Fat Dad Club, part 7

Fat Dad Club was being held at Carl’s apartment. Each dad was armed with pizza and beer, both in copious abundance. This made Henry happy, even if his choice of pineapple and ham topping had been branded a “crime against nature” by the others.

He was feeling clearer-headed for the first time in a long time. For so long he’d thought Hudson’s company was the only thing keeping him going. Now he was beginning to wonder if the opposite hadn’t been true all along. He felt lighter of mind (if not of weight), and surer of what he wanted.

This journey he’d undertaken with his body, enlarging it, increasing his mass, it had sparked something ongoing inside of Henry. He wanted to keep growing bigger and heavier, and not stop. He saw it so clearly now. He loved to eat and to overeat. It wasn’t simply enjoyable. For Henry, he’d discovered a satisfaction in it that was almost… primal. Core to his very being. To indulge and to fatten and expand.

He wanted this so very much. In fact, he was finding that the bigger he got, the more weight and volume he craved.

‘… And now he’s talking about a divorce,’ Boony was saying, redirecting Henry’s attention to the present moment.

‘Well, you’ve both got to agree to that,’ Carl was replying. ‘He can’t just dictate terms all by himself.’

‘Boony, dude.’ Joe concertina’d a slice of BBQ chicken into his mouth. ‘Honestly, it’s sounding a lot like Gus has made his bed. Shit in it too, like, but made it.’

Henry watched Boony slowly nod, a frown burrowed deep into his brow.

‘I can attest,’ Henry said, ‘from Hudson’s side - He is a rather determined young man. If Gus had made up his mind, it’s a good bet that Hudson has too.’

Determined was right. Henry still saw the memory clear as day in his mind’s eye: Hudson gripping his carry-case and marching out the door after that awful speech he made.

Henry was no fool. He’d always known the lad had been drawn to his money, to his generosity, even to his former fame. All of that had been easy to overlook, given the comfort Hudson had provided. He’d shepherded Henry through the worst years of his life. But the way he’d just cut the cord… so clinically…

It stung. Though it may just have been the sting Henry needed.

Beside him, he saw Boony’s shoulders slump and eyes descend; he’d turned very quiet.

The fat dads had the good grace to shift topics and leave poor Boony be.

Carl spoke up. ‘Henry, now you’re… uh, without an assistant, are you doing okay over there in that big house on your own?’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ Henry puffed out his chest and belly with a lungful of air. ‘I’ll be alright. You know, the only thing I’d like is to have someone there to… to, ah….’ He was just going to come out and say it. He could be forthright with these chaps. ‘Well, to feed me, if I am being honest.’

‘Right on, dude!’ Joe raised his beer and guzzled.

‘Nothing wrong with that, big guy,’ Carl added. ‘We’ve all learned the lesson of good eating and good living from Joe here.’ And he ran his palm across his sensibly dressed girth.

‘Oh, quite right,’ Henry replied. ‘José has come into our lives and… unlocked something. Something wondrous.’

Joe made a kind of ‘modest’ expression with his eyebrows, and pretended to bow, his globe of a ballgut blocking most of his way. ‘Well, what about that dude from the club? Maybe he could feed you, man. You think he’d be down for it?’

‘Judd?’ Henry replied.

‘Yeah, did you get his number?’ Carl asked.

‘In fact I did,’ Henry admitted, to the tune of a wolf-whistling Joe. ‘He inputted it into my cellphone shortly before I, uh, chickened out and left the venue.’

‘Aw, Colonel, you’re no chicken,’ Joe started, before Carl snorted with laughter into his beer bottle, causing suds to froth from his nose. He wiped his face, swallowed the beer down and gasped, laughing like crazy.

Boony’s quietude turned to laughter too, at Joe’s accidental joke, and to the comical sound of Carl’s ridiculous chuckle. Joe started bouncing his huge ballbelly up and down in rhythmic laughter at the sight of Carl wiping tears from his eyes, and soon Henry felt himself joining in, erupting into a booming roar of merriment. The joke was so dumb, but the dads couldn’t help themselves; the giggles had set in.

