The Bending of the Bars
by Avery Ray Colter

She first appeared a long time ago,
One night as my mind retreated into the dreamphase.
She sauntered slowly, cautiously,
Out of the icy mist.
What a sight she was!
The silhouette, heavy and ponderous,
Advanced ever forward, step by step.
Still a shadow, she stood
On the opposite side
Of the bars.

I was a prisoner, a captured rebel,
My left foot chained to the iron block of boyhood,
Surrounded by the closely-spaced bars of the system.
“Oh no, another misfit freak bemoaning ‘the system’.
What the fuck does he mean by ‘the system’, anyway?”
He means the system
Of designer jeans,
Weak yuppie rock,
And “No Fat Chicks”.
The system of following the holy orders
Of teevee, press, and National Enquirer.
“Enquiring minds” that never criticize their “enquiries”,
But blindly accept the the edict:
That Rambo is God,
That Jordache is King,
And that the Gate of Heaven
Is eighteen inches wide.

Anyway...

There she stood, this heavy shadow.
A soft voice touched my ear,
A burning question:
“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Yes,” I whispered,
“I have committed thoughtcrime.”
“What crime is that?”
“When the other guys were ogling this one girl,
My eyes glazed over from disinterest.”
“She wasn’t... sexy to you?” the silhouette asked
As she visibly stretched her body.
“Pancake City,” I answered, “flat, hard, lifeless, curveless.
She looked as if she were carved from stone.”
The fat shadow hummed in seeming understanding,
And continued her questions:
“Remember the Sadie Hawkins Dance last year?
Remember someone... special?”
As my eyes slowly adjusted,
I realized who it was, this shadow in the mist.
My Love, my Flower,
Returned to me
In my dreams.
Heather was her name.
She was tall, and so fat
That her face looked like that of a newborn.
I took her to a school dance,
One where a photographer
Was taking pictures of couples.
Yeah, we went for a picture together.
Shit, I looked like a little pixie next to her!
Of course, she probably thought,
“Shit, I look like a giantess next to him!”
It didn’t matter that much to me.
It didn’t seem to matter that much to her either.
We were just happy
That we could go there together,
And show those “enquiring minds”
That dancing close wasn’t only
For musclemen and stringbean women.
As I think back,
The really cool thing was,
No one seemed to ever make fun of her.
Maybe it was the good mood
She always seemed to be in.

Alas...
When I came back after summer,
She was nowhere to be found.
I don’t know if her family moved away
or what......

This feeling started deep in my gut.
A feeling that told me my happy days were at an end.

Aimlessly I prowled the schoolground,
Looking for another flower
To replace my Heather.
Though there were other fat girls around,
None had Heather’s untainted irreverence.
Every one of them had already
Been made into a pincushion
By attackers firing their insults
Like peppered, barbed harpoons
That struck deep into them and would not come out.

One of my worst crushes was for Cammie.
Alas, she was everything Heather was not.
She wouldn’t go to dances with me.
She wouldn’t do much of anything with me,
Except get help with math homework.
When I flirted or played boyish pranks,
She called me immature,
Told me to grow up,
Told me to be more normal.

One day it just got to be too much,
The desire that was finding no relief.
I sat brooding under the oak tree.
Wouldn’t you know it?
All these idiots who never said a word
When Heather and I were together and loving it,
Chose now, seeing my moment of weakness,
To pounce.

“You’ve got a crush on her????”
“She’s fat!”

“So?”
“She’s ugly!!”

“No she’s not!”

“She is!!! You’re in love with a fat cow!”

“SHUT UP!!!”

They surrounded me and chanted,
“fat, fat, Fat, Fat, FAT, FAT, FAT, FAT CAMMIE!”

It was that day,
with that chant ringing in my ears.

I learned how to hate.

I wanted to kill.

An entire year of blinding rage ensued.
I was viscous and spiteful to everyone.
Those idiots who razzed me about Cammie,
And even Cammie herself.
She knew not what I was going through for her.
Or she cared not.
One day she asked why I didn’t try to fit in,
With a tone in her voice full of derision.
After almost a whole semester,
I cracked.
“Fit in???
Look at yourself!”

