Big Beautiful Dreamer
ridiculously contented
Dining, Stuffing. - Three friends challenge one another about whose family provides the very best Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, there's only one way to find out.
“No way, dude,” I insisted. “My mom’s stuffing is the best. Hands down. Sorry.”
Eric smirked. “Stuffing’s stuffing. What matters is the gravy.”
“Gravy, meh,” Julia interjected. “Doesn’t anyone here care about pumpkin pie? Cause my Nana’s pumpkin pie has actually won prizes. For real, dude.”
There was nothing for it. The only-slightly-drunk late-night bull session in the graduate students’ common room was taking the gloves off. Cell phones were whipped out. Invitations wangled. Logistics, surprisingly, ironed out with no trouble at all. And the next thing we knew, we were headed out of Boston en route to four separate Thanksgiving dinner invitations.
First stop, Eric’s father’s house in Foxboro, southwest of Boston. Eric’s father, a pharmacist, was remarried to a Martha Stewart-type, only without the bitchiness, and she was pleased at the chance to show off her hostessing and her magazine-picture Thanksgiving dinner. And Eric’s dad was cool enough not to make goofy innuendos about two guys and a girl.
For the record: I’m gay. Eric and Julia and I are friends. End of story.
Dinner was served at 10:30 because Eric’s dad had to go to work at 1:30. It was the turn of the pharmacy where he worked to be the one open for emergencies.
Now, back to the really important stuff. Er, stuffing. Eric had insisted that his stepmother, Claire, made melt in your mouth gravy. So naturally we had to pour it on everything, just to see for ourselves.
Omygod, he was right. Smooth, warm, velvety, rich, creamy, the gravy melded with crisply moist turkey and rich, spicy stuffing flecked with sausage and sage. It swirled into piles of mashed potatoes and spilled over into the sweet potato casserole. It slid under the corn and turned vegetables into an art form. It dampened the edges of homemade cranberry-orange bread and invaded the cranberry sauce and nobody cared because it was heaven, it was good enough to drink straight from the bowl.
Eric’s father and younger sister laughed and made jokes about starving graduate students and we smiled sheepishly and cleaned our plates and went back for second helpings. Everyone finally slowed down only because we were actually running out of food (a little embarrassing).
Eric’s sister disappeared into her room with the phone and Dad and Stepmom into the kitchen. Eric and Julia and I staggered into the den and sank down onto sofas and recliners.
I let out a long groan cut short by a surprisingly sharp hiccup.
“Ohhh…hic.” Wincing, I laid a hand on my aching belly, finding it firm and round, as though there were a small basketball under my shirt. I had eaten so much my stomach actually stuck out. The snap of my jeans was begging to be undone. With some effort I found the thing and worked it open, undoing the zipper for good measure. My full and bloated gut swelled forward another inch or so, the skin of my midsection pulled taut with distention.
Eric had claimed the bagged-out sofa and was stretched out on it, one arm behind his head and the other resting tentatively on his midriff. His shirt was rucked up and, like me, he had undone his jeans.
“Hic. Ow. Hic,” he contributed. He slid a hand gently back and forth across his waist, which bulged upward like a relief map of the Berkshires, rounded and firm. Only the Berkshires weren’t formed by three or four platefuls of turkey and stuffing… and mashed potatoes and sweet potates and … my overloaded belly churned uneasily just thinking about food.
“Mrrurrp,” Eric added. “Whoo. I’m so full… every time… I breathe… think I’m… gonna pop,” he said a little breathlessly. His belly, like mine, was visibly distended, tight and swollen, and even from across the room I could hear gurgles and groans as his stomach strained to hold and digest several pounds of Thanksgiving dinner.
In the corner, Julia moaned quietly. She had started the day wearing skinny jeans, which might have been a miscalculation, because they left no room for error or second helpings. Like us, she’d undone the jeans, but that didn’t give her much of a margin. Her undeniably full tummy was on remorseless display as she had tugged her shirt up to give her aching belly some relief. In the opening I saw a belt of abdomen punctuated by a rosily taut tummy, a modest but firm swell bulging above and spilling over the unfastened jeans. Creamy flesh filled the area between button and buttonhole, looking as though doing the jeans back up would defy the laws of physics.
“Oh,” she groaned, clutching that bloated bulge. “Oh…hic.” Her cheeks flushed. “Ohhhh. Can I just, like, lay here—hic—and die?” Her eyelids fluttered and her fingertips tapped very, very gently on the mound of tautly straining flesh capped with a belly button pulled tight.
“Hate to tell you guys,” Eric mumbled thickly from the sofa, “but in another hour we’re supposed to be at my mom’s house.” Eric’s mom lived in Natick, our next stop on the Magical Thanksgiving Tour.
If I could have moved, I would have thrown a sofa pillow at him. As it was, I merely grunted. “Too—hic—full. Never want to eat again.” I belched and closed my eyes.
“The drive will do us good,” Eric said through a huge yawn. “Fresh … air.”
We hauled ourselves upward reluctantly and, wincing and groaning, managed to squeeze button and buttonhole closed over our swollen bellies much too full of much too much dinner. We played Rock Paper Scissors, single elimination. I lost, which meant I got to drive. Eric took shotgun, giving me directions. Julia, lucky brat, got to stretch out in the back seat.
Eric’s mom, also a pharmacist, had remarried to a lawyer. Eric had made no superlative claims about anyone’s cooking here, but if he was going to see his dad, by default he also had to see his mom, and we were along for the ride.
Surprisingly, an hour in the car, having to think about navigation rather than tummies, had eased the immediacy of our fullness, and we tumbled out of the car ready for round two at 12:30 on the dot.
The food was good – not awesome, but pretty darn good – and for overworked graduate students living on ramen noodles and stress, a homemade Thanksgiving dinner is a definite high point.
Of course, none of us was starting on an empty stomach, exactly.
I had to unbutton my jeans after the first plateful if I wanted seconds on the turkey and gravy, and the mashed turnips, and the squash pie, and I did. And I could feel my midsection straining at the edges, the sides of my abdomen tugging with effort, my stomach growing heavy and warm and feeling as though it was beginning to sag forward with the effort of holding this overabundance of good food. My jeans creaked as I reached for another crescent roll. Across the table, I absently noticed Julia close her eyes for a second of internal debate before spooning more squash onto her plate. Her hand sneaked under her table and I hid a grin, because I had already undone my jeans.
