Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
~BHM, Eating, Romance, ~MWG - A big man on campus gets bigger under the deft influence of a skilled FFA who knew what she wanted
Brian Lowell paused at the top of the steps to catch his breath. Lately, any ascent of stairs had left him breathless. He supposed it was because he’d had less time to shoot hoops lately. Less exercise, that’s all.
As he looked around, his breathing slowed and he felt better. He continued along the edge of the quad to the bookstore, where he greeted the cashier and moved toward the coffee counter. It felt weird to be on the other side of the balance – to be a faculty member on a campus instead of a student. He thought it probably helped that he was at a university where he had never been a student, so there wasn’t the awkwardness of faculty and staff adjusting to his different status.
He also was justifiably pleased with his resume. B.A. Vanderbilt; M.A. Columbia, Ph.D. Columbia, three journal articles already to his credit and a book in progress. No wonder he’d had no trouble securing a job, if only on a low rung of the academic ladder. Assistant Professor. He could practically feel his crisp business cards glowing with the newness of the title.
His hand on the half-and-half pitcher, he hesitated. Exactly how long had going up a flight of stairs made him short of breath? Surreptitiously, he rested a hand on his abdomen. Was it a little soft? Had it changed in relation to his belt? He eyed the pitcher of 2%, then decisively poured in a generous dollop of half-and-half.
He managed not to have to go up any more flights of stairs that day and got home without incident. In the apartment, he dropped his attaché case with a THUNK and dropped his keys on the small hall table. En route to the sofa, he shed his coat, tie, and shoes, then padded to the kitchen for a Coke. He flopped gratefully into the chair, glad to rest his feet. He decided that for however long it took to drink the Coke, that was how long he could wait to start grading the student compositions weighing down his attaché case.
Toward the end of the Coke, his stomach growled. Hmm, dinnertime. Brian heated up leftover Chinese takeout and ate it while watching television. Eating mindlessly, he didn’t notice how much food there was until the pan was empty. As he stood to throw the pan away, he realized that he was suddenly very full. His stomach ached and his pants were uncomfortably snug. Unthinkingly he stuck a thumb inside the waistband and tried a little informal loosening. He belched and rubbed his swollen belly. Blinking, he threw the pan away and settled back in the chair. It was 5:00. Time enough for a nap before grading those papers.
A little nap made all the difference. Brian awoke at 5:30 feeling refreshed, if still fairly stuffed. Grunting, he stood, retrieved the papers and his lap desk, and set to work. The big meal had mellowed him and he was a little less free with the red pen.
Still, three hours later, the distribution of grades was about what he thought it would be: Twenty-one A’s, thirty-eight B’s, nineteen C’s, six D’s and four F’s. Grading papers for survey courses took forever because of the sheer number of students. That was why, like a good little worker bee, he tended to prepare his lessons on the weekends whenever possible, so he wouldn’t have to do that late in the evening when he was tired and burned out from grading.
With a sigh, he stood and stretched, got another Coke, and fetched another batch of papers. This was a much smaller class, yielding only nineteen papers, and he finished by a quarter to 11. As he was packing the papers away, his stomach growled. Again? Cripes, he’d just eaten. Well, actually, he’d eaten a long time ago. He clicked to a sports show and poured some chips into a bowl. The chips disappeared quickly, and, yawning, Brian shuffled off to bed and was soon asleep.
The next morning, he awoke at 6:30. Channel surfing as he drank some reheated coffee, he came across an early morning exercise show, chipper thin people grinning while doing aerobics. Well, why not. Brian obediently joined in. When he stopped, red-faced and breathless, he felt pleased with himself until he looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 6:42. That meant that less than ten minutes of exercise had left him feeling as though he’d run a marathon. Man, he was out of shape. He’d skip breakfast, he decided.
Not the best idea, as it turned out. He was distracted during his 8:00 class, almost as sleepy and disengaged as the students. As soon as it ended, he headed for the bookstore, where he poured half-and-half in his coffee without even thinking about it and grabbed one of those cellophane-wrapped jumbo muffins. Within five minutes, the 700-calorie bomb was reduced to crumbs. Brian licked his fingers and headed back to his office.
