." She gestured toward her chunky torso, unconsciously echoing Andy's motion from their night at Antonioni's.
"The extra weight looks choice on you," Andy said, "fills you out in all the right places." The statement was so open and so unexpectedly complimentary that Jeri felt herself blushing.
They made a date to have dinner together the first night Andy could stay in town. The rest of the afternoon, Jeri reviewed Andy's looks and words in her head. That weekend, she thought, she had to hit the plus-size shops for something more flattering.
After work, she headed for Antonioni's, replaying her order from their first night together. It wasn't enough to fill her, so she hit two shoppes nearby and brought home a strawberry cheesecake with whipped cream plus a bag of rum cordials. Stripping off her clothes, Jeri sat on her bed and devoured the pastry. In the mirror, she saw this rotund blond with whipped cream on her lips, a dollop of strawberry sauce on her 4ODD breasts. Catching the sauce with her finger, she felt her nipples stiffen as she touched her flesh.
She took a closer look at her reflection, straining to see the Jeri that Andy found so attractive. Her face was rounder and younger than it had ever looked in the past; her lower lip protruded appealingly past her round cheeks; her chin had gone duplex. Her belly had spread and widened with a row of stretchmarks below her navel; it hung about an inch out over her plumpened underbelly. Her thighs had developed dimples and gotten fuller, but not so full as to obscure her twat. Jeri's torso had started to develop extra weight on the side to support her pendulous breasts; they draped against her growing upper paunch, pointing away from either side of her. Looking at her self, she could see Andy's point: she wasn't half bad!
The plump blond reached into her cached cake tin and dabbed a leftover drop of whipped cream on both nipples. Hefting her left breast in her hand, Jeri rubbed the cream into her aureola then licked her fingers. Her nipple grew in size (the bigger the better! Jeri thought - just like her!), so she repeated the act on her right mam. She felt herself grow moist and sent her left hand down to her twat. Parting her labial lips, round belly pressing against her lower arm, she went straight for her clit. Soon as she hit it, her mouth started watering - as did her lower regions.
Continuing to stimulate herself, she reached for the bookshelf headboard and grabbed a handful of cordials. As she crammed them into her mouth, chocolate and rum flavoring saturating her taste buds, Jeri felt herself coming. Her chubby reflection quivered gelatinously as she shivered under the combined sensations. Eyes half closed, Jeri knew that her days of guilt and dieting were over for good. This, she knew, was living!
From that night on, Jeri never looked back. Her appetite swelled as she began to regularly spend her late nights in orgasmic binging. Her evening dining grew opulent indeed; to accommodate her developing tastes, her columns grew: one year after signing on as the Undercover Connoisseur, she'd gained twice the weight she'd lost; a year further on, she was over double her old fat girl weight. She was huge, and she'd never looked better.
She saw Andy about once every three months, but he was never able to stay the night. He was fascinated by her development, though, and she found herself picking smaller sized form-squeezing outfits each time they went out to eat together. Andy the gourmet could barely keep his eyes on his meal, tracing every fold and roll on her body, audibly sighing when she got up to sway her way to the cloak room. Despite his obvious interest, though, Jeri went home from every date alone.
That frustrating situation finally changed, however.
She was working on the third part of a series on super-sized women's fashions when she was buzzed by the Features Editor. Hefting herself off her personal-sized desk chair, Jeri waddled to the office to find a familiar face sitting behind the editor's desk.
"Andy!" she yelled, multiple chins rearranging themselves, as she bounded over to her meal-time lover and pressed him against her great flabby forefront. "What brings you to town?"
"My retirement," the Features Editor said from a corner. In her excitement Jeri'd forgotten all about him! "Andy here's my successor. Brought him back from Springfield so's he can supervise his star protégé."
"Not much need of that," Andy said, standing to return her embrace. "Told you she was the gal for the job two years ago, Ed, and she'd proven me right, too!"
"Excuse me?" Jeri said, tearing herself away from Andy's damnably attractive face toward the retiring editor.
“Andy's the one recommended you for the Undercover Connoisseur position," he explained, heading for the door. "Looks like his instincts were right!"
"You did?" she said, turning back to the blushing Andy.
"I did," he answered, gazing up and down her swollen frame. "Saw your potential from the very first, though it looks like you've surpassed even my wildest dreams."
This time it was Jeri's turn to blush.
"C'mon," he said. "I'm taking my new editorial assistant to lunch. I've made a reservation for us both."
He took her to a hotel restaurant specializing in French cuisine, and as they dined on boullaibaise and cassoulet, Andy talked about his plans for Features. He was going to hand the editorial responsibilities for a monthly Dining Out supplement to Jeri. “It's time to blow the whistle on the Undercover Connoisseur's identity," he said, as he waved away the dessert cart, "if you think you can take the exposure."
"Are you kidding?" Jeri exclaimed, somewhat disheartened to watch the cart roll off but excited by Andy's proposal. "I've been waiting for this!”
The fat editor looked across the table at his even fatter writer. "Good," he said. "Now let's go get some dessert." He led her out of the restaurant proper into the hotel lobby.
"You have a room here?" she gasped.
"Just for today," he answered, and they hit the elevator.
Soon as she entered the hotel room, Jeri knew that Andy had spent some time and thought on this afternoon. On both sides of the bed were two buckets of champagne and full pastry trays. A good-sized portable CD player had been set on automatic replay and was spinning through a selection of thirties blues songs. Memphis Minnie was vamping her way through a number about "Good Biscuits."
Jeri felt her mouth watering, and as her appetite started to flare, Andy leaned against her blubbery torso and kissed her. At last! she thought, as her tongue answered his. She looked into his eyes, and her mind was ablaze with lust, filled with a whole new brand of descriptive adjectives.