Eric the plow horse had gone straight to his work, filling his plate, emptying it, filling it again. He’s always been like that: set a task in front of him and he’ll go straight on until it’s done. His face was a little ruddy, his eyes a little glazed, but he kept steadily lifting his fork, determined to empty his second or third or fourth plateful.
And then, at last, we were done. I’d thought.
Then Eric’s mom brought out a large, steaming deep dish apple pie heaped with crumbly topping, the cinnamon nearly visible.
Oops. Tactical error. Taking as deep a breath as I could manage (distressingly shallow), I cut off a very small tip of the slice I’d been served. Maybe the pie would slide into the cracks and hollows (what hollows?) and do no damage.
I was torn between desire and distress. Torn between the Nirvana of each crumbly, creamy, spicy, silky mouthful and the way I could feel my gorged belly, my swollen waist, inch forward with each swallow. I was full, I was stuffed, I was bursting, I was crying out for relief … and I wanted another taste and another taste and another taste.
I don’t even remember being led to the den. Don’t even remember the extreme caution with which I must have lowered myself onto the sofa. Must have briefly dozed.
Then I was horizontal, pillows behind my head, hearing football on the television. My jeans long since undone. My stomach throbbed and churned in ecstatic protest, the flesh of my overworked abdomen stretched tight over a visibly swollen and aching belly, sticking straight up, a dome of fullness, a monument to indulgence. I pressed my palm to one side of it, the east face. The flesh was warm beneath my hand, pulled firmly taut, not a hint of give. My breathing was shallow, my gut about to pop with each inhalation.
I hiccupped.
“Hey, you’re awake,” Eric grunted. Without moving anything else, I slid my eyes sideways. Eric was in a recliner, feet up, a hand under his shirt and his jeans undone. His midriff was now quite swollen, not just one hillock but a whole chain of the Berkshires beneath a thin covering of stomach. The bulge below his ribcage was protruding out into a large distended mound, little spills of spare tire lapping at his hips. From within issued groans and squeaks as his system struggled to digest another huge offering on top of the first go-round.
A loud hiccup drew my gaze to the corner, where Julia sat, eyes wide and unblinking like those of a toddler who has just pulled off an amazing feat.
“Hic. Hic. Ow! God—hic.” Julia grimaced and pressed her hands to her sternum. Below where her hands rested, her tummy swelled out, lifting the fabric of her shirt and displaying a gravid bulge of belly. Her flesh was taut and rosily flushed, her belly button nearly a slit. The latest dinner she’d consumed rested heavily atop the first one, the digestion of which swelled her lower tummy with bloating and grumbling, a bulging cushion of pink flesh. Those unfortunate skinny jeans lay flapped open, creating a triangle of gorged belly, the denim edges a decorative abstraction rather than fabric intended to be zipped closed.
“What time… uhff…do we hafta… mrrrp… be at your house…urrp,” Eric managed, puffing with effort.
“Two-thirty,” I grunted. “Hic.” As if on cue, the wall clock chimed the half-hour. One-thirty.
“Worcester,” I elaborated. “Time to … uhff… go.”
I would estimate that it took us a good three minutes to slowly and painfully haul ourselves to our feet and another several minutes of grunting and sweating to succeed in fastening our jeans. I don’t know about Julia and Eric, but I was afraid to sit down. Vaguely I wondered how we were going to make it through two more stops.
Eric’s turn to drive. We pulled up in Worcester only ten minutes late. Again, the hour’s drive had refreshed and revived us and at least made a dent in the massive efforts of digestion in which our painfully stuffed bellies were engaged.
My mom and dad folded easily three more people into the chaos, which included my older sister, her husband, and their two children, and my younger sister and her boyfriend. That made eleven people in the 1700-square-foot house, two of them small children. Oh, boy.
With the kids and “Grandma and Grandpa” at the card table in the kitchen, we said grace and started passing dishes. I made sure to get a large helping of stuffing. My mom included apple, walnut, plenty of sage, and oysters in hers, and as far as I was concerned it was almost as good as her turkey, which was plenty good.
By now at least part of the first dinner was history, so although I was still operating under a handicap, I thought I could put away a good plateful.
I put away a good plateful. Paused to reconnoiter. And found myself piling up my plate again. I was full and I knew it, God Almighty, did I know it, but this meal was a once-a-year treat and I was determined to enjoy as much of it as I could stand. I savored the taste of a mouthful… swallowed… let out a little groan at the impact of even one more bite of food on my aching and painfully stuffed belly… felt my sides stretch and pull… felt the warmth as my overloaded stomach, already full to the very brim, accepted one more morsel… closed my eyes as a momentary light-headedness made my head swim… I was dizzy with repletion, too stuffed to move, glutted and gorged and sated to my eyebrows…
I lowered myself with extreme caution into the easy chair made available by Dad choosing to take a proper nap in the bedroom. Yay, Dad.
The jeans that had fit that morning were more or less giving up entirely. Though they were unbuttoned, my sloshing and heavily aching belly surged forward well past the waistband when I sat, the taut bloat of digestion spilling over the sides and the swell of the most immediate feast roundly distending over and beyond the denim, which, after all, could only contain so much.
I leaned back, my eyelids heavy, and the moan that escaped was involuntary.
“Mmmm. Hic.” It felt wonderful to slowly and lightly massage the enormously gorged and aching mountain that was my midriff. Tight, stretched, warm and heavy, my gut was gloriously sated, weighing me down and easing me into hibernation. I was stocked up, I was primal, I could sleep the winter through, full to my eyeballs, logy and gurgling and sodden with food, all of it rich and fatty and spicy and warm and delicious.
I lay in half a doze for an hour or more, unconscious of Eric and Julia, not even knowing if they were in the same room, much less the same house, until here was Julia, flushed and rumpled, shaking my shoulder.
“Time to go,” she said, through a jaw-cracking yawn. “Goin’ to Nana’s.”
