Kinktober Day 22: Beer Belly

I went pretty literal with this prompt, so big content warning for alcoholism!

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“Another night, and what do I have to show for it?” Liza asked herself aloud, slurring a little. She was belly-up in bed, feeling dizzy and suspicious of every belch as it worked its way past her lips, half-certain the next one would make her puke.

She hiccupped and groaned as it jostled her belly, hands sliding up beneath it, pushing up her shirt. She was still half-dressed, having been too drunk to do much more than wiggle out of her jeans before she stumbled into bed. Same old routine as ever.

She’d been a cute little party girl once, what seemed like a lifetime ago. She hadn’t needed a personality then. She had a cute enough face, breasts just big enough to score her an occasional free drink at the bar, and could drink everyone under the table despite her diminutive size. She’d been able to wake up with no ill effects the next day, heading off to work at whatever retail job she was holding at the time. Work didn’t matter much to her so long as she knew where the next party would be.

It was around the time she had her first hangover toward the end of her twenties that she began to realize the beer that fueled her social life was sticking around longer than before. It started as just a little bit of pudge, something Liza could easily shrug off. Just a little extra to grab around her belly. Nothing anyone would notice, nothing to worry about.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye (but was really months of partying and thousands of calories’ worth of beer chugged), that “little” “extra” “bit” of pudge turned into a distinctly rounded belly, with small but grabbable love handles to match. These were especially apparent if she wore lower-cut jeans, her softening middle squishing out into a muffintop. Again, she assured herself it was nothing to worry about. She didn’t look that different, and the other girls she hung out with looked similar. Hell, she was probably one of the skinnier ones. It was fine. She even got her belly button pierced around that time, giving her an excuse to wear crop tops that showed it off. It was fine.

The end of her twenties approached and she was still the girl who seemed to think being able to do jello shots and pound down beers was a personality. Most of her friends had moved on. Some had relaxed into a slower-paced stoner culture and started to eschew alcohol altogether, others were settling down and going back to school, moving on in their careers, starting families. Liza was no quitter, though. She’d chosen this lifestyle, and hadn’t found one she liked more (not that she’d really looked).

It got weird hanging out at parties. At a certain point, she was the oldest one there. So she moved on to bars, like a real grown-up. Turned out that when a party host wasn’t paying for beer, and a bunch of guests weren’t bringing extra booze to share, it was fucking expensive to drink! But she soldiered on. And definitely not because she needed to, or anything. Drinking was just better than not drinking.

Didn’t take long for her to move on from bars, though. Retail wages just couldn’t stand up to the price of drinks. And maybe, now that her little pooch of a tummy had bloated out into a chunky belly that occasionally liked to escape out of her shirts, it was a little harder to get her drinks paid for.

She figured that would be the end of it. Liza had long considered herself a social drinker. But when she felt herself getting shaky at work after a day without beer, she picked up a six pack to enjoy at home in front of the TV in her little apartment. It was gone before she’d even finished two episodes of the sitcom she was watching. She told herself she’d had enough, but found herself going out to grab a thirty-six pack. It was heavy, and probably excessive, but it made more sense to just buy a bunch at once rather than lugging home six packs more often, right?

It only took her two days to get through the whole box. Thirty-six beers.

And that became her routine. Every other day, she’d grab a big pack from the corner store and lug it up to her apartment, shove them all in the fridge, and then plunk down in front of the TV. The fact that she was no longer spending her time walking around from bar to bar, or mingling at parties, meant that all those liquid calories could pool straight in her belly, unburned.

A month passed. Two. She woke up one morning, still a little drunk from the night before, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she was getting ready. She actually sat down on the floor in front of the full-length mirror, soft butt smacking quietly on the hardwood as she went down. Her hands went to the sides of her stomach, which stuck out in front of her, solid and heavy even though it was empty. She had a beer gut. A fat, round beer gut, with her ridiculous little belly button piercing only making it look fatter and rounder.

She called in sick to work the next few days and drank. She actually upgraded to flavored vodka as she mourned the flat stomach she’d once had. How had she let herself go so much? What was she even doing? Going to work, paying her bills, and filling herself with shitty cheap beer, then waking up and doing it all over again?

But party girls like Liza aren’t built for introspection. A bottle or two of vodka quieted her thoughts enough that she was back at work the next day, a little worse for wear, but no longer caught in a panic over her weight gain.

And that was how, weeks later, she’d ended up crawling into bed, just like an uncountable number of nights before, belly gurgling with carbonation as she rubbed at it. It had grown so large it blocked her field of vision when she was in bed, rising up proudly, like a beer gut was something to show off.

She belched again, this one particularly loud, and felt even more nauseated. She shifted a little, wincing as her bloated ball-belly bounced above her. Maybe it was really time to cut back. Liza had been telling herself that for a while now, but her discomfort every night was really getting to her. Feeling like her fat gut was taking over her whole body didn’t help. It was so heavy above her, pressing her down into the bed. She reached up to toy with her bellybutton piercing, trying to distract herself enough so that she could fall asleep.

She could try and cut back tomorrow. Even just one less beer would help her lose this gut, or at least keep it from growing. She’d do better tomorrow, for sure.