It all started when I ran into Jack by the mailboxes in my apartment building and he said, "I need some advice."
I barely knew him. We often had college kids living in our building because we're close to campus. He lived with some buddies on my floor. We bumped into each other a lot in the elevator and he had introduced himself to me one time. But we'd never talked about anything serious, so I wasn't sure how to respond.
All I could think of was, "Me? Give advice to a college kid? Is it possible that he hasn't figured out that I'm gay? Or maybe that's what he wants advice about?"
I was about to get some dinner anyway, so I asked him if he wanted to split a pizza. He said yes, so we headed up to my place.
He seemed nervous, so I tried to engage in the usual small talk. "Where are you from? What are you studying? What do you think of the town? What about this weather?" I kept talking, because I didn't understand why he was sitting in my living room. Then I asked him what kind of pizza he wanted and he said, "You choose." That was the first time he smiled. I warned him that I normally get the meat lovers pizza with extra cheese and he said, "I'll eat whatever you pick," and he smiled again. So I ordered the pizza and we were back to staring at each other.
I couldn't think of any more stupid things to talk about, so I said, "What did you want to talk about?"
"I'm on the hockey team," he said, "and we just finished our season. The thing is, the coach called me in to his office. He said I need to bulk up. He said hockey players are supposed to be big."
I was stunned. What would I know about hockey? At first I couldn't say anything. "Well, Jack," I started to say, "I, um, well. I'm not sure I can give you very good advice about this."
"I'm mostly just looking for someone to help me think it through," he said. "I just don't relate well to guys my age. They seem so immature. I asked my roommate about it and he threw a beer at me and started to laugh. Plus I heard you talking with that friend of yours about helping him to gain weight."
"Dear God," I thought, "now I remember." Jack was in the elevator when my friend Bryan came by for a visit and I was talking to Bryan about his attempts to gain weight. He was talking about being stuck at 208 and he was hoping I'd help him break through that plateau. And then I had a wonderful stuffing session with him. But I didn't think this college kid would pay any attention to our conversation in the elevator. And I was helping Bryan to get fat, not to play hockey.
"You said something about making him a gainer shake," Jack went on, and once again I was speechless. I guess I don't think about who might be listening in when I'm talking to my friends, and Bryan in particular just talks very openly about everything even when I try to shush him.
Since I wasn't talking, Jack went on talking. "I googled it and found a lot of interesting web pages about gainer shakes. So will you show me how to make them?"
"Sure," I said, beginning to regain my composure. "But, I don't like to work with guys who aren't serious. So you'd have to be 100% committed."
"I am, I am," Jack said and he sounded sincere. But I wanted him to prove it to me. "Then eat the whole pizza when it comes," I said, "and drink the entire 2-liter bottle of soda yourself."
He thought about it for a second and said, "Okay. Whatever you say."
"First, tell me a bit about your goals. How much weight are you trying to gain?"
"I was thinking of getting up to 200 and see how I feel."
"And how big are you now?"
"I'm not sure. Do you have a scale?"
Of course I had a scale. I led him into my bathroom and pointed to it. And he immediately stripped down to his underwear and socks. That seemed a bit strange, but I chalked it up to jock culture. They don't seem to be very self-conscious about being almost naked around other guys.
Jack was pretty tiny by my standards. He was 5 foot 11 and the scale said he weighed 165. But still. He had a cute little starter belly with a whorl of hair starting to form around his belly button. He didn't have love handles, but his belly stuck out enough that it pushed the top of his underwear down noticeably.
"I've been trying for a month to gain a bit of weight and I think I've put on about 10 pounds so far," he said. Then he touched his belly and gazed down at it with a look of affection that gave me a bit of a hard-on. I don't think he noticed.
"So you talked to your coach a month ago?" I asked, trying to get my mind off of that belly of his.
"No, I talked to the coach yesterday."
"But I thought you said you've been trying to gain for a month?"