I scrubbed my eyes. Hauled myself up. Took a breath and once more managed to do up the zipper and button: a feat of engineering that defied several known laws of the space-time continuum.
Julia slid behind the wheel with an audible grunt and Eric claimed the back seat, which left me the front passenger side. I went around and with extreme caution lowered myself into the bucket seat and tugged the seat belt over a decidedly distended belly.
As we drove, I had an unobstructed view of Julia’s tummy, which provided interesting shifts in scenery. Below her lovely chest (yes, I’m gay. Yes, I can still have aesthetic appreciations. Shut up.), the bulge of a very full stomach straining to hold her third Thanksgiving dinner of the day rested uneasily on the bloated distention of an abdomen taut with digestive efforts of dinners no. 1 and 2. Flesh leaked out beneath her bra and ballooned outward, stretching the fabric of her shirt, which seemed to be lower cut than when we’d started. The middle section of her belly was trapped between brassiere above and—heaven help us—waistband below, with nowhere to go but out.
Out it was going, creating a plumply taut spare tire, flobbling into overspill at the edges where that poor overworked waistband was doing a heroic job of containing her lower tummy. Her jeans creaked with every shift and wriggle in the driver’s seat, and her belt loops were folded in half as if in a futile effort to reinforce the fabric against the flood.
Speaking of flood: my own gut was similarly encumbered. Hugely full, groaning with the strain, my belly protruded heavily outward in a tight cushion of midsection before oozing over the diabolically pinching waistband of my jeans. Little wavelets of tummy lapped at the edges of the denim dam, the button and buttonhole seemingly drilling into my tender and abused abdomen, pulled so taut it was nearly translucent.
Below, where the jeans heroically held back the Thanksgiving tide, I could hear as well as feel my gorged and swollen gut’s efforts to breach the wall, to surge forward in sweet release, to know no more restraint. The effort of sitting upright, the resulting constriction of lungs and diaphragm, was making me breathe shallowly through my mouth, almost panting like the family dog. Periodically my breath hitched and a painful hiccup resulted, the sharp kind that ought to leave a mark on the sternum for its effort.
I was much too stuffed to even think about turning my head around and looking at Eric, but there was no need. Loud, heavy snores were causing the little car nearly to vibrate. I knew without looking that with each inhalation the snap of his jeans would shudder with effort, threatening to pop open against the swell of bloated and sorely tried belly.
We were all three of us stupefied, dazed, semi-conscious, socked out with storing up, torpid with Thanksgiving. It was glorious: Turkey Day was here at last, and we were gorging with the best of them, maybe even setting some kind of record. We drove the entire route from Worcester to Lowell in silence punctuated only by periodic groans, whines, and other eructations from three astoundingly stuffed tummies.
After an eternity, Julia pulled up in front of a 19th-century white frame farmhouse that had, she assured us, been upfitted with all sorts of modern lighting, plumbing and heat. It now contained Nana, in her own little ground-floor suite of rooms, as well as Julia’s aunt and uncle and their three children, and there was, Aunt Kathy insisted cheerfully, “no problem” fitting three more people around the table.
“You graduate students,” she chided gently, “you work too hard, get rundown, don’t take care of yourselves. We’ll build you right up,” and she dropped a kiss on Julia’s forehead.
By now it was 6 o’clock and time for round four. As before, we’d had our time on the road to aid in the laborious process of digestion; however, we also had no fewer than three full Thanksgiving dinners inside our bloated bellies. I was no longer actively in pain, but neither was I actively hungry. My stamina was faltering. I resolved to pile my plate lightly, eat slowly, put away just token amounts of turkey and gravy.
Ha.
No sooner had I sat down than my salivary glands kicked in, my mouth watered, and although my actual stomach was already stuffed to the brim, my brain was clamoring for good homemade food.
My noble intentions vanished with the passing of the first platter. I heaped up turkey as though I’d been a month without eating. Piled on cranberry sauce, broccoli au gratin, creamed peas, fresh brown popovers, stuffing with walnuts, crisp squash casserole, homemade banana bread, all blended together with smooth, salty, creamy gravy.
It took only a few mouthfuls before I remembered to stop and undo my jeans. I glanced surreptitiously to my right; Eric was way ahead of me on that score. I couldn’t see Julia’s waistband but I was willing to bet it was unfastened. Had to be.
The sensation was unforgettable, unique, marvelous. With each mouthful I swallowed, I felt my aching sides groan, felt my sagging belly grow a fraction heavier, felt my stomach push itself a millimeter farther outward. My head grew heavy, nodding with satiation; I paused now and again for a drink of ice water to clear my palate and give my gorged and glutted midsection a break. The flesh was straining; the belly working to burst through the already-undone jeans.
I savored the taste of a mouthful… swallowed… suppressed a groan. With each bite my sides tugged with effort. I could swear I could actually see my belly inching visibly outward at every swallow.
Eric beside me grunted as he suppressed what should have been a monstrous belch. Paused. Caught his breath. And soldiered on. His belly was brushing the tablecloth; I could see it swelling beneath his turtleneck, the fabric tugging at the sides like a pup tent pulled too wide, a balloon about to burst. Surely the musical groans and gurgles I could hear emanating from his stuffed and swollen belly were matched by the symphony of digestion in my own enormously bloated gut, tight as a drum, ready to pop at a moment’s notice.
Then there was a large wedge of pumpkin pie in front of me and Julia across the table gave me a stare and a wink. Nana’s famous pumpkin pie. Interestingly, in spite of ingesting three full dinners, we had not yet tasted pumpkin pie. So far today, we’d enjoyed Boston cream pie, deep dish apple pie, and chocolate fudge pie. But here at last was the pumpkin pie about which Julia had bragged.
I closed my eyes. To say I had never been so full in my life was a serious understatement.
I was stuffed from my hips up to my throat, stuffing and gravy leaking out my ears. My chest was tight with the effort to take a deep enough breath against a diaphragm compressed with four complete-and-then-some dinners. My torso was thrust outward, stuffed to bursting and hugely swollen. Without even moving I could feel the tug of effort at my sides as my midsection’s usual allotment of flesh strove to cover, however thinly, a truly unusual gorge and the bloat of digestion resulting from my system churning away at thousands of calories.