"Have a Bismarck?" her lover suddenly said, as he backed toward a pastry tray. She nodded her assent. Andy pulled a chocolate covered Bismarck off the tray and brandished it before the hungry fat woman. Jeri licked her chubby lips in anticipation, closed her eyes and waited open-mouthed for him to bring her treat to her. As pastry tip touched her tongue, she felt Andy's free hand climbing her fleshy left thigh, reaching the elastic hem of her linen skirt. For an instant Jeri flashed to her nights of masturbation - the scent of chocolate had become a part of her ritual - and her loins started quivering down behind her belly apron.
By the time she'd finished her first Bismarck, Andy'd slipped her blouse out and was feeling her corpulent torso. This time it was her turn to back away from him. A puzzled look crossed his face, but Jeri raised a fleshy finger and told him to wait and watch. She slowly undressed for him, slipping out of her brocade vest then deliberately peeling off her linen skirt. Her panties were hidden by the drapes of her belly, which hung in two bulges creasing at her stretched slit of a navel. Her thighs had grown wide and puffy, with rolls building on her inner legs as if to form a second line of defense against clitoral assault.
Nimbly undoing her blouse, Jeri sailed across the room to the bed, exaggerating the waddling sway that was her fat woman walk. She unsnapped her bra and swung about to display herself to Andy, letting loose her sixtysomething-sized mams. Bending over as far as her belly allowed to pull off the bed covers, she shook her cumbrous form, making her pendulous breasts dangle.
Jeri sat on the edge of the mattress, reached for a cream horn and used it like a power puff to dab pastry filling on her mams. She made short work of the shell, then took her left breast in hand and began to lick off the filling, savoring both the flavor and sensation of her tongue on her coated aureola. A year ago, she couldn't have done this, but her tits had waxed wondrously with her continued weight gain. Halfway through her right breast, and Andy was frantically casting off his work suit. He stood before her, stiffened member pushing up from under his globular gut.
Andy grabbed a plate piled with petit fours and 1ay them on the bed beside her. Then he kneeled before his billowy lover and pressed his face against her belly, kneading her thighs in the process. Once again, he made his way up her body, stopping to explore every fold and crevice with his tongue, while Jeri ate her way through his newest offering. By the time she'd cleaned her plate, he was up to her softball-sized aureolae. His chins resting in her forefront's fleshiness, Andy sucked her nipples into full attention.
In the background, Memphis Minnie was exhorting her lover to "keep on eating, baby, 'til you've had enough!" With each wave of arousal, Jeri felt her appetite build, words of lust and hunger commingling in her mind.
Head buried in her right and slightly larger mam, Andy fingered her apron as she shifted to grab something new from a tray. Her upper arm swayed as she caught the edge of the tray with her finger and sent it spilling onto the bedspread. "Oops!" she giggled, reaching for the second tray and knocking it onto the mattress, too. She slowly sank back, pastries crowding against her sides, and spread her cumbrous legs for Andy.
She felt his engorged member push under her apron then part her lips. As he started to prod himself deeper into her, Jeri began to madly cram pastries into her mouth. The further he went, the faster she gorged herself, all decorum out the window. This is marvelous, she thought, mouth stuffed with fattening items. The tip of his erection hit her clit as she bit into a raspberry torte. Jeri swallowed and turned her full attention to her lover. Brain buzzing from a concurrent sugar and sex rush, she rapidly built to climax.
She came quickly and repeatedly, scattering the small amount of intact pastries onto the floor. Andy bent over her inflated torso and began to lick her sauce-covered chins and cheeks. "You taste great!" he gasped, sending shivers through layers of womanhood as he escalated his thrusts inside her. Suddenly, he erupted, making them both gasp.
They lay back and relaxed until the tape came to its end, enjoying the sense of satiation that both felt. Then Andy grunted off the bed and popped open a champagne bottle. He took a swig then passed it to Jeri; she took a long draught. Sweat beaded all across the landscape of her globular body.
"Nice lunch," she finally said, patting her paunch, feeling the residue of gourmet living ripple beneath her fat palms.
"Nothing but the best for the Undercover Connoisseur," Andy said, taking the bottle from between her dimpled knees. "I've been waiting for this moment for months," he said. "Now I know what makes your food writing so sensual."
"What took you so long?" Jeri asked.
"The knowledge," he said, "that I could never get to know this body in just one day. There's so much of you to learn! How could I go back to Springfield with all that flesh unexplored?"
Once again, Jeri was charmed, and with that sensation a small pocket of hunger re-ignited deep within her belly.
"Plus," he added, "a part of me got off checking out your growth from month to month." He took another pull on the champagne. "Every time I saw you, it seemed like you got sexier." Leaning over the mountainous blond, he kissed her navel. Jeri watched his face sink into her cushiony mound.
Tonight, she thought, she would take her new fulltime lover to her own apartment, show him some of her own cooking skill. She closed her eyes and visualized the night's menu, her appetites ballooning. So much of her early adult life had been spent denying those appetites; now those cravings were a source of her success as a writer and a woman. Jeri reached for the bedside phone and beeped room service. Both of them could use a couple sandwiches to tide them over until dinner, she thought...
Andy had moved his mouth crotchwards, was sucking on the folds that bulged before her sexual center, as she munched on her first sandwich and planned the night's meal. Her lover'd pronounced himself uninterested in the room service offerings, though he was plainly stimulated by the thought of her continued gourmandizing.
Jeri sighed happily, chewing thoughtfully and trying to pick out the right word to describe the texture of her roast beef. Every time she came close, Andy would hit a spot that distracted her. In the course of his attentions, one of them had pulled a sheet over both their forms.
The Undercover Connoisseurs were in their element . . .
Re-edited version copyright © 2002 - OakHaus Designs
