The Adventures of Phatgurl
by Emily Suzanne
Smiltneck
The
Adventures Of Phatgurl
is a serial collection of stories about the adventures of Jany, a
plus-sized young woman who, in desperation, places an ad on a
personals website. As she embarks on her dates, she meets many
different kinds of men who expect many different things from her.
Some of her adventures are wildly amusing and others are more
serious and even sad.
If you have any
ideas or experiences, funny or otherwise, that you would like to see
depicted in a future Phatgurl story, please e-mail me at
emilysuzanne20@hotmail.com.
I will do my very best to incorporate all reader ideas into future
columns. Thanks!
The
Ad
SWSSBBW seeks SM willing to ask her out. Need
not buy gifts, remember dates, put toilet seat down. Video game
fanatics and men who require guys’ nights out okay. Willing to
watch action movies and avoid “the talk.” Reply to:
phatgurl@personalz.com
Candidate 4: The Man-Infant
To:
phatgurl@personalz.com
From:
hugs4me@personalz.com
Subject: i need a squeeze!!!
wanna give me one? please? pretty, pretty please?
To:
hugs4me@personalz.com
From:
phatgurl@personalz.com
Subject: Re: i need a squeeze!!!
Um, wow. I’m really not sure how to respond to that. Do you mean a
squeeze as in a hug? And in any case, with me in front of this
computer and you in front of some other computer somewhere else, I
don’t think it’d work very well. lol So, yeah. Tell me more about
yourself?
To:
phatgurl@personalz.com
From:
hugs4me@personalz.com
Subject: Re: Re: i need a squeeze!!!
yes, a squeeze as in a hug. but more than that. my bones hurt so
bad. i need to be squeezed hard by big pillowy arms to stop them
from hurting. it’s the only thing that works. will you send me a
picture? please, mama?
To:
hugs4me@personalz.com
From:
phatgurl@personalz.com
Subject: I am NOT yo’ mama!
lmao But here is a pic anyway. And really. Feel free to tell me
more about yourself. Where do you live? What are you looking for
in a woman? Got a pic?
I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about me. I work in an
art gallery. I don’t do the whole art thing myself, just do sales
and cleaning and stuff. It’s a lot of fun, though. I take
different art classes sometimes, in the evenings or whatever, and
maybe someday I’ll be able to have my own gallery. I like to listen
to music, especially live, and watch movies, especially horror and
comedy. I also love to read just about anything.
Oh, yeah, and my name is Jany. Okay, your turn.
To:
phatgurl@personalz.com
From:
hugs4me@personalz.com
Subject: Re: I am NOT yo’ mama!
i am tim. sorry, didn’t mean to offend you. you are so beautiful!
i live in cutler, maine. i like big girls because they’re soft.
skinny girls hurt when they hug you. and most of them don’t like
me. i work as a janitor in the school here. i like to play video
games and read comic books. you sound so much better than the girls
here. you look better too. i love your picture. i want to meet
you. all I really care about in a woman is that she is fluffy and
doesn’t do anything to hurt me. can i come visit you? please?
Visit? From Maine? Jany sat back and contemplated.
Absentmindedly, she drummed her fingers on her desk. What was his
name again? She scrolled back up to his message. Tim, that was
it. He seemed so—needy. Young. Weird. But he seemed to like
her. He might not be that bad.
She wanted to believe he wouldn’t be that bad, because
she was worried about the karma of the whole thing. Say she turned
this Tim guy down, didn’t even consider him, just forgot all about
him. She might never have another chance. With anyone. She went
into the bathroom and stood in front of her full length mirror.
Nothing much to look at, really. She wasn’t hideous, but it took a
special kind of person to appreciate her. Jany suspected that if
she had been born thin, she might even have been considered
attractive. But she hadn’t been that fortunate. And so she knew
how it felt to be lonely. And she knew how it felt to be
overlooked, or even rudely rejected, because she wasn’t the norm.
There was no way she could do the same thing to Jim. Or Tim. Or
whatever his name was.
She slowly and thoughtfully made her way back to her
computer and sat down. Before she could change her mind, she typed
a message to Tim and told him that he was welcome to come and visit
her.