That evening, he ate a deli salad, pleased with his healthy selection, and began making notes on a lesson plan. The salad didn’t last long, of course, and he took a break by making a run to McDonald’s, dropping another 700 calories into his steadily growing belly right before bed. If he had added up the day’s damage, including the hot dog and hot pretzel from the cart a block away from campus … just as well that he didn’t. He slept heavily, although heartburn woke him briefly around midnight.
As the semester progressed, so did Brian’s waistline. His pants were getting harder and harder to fasten, and it was a little shameful how much of a relief it was to undo them and rub and scratch the deep red mark all around his expanding abdomen. He stopped wearing sneakers and started wearing his loafers more often because bending over to tie shoes meant not actually breathing. Around fall break, he finally gave in and bought some pants in a larger size. He tried on some 36’s. Ha. The gap between button and buttonhole was a good two fingers wide. Thirty-eight, then? No. FORTY? Aw, cripes, surely not. Forty it was … and with not much growing room, either. He had a sinking feeling that he was going to be in the dressing room again by Christmas.
The next morning, he brushed the dust off the bathroom scale and stopped on. The needle whirred past the 180 mark without even slowing down. Up up up … quivering … stopping. Brian had to lean forward a little to read the results, which improbably read 210. Holy Shakespeare! How had he gained thirty pounds since March without knowing about it?
All that day, when not in class, Brian found himself contemplating his weight gain. He slowly, almost absently, moved his hand up and down his convex midsection, ran a thumb around the already snug waistband, once even went to the bathroom and, in a stall, pulled up his shirt and poked and pinched the thing. It quivered like something alive, something pale, soft, and unhealthy looking.
At home, he took off his clothes and stood in front of the mirror examining his entire body. His pecs were softening noticeably and the line from sternum to navel was a convex one. He had definite love handles and almost what you could call a spare tire. His entire abdominal region had softened and thickened, his behind was getting bigger – or his desk chair was getting smaller – and there was a crease around his belly button, even without the constriction of clothing.
The next morning, Brian and Josh Devlin, who taught economics, nursed their coffee outside the bookstore, neither in a hurry to step out of the beautiful fall day and into their offices. Josh nodded in the direction of Brian’s perceptibly thicker waistline, already lapping over the belt loops of his new 40-waist pants. “Freshman fifteen, Brian?” he remarked dryly.
“Um. More like the freshman thirty,” Brian admitted, patting his swelling spare tire. “Not enough hoops and too much takeout, I guess.” Josh, one of the campus’ most efficient retailers of gossip, turned his gaze toward Mitch Reynolds, of the psych department. “Speaking of,” he said, “Reynolds has lost a lot of weight.”
Brian followed his gaze and frowned. “He sick?”
Josh laughed. “Nooo,” he said. “Philippa Perry dumped him a month ago.”
“Heartbroken,” Brian diagnosed. “No appetite.”
“Clearly, unlike you,” Josh started to say, but didn’t. He genuinely liked Brian.
With a casual wave, they went in opposite directions, Brian to the Jensen Humanities Building, Josh to Keynes Hall.
“Oops!”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, let me pick those up!”
“No, no, it’s all right, I got it.” Laughing and breathless, the young woman in a peachskin pantsuit had emptied her hands to scoop up the papers that had burst out of Brian’s attaché case after she crashed into him on the steps of Jensen. Brian tried to bend down to help, but he couldn’t bend too far, and she was quicker than he.
“Thanks,” he said, blushing, as his hand brushed her cool small one. Her hands now empty again, she stuck her left one out.
“Philippa Perry,” she said. “Admissions.” Her grip was firm and her gaze cool and steady. Hazel eyes, an oval face with alabaster skin, wavy golden-red hair. Smitten, Brian scarcely remembered his own name.
“Oh, ah, Brian. Brian Lowell. English,” he finally managed.
“Hello, Brian Lowell,” Philippa replied.
Deftly she picked up her own belongings and winked as she trotted up the steps. “Bye, handsome.”
