by Doug
This is not a true story; but just imagine if you received this
e-mail in your mailbox one morning...!
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 13:32:44 -0700
From: Holly Biggs <hbigs@mailhub.interstock.net>
To: Dale Tomkins <dtomk@bigfirm.com>
Subject: Re: Ice Cream
Hello again! Ever write one of those messages where you agonize over every
word so it won't be interpreted the wrong way? Well, this is going to be
one for the history books. I'm going to reveal something to you that makes
me feel very vulnerable and afraid. You're the first person I've been
attracted to in a long time; and I want to be very clear before we start
making anything up about ourselves.
I know you're attracted to me because of my body. You're certainly not the
first man I've met with such predilections. I'm okay with it! But, you see,
I wasn't always the size I am now. Let me start at the beginning.
I have been the fattest person most people have ever seen since the beginning
of my life. I've been fat since birth. It ran in my mothers AND my father's
side. Both of them were the largest in their families. Fortunately for them,
I was their only child. I didn't eat more than everyone else. Even today
I eat barely anything. But since they loved themselves, they respected me for
who I was, and always told me that being myself was OK. So, naturally
every day I would come home from school and fall into the soft arms of my
parents who could ease the pain a little. With great determination, I stayed
in school as long as I could.
In my freshman year of high school, I was sent home from school for being too
fat. Since I couldn't fit in a desk, and wasn't allowed to sit on the floor,
they refused to find me comfortable seating and sent me home. They said I
could come back when I could fit in a desk. My parents, desperate to keep me
in school, took me to a doctor the following week. At the hospital scale,
they weighed me as three-hundred eighty pounds. I was only fifteen years old;
and being five foot four didn't help much either.
>From then on I refused to go to school where I was ridiculed, but I wouldn't
be shamed from public eye. With the help of a fine home-tutor, I finished my
high school degree and went on to college. Fortunately, they were more
accomodating, and I was once again able to attend class.
It's funny -- up till then, I always figured my weight would reach a certain
comfortable point and then stop, just like my parent's had. My mother had
weighed four hundred and twenty for as long as I could remember. But all
through college and afterward, it just kept climbing. By the time I got my
college degree I weighed just over five hundred pounds! Even my closest
friends were becoming worried about me. But for some strange reason, I kept
my faith and let my body have its way. I would have done something; but why?
I was in good health, and could find (or make) the clothes I needed. There
were only a few stores in the world that made size seventy-two dresses.
Oddly enough, a 60J bra wasn't as difficult to obtain.
It was about that time I began to experience difficulty with living in a
thin woman's world. My eighty-eight inch hips brushed the sides of almost
all doorways and some hallways. I had to crunch myself into bathroom
stalls, and squish into elevators. Almost every time someone rode with me
on one, I watched them look at the posted weight limit, and then at my
huge rear (I know you've seen it, and I dare you to think of a more concise
term to describe it). I would shoot them a look, but usually they took no
heed. But... it wasn't all bad. I'll get to that later.
I had learned to sheild myself from the onslaught of glares and remarks by
exuding my own dominating force wherever I went. People couldn't beleive how
much I liked myself. In their eyes I was just a freak, a novelty. Precious
freinds beleived in me and loved me for who I was.
My first job was as a legal assistant, with a boss who, fortunately and yet
not so fortunately, shared your acquired taste in women. Though I didn't
feel the same way about him, he insisted on taking me out to every meal he
could. I had to do it; I knew I wouldn't find a job anywhere else. Suddenly
my weight gain was accelerating from its ususual twenty to thirty pounds a year
to almost one hundred. For the first time in my life I was forced to diet.
I had to keep this job; I had to live my life! There was no way I felt I
could do that in a body any larger.
Diet after diet failed, and the yo-yo effect ballooned me to a size
eighty-four. After two years with the firm, my weight topped the six-hundred
pound mark. It was everything I could do to get in and out of my car (a
Cadillac) every day, push myself through the doors, and squeeze myself through
the hallways. After breaking the very expensive chair they had bought me,
I was fired.
Desperate for work, I went to infinite interviews. They all sounded so
excited on the phone -- and looked so shocked when I showed up. In one
dilapidated office, the floor creaked so badly when I entered that I
turned around and walked right back out. In others, I couldn't fit into
the elevator, so I marched up several flights of stairs, only to meet the
receptionist redder than a beet and breathing heavily. Miraculously, I was
hired by a struggling firm in dire need of a skilled paralegal. When I showed
up, I was awed by the size of the doorways and width of the hallways. They
all looked like I could walk through them without my hips touching the walls!
My interviewer gave me one look, smiled kindly, and said, "You'll have no
trouble getting around here, Ms. Biggs."
It wasn't long before I found out why. My new boss, Dr. Hoffman, was nearly
my size! True, he was a man, but I felt a rushing sense of relief when
the sad twinkle of his eye met my engaging smile. Here was one of the rare
people on this earth who could have a genuine idea of what I'd been through.
