Emotional Fat Suit

When I mount a dude it’s less of a mount and more of a squat-and-hover situation. They’ll grope my ass and grind into me as I engage my core and try to ignore the increasing burn coming from my glutes as I hover a few millimeters over their thighs.

I lost 50 pounds in under a year.

At first it was all good vibes. I felt leaner, healthier, and eager to share my new figure with all of New York City. My exhibitionism wasn’t restricted to the bedroom; I found myself disrobing at parties, among friends at private gatherings, really seizing any opportunity to show off the progress I had made. But it was a conditional pride.

I’d be giving head and press my shoulders onto my partner’s torso so he wouldn’t see my excess weight dangle. I’d suck in and flex, steering clear of certain positions altogether in fear of how they’d make my stomach swell. I was convinced that my weight loss was an optical illusion, a practical joke my mirror was playing on me. At any moment, my 50 pounds would re-materialize and the cute boy would fling me from his bed.

I became obsessed with putting my best bod forward. I wouldn’t eat in the hours before meeting up with someone to avoid bloating, feeling pressure to live up to my newfound thinness. Hyper aware of where a boy was touching me, I’d question his intentions. If he bit my nipples, I told myself they reminded him of breasts. If he ran his fingers up my middle, I was convinced he was searching for washboard abs.

Blinded by the momentary satisfaction that comes with being desired, I ignored my tendencies for self-hate. That was until I was with someone else who displayed the same symptoms.

I hiked up the ends of his tee only to have him grab my wrists and ask, “Do I have to take off my shirt?” I was floored. This was, for all intents and purposes, a thin and attractive guy. His eyes were glossy with insecurity. In them, I saw my own shame for the first time.

I later found out that he had also lost a large amount of weight in a short timespan. I started to notice other quirks of our sex life together — how I had to take the mirror out of my room so he wouldn’t inspect himself before coming to bed, or how he would play with my love handles as we were laying down, as if fascinated by another’s imperfections.

It occurred to me that out of all the boys I’d been with, the only one to touch or notice any of my fleshier parts was someone who was looking for it. Someone who was equally as sensitive about bodies as I was.

And there it was, the problem, more insidious than any carb — the mind’s eye: twisting and morphing our reflection until what we see is no longer reality, but an Etch A Sketch of our insecurities. It took witnessing another healthy and sexy guy, so haunted by his past form that he couldn’t even focus on the naked boy on top of him, for me realize just how damaging my own body image issues were.

Insecurity is the ultimate cockblock, and at some point my negativity had become heavier than my cellulite. All these months I’d been having threesomes with my phantom weight. This was no way to live, and certainly no way to fuck, so I decided it was time for an exorcism.

It began with accepting the logic of the situation: if someone was climbing into bed with me, odds were that they found me attractive, and no amount of “extra” weight would deter them at that point.

So I let go. I put my full weight on boys’ thighs, and as it turns out I didn’t crush them. Instead, I felt lighter.

Art by Zoe Milah.Â