"Yeah, well, I've been thinking about it for a while. The comment from the coach just gave me an extra incentive to get serious."
Fortunately the doorbell rang just then because I don't know how I would have gotten out of that situation otherwise. The pizza had arrived. So we moved into the living room and he started to eat. He made good progress at first, wolfing down four slices in just five minutes. He had a pretty good appetite for a little guy. But then he started to slow down with the fifth and sixth slices. And he'd barely made a dent on the soda.
"Maybe you should rest a bit," I said.
"No, it's okay. Just give me a minute." He suddenly had this serious look on his face, like he was having a chat with his stomach and telling it to shut up. Then he lifted up his shirt and started to rub his belly. I got another hard-on, but Jack wasn't in any position to notice. It seemed like he was entering a food coma.
I put on a TV show so he could digest for a bit and while we watched it, he made slow progress with the soda and the seventh slice of pizza. After the show he said, "You know, I think maybe I'll take this last slice back to my place and finish it later with the rest of the soda."
I don't know what got into me, but I suddenly was annoyed and I said, "You promised me you'd finish the whole thing. You either finish it now or don't come back."
He looked seriously worried and he said, "Yes, sir," as he quickly finished the last slice of pizza and started to chug the soda.
"You don't have to call me sir."
"The way you talked just then, it reminded me of my hockey coach. He always makes us call him sir. When you don't, he says, 'I can't hear you,' until you say 'yes sir' or 'no sir' or 'sorry sir.'"
Then he let out a loud burp and we both laughed. "Okay," I said, "you've kept your end of the bargain. Come back tomorrow and I'll make you a gainer shake."
"Do you want me to pay for it?" he said. "I don't have a lot of money, but I can pay something."
"One of the good things about being an old guy like me is that you don't have to worry about money," I said. "I'll pay for the shakes. You just focus on the gaining part."
"Yes, sir!" he said with a smile. I liked how he said it. This seemed like it could be fun. I'd helped a lot of gay men get fat. Would it be that different to help a straight guy bulk up?
I went to the store and bought all of the usual ingredients and read up on what kind of gainer shakes athletes use. I didn't buy any of the pre-packaged powders because you can do just as well with your own ingredients and whey protein. So I started giving him daily shakes that had whey powder, milk, a banana, some vanilla ice cream, and a bit of vanilla extract for flavor.
We fell into a regular pattern. He'd come by every night around 8 and I'd mix up a shake for him. Then we'd watch some TV in the living room while he slowly drank it. We weighed him every week and I put a chart up on the wall where we could plot his progress over time.
For the first month it was slow going. He said he'd gained 10 pounds on his own in a month, but he barely gained 4 pounds in a month working with me even though I was making him a 2,500-calorie shake every day on top of his usual diet. This bulking up thing was turning out to be harder than I thought.
I should have realized it would turn out that way. It's hard to gain muscle. It happens very slowly. When guys talk about bulking up quickly, they're either using steroids or they're talking about getting fat. Consuming massive quantities of protein doesn't cause you to gain muscle. The body can't store the extra protein so it just comes out the other end. I knew these protein shakes were never going to produce big gains and I was used to getting results.
So at the beginning of the second month, I went back to my normal gainer shake formula. I dropped the whey protein. He was already getting plenty of protein. I replaced it with peanut butter. I'd give him about a third of a jar of peanut butter in each shake. And I started using more ice cream.
When I first mixed up one of those shakes he said, "Isn't all that ice cream going to make me fat?" He should have been more concerned about the peanut butter because it was contributing more calories and more fat than the ice cream.
I gave him a bullshit answer about how it has a lot of protein and it also has calcium, which is important because being bigger puts more strain on your bones. I couldn't believe how stupid it sounded, but he just nodded and accepted it. He wasn't stupid, so I knew that at some level he knew it was bullshit. It didn't seem to matter. He wanted to believe.