Having decided to cease dieting, my metabolism actually bounced upwards, and
for the first time in about 10 years, I had stopped gaining weight. I was
able to keep the same clothes in my closet for over a year; I remember it
being almost an odd sensation. Clothes for a six hundred thirty pound woman
aren't cheap, and they're made to last. I remember how incredible my behind
was at that time. I was four and a half feet wide, and it stuck out far enough
that things could be set on it while I was standing.
I had never felt an original attraction to James Hoffman. But as we spent
more time together sharing horror stories and confessing secrets, we began
to grow on each other. But as we grew on each other, we grew ourselves.
Three years later, we were both more than a hundred pounds heaver. We were a
spectacle in court, though we never lost a case since our start together.
I was a seven hundred fifty pound woman with the biggest ass God could think
of, and he was a six hundred eighty pound man with the biggest gut since the
humpback whale. Courts began to decline our application after we filed our
disability seating order. Judges taunted us by continually asking us to
rise while we cross-examined. It was a triumphant hell.
One day, as we lay lounging on a huge sofa together, listening to the
furniture's foundations giving a last plea for life, he became very serious.
With a sad face, he announced plans for leaving the firm and starting his
retirement. He wanted me to be a part of it -- but he didn't ever want to
appear in court again.
I loved him. So I accepted. But as James closed himself off from the world,
and he became sadder and sadder. He closed himself off from family and friends,
and with me as his only company, he began to emaciate. After trimming to
a meager one hundred fifty pounds, he set off to find a place in a thin
man's world, at age fifty three. I still loved him very much, but he was
very sad. Trouble was, no one recognized him. They thought he was an imposter
ridiculing their long lost friend who "never could have lost any weight".
Driven so far from his own identity, he plunged into depression.
The suicide crushed me into a million peices.
The firm offered to give me his position -- I had built the foundation of all
of our greatest work together. All I had to do was pass the bar. But I
declined; I could never see any of them again. For three months, I lived with
my seven hundred plus pound body in a small apartment. My mother, now the
only living parent, wrestled to pull me out of my slump. She got job
interviewers to come to my home; cooked me food and help me find clothes.
Amazingly, I found another job. Maybe its my karma or something. But I found
a job at a small computer company. When I arrived, in the largest women's
business suit the world has ever seen, I was greeted warmly by everyone.
No one ever mentioned a word; it was almost eerie. Maybe I just don't trust
my luck.
Now it seemed inevitable. My weight was going to continue to rise no matter
what I did. I worked out hard to try to keep strong enough to move and
live in my body. I could bench four hundred pounds sometimes. But before too
long I was tipping the scales at over eight hundred pounds. This was my first
time in a long while that I worked in an office for thin people. Occasionally
I would get stuck in doorways or hallways or cubicles, and people would be
embarassed about what to do, and end up having to unwedge me. As a weekly
experience, this didn't do good things for my hard-earned self-esteem. Then
things got worse.
At nine hundred and fifty pounds, My muscles finally became overwhelmed with
my weight. I had to have a special van take me places. Getting in and out
of anything at the office was a complex, multiperson ordeal which required
heavy future planning. Not finding enough things to do that didn't require
me to get up very often, I had was fired once again. My mother, now
larger than ever, overcame her confidence and took me to Jewish Memorial. I
came out of rehab after two years. Seeing how strong and independent I
could be at four hundred sixty-five pounds, they let me go. I won't go into
the torture of that place now.
So now you see me, at about that weight. But none of that is the real secret.
You see, when I was at my peak weight, I was the happiest I'd ever been in
my life. All that flesh - it felt so good! I can't believe I'm saying
this. To lay down at night and feel myself spilling over the edge of my
king-size bed; to feel every fold softly caressing every other fold; the
helplessness of needing assistance for everything; the list goes on. Dale, I
need someone to take me back there. I need an honest, loving, caring, and
respecting man. When I was in the hospital, I had a life-altering experience.
One of the first patients I met was a woman who weighed nearly as much as I.
When we first saw each other, and were able to see what someone of this
size really looks like, our hearts swelled with simultanous lust and terror.
The truth is, I want to be as fat is as physically possible. This woman
told me of her journey into extreme obesity to almost three quarters of a ton.
Her devoted husband had continued to coax and feed her to immobility and
beyond. When their house began to lose structural integrity, she had to
be removed by crane; and there was a public spectacle during the event. To
save embarassment, her family had placed her in hospital care. She had been
there for seven years! I dreamed every night for months about being that
size as I watched my body grow slimmer and slimmer.
I know someday I'll be there. I know my body, and it wants to do this
as much as I do. I don't know if you'll be the one. But I know one thing -
I'm falling in love with you. Thanks again for the ice cream. I'll leave you
with this thought... imagine what these eighty-two inch hips would look like at
one hundred thirty...
Sincerely yours and don't screw up,
Holly
P.S. What kind of car do you have?