Fat Chance (19 page)

Greg and I made the mistake of trying the latter option.

It was about six months before we started the competition, and we were both at what you could describe as our lowest ebb, in terms of our sex life and our lifestyles in general.

January is never a good month when you’re fat. You’ve just had all the excesses of Christmas to deal with. And boy, did we get particularly excessive this year. Tins of Quality Street were consumed with abandon, turkey sandwiches were crammed in our mouths like there was no tomorrow. I drank my way through what felt like an ocean of red wine and Greg did much the same with the lager.

I confess that this edible debauchery was largely my fault. The embarrassing horror of getting stuck in the green dress the month before still weighed heavily on me, and I tried to cheer myself up in the only way I knew how: by eating.

What a cruel and idiotic thing the human brain truly is.

When faced with this kind of adversity through addiction it should prompt you into doing something
positive
about it. Logic suggests that if you’re hooked on too much fat and sugar, there should be a part of your cerebral cortex ready and willing to
metaphorically
slap you around the face a few times until you come to your senses and start eating tofu. But
no
, the little sod doesn’t do that. Instead it tries to cope with the misery of addiction by plunging you
even further
into the mire of the very obsession you need to get away from!

It’s the equivalent of burning your hand in the fire and going back repeatedly to see just how crispy you can make your skin before the entire appendage drops off.

So during Christmas I salved my wounded self-esteem by making myself even fatter, in a glorious downward spiral that would have seen me washing myself with a rag on a stick and unable to walk if it hadn’t been for Elise and her radio competition.

Between Christmas and the third week of January I’d put on half a stone and Greg three-quarters. We also hadn’t had sex for over a month. More specifically, we hadn’t had sex since I’d attempted to fit into that green dress—a fact that should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone.

This meant that for the first time in our fifteen years of marriage we hadn’t made love over the Christmas period even once. Not one romantic session in front of the Christmas tree, not one quickie while the Queen was on, not one drunken shag after a Boxing Day party.

Nothing at all.

I’m sure Greg had wanked off a few times, given that no man can go a month without at least one incident of self-abuse, but my sex drive was utterly dormant for the first time in my life.

I’ve always enjoyed sex.

No, scratch that: I’ve always
loved
it.

From the first time with Greg, and on through the years until the weight really piled on, our sex life has been the cornerstone of what has by and large been the best relationship any woman can hope to have.

My husband is kind, thoughtful, intelligent, and loving. He also sports a large penis. This by no means has any influence on how much I love him, but when somebody serves you up a delicious cake, it’s always nice to find a big, juicy cherry on top.

In all our time together a month has never gone by without sex, not until last Christmas.

Not even when Greg broke his leg and we had to employ a
hastily
constructed pulley with block and tackle so he could
perform
. Not even when I came down with a bout of influenza that would have pole-axed a rhino. I finished that particular session by being sick all over the carpet, but damn it, it was still some good, hard sex we had that night . . . what I can remember of it thanks to the delirium.

The realisation that we’ve gone so long without a shag dawns on us one night in front of the TV. We’re watching ‘Game of Thrones,’ a program that seems to delight in the depiction of fantasy people going at it hammer and tongs on a fairly regular basis.

As a gorgeous thin redhead bounces up and down on a ruggedly handsome man in the kind of medieval castle bedroom that every girl dreams about staying just one night in, Greg turns turned to me and said ‘When’s the last time we did that, baby?’

‘We’ve never stayed the night in a castle, Greg. I wanted to last year, if you remember, but you made me go to the Goodwood
Festival
of Speed instead.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant . . . you know . . . what they’re doing.’

‘Oh, right,’ I say and flush red. ‘It’s been a while.’

Greg starts counting on his fingers. I know full well how long it’s been since we’ve had sex, but I’m interested to see if he’ll come up with roughly the same figure. ‘It’s got to be over a month,’ he eventually says.

‘Thirty-four days,’ I reply.

‘Really? That’s a lot for us.’

‘Yes Greg,
it is
,’ I sigh, and start picking at one corner of the cushion.

Greg sits up and looks at me closely for a few moments, before pausing ‘Game of Thrones’ in mid-shag and moving over on the couch to put his arms around me in a comforting manner. My
husband
knows how to read my moods very well.

‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ he says and kisses my cheek.

‘I’m not sexy.’ I reply, downcast.

‘What?’

‘I’m not, Greg. I’m big and fat and ugly.’

‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous!’

‘Yes, I am. That’s why we haven’t had sex for ages.’

‘It’s only been a month! And we’ve both had lots of work on our plates. It’s got nothing to do with how you look! You always look gorgeous to me.’

I can feel tears in my eyes, which I’m extremely annoyed about, but there doesn’t appear to be anything I can do about it. ‘But it was almost a month before the last time as well!’ I cry. ‘We do it less and less, Greg. And it’s because I’m getting fatter and fatter!’

‘No, no. That’s not . . . it’s not . . . I don’t think you . . .’ Greg blusters. I know he’s trying to come up with an excuse that’ll make me feel better, but I know he won’t find one. He hangs his head and runs a hand through his hair, before grabbing one of his love handles and giving it a shake. ‘I don’t think it’s down to you getting fatter anyway, baby.’

Oh, great. Now we’re both depressed by our combined weight gain. This is turning into a truly
wonderful
evening.

Greg unpauses the TV and we watch the two thin, healthy people bouncing up and down on the bed for a few more moments.