We never talked to each other again.

At this point,
I still wasn’t sure what this feeling was,
This feeling I had about fat girls.
Was it love? Was I getting turned on?
Over the course of that year,
I knew what admitting to that would mean.
I wrestled with these thoughts
All through each day,
And cried a demon’s tears at night.

”Yes,” I gasped, my eyes watering.
“I remember you.
I miss you.
Those idiots! I can’t stand them!
I’LL KILL THOSE SONS OF BITCHES...”
“Relax,” she answered soothingly,
“Hating them is not the answer.
They have their own girls who come into their minds.
You are not like them.”
“I know,” I growled in reply.
“What about Cammie?
The things I said to her...
I can barely even stand myself anymore.”
“Mistakes happen”, she reassured me,
“Especially at your age.
Just add it to your list of lessons...”
I asked, “So is this it? Is it love I’m feeling?”
She smiled, stretching slowly yet again.
“What you see is what you love.”
She reached out a hand,
And grasped the cold bars.
“Hear my words,” the shadow whispered,
“Stand strong.
Defend yourself and your ideas with confidence.
And don’t be bitter;
We will meet again.”

And as the last words reached my ears,
My alarm clock’s ring poked through the dreamphase.
The vision froze and faded,
And my eyes slid open
To the prospect of another long day.

More classes, more homework.
More shitheads telling me
What kind of girl to like.
But instead of bitterly cowering before their words,
That day I stood solid, resolute, unshakeable.
With mischievous eyes and a lightning tongue,
And even clenching a fist at times,
I showed all those who doubted me,
That I would not be changed.
Take it or leave it.
My best friends, happily,
Stuck by me,
Though I knew liking fat girls
Was an alien concept to them.
Suddenly I felt good.
I mean really good,
For the first time since Heather had gone away.

That night, I closed my eyes,
And saw once more the strange scene:
Shackled by my left leg in the middle of jail cell,
And again she appeared out of the icy mist.
The sunny blonde Heather
Was a silhouette no longer.
Indeed, I could clearly see
How her blood-red dress
Was closely following
All the countless curves of her body.
So young, twelve years old,
And with more curves
Than some women have
In a lifetime.
A hundred lifetimes.
Again the slow, measured pace as she approached.
But through the bars I could see
A most wonderful sight.
With each gentle planting of her foot,
Wavelets would erupt at her ankle,
Race up the leg and out of sight
Beneath her sweeping skirt,
Only to reappear at her waist like magic.
Restrained only by a wide black belt,
Her belly oscillated powerfully.
There was no other noise around,
And as my ears scanned the air,
I could faintly hear her body’s vibrations,
Like some very low-pitched “OM”.
I felt an energy inside me,
Something I’d never felt before.
It felt so good, and yet so strange,
As if my soul’s very resonance note
Was the same one that great plump belly
Was sending forth in the darkness!
She stood still, and her frame’s vibrations died away.
With her warm, gentle voice, she chanted:

I will fill your head with a powerful vision,
That will tap the deepest levels of your core.
Should it bring pleasure, fear ye no derision,
For my comforts shall l be yours forevermore.

And with that,
And with that,
I felt myself holding Heather in my arms,
My brown eyes locked with her blue
As a hill of warm soft flesh splashed against me.
Sweating a river,
My aura burned so strong,
I felt such a surge of energy as I’d never felt.
A strange pressure building
From somewhere deep within me,
And then... WAIT!
I look down... it’s covered!
Surrounded, held in an unrelenting grip.
The pressure underwhelms me,
And a bright light flashes as my inside explodes
Into a thousand pieces.

My eyes snapped open
In the darkness of a familiar room,
A pillow staring back at me,
My arms buried into a heavy quilt.
I tried to turn over
And...
Well, you can guess the rest.
Three years of watching the girls change,
Taking on that strange new heaviness;
An I never really noticed until that night:
I was changing too!

The next night.
Still shackled,
Still gazing out.
Again she comes,
But now she looks older.
I see my twelve-year-old friend
Ten years later,
In full bloom.
Again she wore a red dress,
Which visibly strained from gentle forces within,
And a black belt locked in place
By walls of flesh above and below.