Someone had slid a flier under his door urging Humanities faculty members to attend the admissions reception for prospective students that evening. Brian attended such gatherings selectively – that is, when he thought it would be politically wise to be seen at them. This would normally have been a borderline event, but then, Philippa Perry worked in admissions, didn’t she? Ah.
The party was crowded, the room stuffy. Brian didn’t dare shed his jacket. A plastic cup filled with ice and punch was pressed into his hand. “You look as though you could use a nice cool drink.”
“Ah, Philippa,” Brian stammered. “H-hello again.”
Philippa beamed. “Hello to you too, Brian Lowell,” Philippa replied, smiling at the way she was making a private joke out of greeting him. She leaned in and he smelled her cologne, powdery and light.
“These things are horrible,” she murmured. “Give me half an hour more and we can split and get some real food. Don’t bother with the hors d’oeuvres, they’re left over from the Kerouac administration.”
Brian, grinning, nodded his agreement, struck dumb with infatuation.
Later, over dinner, they got to know each other better. Brian avoided waving his credentials in her face and said simply that he truly loved teaching English and liked teaching at a college. Philippa revealed that she was the middle of three children, the only girl, and that she’d started as a guidance counselor but stumbled into admissions after supplementing her income by helping as a volunteer in the admissions department of her own alma mater. “Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
The food arrived. Normally Brian, quite hungry by now, would have attacked it, but manners held him back.
“Ah, Philippa,” he stammered. “Ah, I don’t want to broach anything too painful … you were, uh, keeping company with Mitch Reynolds?”
Philippa looked down. Oh crap, Brian thought.
After a pause, she looked up, and … of all things … she looked sheepish. “We were seeing each other,” she said. “Then he decided he was too fat and went on a horrible diet. He lost more than forty pounds. It was like hugging a skeleton.” She shivered. “I kept trying to ask him to cool it, but he didn’t listen. We just weren’t a good … fit … for each other … after that.”
“Ohhh,” Brian said. Oh! Brian thought.
Fork in hand, he paused. “I’ve been thinking about taking off a few pounds myself,” he ventured. “I’ve, ah, succumbed to the freshman fifteen … plus …”
Philippa smiled. “Well, you know what?” she said. “Whatever. It’s you I like, not too concerned about the box.” She picked up her own fork. “Eat, before it gets cold.”
He did.
Soon Brian and Philippa were spending most evenings together at his faculty apartment on the fringes of campus, she quietly reading or knitting while he graded papers. Sometimes she cooked, sometimes they went out – not too often, it cost money – and slowly, subtly, but steadily, Brian continued expanding. His thickening waistline became an undeniable spare tire, then a pot belly. He finally, sadly, bailed on the 40-inch pants. It was mid-September when he’d been at 210. By Halloween he was up to 228 on his 5’11” frame.
November would prove to be numerically significant. He and Philippa were for all intents and purposes living together; he was eating more food, better food, and on a more regular schedule; the only exercise he got was in the bedroom.
And Philippa was in the habit of praising his big body. She’d run her hands down his sloping sides, walk her fingers up the hillock of his belly, make his spare tire into a jogging track for a circle of kisses, squeeze his softening behind, pillow onto his padded pecs after a “workout.”
“Brian,” Philippa murmured one Saturday. “How much can you hold?”
“What?”
“How much do you think you could eat, if you ate as much as you could,” Philippa tried to say, but it sounded so much like the woodchuck tongue twister that they both laughed. “Just curious,” she added.
Brian waved a plump hand dismissively, but all day they found themselves thinking about it.
“OK,” Brian said that afternoon. “Let’s go to the Family Bargain Buffet. We’ll see what I can do.”
“Really?”
“Really really,” Brian said in a fake Scottish accent, mimicking Shrek.
“You sit,” Philippa suggested. “I’ll just bring you food until….”
“Until,” Brian agreed.
The eating began. Now at 230-and-change, Brian put away two heaped platefuls easily, cleansing his palate with a big salad of leafy greens and a glass of ice water. Two more platefuls were no problem, although he cleaned his last plate more slowly. He was getting tired from the effort of eating. His jaws ached. More seriously, his stomach ached. Bloated and sore, it swelled out, ballooning over his straining pants button, the waistband folded over and slicing into his soft sides.