In the second month we saw dramatic results. He gained 10 pounds in a month, so he was up to 179. And I could tell it was mostly fat. Maybe he was building up some muscle with all of those trips to the gym, but I could see the telltale signs. He was beginning to develop love handles and you could see the fat spilling over his jeans, which were now way too tight. But he didn't seem to care. He never asked to measure his biceps or his chest. He always seemed to fondle his belly whenever I'd weigh him and we'd put a new entry in his progress chart.
I think it was right around that time, at the end of the second month, that he came up with that cute phrase about his pants. He was complaining that he'd just bought new pants that were a 34 waist and already his pants felt tight when he'd drink his daily shake. So I told him he should unbutton his pants. And he said, "We should make that a goal. Every night should be a pants-popping night if I want to get big."
So I started to use that phrase for all sorts of things. If he was taking too long to finish his shake, I'd say, "Do you want this to be a pants-popping night or not?" And sometimes I'd ask him if he wanted pizza and he'd say, "Yeah, let's make it a pants-popping night."
Even with the pants popping, his pants really didn't fit him and he told me he couldn't afford to buy 36s. So one night I took him to the pants graveyard in my closet. "Take whatever you want," I said. "I've got 36s, 38s, 40s, and 42s."
"Why do you have all these different sizes?" he asked.
"Because I used to wear them."
"You mean, you were fat enough to fit in these?" His eyes got really wide, especially looking at the 42s.
"Yeah, I used to be fatter. Take a look at these," I said, and I handed him a pair of 48s.
"These couldn't have been yours?"
"No," I said. "Those belonged to my ex-boyfriend. He was a big boy."
"But why were you fat?"
"It's kind of hard to stay skinny when you're living with a fat guy. And he wanted me to get fat."
"Really? He wanted you fatter?"
I was so used to having this conversation with people. The idea of someone getting fat on purpose is so odd that people don't seem to believe it at first. They think you're joking. But Jack didn't have that reaction. He seemed to be excited by the idea.
"Yeah. He liked me more when I was fat. And I liked him. So I got fat for him."
"Aww," Jack said with a huge smile. "That's sweet."
"Well, now it means I have clothes for you to wear. You've got room to grow."
I wasn't sure I should have said that because usually guys don't like the idea of having a bigger waist size, but Jack seemed to really like my comment and he immediately put on a pair of 36s.
But the third month didn't go so well. He'd gained so much in his second month that it just seemed natural that he'd gain as much in his third month. But it never works that way. The body starts to resist you. And he experienced his first weight plateau. For two weeks in a row he didn't gain anything. He was clearly demoralized by it. It's not easy to work so hard and then not see any progress.
So then I told him that we were going to add some grazing to his program. I put a bowl of nuts on the coffee table and told him to eat a handful whenever he felt like it. He was now spending several hours a night with me, so he managed to eat quite a lot each night. The first time I put out a bowl of chips in addition to the nuts he made a funny face and I said, "Don't you want it to be a pants-popping night?" and he just laughed and grabbed a handful.
The grazing helped him to get back on track. Even though he'd made no progress in the first half of the month, by the end of that third month he'd gained 5 more pounds, so he was up to 184. He was approaching his goal pretty quickly.
He gained another seven and a half pounds in his fourth month. By now everyone was noticing how fat he'd gotten. He said that his roommates were making fun of him. I told him to ignore those guys. But you could even see it in his face. He was getting round, puffy cheeks like a chipmunk. I gave him another bullshit story about how you can gain more muscle when you allow yourself to get fat and he could always do what the bodybuilders do and switch into weight loss mode to get cut later. It didn't seem to matter. He was eating everything I was putting in front of him.
By then I was buying him all sorts of fattening foods. I didn't even make up bullshit reasons any longer. It didn't seem to matter. And it was so much fun for me to figure out what kind of donuts he liked and what kind of cookies and what kind of candy bars. He seemed to enjoy it, too. Once he said, "I like it when you pick out food for me."