Pounds of food swirled through my aching belly, making me feel warm, flushed, semiconscious and yet vaguely triumphant. I had fulfilled my obligations as a living human, I had fed hugely on the results of the hunt, I had stuffed myself to the brim as preparation for the dark and bleak winter days that lay ahead. Full as I was, painful as was the heavy sag and thrust of my gut, swollen and gorged as was my belly, I was master of my future, I had ensured that I would survive to see another spring.
Then the scent of pie tickled up to my nostrils and interrupted my evolutionary ruminations.
The wedge in front of me loomed. Enormous. Fully a quarter of a pie. I glanced around. What was everybody else eating?
“It’s fine,” Julia’s aunt assured me with a wink. “I made three to be sure to have enough.”
Oh.
To my right, Eric sat flushed and stupefied, remaining upright through either habit or sheer force of will. His face was damp with perspiration and his shirt clung valiantly to his chest and enormously bloated gut, losing the fight for coverage somewhere around Eric’s navel, revealing a taut pale strip of very full belly swelling outward, the waistband of his jeans nowhere in view.
Across the table, Julia blinked slowly, mechanically, each blink longer than the last. Stuffed to the rafters, she too was losing the fight for sleep, ready to slide into hibernation.
I took a mouthful of the pie and let it slip down my throat, silky and harmless, delicious and smooth, surely it would slide through the bottleneck of dinner(s) piled in my gut and find a resting place.
Each mouthful disappeared so quickly, so tantalizingly, that it called for another and another and another. No sooner did my plate get emptied – a minor miracle – than another huge wedge was laid in front of me.
“Eat up,” Aunt Kathy urged. “We got plenty.”
Don’t ask me where that second chunk of pie went. It vanished, so it must have gone somewhere, but I was full up to my eyebrows, so full I never wanted to move again, but something in me was urging me to get up, that if I could only recline it would be a favor for my poor aching belly, painfully stretched and throbbing with the mountains of dinner it now contained.
I hauled myself upward, caught my balance, paused for breath, and slowly, heavily, waddled from the room, each step surely unbalancing the 200-year-old farmhouse and endangering the floorboards.
Claimed a deep recliner and sank in. The fact that my jeans were undone offered no comfort to my distress. I could not in a hundred years have fastened them up, the fabric simply would not stretch around my massively engorged midriff, but the absence of pressure did nothing to temper my fullness.
I rested a hand on my belly, my shirt hiked up to cool its fevered, ballooning surface, and through fluttering eyelids surveyed the scene.
We were laid out like casualties after a battle, stuffed and gorged bellies protruding outward, tummy flesh straining tautly against acres of distended guts, navels stretched to slits, tight mounds of stomach bulging rosily, punctuating the air with gurgles and squeals, grumbles and groans.
“We.... did it. Urrp.” Eric punctuated his pronouncement with an enormous belch, crisp and resonant.
“Ohhhhhh.” This from the corner where Julia, sprawled on the sofa, was cautiously squirming, trying to find a position that would ease the discomfort of her heavily swollen tummy. Rosy and tight, her belly swelled roundly below the confinement of her bra, punctuated the air with a triumphant arc of distention, and ended by lapping heavily over the waistband of those poor skinny jeans. Long since undone, of course, but the denim now clung round her bottom and hips as if painted on, the flaps pushed down by the determined spill of a tummy stuffed to the limits and beyond by a delicious satiation, a feast for the ages, an incredible intake of no fewer than four full, complete Thanksgiving dinners, pie and all.
She hiccupped. “I don’t—hic—feel very well.” She winced and delicately pressed her fingertips against the tautness. “My…stomach—hic—hurts.”
Eric massaged his gut, swollen and sagging. His belly had protruded as far out as it could manage, then in self-defense lapped around the sides and now rested heavily on what had, possibly, once been the waistband of an average pair of jeans. His bloated gut, gorged to bursting, entirely covered the top part of the jeans and swelled out over the opening where his button and zipper no longer dreamed of meeting.
“Four dinners—urrrp. Four… whole… complete—urp—Thanksgiving… dinners.” Eric thumped his drum of a stomach, creating a hollow thunk, evidence of a belly that was anything but hollow. “We… came… we…uhff… ate… we…mrrp… conquered.” He thrust a fist upward, smirking.
My own belly, not content with swelling straight out, was so filled to the brim that it actually bulged upward toward my chest before protruding tautly forward, gravid and firm. Not an inch of give to the tightly distended flesh of my torso, not a hint of anything to pinch, I was stuffed so full that I could not even get hold of a squeak of flesh to see how fat I’d become.
I was nearly comatose, yet so achingly, painfully stuffed that I was too full to doze off. An awareness of just how very glutted I was kept me conscious, something deep within signaling that it was not yet safe to hibernate, that sated and sore, I still had to keep one eye out for saber tooth sloths.
I reclined in exquisite agony, savoring the tug and sag of my gut, the warm heaviness of my belly weighing me down, pinning me to the chair. I was too stuffed to crane my head forward to look, but I knew by feel that my sphere of a midsection was resting heavily on my lap, spilling over the waistband of the jeans that once, an age ago, had fit fine but somehow had shrunk, glued to my backside and thighs, the button and buttonhole miles apart, a surge of full and bloated belly thrust through the opening. I could feel the ballooning mound of gut pressing urgently against the denim, crying out for more space, even though I knew as a practical matter that undressing would make not a bit of difference.
I had completed my task, I had triumphed, I had done my duty magnificently. I was stocked up to the rafters, pounds and pounds of turkey, stuffing, pie, quarts of gravy, rivers of vegetables, churning and swirling in my massively swollen belly, sated and gorged, glutted and stuffed, my belly squealing and squawking as it strove to move mountains of absolutely delicious dinner…four Thanksgiving dinners!...through my overworked system.
I caught my breath, ready to say something, ready to contribute to the conversation, such as it was.
Opened my mouth. Belched. And felt a smile curve my lips upward as at last, gorged beyond believing, I drifted into a warm and satisfying sleep.