Philippa noticed that he was slowing down and raised an eyebrow. Brian nodded.
Philippa returned with another heaping plateful. “After this, dessert,” she said encouragingly.
Brian started to groan but belched instead. “Excuse me,” he said. Philippa winked. As Brian waited for her to return he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was feeling a little lightheaded and was really achingly stuffed. The skin of his bulging belly was stretched taut, covering too much real estate. He wanted to undo his pants button but knew he couldn’t find it under all that mound of full tummy.
Philippa returned, patting him on the shoulder. “Come on, champ.”
Brian sighed and picked up a fork.
When he set that fork down with a clink, the plate was empty but his tummy was oh, so full. Tight, aching, stretched far beyond capacity, his poor overloaded belly sloshed and gurgled. Philippa had gone and returned without his even noticing. She set a big bowl of pudding in front of him. “This will go down easily,” she said. She also set down a cup of coffee. Wonderful. Coffee was a digestif and would help. If anything could help.
Slowly, Brian put away the pudding. He let it slide passively down his throat and hoped it would stay down. He thought he might burst, the slightest move and his brim-full tummy would overflow, and heaven only knows what would come out and how. Brian was now so lightheaded that he was only dimly aware of Philippa helping him to his feet and leaving a generous tip. He was too full to straighten up.
Philippa gently guided him as he staggered heavily out to the sidewalk and pulled the keys out of his hand. “I’ll drive,” she said from what sounded like a mile away. Brian had no awareness of the ride home. Slowly, slowly, he levered himself out of the car and thudded into the apartment, where Philippa helped him into the recliner. He felt her hands gently finding and undoing his pants and sliding down the zipper.
“Ahh (urp),” Brian sighed. “ ’Cuse me.” Philippa smiled like a cat and perched on the footstool. She scooched it back a little and began gently and steadily massaging his overloaded tummy. Gradually, as he slowly began to digest, Brian’s aching stomach began to feel a little better. At the same time, Philippa’s hand drifted south. Oh my. When Philippa tugged him to his feet, stuffed as Brian still was, he was ready for the bedroom.
And it was good.
By the Book
by Big Beautiful Dreamer
by Big Beautiful Dreamer
Brian Lowell paused at the top of the steps to catch his breath. Lately, any ascent of stairs had left him breathless. He supposed it was because he’d had less time to shoot hoops lately. Less exercise, that’s all.
As he looked around, his breathing slowed and he felt better. He continued along the edge of the quad to the bookstore, where he greeted the cashier and moved toward the coffee counter. It felt weird to be on the other side of the balance – to be a faculty member on a campus instead of a student. He thought it probably helped that he was at a university where he had never been a student, so there wasn’t the awkwardness of faculty and staff adjusting to his different status.
He also was justifiably pleased with his resume. B.A. Vanderbilt; M.A. Columbia, Ph.D. Columbia, three journal articles already to his credit and a book in progress. No wonder he’d had no trouble securing a job, if only on a low rung of the academic ladder. Assistant Professor. He could practically feel his crisp business cards glowing with the newness of the title.
His hand on the half-and-half pitcher, he hesitated. Exactly how long had going up a flight of stairs made him short of breath? Surreptitiously, he rested a hand on his abdomen. Was it a little soft? Had it changed in relation to his belt? He eyed the pitcher of 2%, then decisively poured in a generous dollop of half-and-half.
He managed not to have to go up any more flights of stairs that day and got home without incident. In the apartment, he dropped his attaché case with a THUNK and dropped his keys on the small hall table. En route to the sofa, he shed his coat, tie, and shoes, then padded to the kitchen for a Coke. He flopped gratefully into the chair, glad to rest his feet. He decided that for however long it took to drink the Coke, that was how long he could wait to start grading the student compositions weighing down his attaché case.
Toward the end of the Coke, his stomach growled. Hmm, dinnertime. Brian heated up leftover Chinese takeout and ate it while watching television. Eating mindlessly, he didn’t notice how much food there was until the pan was empty. As he stood to throw the pan away, he realized that he was suddenly very full. His stomach ached and his pants were uncomfortably snug. Unthinkingly he stuck a thumb inside the waistband and tried a little informal loosening. He belched and rubbed his swollen belly. Blinking, he threw the pan away and settled back in the chair. It was 5:00. Time enough for a nap before grading those papers.
