shopping spree
It starts with a shopping spree. In the middle of Asda you discard any pretence of self-control, bouncing from aisle to aisle with the excitement of a little kid. There is no rhyme or reason. Canned hot dogs land next to a joint of lamb, itself wedged between every flavour of Pringles and a frozen vegetarian lasagne. I watch with awe and mounting horror as I realise how much this is going to cost me. Not like that’ll stop either of us.
“… You actually just want to eat everything, don’t you?” I ask, as you decide between the twelve pack of Muller rice in one hand and the twelve pack of Muller corner in the other. You just give me a Look. I remember, as you very deliberately place both packs in the trolley, that yes, you quite literally do want to eat everything.
No one has ever felt more in love inside an Asda than I do at that moment.
I cook, you handle drinks. You’ve been on a Manhatten kick so we’re three rather powerful drinks down before even the first course is ready. As I plate up that traditional appetiser, chicken and mushroom pizza garnished with sausage rolls and Babybells, we sing along to a track playing on Alexa.
“Angels start to look good to me / They’re gonna have to deport me to the firey deep.”
You only have eyes for the food I’m placing in front of you. I only have eyes for you. Your belly is such that you have to sit a little back from my table and I think for the fiftieth time that I need to buy chairs your backside won’t overhang. The sheer excess of you screams vitality and desire. Your body, a sign of your greed forged from feasts and men, women and children, is the realest thing in the room. It’s a good job you’re looking only at the plate: I’d be embarrassed if you noticed my eyes were a little wet.
The music shifts to playing a Tom Waits track, drunkenly slurring through The Piano has been Drinking while you select a lucky, joyous sausage roll section and introduce it to the grinding annihilation of teeth, throat and stomach. I settle into my accustomed pose next to you and tear a slice of pizza from the round.
“Gosh, I’m famished,” you say, popping two more sections into your mouth. I watch you chew. No matter how big you get your jawline only gets a little softer. You still carry that neat beauty that first captivated me on the train platform so long ago. When you swallow and open wide for pizza there are still a couple of pastry flakes on your tongue.
I glide the tip of the slide within your mouth and hold it steady while you tear off a generous mouthful, the completion of which requires nibbling up strings of gooey, melted mozzarella.
“I hope you are famished, my love. You’re going to eat everything we bought today.”
“Except one loaf of bread,” you say after swallowing. “Buttery toast for breakfast. Or midnight snack.”
Another bite of pizza. It still kind of blows my mind that your bite, fanged and capable of engulfing whole struggling human beings, still takes just the familiar small horseshoe shape out of the dough.
Half way through the pizza you announce that you require another drink. “And you should get it. I’mma sit here. Am princess.”
I kiss the tip of your nose. You give me a smile that is no less sweet for the slice you lift to it. I leave you to finish the pizza while I mix up two negronis. When I come to pick up your empty plate you lift your glass in a slightly tipsy salute, then act surprised when my hand sinks a few inches into the fat lying over your middle. My brief massage of your much-hidden stomach comes with another kiss, to your cheek this time.
The next course, which I perversely refer to as the “salad” course, is likewise a schizophrenic creation of your impulse purchasing. The platter I lay before you consists of hot falafel garnished by hummus and smoky baba ganoush; applewood smoked cheese lovingly melted over bagels and topped with tomato slices; and a trio of Pringles, arranged in a spiral within a large bowl. You’re munching on crisps before I even set down the platter.
After playing with the Pringles a little—you see me squirm every time you place one of the little potato saddlebacks on your tongue then crunch it between your teeth—you set to the bagels and falafel. Both are dense: you feel every mouthful hit your stomach with a kind of slow-growing ecstatic haze. Again I come feed you, freeing up your hands to play with your gut in little looping patterns.
You’re full by the end. Normal-full. “Help me off with this,” you say, untucking your blouse. I help work it over your shoulders and head but wow, the way your belly flops out from under it sets my heart pounding. “See something you like?” you ask with a devious smirk.
“Lots of things.”
“Lots of thing, singular,” you say, hefting your gut in both hands. “More.”
I feed you four crisps at a time and mechanically you reduce them to paste and swallow with single-mindedness bordering on the meditative. So much for the salad course.
The first real belch of the evening visibly startles you from your potato reverie. ~BoaaAAarraaAp~. “Whoops, ‘scuse me!”