“Whew, that was heavy, literally and otherwise!” I said.
“So you liked it?” she questioned.
“Oh yeah, that was beautiful,” I mused.
She continued:
“When, in the waking world, you see a fat woman,
You will feel that way.
You will have the ability to act on these feelings
When I have made love to you where you stand now.
And so, I have to come in.”

“Come in? There’s no gate,” I said.
“Correct. There is only one way to enter.”
What way, I silently thought. She couldn’t mean...
“Yes, “ she said, reading my thoughts,
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
I gawked incredulously,
An action she answered
With the expression of someone hurt.
“I thought you wanted me,” she said sadly.
“I do!” I asserted. “But...”
“But?” she queried, “Is that it?
Think my butt’s too big for that?”
“Perhaps my eyes deceive me, pretty lady;
But do you really think that’s possible?”
“If I didn’t, I would never have come.
We are in your mind.
Things happen here that can never happen out there.
I have done this with others.
I can do it with you.
But only if you wish for it hard enough,
Only if you believe in me.
Decide now if you wish me to ever be with you.”

I already knew the answer to that one:
“My arms await you, sweet breaker of my chains.”
Turning sidelong,
She cast her right foot between two of the bars,
Then a knee, then the lower half of a thigh.
At that point the bars sank in,
And her leg grumbled to a halt.
Thus poised, she spoke.
“These bars were put here by your enemies.
You have resisted well,
So yours are not as closely spaced
As some I’ve seen.
This will be easier for you
Than for many of the men I’ve come to.”
“Okay,” I said, “What do I do?”
“Just relax,” she said. “Listen well.
Concentrate on the bars.
Think thoughts of softness.
As your thoughts soften, so will the bars.
Don’t worry if it goes slowly.
Little by little I will advance.
If I have trouble moving, you will need to relax more.
Don’t become alarmed about me;
That will only make the bars close tighter.
Have faith in me, and I’ll be in your arms soon,
And you will be free of your shackles.”

“Now, look into my eyes,” she commenced.
“Think of my body:
How soft it will feel in your hands,
How effortlessly it will give way to your arms.
Let the bars become that soft.”
She took a deep, slow breath,
And began the advance.
The flesh of her leg growled a fierce complaint as,
Inch by inch, she slid it between the bars.
Inch by inch,
Until the leading edge of her hip
Impinged upon the cold steel.

“Now for the interesting part,” I thought aloud.

“O.K. Now,” she said in a low hypnotic tone,
“Think about the bars.
They are your arms.
Your arms are hugging me too tightly.
Relax them.”

I started to relax.
My eyes locked with hers,
And I silently beheld.
Bending her left leg still outside,
She raised her wide flank,
And with a mighty roar
Forced her right hip through.
The bars, now visibly bowed,
Dug deep into her right flank
And the edge of her belly.
Then a breast bowed the section it contacted;
And her belly, that great gelatinous entity,
Slowly flowed round the bar.

Her whole body growled as it forced the bars back,
And the bars resisted with shrill shrieks.
Fat and steel:
Two mortal enemies locked in deadly combat.
Happily, it looked as if the steel was losing.
Farther and farther the bars curved,
As the irresistible flow of her midriff continued.
Inch by inch.
Still further the bars bent,
Until, suddenly,
Two loud clanking noises tore through the air.
So far out had she bent the bars,
That they had in turn
Slammed into the bars next to them!

And she pressed on still,
Gripping one bar with both her hands,
And pushing it further out, farther back.
It was strangely beautiful to behold,
As her body strained and growled,
And her eyes locked shut,
And her teeth gritted,
And her powerful legs propelled her ever forward,
Inch by inch.
I started to feel that strange aura again,
As I beheld this captivating figure,
Gently straining and squirming,
My spirit again felt the mysterious heat.
I began to recall the vision
Of her in my arms,
Straining and squirming in a similar way.
Again, some unearthly pressure
Took hold deep inside.
Again it underwhelmed me,
And again I surrendered to it,
Exploding into a thousand pieces.
And again, I awoke into the dark of night.

