Sarah Jones sat on the subway seat with her back inches from the backrest. From years of experience she knew that if she got more comfortable on the seat the stifling heat would fuse her back to the upholstery and her blouse would be soaking when she got off the train.
And she was in no mood to get comfortable. She was just about to act on a decision that would change her life, or, at least, she hoped it would, change her life like it needed to be changed.
She was alone now, alone to make her own decisions. Her mother had died a week before after a long and difficult illness β an illness with a fascinating irony: an obese body slowly shrunk to a skeleton.
Sarah had made the decision on the day of the funeral: she would take a different path from her mother; she would travel the high road; the mountain trail, up steep slopes, through rocky terrain β for the rest of her life. Never once, not for a single step would she trod the downward, comfortable slope to destruction. That's why she was getting off the train in two subway stops: so she could walk the three miles to her home.
In her bedroom, she peeled the soaking blouse from her body, glad that she had stored the stand-up mirror in her mother's room. She knew what was beneath the huge sexless bra that in doing its job cut into her shoulders and cinched tight to her back, like a saddle on a horse. She reached behind and when she set it free she sighed and threw it in the hamper then undid her skirt. She had to sit down now. She knew she couldn't take off her pantyhose, sausage skins as she thought of them, balancing on one foot. She had no balance; she was top heavy, ass heavy, thigh heavy β she was a corpulent, featureless mess and when she threw her pantyhose at the hamper, she felt the bile of self-disgust, then she discarded her panties with the same revulsion; they were huge and worn and wet, the very symbol of the 25 year old woman who wore them.
She didn't cry today. That surprised her, she always cried when she came home, she cried about her awful job, her empty evenings, her sick and now dead mother β she cried about her life, once so filled with promise, now so destroyed by fat.
Why didn't she cry? She thought about that for a moment: maybe she was just too empty to care any more ... or maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to imagine a glimmer of hope.
She reached for the large bag on the floor and shook it over the bed. Out tumbled new jogging suits and jog bras, sports socks and underwear, walking shoes and sweat bands.
Just before she left her apartment she opened the journal on the kitchen table and wrote 'Day 1: Walked three miles home. Going on three mile walk.'
...
Day 42 was cold and wet and she was cold and wet but she wanted to make her entry before her bath. The first target: Six Weeks, 'don't even think about what you are doing until you have made it to six weeks.' That's what the book said, and she had embraced the advice, she didn't think about her walking, she just did it, she walked for as long as she could, everyday, in the morning, in the evening and at lunch, too, instead of eating. After six weeks, the book promised, it would get a whole lot easier.
She wrote: 'Walked a total of four hours and 14 minutes today.'
Six weeks is up: now what? She opened the book on the table and found 'Stage Two' in the index. The Chapter began unexpectedly: 'First, take a moment, imagine who you want to be and what you want to look like; do that today, your 42nd day, and then celebrate, don't forget to celebrate β but not with food.'
When she eased herself into the hot water she was surprised that she felt almost pain-free. She was tired, sure, she had been bone tired for six weeks but the pain in her arches, calves, back and shoulder seemed to be gone or almost gone, reason enough to celebrate. But how to celebrate? Is wine food? Probably, it means calories, so with food and drink out, what's left? Not much.
Right from the start she had vowed not to set targets, just do it, just do what the bloody book said: don't think, do! Now the book told her to reflect. As the salubrious waters washed over her she dared to imagine what she wanted to look like and a clear image soon emerged: she wanted to look like her mother did three months into her illness when the disease had eaten away half her weight and her face and body took a kind of fat-free definition. She was beautiful, if only for a few weeks, she looked like the pictures of her youth and in her mother, sick and dying, she could see a hint of herself β a self that was buried deep beneath the fat of self-indulgence.
She relaxed and glared into nothingness. The image of her new self danced in her mind, literally, in colourful clinging clothes, a thin, lithe body in the arms of an adoring man, holding her, swinging her in a blurring arc of happiness.
She had noticed it a few days before, just a hint, but the hint had slowly built to a feeling and the feeling was in her now. At first she didn't know what it was, she had never felt it before but as it grew stronger it became ever more obvious: she was feeling her own emerging sexuality. It was the first dividend of fitness and she didn't know what to do with it; it was like an itch that she didn't dare scratch.
She knew about masturbation, she had read about it, had read that it wasn't for everyone and she had known it wasn't for her. She looked down at the large melons spilling off her chest and her huge pink belly rounding from the water like a grotesque, bald island. She was ugly, repulsive β yes, but not as ugly, not so repulsive as before and she felt a little more alive; life seemed to be just a little bit more promising. Maybe. Just maybe ....
She struggled from the tub and quickly dried herself and she looked in the cabinet, moving bottles and jars until she found it.
It is day 42: 'Who do you want to be?' That's what the book asked and it stated, emphatically: celebrate.
Who is that girl in the dress at the dance? Watch her. See her climb onto the bed with the jar in her hand, see her kick back the duvet and sheets to lie down with her head on the pillow. She is a pretty girl with intelligent black eyes, a thin elegant nose, wide full lips and a strong determined chin, all surrounded by thick black hair, the same colour as the bush between her elegant legs, stretched wide on the sheet. She really is beautiful, sexy even ... even desirable.
As her fingers move slowly to her thigh, she opens her legs wider and let her fingers crawl, not on puckered flaccid fat but on the trim brown thighs of her imagination. The tingle was stronger now and her breathing more rapid but when she looked, she didn't see a heavy heaving chest, she saw instead the erotic perky tits of the girl, large and firm and feminine, with nipples stiff and erect.
When her fingers found the gully of her crotch she let out a sigh, a sound she had never heard before β the feeling was so strange, so foreign, so intimate. She was encouraged, she willed her fingers on.
The hair of her crotch was sparse and stiff, not like the delicate cover of her pussy, so soft and sensitive. She shifted excitedly on the sheet, bunching the pillow under her head, the better to see the trim young body of her dream. Her fingers were in the tangled hair of her mound and they found her crack, but she didn't go in, instead, she followed it slowly along its length, squirming to open herself wider and when she got to the bottom her fingers joined a small river that flowed to the puckered mystery between her cheeks.