A little nap made all the difference. Brian awoke at 5:30 feeling refreshed, if still fairly stuffed. Grunting, he stood, retrieved the papers and his lap desk, and set to work. The big meal had mellowed him and he was a little less free with the red pen.
Still, three hours later, the distribution of grades was about what he thought it would be: Twenty-one A’s, thirty-eight B’s, nineteen C’s, six D’s and four F’s. Grading papers for survey courses took forever because of the sheer number of students. That was why, like a good little worker bee, he tended to prepare his lessons on the weekends whenever possible, so he wouldn’t have to do that late in the evening when he was tired and burned out from grading.
With a sigh, he stood and stretched, got another Coke, and fetched another batch of papers. This was a much smaller class, yielding only nineteen papers, and he finished by a quarter to 11. As he was packing the papers away, his stomach growled. Again? Cripes, he’d just eaten. Well, actually, he’d eaten a long time ago. He clicked to a sports show and poured some chips into a bowl. The chips disappeared quickly, and, yawning, Brian shuffled off to bed and was soon asleep.
The next morning, he awoke at 6:30. Channel surfing as he drank some reheated coffee, he came across an early morning exercise show, chipper thin people grinning while doing aerobics. Well, why not. Brian obediently joined in. When he stopped, red-faced and breathless, he felt pleased with himself until he looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 6:42. That meant that less than ten minutes of exercise had left him feeling as though he’d run a marathon. Man, he was out of shape. He’d skip breakfast, he decided.
Not the best idea, as it turned out. He was distracted during his 8:00 class, almost as sleepy and disengaged as the students. As soon as it ended, he headed for the bookstore, where he poured half-and-half in his coffee without even thinking about it and grabbed one of those cellophane-wrapped jumbo muffins. Within five minutes, the 700-calorie bomb was reduced to crumbs. Brian licked his fingers and headed back to his office.
That evening, he ate a deli salad, pleased with his healthy selection, and began making notes on a lesson plan. The salad didn’t last long, of course, and he took a break by making a run to McDonald’s, dropping another 700 calories into his steadily growing belly right before bed. If he had added up the day’s damage, including the hot dog and hot pretzel from the cart a block away from campus … just as well that he didn’t. He slept heavily, although heartburn woke him briefly around midnight.
As the semester progressed, so did Brian’s waistline. His pants were getting harder and harder to fasten, and it was a little shameful how much of a relief it was to undo them and rub and scratch the deep red mark all around his expanding abdomen. He stopped wearing sneakers and started wearing his loafers more often because bending over to tie shoes meant not actually breathing. Around fall break, he finally gave in and bought some pants in a larger size. He tried on some 36’s. Ha. The gap between button and buttonhole was a good two fingers wide. Thirty-eight, then? No. FORTY? Aw, cripes, surely not. Forty it was … and with not much growing room, either. He had a sinking feeling that he was going to be in the dressing room again by Christmas.
The next morning, he brushed the dust off the bathroom scale and stopped on. The needle whirred past the 180 mark without even slowing down. Up up up … quivering … stopping. Brian had to lean forward a little to read the results, which improbably read 210. Holy Shakespeare! How had he gained thirty pounds since March without knowing about it?
All that day, when not in class, Brian found himself contemplating his weight gain. He slowly, almost absently, moved his hand up and down his convex midsection, ran a thumb around the already snug waistband, once even went to the bathroom and, in a stall, pulled up his shirt and poked and pinched the thing. It quivered like something alive, something pale, soft, and unhealthy looking.
At home, he took off his clothes and stood in front of the mirror examining his entire body. His pecs were softening noticeably and the line from sternum to navel was a convex one. He had definite love handles and almost what you could call a spare tire. His entire abdominal region had softened and thickened, his behind was getting bigger – or his desk chair was getting smaller – and there was a crease around his belly button, even without the constriction of clothing.
