The Origins of Lust
By Chubbybelly

In fifth grade Anita kissed Ilya, the first boy who ever told me that he loved me. Right along her side I was kissing his best friend, Ygor, my own first love. The four of us escaped during a celebration of one or the other Jewish holidays and walked around the yard of our school hand in hand all afternoon. Anita's real name was Anna, Anya for short. She had a non-bratty brother and nice parents, who often went on business trips and took the kids with them. Anita and I got very close very fast. I felt separated from the rest of the girls somehow, maybe because I was with the cutest and the most athletic boy of our class. Maybe because I was considered the prettiest. Maybe because my best friend Dina and I were always exclusively together. Other girls did not like Anita, but I thought her to be sweet and smart and we became fast friends. She had long dark brown wavy hair, a cute round face and wore pleated plaid school girl skirts and bright sweaters. We were friends for one year. By the time the autumn leaves fell again Anita's family had moved on taking the first kindred soul I have encountered away from me.

If I met Anita now, I would ask her many questions, leaving the most important one to burn on my tongue for longest. That night I was brought over by my grandfather for a sleepover. The three kids, Anita, Gosha and I ate all the food in the house, played video games and watched television. Later Anita and I lay side by side in her bed. We felt warm, comfortable and comforted, weighed down by the food we ate and our lack of energy. The room was moonlit - I watched the tree sway in the breeze outside Anya's window and the patterns of night light changed on the ceiling as I stared. The rest of the house went to sleep, but we kept whispering to each other. Somehow we went on the subject of sumo wrestlers.

"How do you think they have sex?"

"I don't know, I guess their big bellies would make it very hard."

"Especially if their wives are fat, too."

We giggled, started to move around, pretending we were a sumo wrestler and his fat wife. We pushed out our tummies and pressed our bodies together. We rolled over each other in bed and our breathing got out of rhythm. My eleven-year old body was responding in an adult way to the stimulation our conversation and actions were providing. It was the first instance of mutual arousal for me. If I could see Anita now I would ask her, "Did you feel the same thing?"

As a toddler I received a different kind of satisfaction telling a very round playmate that she was fat and looking at her fat round belly as she sat in the sandbox with her toys.

In the second grade my best friend Andrey and I waited in day care until seven or eight every day after school. Andrey and I clowned around while the other kids solved math problems and copied down language exercises. One day we took everyone's warm hats and gloves and extra sweaters and stuffed our clothes with other kids' things. We walked around the room pretending to be very fat. I came over to Masha's table and pushed my newly acquired potbelly into her skinny side. At first she laughed, poked her finger into the softness and pushed it away from herself. I was instantly aroused. I continued to annoy Masha until she got up and moved her seat. I knew the warm shudders and sweet tension those instances allowed me to feel. Somehow I probably knew I was different in the subject of my arousal, but at the time it didn't matter.

In the beginning of 6th grade my mom and I moved again. Our neighbors were a single mom with her tall chubby daughter, Masha, who wore glasses and was sweetly dumb. We were introduced. After that we played with Barbies, walked around our neighborhood, had fashion shows. I basked in the loyalty with which she followed my lead. During those "fashion shows" we made up different games. Each consisted of one of us getting naked or into some very skimpy outfits in front of each other. I loved showing off my yet childish but curvy by then body to her. Besides being somewhat of an exhibitionist, I later realized that the term "nudism" would follow my sense of identity.

These homoerotic experiences nurtured the "lover" in me; the sexual human being of pure devotion to the human body, the heat of sexual encounters and romantic notions. Years later my discoveries gave me a historical background, to fill into gaps on the map of my identity. I was given components that pieced me from the little girl my family adored, to the popular kid just discovering herself, to the now secure youth of her own style and philosophy. My discoveries chased me to seek out my fetishes - plumper porn, fiction, essays and personal ads. Years later I never have a shortage of material to stimulate my self-evoked orgasms. I have met several wonderful people to share experiences and stories, to discuss what it means to be different in our sexual preferences, to live in a world of people who admire flat abs and high cheekbones.

Years later I am still thinking about Anya and the clarity of arousal of that night. I still haven't found a girl I could trust and with whom to explore and to play. I wonder if Anya could have been that sort of person. I wonder if our contact that night made a difference in her identity shaping, helped her find herself. And if we met now, could she and would she tell me what I want to know? I wonder where she is today, that nostalgia girl.