‘“Colonel, you’re no chicken!”’ Carl repeated, barely able to talk. ‘That’s so stupid!’

As Henry held his sides - spread further outwards these days - he revelled in this moment. The pure enjoyment of being here with the Fat Dad Club.

His best friends.

After Henry and Boony said their farewells, Joe, of course, remained. It was probably looking beyond suspicious at this juncture, but he was past the point of caring; much pizza was leftover and Joe intended to get all of it crammed tight into Carl’s belly. As soon as the front door clicked to a close, he was on the case.

‘Alright, you big sexy dad, time to really fill you up.’

‘Mmmmh.’

Carl wasted no time in removing his straining polo and opening up. The two men stood there in the centre of the living room, feasting and feeding, soon caressing and moaning.

‘You’re getting so big, dude,’ Joe murmured as he fed. ‘Fucking… vast…’

And it was true. Carl was ballooning out of control. His fat was rolling and cascading out in all directions now. He was massive, thick, every part of him encased in blubber. His face had become bulbous and round, so fuckin’ handsome.

As he chowed down, Carl laid his plump hands over Joe’s enormous, exposed ballgut and asked, ‘Do people ever comment on this thing? On how big you’re getting?’

Joe deftly leaned to his side to grab another slice of hot spicy pork pizza, and held it to Carl’s willing jaws as he answered. ‘The guys at work think it’s hilarious,’ he said. ‘They keep asking me when I’m due, shit like that. You know, stereotypical guy-crap. I don’t mind.’ But then he paused, went quiet for a bit. ‘… Darcy hates it.’

Joe didn’t elaborate after that, and Carl didn’t want to press any further. He just kept right on eating, his hands exploring Joe’s beautiful ball. It was a freak of nature now, a gigantic tight sphere that protruded straight out, incredible to the touch. The sensation never grew old.

‘I work from home, mostly,’ Carl said, to fill the vacuum. ‘So no-one at the firm comments much. Some folks at Church asked if I was okay. I always laugh it off. That tends to be my way. My daughter, when I was FaceTiming with her, wanted to know if I was sick or something, haha. Isn’t it funny how people assume it’s got to be a negative thing?’

‘Right, like something must be wrong with you if you’re getting fat,’ Joe agreed, continuing his pizza-based tirade against Carl’s cheeks. He’d started the belly rubs with his free hand.

Carl sighed, as was usual for these moments. So much erogenous pleasure built up when Joe was feeding and feeling him. But there was also the thing… that thing always lurking behind the pleasure. The thing they never spoke on.

Joe was cheating on his wife.

And Carl was complicit.

Never in a million years had he pictured himself here, in an affair. With another man, no less!

When Joe was plowing food into Carl’s gut, it was easy to let the enjoyment take over, to just shut everything else out. But always in the moments in-between came that voice. That little voice in Carl’s head that said,

(’This is wrong.’)

Still he ate on. He ate and ate, making his way through the rest of the pizza, washing it down with beer and wallowing in the rush Joe’s touch gave him.

Problem was… the voice was getting louder.

The passage of time didn’t help. In the days following their pizza stuffing, Carl couldn’t shut out the feelings of guilt and shame.

He’d never even met Darcy and still felt he was betraying her.

(Because I am. And I keep doing it.)

Sometimes Joe would text, sometimes even call. They would talk over how much bigger Joe was going to make him. But Carl felt a schism emerging between his heart and his brain. He felt… strongly for Joe. It ran deep, as a matter of fact. He thought about him all the time, and often couldn’t concentrate when alone. He went to bed each night wishing for their next session to come sooner.

But the voice was taking over. Turning joy to dread.

(What we’re doing is wrong.)

Joe was a family man, which made Carl… what? A home wrecker?

‘Oh, Spot, what am I gonna do?’ he asked the cat in his lap one dreary evening as he sat at his laptop in his home office. He’d been staring at the same spreadsheet for 45 minutes, not really seeing it.