The next morning, Brian and Josh Devlin, who taught economics, nursed their coffee outside the bookstore, neither in a hurry to step out of the beautiful fall day and into their offices. Josh nodded in the direction of Brian’s perceptibly thicker waistline, already lapping over the belt loops of his new 40-waist pants. “Freshman fifteen, Brian?” he remarked dryly.
“Um. More like the freshman thirty,” Brian admitted, patting his swelling spare tire. “Not enough hoops and too much takeout, I guess.” Josh, one of the campus’ most efficient retailers of gossip, turned his gaze toward Mitch Reynolds, of the psych department. “Speaking of,” he said, “Reynolds has lost a lot of weight.”
Brian followed his gaze and frowned. “He sick?”
Josh laughed. “Nooo,” he said. “Philippa Perry dumped him a month ago.”
“Heartbroken,” Brian diagnosed. “No appetite.”
“Clearly, unlike you,” Josh started to say, but didn’t. He genuinely liked Brian.
With a casual wave, they went in opposite directions, Brian to the Jensen Humanities Building, Josh to Keynes Hall.
“Oops!”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, let me pick those up!”
“No, no, it’s all right, I got it.” Laughing and breathless, the young woman in a peachskin pantsuit had emptied her hands to scoop up the papers that had burst out of Brian’s attaché case after she crashed into him on the steps of Jensen. Brian tried to bend down to help, but he couldn’t bend too far, and she was quicker than he.
“Thanks,” he said, blushing, as his hand brushed her cool small one. Her hands now empty again, she stuck her left one out.
“Philippa Perry,” she said. “Admissions.” Her grip was firm and her gaze cool and steady. Hazel eyes, an oval face with alabaster skin, wavy golden-red hair. Smitten, Brian scarcely remembered his own name.
“Oh, ah, Brian. Brian Lowell. English,” he finally managed.
“Hello, Brian Lowell,” Philippa replied.
Deftly she picked up her own belongings and winked as she trotted up the steps. “Bye, handsome.”
Someone had slid a flier under his door urging Humanities faculty members to attend the admissions reception for prospective students that evening. Brian attended such gatherings selectively – that is, when he thought it would be politically wise to be seen at them. This would normally have been a borderline event, but then, Philippa Perry worked in admissions, didn’t she? Ah.
The party was crowded, the room stuffy. Brian didn’t dare shed his jacket. A plastic cup filled with ice and punch was pressed into his hand. “You look as though you could use a nice cool drink.”
“Ah, Philippa,” Brian stammered. “H-hello again.”
Philippa beamed. “Hello to you too, Brian Lowell,” Philippa replied, smiling at the way she was making a private joke out of greeting him. She leaned in and he smelled her cologne, powdery and light.
“These things are horrible,” she murmured. “Give me half an hour more and we can split and get some real food. Don’t bother with the hors d’oeuvres, they’re left over from the Kerouac administration.”
Brian, grinning, nodded his agreement, struck dumb with infatuation.
Later, over dinner, they got to know each other better. Brian avoided waving his credentials in her face and said simply that he truly loved teaching English and liked teaching at a college. Philippa revealed that she was the middle of three children, the only girl, and that she’d started as a guidance counselor but stumbled into admissions after supplementing her income by helping as a volunteer in the admissions department of her own alma mater. “Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
The food arrived. Normally Brian, quite hungry by now, would have attacked it, but manners held him back.
“Ah, Philippa,” he stammered. “Ah, I don’t want to broach anything too painful … you were, uh, keeping company with Mitch Reynolds?”
Philippa looked down. Oh crap, Brian thought.
After a pause, she looked up, and … of all things … she looked sheepish. “We were seeing each other,” she said. “Then he decided he was too fat and went on a horrible diet. He lost more than forty pounds. It was like hugging a skeleton.” She shivered. “I kept trying to ask him to cool it, but he didn’t listen. We just weren’t a good … fit … for each other … after that.”
“Ohhh,” Brian said. Oh! Brian thought.
Fork in hand, he paused. “I’ve been thinking about taking off a few pounds myself,” he ventured. “I’ve, ah, succumbed to the freshman fifteen … plus …”
Philippa smiled. “Well, you know what?” she said. “Whatever. It’s you I like, not too concerned about the box.” She picked up her own fork. “Eat, before it gets cold.”