Less than a week later, on Saturday afternoon, Jany was
on the train to the airport. She had expected Tim to take the train
in on his own, but he had been afraid to. Something about people
spitting on him in the mall, and he was afraid to be alone with
strangers. Maybe his odd explanation was why there was a heavy
feeling in the pit of Jany’s stomach. Like she had eaten bad
seafood or something. Or maybe it was just a bad omen. She almost
wished she had ignored Tim’s message in the first place. Too late
to go back now, though. She checked her wallet to be sure the key
to Tim’s hotel room was still tucked safely inside. There was no
way a stranger was going to see where she lived, but she felt bad
telling him that, so she had offered to get a hotel room for the two
nights of his stay.
When the train finally stopped at the airport, Jany
stood up slowly and stretched. His plane was due in fifteen
minutes. She made her way to the seating outside of the baggage
claim area and pulled a magazine out of her bag. She had only been
reading for a few minutes when she felt someone staring at her. She
assumed it was just another stranger staring at her oversized body
in horror and didn’t bother looking up, but she wasn’t reading
anymore. Couldn’t, with a pair of eyes burning into her like that.
“Ahem. Mhmm. Ahem!”
Whoever was staring was close to her, and trying to get
her attention with increasingly louder throat-clearing noises.
Reluctantly, she lifted her eyes and peered over the top of the
magazine. There was a skinny, bony, blonde guy standing an arm’s
length in front of her. He looked awkward, like his joints were too
big for his bones and his body was made up of spare parts.
“Hey!” he said loudly. “How are ya?”
“Uh—” Jany looked around to see if there was anyone
else he could be talking to. Random men didn’t come up and start
conversations with her. Not usually, anyway, but there was no one
else around. “I’m okay. Um. How are you?”
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“Sure, I do—alright, no. Not a clue. Sorry.” Jany
looked down, her face flushing. She met a lot of people in the
gallery, and whenever she sold someone an especially striking piece
of art, the buyer always seemed to remember her. She wished she had
a better memory for faces and names.
“It’s me, silly! Tim!”
Jany’s head snapped back up.
“Tim? Oh, wow. I thought your plane wasn’t due for
another five minutes!”
“Well, I was afraid you’d get here and leave if I wasn’t
here yet, so I managed to get an earlier flight. My brother works
for the airline, so he took care of the ticket for me. I get to fly
anywhere I want to for like forty bucks.”
“Ah, yeah. Cool.” Jany had no idea what to say next,
so she waited in silence for a topic of conversation to present
itself. Or, more accurately, for Tim to present a topic of
conversation. He didn’t. Finally, the silence grew uncomfortable
enough that Jany found her voice.
“You—ya wanna sit down? Or head for the train?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Um. Which one?”
“Whatever one takes us to where we’re going.”
“What—oh. Oh, wow, I didn’t mean which train. But
okay. Let’s go.”
Jany tucked her magazine back into her oversized purse
and started walking. When she realized that Tim was following her
and not stepping into place alongside her, she found herself adding
a little wiggle to every step. It was hard to be shy around someone
who was so painfully awkward.
She pulled both of their train tickets out of her purse
and soon they were seated side by side on the train, with Tim’s bag
crammed in front of their knees. She had suggested he put it on the
rack above them, but he didn’t want to. He was afraid it might fall
and hurt someone, even though there were at least a dozen other bags
the same size on the rack already. They talked a little, but mostly
when Jany asked a question, Tim answered it with two or three words
and trailed off. He sat with his back pushed up against the window
and stared at the side of Jany’s head. She fidgeted with her purse
handle until finally he turned so that he was sitting next to her
again, right up against her.
“You’re really pretty,” he said, looking straight ahead.
“Um, thanks.” Jany said with a giggle. It was nice to
hear, but the whole situation felt stiff and strange. She wondered
if she was supposed to say he looked good, too. The problem was,
she didn’t really find him attractive. But maybe that’s what girls
did with guys. Maybe they lied. She couldn’t force herself to do
it, though. Instead, she tried for more conversation. “So, did you
have a good trip?”
“Yes. It was nice.” His voice had taken on an odd
tone. He sounded almost like a little boy. Suddenly, he leaned his
head against her arm. Not even her shoulder, but her arm. He had
scooted down in the seat so that his head was just above her elbow.
Jany sat without moving. She felt a sneeze coming on but held it
back because she didn’t know quite how to go about sneezing without
disturbing Tim. Finally, when her hand had fallen asleep and her
whole arm was tingling painfully, Jany slowly slid her arm out from
under him. She suspected he might take it as a rejection of some
sort, since he seemed so insecure. He didn’t take it that way,
though.
Instead, he was only too willing to snuggle his head
against the side of her body. He nestled it into her armpit at
first, then slid it forward so that it was resting on her chest.