The Sign of the Four
Big Beautiful Dreamer
Big Beautiful Dreamer
“No way, dude,” I insisted. “My mom’s stuffing is the best. Hands down. Sorry.”
Eric smirked. “Stuffing’s stuffing. What matters is the gravy.”
“Gravy, meh,” Julia interjected. “Doesn’t anyone here care about pumpkin pie? Cause my Nana’s pumpkin pie has actually won prizes. For real, dude.”
There was nothing for it. The only-slightly-drunk late-night bull session in the graduate students’ common room was taking the gloves off. Cell phones were whipped out. Invitations wangled. Logistics, surprisingly, ironed out with no trouble at all. And the next thing we knew, we were headed out of Boston en route to four separate Thanksgiving dinner invitations.
First stop, Eric’s father’s house in Foxboro, southwest of Boston. Eric’s father, a pharmacist, was remarried to a Martha Stewart-type, only without the bitchiness, and she was pleased at the chance to show off her hostessing and her magazine-picture Thanksgiving dinner. And Eric’s dad was cool enough not to make goofy innuendos about two guys and a girl.
For the record: I’m gay. Eric and Julia and I are friends. End of story.
Dinner was served at 10:30 because Eric’s dad had to go to work at 1:30. It was the turn of the pharmacy where he worked to be the one open for emergencies.
Now, back to the really important stuff. Er, stuffing. Eric had insisted that his stepmother, Claire, made melt in your mouth gravy. So naturally we had to pour it on everything, just to see for ourselves.
Omygod, he was right. Smooth, warm, velvety, rich, creamy, the gravy melded with crisply moist turkey and rich, spicy stuffing flecked with sausage and sage. It swirled into piles of mashed potatoes and spilled over into the sweet potato casserole. It slid under the corn and turned vegetables into an art form. It dampened the edges of homemade cranberry-orange bread and invaded the cranberry sauce and nobody cared because it was heaven, it was good enough to drink straight from the bowl.
Eric’s father and younger sister laughed and made jokes about starving graduate students and we smiled sheepishly and cleaned our plates and went back for second helpings. Everyone finally slowed down only because we were actually running out of food (a little embarrassing).
Eric’s sister disappeared into her room with the phone and Dad and Stepmom into the kitchen. Eric and Julia and I staggered into the den and sank down onto sofas and recliners.
I let out a long groan cut short by a surprisingly sharp hiccup.
“Ohhh…hic.” Wincing, I laid a hand on my aching belly, finding it firm and round, as though there were a small basketball under my shirt. I had eaten so much my stomach actually stuck out. The snap of my jeans was begging to be undone. With some effort I found the thing and worked it open, undoing the zipper for good measure. My full and bloated gut swelled forward another inch or so, the skin of my midsection pulled taut with distention.
Eric had claimed the bagged-out sofa and was stretched out on it, one arm behind his head and the other resting tentatively on his midriff. His shirt was rucked up and, like me, he had undone his jeans.
“Hic. Ow. Hic,” he contributed. He slid a hand gently back and forth across his waist, which bulged upward like a relief map of the Berkshires, rounded and firm. Only the Berkshires weren’t formed by three or four platefuls of turkey and stuffing… and mashed potatoes and sweet potates and … my overloaded belly churned uneasily just thinking about food.
“Mrrurrp,” Eric added. “Whoo. I’m so full… every time… I breathe… think I’m… gonna pop,” he said a little breathlessly. His belly, like mine, was visibly distended, tight and swollen, and even from across the room I could hear gurgles and groans as his stomach strained to hold and digest several pounds of Thanksgiving dinner.
In the corner, Julia moaned quietly. She had started the day wearing skinny jeans, which might have been a miscalculation, because they left no room for error or second helpings. Like us, she’d undone the jeans, but that didn’t give her much of a margin. Her undeniably full tummy was on remorseless display as she had tugged her shirt up to give her aching belly some relief. In the opening I saw a belt of abdomen punctuated by a rosily taut tummy, a modest but firm swell bulging above and spilling over the unfastened jeans. Creamy flesh filled the area between button and buttonhole, looking as though doing the jeans back up would defy the laws of physics.
“Oh,” she groaned, clutching that bloated bulge. “Oh…hic.” Her cheeks flushed. “Ohhhh. Can I just, like, lay here—hic—and die?” Her eyelids fluttered and her fingertips tapped very, very gently on the mound of tautly straining flesh capped with a belly button pulled tight.
“Hate to tell you guys,” Eric mumbled thickly from the sofa, “but in another hour we’re supposed to be at my mom’s house.” Eric’s mom lived in Natick, our next stop on the Magical Thanksgiving Tour.
If I could have moved, I would have thrown a sofa pillow at him. As it was, I merely grunted. “Too—hic—full. Never want to eat again.” I belched and closed my eyes.
“The drive will do us good,” Eric said through a huge yawn. “Fresh … air.”
We hauled ourselves upward reluctantly and, wincing and groaning, managed to squeeze button and buttonhole closed over our swollen bellies much too full of much too much dinner. We played Rock Paper Scissors, single elimination. I lost, which meant I got to drive. Eric took shotgun, giving me directions. Julia, lucky brat, got to stretch out in the back seat.
Eric’s mom, also a pharmacist, had remarried to a lawyer. Eric had made no superlative claims about anyone’s cooking here, but if he was going to see his dad, by default he also had to see his mom, and we were along for the ride.
Surprisingly, an hour in the car, having to think about navigation rather than tummies, had eased the immediacy of our fullness, and we tumbled out of the car ready for round two at 12:30 on the dot.
The food was good – not awesome, but pretty darn good – and for overworked graduate students living on ramen noodles and stress, a homemade Thanksgiving dinner is a definite high point.
Of course, none of us was starting on an empty stomach, exactly.
I had to unbutton my jeans after the first plateful if I wanted seconds on the turkey and gravy, and the mashed turnips, and the squash pie, and I did. And I could feel my midsection straining at the edges, the sides of my abdomen tugging with effort, my stomach growing heavy and warm and feeling as though it was beginning to sag forward with the effort of holding this overabundance of good food. My jeans creaked as I reached for another crescent roll. Across the table, I absently noticed Julia close her eyes for a second of internal debate before spooning more squash onto her plate. Her hand sneaked under her table and I hid a grin, because I had already undone my jeans.