Spot purred.

‘What am I gonna do…?’ Carl repeated.

It was eating away at him. The push and the pull of it. This massive, fat, wonderfully soft body he and Joe had built together; it was built on a foundation of deception and lies.

And he couldn’t take it any longer.

It was time to do something.

‘If Darcy answers, I’ll say… I’ll say… I’m a friend of Joe’s and, uh, I just need to talk to him. That’s all. That’s fine, right? Why wouldn’t that be fine?’

He muttered to himself, waiting for the lights to change while his Camry idled. He didn’t want to do this over the phone. He needed to see Joe and tell him in person. Now. And that meant a drive across town.

‘If Joe answers, well, then I’ll just… tell him ‘Hey, can we, uh, talk? In private, I mean? Just for a second?’’ Carl was drumming his fat fingers on the steering wheel. His leg was bouncing up and down. ‘I’ve just got to, uh, peel the bandaid off. Just get it over with. ‘We can’t see each other anymore. Not like that, anyway. Can we… just go back to being friends?’’

The lights changed and Carl drove on.

(CAN we just go back to being friends?), he thought. (Could I be in the same room as Joe and just… never touch him again? Never feel his hands all over my belly, and… the rest of me… Can I go without his feedings…? Or the sex…? Without any of it…?)

He shook his head. Checked his mirrors and signaled, turning. Evening had descended over Maupinton. Carl hoped Joe would still be up. He remembered how exhausting those early days of fatherhood were.

He gripped the wheel tighter.

‘I have to do this,’ he whispered to himself, even though all of his heart wanted to turn back. ‘I have to.’

When he pulled up along the suburban crescent of Joe’s neighborhood, Carl’s heart wouldn’t back down. It was beating itself into a crescendo beneath his massive moobs.

(I have to do this.)

He unbuckled, stepped out from the Camry (disgorging himself from his car had become a real task these days - not totally unenjoyable, though), and began the waddle to Joe’s house. He knew the address since all of the fat dads had exchanged information long ago.

There was an athletic-looking, very attractive woman adorned in tattoos with a bob of black wavy hair taking out the trash at the driveway. This had to be Darcy.

She appeared to have stopped, mid-task, and was stood in a kind of exhausted, resigned pose, not focusing on much at all.

‘Uh, hi, excuse me.’ Carl approached and did his awkward little wave he saved for strangers.

She didn’t look up.

‘I’m, uh, looking for Joe. Is he around or…?’ Carl tried again. ‘I’m a friend of his…’

Then Darcy seemed to see Carl for the first time, which made little sense to him, given just how much space he took up nowadays.

For a moment she remained silent, and simply stared at him. The woman looked… defeated, truth be told.

‘I know who you are,’ she eventually said.

Carl stopped.

When he went to form words, only his lips moved. No sound came.

‘You’re from that stupid club,’ Darcy carried on.

‘Uhhh…’ Carl didn’t really know how to respond. Was it safe to unfreeze?

Then she turned her gaze away again, still holding onto the garbage bag.

‘Joe’s dead,’ she said.

Nothing but silence, then the cawing of a bird, the rustling of trees, followed.

A tiny breath escaped Carl.

Distant Maupinton traffic carried on the wind for a moment, and was gone.

Carl couldn’t speak.

‘Took that stupid fucking bike of his out for a spin… Got hit…,’ Darcy said.

His voice wouldn’t work. Something was happening to his throat. Vocal chords weren’t responding. His windpipe was closing up. There was a thrumming in his head. He smacked his lips over and over, probably looking like an idiot.

Darcy appeared to see him again.

‘In case it wasn’t clear, you and your fat friends aren’t invited to the funeral.’ She’d gone from distant to venomous in a heartbeat.

(Joe…

… No…)

Carl felt his face cracking.

From inside the house came the sounds of a baby crying, which roused Darcy’s attention. She sniffed and dumped the garbage bag into the metal pail at the end of the driveway, before heading back indoors.

‘Now get the fuck off my property,’ she called out, before disappearing inside.