Jany froze, her tingling arm still raised in the air.
“Um—uh—yeah, we’re almost there now,” she said quietly,
so as not to startle him. Her body convulsed with silent giggles
that she barely managed to keep from erupting. She struggled to
stay still.
“Okay,” Tim said back, his voice muffled by her breast.
He moved his hand up and placed it on her body, just in front of his
face. On her breast. Not like a man touching a woman, though.
Like a little boy settling into his pillow at night. “I like the
way your tummy jiggles when you talk,” he told her. He reached out
and patted her stomach and then returned his hand to its place on
her breast.
Jany frantically looked around the train car to see if
anyone was watching. She hoped no one was. Tim’s behavior seemed
like the kind of thing that might attract attention. And not the
kind of attention she wanted. There was a part of her, though, that
hoped that everyone in the whole world was watching, that everyone
would know there was someone in the world who thought she was
beautiful, worth spending time with, someone who wanted to touch
her. She hated that part of herself. It was that part of herself
that held her back from everything in life even more than her
appearance did. It was that part of herself that made her so
desperate for affection.
She couldn’t hold her hand in the air any longer. The
only place to put it was over Tim’s shoulder. Either that, or on
his head. Jany lowered her hand over his shoulder and let it dangle
in the air in front of them. They sat quietly. Jany could hear a
noise coming from the general area of Tim’s mouth. It sounded
suspiciously like a suckling sound. She strained her neck to look
around his head and see what he was doing; she couldn’t see his
face, but when he snuggled more deeply into her breast and started
snoring gently, she had her answer.
Jany was on her feet before the train fully stopped at
the station. She had Tim’s bag in one hand and her purse in the
other and was headed for the door by the time Tim was awake enough
to know what was going on. He rested one elbow on the seat and
stuck his head out into the aisle, like a confused child.
“Jany? Jany, where are you going? Are you leaving
me?” His voice sounded tiny and trembly.
“We’re here. It’s time to get off the train. Of course
I’m not leaving you, silly. Come on!” Jany sort of wished she was
leaving him.
He stood up and followed her down the aisle and off the
train. By the time he had caught up with her, Jany was already down
the platform stairs and standing on the sidewalk.
“Wow. You’re fast for a big girl!” he said, with a
big, dumb grin on his face.
“Uh, thanks? I guess?”
She expected him to offer to take his own bag, but no
such luck. He just stood next to her with his stupid grin and asked
where they were going.
“To the hotel. It’s a block down on that street over
there,” she told him, pointing.
“Where do you live?”
“Not far away. About three blocks past the hotel and
one block over. I can walk from my house to the hotel in ten
minutes.”
“Walk? You mean, you’re not going to stay there with
me?”
“Uh, no. I wasn’t going to. I mean, we’ll go out to
dinner and do something together. I’m not going to abandon you. I
can hang out there with you. But since it’s our first time meeting,
I don’t think we should spend the night together.” She wasn’t about
to tell him she’d never had the courage to tell anyone else the same
thing. That, right there, was the point of her ad: to find someone
who didn’t just want sex. And with Tim, she had the confidence to
push the issue.
“You’re not gonna leave me, though, right? If you go
home, you’ll come back? I could just stay at your house. I promise
I’ll be good.”
“I already made the reservation. Sorry. I promise I
won’t leave you. If you thought I was the kind of person who would
do that, why did you even want to come meet me?”
“Because I love you.”
Jany stopped in her tracks. He loved her? How the hell
was she supposed to respond to that? She had sent the guy
approximately five e-mails, talked to him on the phone once, and had
met him in person less than forty-five minutes ago. He loved her?
She stared at him.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked her.
“No. Not really. In my experience, love at first sight
is lust, plain and simple. And that’s what I’m trying to avoid,
just so you know. I mean, lust is great, I’m not saying it isn’t.
But I want the lust to come after the like for once. Okay? And
it’s too early for like yet, much less love. You hardly know me.”
“Okay. But I still love you. You’ll see.”
They went into the hotel and Jany led Tim to his room.
She had checked in before she’d gone to meet him so he wouldn’t know
how much she had spent to get him a room near her apartment. She’d
managed to get a great rate on her apartment because she’d taken
over the lease for a woman she knew through the gallery, who’d lived
there forever, but it was an expensive neighborhood. She’d wanted
him near her, though, so it wouldn’t be hard to get from home to the
hotel.