Eric the plow horse had gone straight to his work, filling his plate, emptying it, filling it again. He’s always been like that: set a task in front of him and he’ll go straight on until it’s done. His face was a little ruddy, his eyes a little glazed, but he kept steadily lifting his fork, determined to empty his second or third or fourth plateful.
And then, at last, we were done. I’d thought.
Then Eric’s mom brought out a large, steaming deep dish apple pie heaped with crumbly topping, the cinnamon nearly visible.
Oops. Tactical error. Taking as deep a breath as I could manage (distressingly shallow), I cut off a very small tip of the slice I’d been served. Maybe the pie would slide into the cracks and hollows (what hollows?) and do no damage.
I was torn between desire and distress. Torn between the Nirvana of each crumbly, creamy, spicy, silky mouthful and the way I could feel my gorged belly, my swollen waist, inch forward with each swallow. I was full, I was stuffed, I was bursting, I was crying out for relief … and I wanted another taste and another taste and another taste.
I don’t even remember being led to the den. Don’t even remember the extreme caution with which I must have lowered myself onto the sofa. Must have briefly dozed.
Then I was horizontal, pillows behind my head, hearing football on the television. My jeans long since undone. My stomach throbbed and churned in ecstatic protest, the flesh of my overworked abdomen stretched tight over a visibly swollen and aching belly, sticking straight up, a dome of fullness, a monument to indulgence. I pressed my palm to one side of it, the east face. The flesh was warm beneath my hand, pulled firmly taut, not a hint of give. My breathing was shallow, my gut about to pop with each inhalation.
I hiccupped.
“Hey, you’re awake,” Eric grunted. Without moving anything else, I slid my eyes sideways. Eric was in a recliner, feet up, a hand under his shirt and his jeans undone. His midriff was now quite swollen, not just one hillock but a whole chain of the Berkshires beneath a thin covering of stomach. The bulge below his ribcage was protruding out into a large distended mound, little spills of spare tire lapping at his hips. From within issued groans and squeaks as his system struggled to digest another huge offering on top of the first go-round.
A loud hiccup drew my gaze to the corner, where Julia sat, eyes wide and unblinking like those of a toddler who has just pulled off an amazing feat.
“Hic. Hic. Ow! God—hic.” Julia grimaced and pressed her hands to her sternum. Below where her hands rested, her tummy swelled out, lifting the fabric of her shirt and displaying a gravid bulge of belly. Her flesh was taut and rosily flushed, her belly button nearly a slit. The latest dinner she’d consumed rested heavily atop the first one, the digestion of which swelled her lower tummy with bloating and grumbling, a bulging cushion of pink flesh. Those unfortunate skinny jeans lay flapped open, creating a triangle of gorged belly, the denim edges a decorative abstraction rather than fabric intended to be zipped closed.
“What time… uhff…do we hafta… mrrrp… be at your house…urrp,” Eric managed, puffing with effort.
“Two-thirty,” I grunted. “Hic.” As if on cue, the wall clock chimed the half-hour. One-thirty.
“Worcester,” I elaborated. “Time to … uhff… go.”
I would estimate that it took us a good three minutes to slowly and painfully haul ourselves to our feet and another several minutes of grunting and sweating to succeed in fastening our jeans. I don’t know about Julia and Eric, but I was afraid to sit down. Vaguely I wondered how we were going to make it through two more stops.
Eric’s turn to drive. We pulled up in Worcester only ten minutes late. Again, the hour’s drive had refreshed and revived us and at least made a dent in the massive efforts of digestion in which our painfully stuffed bellies were engaged.
My mom and dad folded easily three more people into the chaos, which included my older sister, her husband, and their two children, and my younger sister and her boyfriend. That made eleven people in the 1700-square-foot house, two of them small children. Oh, boy.
With the kids and “Grandma and Grandpa” at the card table in the kitchen, we said grace and started passing dishes. I made sure to get a large helping of stuffing. My mom included apple, walnut, plenty of sage, and oysters in hers, and as far as I was concerned it was almost as good as her turkey, which was plenty good.
By now at least part of the first dinner was history, so although I was still operating under a handicap, I thought I could put away a good plateful.
I put away a good plateful. Paused to reconnoiter. And found myself piling up my plate again. I was full and I knew it, God Almighty, did I know it, but this meal was a once-a-year treat and I was determined to enjoy as much of it as I could stand. I savored the taste of a mouthful… swallowed… let out a little groan at the impact of even one more bite of food on my aching and painfully stuffed belly… felt my sides stretch and pull… felt the warmth as my overloaded stomach, already full to the very brim, accepted one more morsel… closed my eyes as a momentary light-headedness made my head swim… I was dizzy with repletion, too stuffed to move, glutted and gorged and sated to my eyebrows…
I lowered myself with extreme caution into the easy chair made available by Dad choosing to take a proper nap in the bedroom. Yay, Dad.
The jeans that had fit that morning were more or less giving up entirely. Though they were unbuttoned, my sloshing and heavily aching belly surged forward well past the waistband when I sat, the taut bloat of digestion spilling over the sides and the swell of the most immediate feast roundly distending over and beyond the denim, which, after all, could only contain so much.
I leaned back, my eyelids heavy, and the moan that escaped was involuntary.
“Mmmm. Hic.” It felt wonderful to slowly and lightly massage the enormously gorged and aching mountain that was my midriff. Tight, stretched, warm and heavy, my gut was gloriously sated, weighing me down and easing me into hibernation. I was stocked up, I was primal, I could sleep the winter through, full to my eyeballs, logy and gurgling and sodden with food, all of it rich and fatty and spicy and warm and delicious.
I lay in half a doze for an hour or more, unconscious of Eric and Julia, not even knowing if they were in the same room, much less the same house, until here was Julia, flushed and rumpled, shaking my shoulder.
“Time to go,” she said, through a jaw-cracking yawn. “Goin’ to Nana’s.”
