Let’s start at the very beginning…

((This has also been posted on my Tumblr under the handle "chessene".))


As a child, for as long as I can remember, I was fascinated by the idea of the expanding stomach.

My make-believe featured characters who repeatedly overate day after day until they tore out of their crudely drawn pencil dresses and belts.  My small dolls would be seated beside real-sized food at their picnics, and a scone divided up among them while in my imagination, they forced themselves to eat portions the size of their head under one pretense or another.  Sometimes, I would imagine myself in their position, and stuff rolled-up towels into my nightie to give the appearance of having engorged myself.  I would then dress myself, pulling t-shirts and jumpers down over that pillowy gut, fastening trouser drawstrings underneath its curve, trying in vain to button a jacket across my front.

My play was not confined to these ideas at all.  I had Barbies in paper wings learning to fly, stick people who lived under bushes and kept woodlice as pet cats, dolls’ houses with nuclear families.  It wasn’t until recent years when I looked back and realized that there had been one recurring theme that never really left me.

The first time I remember experiencing the fact for myself was when a new restaurant opened in our small town.  It was a pizza buffet, all you can eat plus the dessert table.  My parents and I didn’t often eat out, but we made an exception to try this novelty.

It was crowded inside, and noisy.  At our booth, we were surrounded by families just like ours, children’s birthday parties, and gaggles of teenagers.  There was a constant stream of people making their way up to the buffet, refilling their plates and then returning to their tables.  I took my plate and, in my excitement at the spread, loaded it with a slice of each kind of pizza that didn’t feature BBQ sauce.

As I ate, the other people at the restaurant began to draw my attention.  I saw a slim young woman leaving with her midriff-baring tank top crinkled above a round, perfectly smooth belly.  I saw an older man, already enormous, lean back into his seat, slap both hands on the expanse of his stomach with a sigh and announce to his wife that he couldn’t move yet.  I saw a group of teenagers teasing and prodding at the firm pot-belly of one of their number.

I miss the careless abandon I could eat with as a child.  Unaware of the more grown-up concepts of moderation, watching one’s figure or not being seen as a “pig”, I reloaded my plate once I had finished and devoured every slice.  Dessert followed: bowls of ice cream sprinkled with sweets, with slices of rich chocolate brownie munched while I stood in the line for the ice cream.

Eventually, I relented that I had had enough and we left.  Walking across the carpark, I first realized that I felt different: I was moving slowly, my back almost arched, my whole centre of gravity shifted.  I lowered myself into my seat with a little difficulty, unable to bend forwards, and fastened the seatbelt around the distended curve of my new stomach.

I don’t remember any pain or discomfort with the experience, nor even feeling sick, just a fascination with the altered shape of my body and the strange sensations of heaviness that came with it.  When we arrived home and I was packed off to bed, I remember removing my coat in my room and staring down at myself.  My trousers were elastic, and so had stretched easily and still sat around the level of my bellybutton.  On top, I wore a baggy wool polarneck which hadn’t moved at all.  It was my skin, I realized when I removed my clothes to change into my pyjamas, which felt stretched tight.  I ran my fingertips across my stomach, prodding here and there, marvelling at how solid it was and how I could no longer see my toes over it.

Then, with curious thoughts of what might have happened if I had been wearing a whole array of imagined outfits circling in my head, I drifted to sleep.