“It’s happened again!” I whispered to myself.
Was this the transition I’d heard of?
Was this the jolting start of manhood?
Was this why I was noticing
All these girls’ flat chests,
Flat stomachs,
Flat rear ends,
Filling up so full
With the stuff of womanhood?
With these questions in mind,
I fell back to sleep,
Back into the dream at hand,
Back to my amplebodied rescuer.


There she was, in her revealing red dress,
Still straining and squirming,
Still bending back the bars.
I moved as close to her
As my cold chain permitted,
And reached a hand out to her.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
She stopped momentarily, smiled,
And reached out, stretching, stretching,
And her hand was about a foot away from mine.
Trailing my bound left foot,
I crouched on my right leg, and raised my hand again,
Now our hands were only inches apart,
Each stretched toward the other.
The steel cuff gripped my slender ankle,
As the steel bars dug deeply into her flesh.
She took hold of the bars again,
And gave a mighty push,
This time not seeming to advance.
“Relax,” she said.
I relaxed into a keeling position,
And quietly, contemplatively watched,
As she worked her tremulous belly around one bar,
And eased her deeply curving rump around the other.
She reached out once again to my waiting hand,
And our fingers touched!
I smiled at her,
“Keep going, pretty lady, you can do it.”
She smiled back, winking her eye,
“You know, I think you may be right,”
And set to work once again.
A few more powerful pushes,
And a few more powerful sighs from her full red lips,
And at last I was holding her supple right hand.
I released it after a moment,
And she advanced again.
Then she stopped, looked down at her billowing torso,
indented steeply inward by the impinging bar,
And examined her belly button,
Which, visible beneath her dress,
Was now on my side of the barrier.
She looked back at me with smiling eyes,
And playfully chortled,
“Well, I guess it’s all downhill from here!”
And her gradual flow continued,
Still maneuvering and thrusting her left leg,
Still gripping the steel bar with her hands,
As the trailing half of her body
Slid ever more easily past the bars.
Her left breast slowed the advance momentarily,
But in time progressively inched its way through.
Finally, she had done it!
This gorgeous woman was in my cell,
Four defeated steel bars behind her,
And I knew my lonely sentence was at an end.

With slow, deliberate steps,
She came to me,
Took me up from the floor,
And with unstoppable force,
Stomped her foot down on the chain holding me,
Breaking one link near my ankle.
Then we embraced in triumph.
And she tossed away her belt,
And slowly, seductively,
Wiggled out of her dress,
And continued on, until,
Naked and unfettered,
She took my hands in hers,
and placed them upon her great gelatinous belly.
Then she slowly undressed me,
Shaking like a leaf, Ablaze with emotions,
As my hands traveled over her
Like skiers over a mountain.
Soon I was bared as well,
And slowly, steadily,
I began to sink my whole body into hers.

Then, I heard harsh footsteps outside.
A man’s voice barked out,
“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”
And out of the icy mist,
Came this hostile looking dude,
tall, blond, muscular,
artificially tanned, with the coldest of eyes.
He unslung his weapon:
A harpoon gun.
“Yeah right, real fitting,” I thought.
But the eerie pressure began to arise again,
As my oh-so-well-rounded rescuer and I
Continued to embrace each other.
The gunman leveled his barbed weapon against us,
And sneered: “Fat lover, there is no escape;
Renounce the blimp or die!”
Holding the increasing pressure back,
I slowly turned, and looked into my enemy’s cold eyes.
And I slowly answered,
“Like, sorry dude,
but you’re the one who’s dying tonight!”
And I turned all the pressure toward him,
And let go.
And instead of exploding into a thousand pieces,
I became a fiery cannonball,
Speeding unerringly to my target.
I plowed into the gunman’s heart,
Shot out of his back,
And landed face-down in my bed.

And in the lonely darkness I could hear my rescuer’s voice:
“Go into the world, and follow your heart.
Defend the honor of those misunderstood.
Keep well your love of fat women,
For it is the key to your happiness.
And when you love a fat woman, remember me.
Relax your mind,
let your hands run free.
Through your gentle care, she will become strong,
And she will learn the secret of

THE BENDING OF THE BARS.”