I scrubbed my eyes. Hauled myself up. Took a breath and once more managed to do up the zipper and button: a feat of engineering that defied several known laws of the space-time continuum.
Julia slid behind the wheel with an audible grunt and Eric claimed the back seat, which left me the front passenger side. I went around and with extreme caution lowered myself into the bucket seat and tugged the seat belt over a decidedly distended belly.
As we drove, I had an unobstructed view of Julia’s tummy, which provided interesting shifts in scenery. Below her lovely chest (yes, I’m gay. Yes, I can still have aesthetic appreciations. Shut up.), the bulge of a very full stomach straining to hold her third Thanksgiving dinner of the day rested uneasily on the bloated distention of an abdomen taut with digestive efforts of dinners no. 1 and 2. Flesh leaked out beneath her bra and ballooned outward, stretching the fabric of her shirt, which seemed to be lower cut than when we’d started. The middle section of her belly was trapped between brassiere above and—heaven help us—waistband below, with nowhere to go but out.
Out it was going, creating a plumply taut spare tire, flobbling into overspill at the edges where that poor overworked waistband was doing a heroic job of containing her lower tummy. Her jeans creaked with every shift and wriggle in the driver’s seat, and her belt loops were folded in half as if in a futile effort to reinforce the fabric against the flood.
Speaking of flood: my own gut was similarly encumbered. Hugely full, groaning with the strain, my belly protruded heavily outward in a tight cushion of midsection before oozing over the diabolically pinching waistband of my jeans. Little wavelets of tummy lapped at the edges of the denim dam, the button and buttonhole seemingly drilling into my tender and abused abdomen, pulled so taut it was nearly translucent.
Below, where the jeans heroically held back the Thanksgiving tide, I could hear as well as feel my gorged and swollen gut’s efforts to breach the wall, to surge forward in sweet release, to know no more restraint. The effort of sitting upright, the resulting constriction of lungs and diaphragm, was making me breathe shallowly through my mouth, almost panting like the family dog. Periodically my breath hitched and a painful hiccup resulted, the sharp kind that ought to leave a mark on the sternum for its effort.
I was much too stuffed to even think about turning my head around and looking at Eric, but there was no need. Loud, heavy snores were causing the little car nearly to vibrate. I knew without looking that with each inhalation the snap of his jeans would shudder with effort, threatening to pop open against the swell of bloated and sorely tried belly.
We were all three of us stupefied, dazed, semi-conscious, socked out with storing up, torpid with Thanksgiving. It was glorious: Turkey Day was here at last, and we were gorging with the best of them, maybe even setting some kind of record. We drove the entire route from Worcester to Lowell in silence punctuated only by periodic groans, whines, and other eructations from three astoundingly stuffed tummies.
After an eternity, Julia pulled up in front of a 19th-century white frame farmhouse that had, she assured us, been upfitted with all sorts of modern lighting, plumbing and heat. It now contained Nana, in her own little ground-floor suite of rooms, as well as Julia’s aunt and uncle and their three children, and there was, Aunt Kathy insisted cheerfully, “no problem” fitting three more people around the table.
“You graduate students,” she chided gently, “you work too hard, get rundown, don’t take care of yourselves. We’ll build you right up,” and she dropped a kiss on Julia’s forehead.
By now it was 6 o’clock and time for round four. As before, we’d had our time on the road to aid in the laborious process of digestion; however, we also had no fewer than three full Thanksgiving dinners inside our bloated bellies. I was no longer actively in pain, but neither was I actively hungry. My stamina was faltering. I resolved to pile my plate lightly, eat slowly, put away just token amounts of turkey and gravy.
Ha.
No sooner had I sat down than my salivary glands kicked in, my mouth watered, and although my actual stomach was already stuffed to the brim, my brain was clamoring for good homemade food.
My noble intentions vanished with the passing of the first platter. I heaped up turkey as though I’d been a month without eating. Piled on cranberry sauce, broccoli au gratin, creamed peas, fresh brown popovers, stuffing with walnuts, crisp squash casserole, homemade banana bread, all blended together with smooth, salty, creamy gravy.
It took only a few mouthfuls before I remembered to stop and undo my jeans. I glanced surreptitiously to my right; Eric was way ahead of me on that score. I couldn’t see Julia’s waistband but I was willing to bet it was unfastened. Had to be.
The sensation was unforgettable, unique, marvelous. With each mouthful I swallowed, I felt my aching sides groan, felt my sagging belly grow a fraction heavier, felt my stomach push itself a millimeter farther outward. My head grew heavy, nodding with satiation; I paused now and again for a drink of ice water to clear my palate and give my gorged and glutted midsection a break. The flesh was straining; the belly working to burst through the already-undone jeans.
I savored the taste of a mouthful… swallowed… suppressed a groan. With each bite my sides tugged with effort. I could swear I could actually see my belly inching visibly outward at every swallow.
Eric beside me grunted as he suppressed what should have been a monstrous belch. Paused. Caught his breath. And soldiered on. His belly was brushing the tablecloth; I could see it swelling beneath his turtleneck, the fabric tugging at the sides like a pup tent pulled too wide, a balloon about to burst. Surely the musical groans and gurgles I could hear emanating from his stuffed and swollen belly were matched by the symphony of digestion in my own enormously bloated gut, tight as a drum, ready to pop at a moment’s notice.
Then there was a large wedge of pumpkin pie in front of me and Julia across the table gave me a stare and a wink. Nana’s famous pumpkin pie. Interestingly, in spite of ingesting three full dinners, we had not yet tasted pumpkin pie. So far today, we’d enjoyed Boston cream pie, deep dish apple pie, and chocolate fudge pie. But here at last was the pumpkin pie about which Julia had bragged.
I closed my eyes. To say I had never been so full in my life was a serious understatement.
I was stuffed from my hips up to my throat, stuffing and gravy leaking out my ears. My chest was tight with the effort to take a deep enough breath against a diaphragm compressed with four complete-and-then-some dinners. My torso was thrust outward, stuffed to bursting and hugely swollen. Without even moving I could feel the tug of effort at my sides as my midsection’s usual allotment of flesh strove to cover, however thinly, a truly unusual gorge and the bloat of digestion resulting from my system churning away at thousands of calories.