He gained another seven and a half pounds in his fifth month, weighing in at 199 pounds. He was so close to his goal of 200 pounds that I suggested that he go and see his hockey coach. The season didn't start up for a few more months, but why not surprise him and see his reaction? Jack thought that was a great idea, so he told me he'd stop by to see him the next day.
He came by the next day around 8 and he was acting very strangely. He was clearly upset. But he said he didn't want to talk about it. He just wanted his shake. So I made up the usual shake and he drank it all down. Then he went into the living room and started grabbing handfuls of food.
"Are you going to tell me what's wrong?" I asked.
"He said I was fat. I went to see Coach today and he said I was fat. He almost fell over in his chair. He was just shocked. He said I'd blown up like a water balloon."
I wasn't sure what to say. I'd gotten so focused on the weight that I wasn't thinking about whether it was going to work for playing hockey. But Jack had gone along with it. He seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. And once again he was in my apartment eating and eating and eating.
"I hope this doesn't seem rude," I said, "but you don't sound all that upset about it."
He took a minute to ponder that and then he said, "Well, that wasn't what I was upset about. Coach yelled at me, but he does a lot of yelling. I think he actually kind of likes it." Then he laughed, but only for a second. "He said if I got any fatter he'd have to make me the goalie."
"So what are you upset about?"
He stared straight at me and for the first time I saw something like tears forming in his eyes. "I'll show you," he said and he headed for the bathroom. He stripped off his clothes and stepped on the scale. "Two-hundred pounds. It says I weigh two-hundred pounds."
"I thought that's what you wanted?"
"I was sure I was going to be huge at this weight," he said as he stared down at his belly with a look of disbelief. "I feel so small," he said. "I just don't feel big at all."
And that was when I really felt I understood Jack. That's when I knew what he wanted.
"Look," I said, "you've made incredible progress. You're wearing 38s now and they barely fit. When I get fat, it goes to all the wrong places. But you've got a ball belly forming that has a wonderful round shape."
"Really?" he said, "You're not just saying that?"
"I wouldn't lie to you," I said. "And your future is entirely up to you. You can stay at this weight if you want to or you can get bigger or you can go back to 165 and gain it all over again. Whatever you want to do."
That seemed to cheer him up. "Do you want to see what it's like to take it to the next level?" I asked. His eyes got wide again and he said yes.
"Then go into the bedroom and sit on the bed while I make another shake."
I could tell he was going to protest so I just made a sound that indicated that I wanted him to shut up and do what I said. Then I went to the kitchen and made him a second shake and brought it back into the bedroom.
"You might be feeling full," I said, "but you don't know yet what you're capable of when someone really helps you to push your limits. You've been rubbing that belly of yours for months, but you've never had a chance to just lie back and let me rub your belly."
He seemed surprised, but he lay back on the bed and let me start rubbing his belly. "That feels good," he said. He still had his underwear on, but I could see his rock-hard cock clearly enough, so I started to rub that as well and he gave out a little gasp.
"Jack, let's not have any more pretending between us," I said as I took off my shirt and then my pants. He started to make a sound but all he could say was, "but, but, but." I didn't pay any attention. I was looking into his eyes and I could tell what he wanted. I climbed on top of him and gave him a deep, slow, kiss. I had enough experience with gainers to know how to press down on him just enough to let him know that I'm in charge without causing him to feel sick. His belly was swollen tight, but I knew he could handle more.
"If you want to take it to the next level, then you're going to have to finish this second shake," I said. "Do you want to take it to the next level?"
"I do," he said, "I do."
"I didn't hear what you said."
"Yes, I want to take it to the next level."
"I can't hear you," I said in a mocking voice and then he understood.
"Yes, SIR!" he said with a laugh.
I leaned down to give him another slow, playful, sensual kiss and then I said, "Now let's see about that second shake."