Tim sat down on the bed and watched as Jany dropped his
bag on the floor and set her purse on the desk. She sat in the
room’s only chair.
“You can come sit on the bed by me,” Tim told her
hopefully.
“I’m good here, thanks,” she replied. “Are you hungry?
Did you want to go get something to eat?”
“No, thanks. Not yet. Come on, come sit by me for a
while. We’ll watch TV.” He picked up the remote control and
flipped through the channels until he found an old movie. “Here.
You said you like comedies.”
Jany figured she’d be safe on the bed with him if they
were watching TV. He didn’t seem like the type that could
concentrate on more than one thing at a time. She laid next to him
on the bed, on her stomach, and rested her chin in her hands.
He followed suit, then glanced over his shoulder, turned
to her, and grinned.
“Nice butt, mama. Can I call you mama? Do you mind?”
“Would you tell your mother she has a nice butt? Of
course I mind. I told ya, I’m not your mama,” Jany said
frantically. She stared at the television and tried to forget that
Tim was next to her. It didn’t work, though, because she was trying
too hard. She was aware of every breath he took, every move he
made.
“I’m sorry. I need a squeeze.”
Jany looked sideways at him. She sighed. She knew what
it must be like to be a beautiful woman, now. Trying to keep a
guy’s hands off you was exhausting. What could it hurt to give him
a hug? She reached an arm across his back and hugged him lightly.
“Harder, mama. Hold me harder. Make it stop hurting.
I try to find someone to love me all the time and they don’t do it.
They spit on me. Please, mama. Squeeze me. Squeeze me hard.”
Tim was almost crying. Or maybe he was crying. Jany
couldn’t see his face well enough, in the dim room, to be sure. Her
gentle nature, her womanly instinct to protect and to heal, took
over then. She wrapped her arms around him and rocked gently back
and forth on the bed. For several minutes, Jany held Tim, her arms
encircling his body and pinning his arms to his side as if he was an
infant. Neither of them spoke. In fact, Jany began to wonder if
Tim had fallen asleep, until she felt his arm moving rhythmically
against her stomach, like maybe he was rubbing his leg or something.
Then it occurred to her that it might not be his leg he
was rubbing. The thought of what he might be rubbing instead
horrified her. Slowly, she pulled away from him, as if she were
stretching, and glanced downward. Without sitting completely
upright and staring at him in a very obvious way, she couldn’t be
sure, but it did appear as though he was rubbing something that
definitely was not his leg. He was almost definitely rubbing
his—no, she couldn’t even think the word.
Panic-stricken, Jany leapt from the bed.
“Mama, where are you going? Come back. I need you,
Mama.”
Jany opened her purse and frantically pretended to be
searching for something important. In reality, she was so flustered
she could barely see what was in front of her. She suddenly found
her cell phone in her hand and quickly took advantage of the
situation. She flipped it open and stared blankly at the empty
screen.
“Mama. I need you.” Tim’s voice was whiny and
desperate, and he was masturbating openly now, rubbing himself
feverishly through his pants.
Jany choked out the word, “Voicemail,” and ducked into a
corner of the room, under the guise of finding decent cell
reception. Her cheeks burned and there were tears in her eyes.
Tears of humiliation, even though she knew there was no reason in
the world why she should be the one who was humiliated, but there
were tears of mirth, too. From the outside, the scene must look
like something from a stupid movie, or a sitcom. Even in the midst
of her panic, even though she had not the faintest clue what she was
going to do or say when she had to turn around and face him again,
it wasn’t hard to recognize how hysterically funny the whole thing
really was. Almost sad, but hilariously funny.
“Hurry up, Mama!” she heard him say breathlessly. And
that was it. She exploded into uproarious laughter. Judging by the
sounds coming from the bed, Tim was dealing with an explosion of his
own. Jany leaned against the wall and laughed until her face hurt,
her head hurt, her lungs hurt. She laughed until she was crying,
crying because way in the back of her mind she was remembering the
pathetic, child-like man who had settled himself so snugly into her
chest on the train ride into town. She couldn’t begin to imagine
what he must have seen in his lifetime, or not see in his lifetime,
to have become the kind of person he was.
When she finally dared to look over at the bed, Tim was
sleeping soundly, a thumb planted firmly in his mouth. After
writing a note on the hotel stationery and placing it under his cell
phone, she headed for the door. Before she left, she leaned down
and kissed him gently on the cheek. She couldn’t help herself.