Pounds of food swirled through my aching belly, making me feel warm, flushed, semiconscious and yet vaguely triumphant. I had fulfilled my obligations as a living human, I had fed hugely on the results of the hunt, I had stuffed myself to the brim as preparation for the dark and bleak winter days that lay ahead. Full as I was, painful as was the heavy sag and thrust of my gut, swollen and gorged as was my belly, I was master of my future, I had ensured that I would survive to see another spring.
Then the scent of pie tickled up to my nostrils and interrupted my evolutionary ruminations.
The wedge in front of me loomed. Enormous. Fully a quarter of a pie. I glanced around. What was everybody else eating?
“It’s fine,” Julia’s aunt assured me with a wink. “I made three to be sure to have enough.”
Oh.
To my right, Eric sat flushed and stupefied, remaining upright through either habit or sheer force of will. His face was damp with perspiration and his shirt clung valiantly to his chest and enormously bloated gut, losing the fight for coverage somewhere around Eric’s navel, revealing a taut pale strip of very full belly swelling outward, the waistband of his jeans nowhere in view.
Across the table, Julia blinked slowly, mechanically, each blink longer than the last. Stuffed to the rafters, she too was losing the fight for sleep, ready to slide into hibernation.
I took a mouthful of the pie and let it slip down my throat, silky and harmless, delicious and smooth, surely it would slide through the bottleneck of dinner(s) piled in my gut and find a resting place.
Each mouthful disappeared so quickly, so tantalizingly, that it called for another and another and another. No sooner did my plate get emptied – a minor miracle – than another huge wedge was laid in front of me.
“Eat up,” Aunt Kathy urged. “We got plenty.”
Don’t ask me where that second chunk of pie went. It vanished, so it must have gone somewhere, but I was full up to my eyebrows, so full I never wanted to move again, but something in me was urging me to get up, that if I could only recline it would be a favor for my poor aching belly, painfully stretched and throbbing with the mountains of dinner it now contained.
I hauled myself upward, caught my balance, paused for breath, and slowly, heavily, waddled from the room, each step surely unbalancing the 200-year-old farmhouse and endangering the floorboards.
Claimed a deep recliner and sank in. The fact that my jeans were undone offered no comfort to my distress. I could not in a hundred years have fastened them up, the fabric simply would not stretch around my massively engorged midriff, but the absence of pressure did nothing to temper my fullness.
I rested a hand on my belly, my shirt hiked up to cool its fevered, ballooning surface, and through fluttering eyelids surveyed the scene.
We were laid out like casualties after a battle, stuffed and gorged bellies protruding outward, tummy flesh straining tautly against acres of distended guts, navels stretched to slits, tight mounds of stomach bulging rosily, punctuating the air with gurgles and squeals, grumbles and groans.
“We.... did it. Urrp.” Eric punctuated his pronouncement with an enormous belch, crisp and resonant.
“Ohhhhhh.” This from the corner where Julia, sprawled on the sofa, was cautiously squirming, trying to find a position that would ease the discomfort of her heavily swollen tummy. Rosy and tight, her belly swelled roundly below the confinement of her bra, punctuated the air with a triumphant arc of distention, and ended by lapping heavily over the waistband of those poor skinny jeans. Long since undone, of course, but the denim now clung round her bottom and hips as if painted on, the flaps pushed down by the determined spill of a tummy stuffed to the limits and beyond by a delicious satiation, a feast for the ages, an incredible intake of no fewer than four full, complete Thanksgiving dinners, pie and all.
She hiccupped. “I don’t—hic—feel very well.” She winced and delicately pressed her fingertips against the tautness. “My…stomach—hic—hurts.”
Eric massaged his gut, swollen and sagging. His belly had protruded as far out as it could manage, then in self-defense lapped around the sides and now rested heavily on what had, possibly, once been the waistband of an average pair of jeans. His bloated gut, gorged to bursting, entirely covered the top part of the jeans and swelled out over the opening where his button and zipper no longer dreamed of meeting.
“Four dinners—urrrp. Four… whole… complete—urp—Thanksgiving… dinners.” Eric thumped his drum of a stomach, creating a hollow thunk, evidence of a belly that was anything but hollow. “We… came… we…uhff… ate… we…mrrp… conquered.” He thrust a fist upward, smirking.
My own belly, not content with swelling straight out, was so filled to the brim that it actually bulged upward toward my chest before protruding tautly forward, gravid and firm. Not an inch of give to the tightly distended flesh of my torso, not a hint of anything to pinch, I was stuffed so full that I could not even get hold of a squeak of flesh to see how fat I’d become.
I was nearly comatose, yet so achingly, painfully stuffed that I was too full to doze off. An awareness of just how very glutted I was kept me conscious, something deep within signaling that it was not yet safe to hibernate, that sated and sore, I still had to keep one eye out for saber tooth sloths.
I reclined in exquisite agony, savoring the tug and sag of my gut, the warm heaviness of my belly weighing me down, pinning me to the chair. I was too stuffed to crane my head forward to look, but I knew by feel that my sphere of a midsection was resting heavily on my lap, spilling over the waistband of the jeans that once, an age ago, had fit fine but somehow had shrunk, glued to my backside and thighs, the button and buttonhole miles apart, a surge of full and bloated belly thrust through the opening. I could feel the ballooning mound of gut pressing urgently against the denim, crying out for more space, even though I knew as a practical matter that undressing would make not a bit of difference.
I had completed my task, I had triumphed, I had done my duty magnificently. I was stocked up to the rafters, pounds and pounds of turkey, stuffing, pie, quarts of gravy, rivers of vegetables, churning and swirling in my massively swollen belly, sated and gorged, glutted and stuffed, my belly squealing and squawking as it strove to move mountains of absolutely delicious dinner…four Thanksgiving dinners!...through my overworked system.
I caught my breath, ready to say something, ready to contribute to the conversation, such as it was.
Opened my mouth. Belched. And felt a smile curve my lips upward as at last, gorged beyond believing, I drifted into a warm and satisfying sleep.
