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Kinktober 2022 #6: Embarrassment/Humiliation
🕑 Added 2022-09-27 01:47:03 +0000 UTCThis one's a little dark! No good body feels or redemption in this one, just a whole lot of fat-shaming.
Also, I noticed something as I wrote this: I tend to spend a lot of time focusing on the "how" and "why" of characters gaining weight, even in shorter stories. Is that something that y'all enjoy, too, or should I cut back and focus more on the results of a gain?
***
He took a deep breath, steadying himself. He had prepared for this moment for months, ever since he booked his train ticket home. His hand shook as he reached for the front doorknob of his childhood home. No time like the present.
He walked in the door and was immediately met with familiar voices and the intoxicating smell of a Christmas dinner in progress. Under different circumstances, he might’ve felt excited to see his family, or felt a sense of relaxation at being home. Instead, he could feel his shoulders creeping up around his ears, eyes scanning back and forth anxiously.
“I just heard the door!” he heard a voice call from the kitchen – his mother. “That must be Mikey!” she said in sing-song, the slide of her house shoes shirring across the hardwood floor as she ran out to greet her son. The smile on her face was huge as she came around the corner, but right as she really took him in, it faltered, no longer meeting her eyes. “Oh, Mikey,” she said, her enthusiasm dampened by disappointment. “I’m so glad you were able to make it home.”
“Me, too, Mom,” he said, barely meaning it.
It had been close to half a decade since he’d come home to visit. The last time he could remember was right after he graduated college, in the short couple weeks before he’d started at his new job. Since then, he had been single-mindedly focused on work. That wasn’t hard to do at a startup, and especially not a game development studio steeped in toxic crunch culture. Long hours were not only expected but effectively required. Mike, determined to rise through the ranks, regularly put in 15-hour days and rarely took a full weekend off. His mother tried to invite him home for holidays or just to visit, but he kept putting it off, knowing taking time off could jeopardize his career.
With a schedule like that, everything else in his life easily faded into the background, and his bad habits piled up. He had been a regular at the campus gym in college, visiting two or three times a week. He tried to keep to a similar schedule when he entered the workforce, but when he was leaving the office at 10pm more nights than not, he was usually too exhausted to even bother with a half-hour on the treadmill. His diet suffered, too. He was an okay cook, able to put together a few simple, nutritious meals. As time wore on, he rarely even kept groceries in the house, instead relying on the takeout places near the office for all his meals. The office was well-stocked with snacks and all the sugary, caffeinated drinks anyone could ask for, too, and with the lack of sleep and constant stress, he found himself reaching for them more and more.
A year of this hadn’t done too much damage. He got a little soft, but nothing too noticeable. His second year seemed to be a tipping point. All the takeout, late-night drinking with his coworkers, and a wholly sedentary lifestyle saw his waistline rounding out wider by the month. He was alarmed by it, but unsure exactly what to do about it. His company wasn’t exactly a paragon of work-life balance. Trying to make time for the gym or meal prep or even just taking the stairs more often seemed impossible.
To make matters worse, as he started to blow up, he was riddled with shame knowing he would be The Fat Guy at every family gathering. His whole family was assiduously thin. His mother was the type who would eat three almonds and call that a meal. His father was in his fifties and did a couple triathlons per year. His sister, his cousins, his aunts and uncles and grandparents – every single one of them was perfectly, naturally thin. He remembered all the nasty fat jokes told at family get-togethers, dehumanizing and cruel. To them, fatness was abstract and distant, a problem to be worried about by doctors and the impoverished who seemed so easily controlled by their gluttony.
Mike, just as prone to thinness his whole life as the rest of his family, had never considered he might join the ranks of the obese. And, aside from his college workout habit, he had never had to think about the difficulty of staying thin once your body discovered an imperative for fat storage.
Over the next couple years, he tried a lot of different diets, hoping one of them would stick and return him to his previous state of thinness. First was keto, with all its promises that eating delicious, fatty foods loaded with butter and grease would somehow turn his body into a fat-burning machine so long as he avoided carbs. This backfired spectacularly, adding nearly fifteen extra pounds to his growing gut in only six weeks. He did a complete 180 and tried going vegan instead, figuring a steady stream of vegetables and tofu would help him reduce. That got boring fast, and led him to discover all the different vegan restaurants nearby, along with all kinds of fun facts, like that Oreos were vegan. At the end of that, he hadn’t lost a single pound.
He tried again and again: intermittent fasting, calorie counting, low-fat, starting the day with a big breakfast to stave off hunger, an all-meat diet, smaller plates, and on and on and on. Some of these he managed to try for months. In a few cases, he even lost a couple pounds. But as soon as he went back to his usual habits, he gained it all back and then some.