He did.
Soon Brian and Philippa were spending most evenings together at his faculty apartment on the fringes of campus, she quietly reading or knitting while he graded papers. Sometimes she cooked, sometimes they went out – not too often, it cost money – and slowly, subtly, but steadily, Brian continued expanding. His thickening waistline became an undeniable spare tire, then a pot belly. He finally, sadly, bailed on the 40-inch pants. It was mid-September when he’d been at 210. By Halloween he was up to 228 on his 5’11” frame.
November would prove to be numerically significant. He and Philippa were for all intents and purposes living together; he was eating more food, better food, and on a more regular schedule; the only exercise he got was in the bedroom.
And Philippa was in the habit of praising his big body. She’d run her hands down his sloping sides, walk her fingers up the hillock of his belly, make his spare tire into a jogging track for a circle of kisses, squeeze his softening behind, pillow onto his padded pecs after a “workout.”
“Brian,” Philippa murmured one Saturday. “How much can you hold?”
“What?”
“How much do you think you could eat, if you ate as much as you could,” Philippa tried to say, but it sounded so much like the woodchuck tongue twister that they both laughed. “Just curious,” she added.
Brian waved a plump hand dismissively, but all day they found themselves thinking about it.
“OK,” Brian said that afternoon. “Let’s go to the Family Bargain Buffet. We’ll see what I can do.”
“Really?”
“Really really,” Brian said in a fake Scottish accent, mimicking Shrek.
“You sit,” Philippa suggested. “I’ll just bring you food until….”
“Until,” Brian agreed.
The eating began. Now at 230-and-change, Brian put away two heaped platefuls easily, cleansing his palate with a big salad of leafy greens and a glass of ice water. Two more platefuls were no problem, although he cleaned his last plate more slowly. He was getting tired from the effort of eating. His jaws ached. More seriously, his stomach ached. Bloated and sore, it swelled out, ballooning over his straining pants button, the waistband folded over and slicing into his soft sides.
Philippa noticed that he was slowing down and raised an eyebrow. Brian nodded.
Philippa returned with another heaping plateful. “After this, dessert,” she said encouragingly.
Brian started to groan but belched instead. “Excuse me,” he said. Philippa winked. As Brian waited for her to return he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was feeling a little lightheaded and was really achingly stuffed. The skin of his bulging belly was stretched taut, covering too much real estate. He wanted to undo his pants button but knew he couldn’t find it under all that mound of full tummy.
Philippa returned, patting him on the shoulder. “Come on, champ.”
Brian sighed and picked up a fork.
When he set that fork down with a clink, the plate was empty but his tummy was oh, so full. Tight, aching, stretched far beyond capacity, his poor overloaded belly sloshed and gurgled. Philippa had gone and returned without his even noticing. She set a big bowl of pudding in front of him. “This will go down easily,” she said. She also set down a cup of coffee. Wonderful. Coffee was a digestif and would help. If anything could help.
Slowly, Brian put away the pudding. He let it slide passively down his throat and hoped it would stay down. He thought he might burst, the slightest move and his brim-full tummy would overflow, and heaven only knows what would come out and how. Brian was now so lightheaded that he was only dimly aware of Philippa helping him to his feet and leaving a generous tip. He was too full to straighten up.
Philippa gently guided him as he staggered heavily out to the sidewalk and pulled the keys out of his hand. “I’ll drive,” she said from what sounded like a mile away. Brian had no awareness of the ride home. Slowly, slowly, he levered himself out of the car and thudded into the apartment, where Philippa helped him into the recliner. He felt her hands gently finding and undoing his pants and sliding down the zipper.
“Ahh (urp),” Brian sighed. “ ’Cuse me.” Philippa smiled like a cat and perched on the footstool. She scooched it back a little and began gently and steadily massaging his overloaded tummy. Gradually, as he slowly began to digest, Brian’s aching stomach began to feel a little better. At the same time, Philippa’s hand drifted south. Oh my. When Philippa tugged him to his feet, stuffed as Brian still was, he was ready for the bedroom.
And it was good.