Third course I call the “amuse bouche”, because I’m clearly enjoying being unhelpful. An entire butterflied lamb leg is laid before you, roasted then pan-fried to sear the flesh a little closer to the well-done that you like. Beside it, still bubbling from the oven, a creamy potato dauphinoise, meant to serve four.
“Wow.”
“You can do it.”
“I know that. I’m just surprised you’ve left my glass empty.”
I laugh and tear off a lump of meat with my bare hand to stuff into your mouth. You take it without complaint and chew—if I were slower my fingers would also be being reduced to paste—while I mix us up another drink.
“Full yet?” I ask as I set down a banana daiquiri before you. An eighth of the lamb has disappeared but a half of the dauphinoise has gone. You clearly fancy the potato more.
Your only answer is another belch. When I go to pick up cutlery to feed you, you instead grab my hands and gently force them to your belly, incidentally forcing me to kneel. From that vantage I watch you consign the whole thing to your stomach while I grindingly knead your guts and that same stomach. As time goes on you slow down and become more unfocused. The pleasure of fullness, the alcohol, the stretch, the food beginning to trickle past sucking villae in your intestines and charge your blood with nutrients… all these are making your head fuzzy with warmth and contentedness.
It’s time to help you eat.
After one last loving squeeze from waistband to breasts through every gorgeous curve in between, I feed you the last couple of mouthfuls of lamb and then bring you the next plateful. You sigh and just accept what you are given. The first three hotdogs come in buns with tomato sauce. The remaining nine go down whole, your head tilted back and your easy throat gulping down each footlong torpedo of meat. Lasagne and chips are comforting and hot, serving as a soothing internal balm as your stomach squelches it together with its existing contents. Pork chops, fried with cider and cream, are a bigger challenge, and we need to pause for me to massage your bulging tummy to help settle things down.
One of two two-litre bottles of milk I placed before you. “Drink,” I instruct. You give me a slightly pleading look but raise it to your lips. Cold steadily stretches out your stomach. When you set down the empty bottle you can feel yourself sloshing slightly. “Good girl, my greedy Raven. Very good girl. Stand up, let me get a look at you.”
Earlier, you would have told me to get lost, but now the food hit makes you subby and trusting. I touch your cheek in an affectionate stroke and you smile slightly as I bodily heft the overhang of your belly.
“Raven, you are so beautiful it hurts. We’re going to fill you up some more, okay? Pack this gorgeous tummy full of food, make you even fatter. Understand?”
You nod and sit back down, bumping against the table and causing it to squeak an inch further away. I smile at that, and you get the giggles.
Shish kebabs cremated, and pitas with souvlaki chicken and more chips. They march meekly into your gut. Twelve little pots of rice in various flavours chase them down. You groan. The problem with liquidy food is that it can fill up every crack. Your stomach feels like a block of concrete, pressing down towards your belly button.
Now, meatless burgers join fish fingers and many rounds of toast. Butter makes your lips shine. In a desperate gambit to make space your poor tummy forces out a silent but voluminous fart, easing pressure but making you blush. I kiss your lips, and you hiccup and then burp by surprise.
Fifteen whole minutes, then, we spend with you sprawled back on the chair and me kneeling and massaging your poor tum. I feel like I’m feeling it chew up your food all over again. Already your food is pouring out of your conquering stomach. I can feel your lower GI tract beginning to plump up like thick rope tangled inside your abdomen.
You are so brave. I tell you over and over again how impressed I am. You finish the yogurts, the other milk, some more toast. Little tiramisu desserts are followed by cupcakes and strawberries, which become hot chocolate. You take everything I place in your mouth and diligently, carefully tuck it away inside your body.
“There,” I say, popping the last square of a half kilo of chocolate bar into your mouth. You chew painfully slowly, then tilt back your head with a swallow. “That’s the last of it. Except breakfast.”
“Yay,” you say, in a small voice. “Buttery toast.”
I chuckle and gently take your hands. You’re unsteady when I encourage you to your feet but we make it to the living room. I lie you down on the couch and drape you with a blanket. My hands slip under the blanket and you gasp sharply when I massage.
You’re soon drifting off. When you do wake, you find each time I am buried in gentle worship of your aching tummy. The pressure spreads and eases as more chyme slops down into the depths, to be sucked dry of goodness and laid upon your form.
I have so much washing up to do. But it’s worth everything to watch you content and swollen with food. I kiss your forehead and tug you properly in, before switching off the light.