Mike’s fifth Christmas without going home approached quickly. For the first time, his team had some breathing room: they’d just shipped a game, and there was enough of a lull that the higher-ups had instituted a two-week shutdown for the holiday so everyone could “recharge.” He had no excuse not to show his face. He considered lying, but the thought of staying home just because he was too afraid what his family would say about how fucking fat he’d gotten was somehow more depressing.
He knew they’d all have a lot to say. He was, by any accounting, massive. He didn’t have a scale at home, but his last checkup had clocked him at 407 pounds; it had been a few months, and he knew he was even fatter. He had a huge, sloping belly that dominated his frame, with two heavy breasts resting atop it. His arms stuck out a little, unable to rest fully at his sides now that they’d gotten so thick with flab and his side rolls were too much to compete with. He had a round double chin. His thighs were so thick he felt them rub against each other with every step, forcing him into a waddle. He knew that each one of these details would be picked apart by his relatives. No longer would random, faceless strangers be the butt of their jokes.Instead, it would be him.
And you know, maybe that would be good for him! Maybe feeling like a huge fatass in front of everyone, all the shaming, would help him get his shit together! Nothing like some tough love to whip you into shape, right?
After a train ride more cramped than it should’ve been, there he was, with his mom looking him over, her nose wrinkling as her smile dropped. Pleasantries were done with, apparently. “Goodness, Mikey, what have you been eating? You look like you’ve been stuffing your face nonstop.”
Mike tried to hide a grimace, hating that she wasn’t wrong. Worst of all, his stomach growled right then. His cheeks reddened with embarrassment. His mother patted his stomach a little too hard. “Jesus, honey, hold your horses. I know it’s Christmas and everything, but don’t go eating the whole meal yourself.” She turned around and he winced. Fuck. That had hurt more than he’d expected to – the way his own mother had so easily slipped into chastising him when she had never once said an unkind word about his weight or his body.
He followed behind his mother. She headed into the kitchen and he kept walking to the living room. His father and sister were sitting on the couch, chatting. Both of them turned as he walked in, their eyes going wide. His sister was so shocked she spilled a little wine on her sweater. “Mikey?” she squeaked. “Is that actually you in there?” She cupped her hands around her mouth, using them like a megaphone as she called out, “Can you even hear me through all that extra padding?” Their father laughed, apparently finding this hilarious.
This is so much fucking worse than I thought it would be, Mike thought, seriously considering turning around and heading home right then. Not wanting to be rude, he tried to smile. “It’s been a long time, huh?” he said.
His father stood and walked over to him. Mike stretched out his arms, going in for a hug. But his father only stuck out a hand, greeting his eldest child with a mere handshake. “I’d hug ya, but I’m worried I’d catch it,” he said with a cruel laugh. Mike laughed along, feeling like he was losing his mind.
Other relatives filtered in, each of them vocally shocked at Mike’s gain. He kept hoping at least one of them wouldn’t make some hideous joke about him, but not a single one of them missed an opportunity. When they sat down at dinner, he tried making actual conversation, asking about people’s jobs and hobbies, and every single comment somehow became about him and his fat face or his fat tits or the belly that pushed him back from the table.
He barely ate, mostly because he knew every bite was being scrutinized. He didn’t even finish an entire plate. He kept feeling waves of shame, and then anger. They were the ones stuffing their faces, getting second plates, and they had the gall to make fun of him? But then he reminded himself that they were thin. He had no right to complain. He had glutted himself to 400-some-odd pounds; he had no right to be angry. Cue his fat cheeks reddening with embarrassment for the thousandth time that evening.
He offered to help clean up before dinner and dessert, but his mother insisted he stay seated. “I’m worried it’ll be like a bull in a china shop if you try and squeeze in there.” Nevermind that the kitchen was ridiculously spacious and wouldn’t require “squeezing,” even for him.
He made it through dessert before it was all too much. Everyone was eating ice cream while he nibbled through the smallest slice of pie, and the snide comments were endless. Finally, he excused himself. He waved goodbye to everyone and grabbed the bag he’d left by the front door. “See you all next year!” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic about it, even though he’d rather chug seawater. He was grateful he’d booked a hotel rather than trying to stay with his family.
His mother was the only one who came to the door to greet him. For the first time, she hugged him. She pulled away and put a hand on his chubby cheek. “Try and lose some of this flab before you come next year, okay, hon? You’re really looking like a whale, and I’d like to get my arms around you next time I see you.”
He gave a close-mouthed smile. “Of course, Mom. You bet I will.”
He walked through the front door and shut it behind him. For the barest moment, he felt indignant. Some sense of pride crept back in, bolstered by his anger at his shitty family. And then, like clockwork, his stomach growled, starved after the meager meal. His own body betraying him almost felt worse than the verbal abuse.
At the hotel that night, he gorged himself on room service, promising he would start doing better the next day with every bite. He never wanted to feel like this again.
Comments
Nick
I like the how & why even in shorter stories. Also love the story, great to see the contrast between mc & family.
