Wikipedia says: Fat fetish or adipophilia is a sexual attraction directed towards overweight or obese people due primarily to their weight and size.

The voice in a recurring dream says: So rough with yourself, ██████. Not everything grows back, you know. One day, someone is going to eat your heart.

I look at my body in the mirror. Fat, yes. But desire is a crooked hook down my throat I cannot articulate. What do I desire? A shadow. What do people desire about me?

Let’s find out.

***

I have always been fat. My father was fat, too. Now perhaps a rotted husk in a coffin in a place I cannot bear to remember. When I go there my body starts to fracture — an aching head, a pain in the ankle. Though no weight lost. My mother’s family is thin and bird-boned. I am a big person in a big body with big bones. Were the fat to slough off of me, miraculously, I would still be left with a large pile.

On my “dating” profiles, the first line about myself is always: fat.

Other words: indigenous, friend to all cats, trying to escape samsara.

The fat, it is surely visible, but I feel that I photograph well (by my own hand) and terribly by others. Angle differently, I want to say, but never do.

My life is punctuated with millions of silences and thousands of words, written to you. Always you.

***

I am going to tell you a story about my body. And about desire. And perhaps about love, if you can stomach it. I have changed this story in order to survive it, but not by much. I am heartless and horrible and a soft touch, in the end.

So this is how it goes: They meet in a casino ballroom.

Forgive me. I cannot go on.

***

Here is another story: I downloaded the fat fetish app because I am willing to experience a great many things if I can one day write about them.

The things I am willing to experience: pain, lack of pleasure, weak orgasms, boredom, icy nerves, pain, headaches, stomachaches, a very minor sense of embarrassment, pain.

When I was a child, I was not allowed to cry. As an adult, faced with my own tears, I am an anthropologist on a distant planet. Subject exhibits melancholic traits. Subject relies on archaic and primal modes of sense, such as dreams. Subject cannot, it seems, forget anything.

***

Another dream, another memory: there are three bottles on the forest floor. My teacher has taken me to the river and whipped my fat body with reeds to cleanse me of my attachments to the earthly realm, my deep sadness, my bad attitude, my —

Now drink, my teacher says, in a language older than English, older, even, than Cherokee.

They are not small bottles. To consume them all in one go would be torture. And I know, without either of us verbalizing it, that these bottles, what is inside of them, will take me somewhere else. A test, a punishment, a reward, a balm. I am terrified.

And so I drink.

***

The split between fat people I have “dated” and thin people I have “dated” is about half, leaning perhaps towards “average.”

I have never thought much about this, in context of their bodies. My body is the only one that matters. For isn’t it strange to “date” someone who knows nothing about your size? The stares? The nervousness? The odd feeling of undressing and mental math.

Furthermore, isn’t it doubly strange to “date” someone who may have experienced the same things you have, but perhaps worse? For it really wasn’t so bad for you. And now leaving the house together makes you embarrassed. For what would you do if someone looked at the pair of you in disgust, in faked nausea?

It is so much easier to hide when you are alone.

***

As an adolescent, I was so self-conscious it was physically painful. My body was a torture mechanism I could never part from. I was strapped into this ride whether I wanted to take it or not.

And I did not, in fact, want it. To seize the day, to embody something, to move or be physical. The thing I wanted most badly was a new body, a new mind, a new personality, a new life.

Years later, a free therapist I saw for two sessions said: Ah, so you just constantly wished you were dead?

***

The app states it is: “…a social network and community for feeders, feedees, fat admirers and BBW/BHM. We’re a quirky bunch of men and women who love words like curvy, thick, plump, bellied, chubby, fat, obese, super-size and so much more!”

One of the first messages I get says: “ur not even fat.”

Are you sure about that? I type back. And would you be willing to write me a testimonial?

***

The interface itself feels from another time, one of message boards and forums. I have done my research on Reddit, mostly. About fat admiration, fat fetish, feedism, and the like. When friends who know I am writing on the subject ask me to delineate the differences, however, I stumble and correct whatever I have just said. I found the app on one of these threads. You are brave to show your face, someone says.

Am I? I ask. One must wade through the water, you know.

***

Fat admirer, in my own words: someone who likes fat people. Who wants to fuck them. Who thinks they are hot. Fat admirers could, in a derogatory light, be called chubby chasers. Fat admirers are not always good people and do not always treat fat people as human. What did you expect?

Feedism, not vetted: to gain pleasure by either causing someone to gain weight or by gaining weight. One can be a feeder or a feedee. One can be a mutual gainer, too, i.e. let us get fat together.

Fat fetish (my version): worse than fat admiration. Fat is a vessel for a fat fetishist’s sexual pleasure, less so for the fat person’s sexual pleasure. More in line with the term “chubby chaser” than with anything else.

I say: I love fat people, but I don’t have a fetish. Maybe I’m just a prude, though.

In another world, perhaps.

***

Don’t kink shame, someone says, laughing.

I’m not kink shaming, I say. I’m just a bitch.

I, too, am laughing.

***

I cannot turn off my writerly (ha) eye, nor my obsessive need to document. As I scroll through the app, I observe the number of skinny bodies vs. fat bodies. There are bellies and tits and stomachs and stretch marks. There are plates of food and beautiful landscapes and pictures in the club.

Even as someone who works hard to see all people as people, I am surprised. While I did not expect a den of iniquity, I certainly did not expect this — beggars for attention, intra-community drama, generous commentary, horny posting, and hilarious usernames.

I say: While I am not interested in intentional weight gain, I am also not interested in intentional weight loss.

Why are you even here? someone asks.

I too enjoyed siddartha, one says.

Hey pretty, how’s a beautiful queen like you doing ? x, I receive.

I just love you’re bio so much. Instant follow bcse you re a gorgeous sweet lady , I have my intuition keeps telling me that you re the kindest person on the planet . A man from Paris sends.

Another says: Are you watching the Olympics?

***

A few running jokes between my friends and I: I want to be spoiled but when someone is too nice to me I withdraw. I have the world’s most classic case of anxious-avoidant attachment disorder. The dad may die but the daddy issues will never perish.

I get disinterested in potential “partners” easily, it is true. In the right mood, when someone messages me, I will reply back a few times, less if they bore me. I am a voyeur peeking behind the curtain, but occasionally, I let out a yawn.

***

Apologies, I never answered the question: Why am I here?

To see what it is like to be in a community, a platform, with people who prefer those of my size or bigger. To shield myself from criticism, at least about my looks. To feel above something — baser urges. To indulge and to judge. To remove myself from such judgment by exposure. To be minorly admired, but not too much. Because I am curious. Because I am a dumbass. Because I am, above all, a mind and a spirit trapped inside a vessel.

Yes, the cage shakes, but what can you do?

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