‘Turn this off, will you?’ I eventually say when I just can’t suffer the comparison any more.

We sit in silence for a few minutes before Greg utters the line that most people who have been married for over ten years probably say at some point. ‘Maybe we could do something to . . . you know . . . make it more exciting?’

‘What like? Do it on roller skates?’

‘Not quite.’ He lapses into silence again. Then I see the light of an idea spark in his eyes. ‘I know! Let’s do a bit of dressing up!’

‘Dressing up?’

Greg waggles his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, you know. Get some sexy stuff on and role play a little.’

I give him a withering look. ‘You think Ann Summers caters for a woman of my size, do you? If I try to wear one of those tiny G-string and bra combos I’ll end up looking look a rolled pork joint.’

Greg has the decency to not argue.

Another few silent minutes go by. I pick up the iPad and start mindlessly web surfing until Greg pipes up again.

‘How about . . . how about what we were wearing when we first met?’

‘You mean the rugby kits?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes are gleaming. ‘Yeah, the rugby kits. I can still picture you in it now.’

I consider his idea for a moment.

It’s a
good one
.

For the first time in God knows how long I feel a faint rush of sexual desire.

The idea of recapturing the thrill of our first time together, from the photo shoot to his bed a few hours later, is one that I can well and truly get behind. Also, rugby kits come in all different sizes, so even we should be able to find a pair of matching kits that will fit our larger frames.

Greg walks his fingers along the couch. ‘Maybe . . . maybe we could even take a few photos?’

Blimey, I hadn’t even thought of that! It sounds
great!
And pretty damn
dirty
into the bargain.

‘Okay,’ I say to him, a little breathlessly. ‘I’ll go online and get us the outfits. You try to find the digital camera.’

It takes just three days for the rugby kits to be delivered. They’re not exactly the same as the ones we wore all those years ago, but they are more or less the same shade of blue, and the shorts are the same crisp white that I remember from nearly two decades ago.

Greg does manage to track down the camera. It’s not the newest, but it will still take some decent timed pictures when propped up on the chest of drawers at the end of our bed.

There’s no Lionel the Pervert this time around, of course, which can only be considered a good thing.

Greg and I both change into the rugby kits and join each other in the bedroom. He is holding a photo album, the page open at the rather tatty print of our first picture together. Lionel had made us pay through the nose for a copy, the little weasel, but it had been more than worth it.

‘Shall we recreate our first photo, then?’ Greg suggests, putting the album on the bed before giving me a lingering kiss.

‘Why not?’ I reply with a cheeky smile.

Greg goes over and sets the camera timer running. He comes back and I try my best to place myself in the same position I was in all those years ago.

The camera shutter goes
click
. ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’ I say, heart racing. This is all very exciting. My mind is already fast-forwarding to what happened later that day and I’m feeling more turned on than I have in a long, long time.

Greg retrieves the camera, and fiddles with the settings until the shot that’s just been taken appears in the display.

We sit on the end of the bed and take a good, hard look.

My libido is immediately snuffed out as soon as I take in what the photo has to offer.

The problem is that we’ve managed to recreate the pose we were in back at college a little
too
well. This gives rise to an immediate and painful comparison to the original photo.

Frankly, it looks like the two young sexy kids in the original shot have had hoses rammed up their arses and been pumped full of jelly.

You’d need a good couple of hours in Adobe Photoshop and the constant use of the Bloat Tool to otherwise illustrate the change from young Greg and Zoe to current Greg and Zoe.

Rather than recapturing the erotic vibe of our youth, all we have served to do with this little experiment is hammer home just how blubberous we’ve both grown in the intervening years.

‘Oh, good God,’ Greg whispers.

‘I know. I look like a whale in a polo shirt.’

‘I have tits, Zoe. Look at my big floppy tits.’

Greg holds up the old photo and we look from one to the other with jaws agape.

‘Delete it,’ I order.

‘Okay.’

Greg fiddles with the buttons on the camera and the hideous picture is irrevocably wiped from existence. It will, however, take up near-permanent residence in my mind’s eye for the foreseeable future.

‘I think I’m going to take this gear off,’ Greg says. ‘I don’t feel up for it any more.’

‘Yes. I think that’s a very good idea,’ I reply. ‘Then I think we should burn them . . . and never speak of this again.’

Needless to say, the sex did
not
happen that night.

Nor did it happen for many more nights after that, until we started Fat Chance. It would take the crazy diets and exhausting exercise regimes to get me horny again.

It wasn’t an immediate thing.

I didn’t just wake up the morning after I started dieting to find myself ravenous for sex. I was too busy being ravenous for food at the time.

Slowly, though, as we both started to drop a few pounds here and there, I started to admire Greg a lot more when I looked at him, and I even started to hate my own body a bit less as the weight loss went on.

It’s amazing what only a small change can do for you psychologically.

And it isn’t just the actual weight loss. Replacing all those fats and sugars with vitamins and minerals does wonders. Your skin starts to look healthier; your hair starts to look fuller.

A lot of incremental little changes add up to big ones.

And your sex drive eventually returns . . . in fucking spades!

So much so that I nearly got us both chucked out of B&Q the other day.

It really isn’t a good idea to go to a hardware store when you have a rampant libido and your husband is dressed as a burly
workman
. I had no choice, however, as we needed to replace some of the flagstones in the patio.