Francis Levy - Erotomania - A Romance

Isn't it odd how help often comes from the most unexpected places? Who would believe a Swanson's Boneless White Meat Fried Chicken Hungry-Man would be the agent of Monica's salvation. But it was a TV dinner that finally cured her of her malaise. We had stopped off to load up on paper towels and toilet paper at Sam's Club when we passed the frozen food section.

"Swanson's TV dinners, I haven't seen one since 1 was a kid. 1 didn't think they still made them," Monica cried out with childish glee. Her sexual addiction had started at such a young age that she had bypassed many of the experiences other adolescents have. According to SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous), emotionally, Monica would be the age she was when she had first started acting out, which in her case was twelve. She had bypassed the junk food stage that most teenagers go through when, by the time she was fourteen, she graduated from hand jobs and heavy petting to affairs with married men who wined her and dined her with fine French cuisine.

She wheeled our cart past the frozen food section, but I ran back and grabbed three Fried Chicken Hungry-Mans and a Roast Turkey. TV dinners are okay as far as I'm concerned, though they don't compare to ordering in Chinese, but we had to start somewhere. A sacrifice was needed if she and I were going to get back on our feet again.

The Hungry-Men led us into a whole new area of microwave cookery. There were frozen pizzas, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinners, frozen fish sticks, turkey pot pies, frozen French fries. Monica became so fat that it would have been difficult to have sex even if we wanted to. I would have needed a pretty big dick to get past her huge hanging stomach and, to be honest, my six inches makes me normal, but not what one would call exceptionally well hung. As our relationship matured, sleeping together took on the literal meaning of the words. I began to enjoy the depression in the bed caused by all her blubber. I'd fall into the trough her body created and warm myself. It was different from putting my dick in her hot hole, yet it was a hole all the same and I came to look forward to it almost as much as I did in the days when hole meant something else.

One time in the middle of the night, I had a shock. It was like having a nightmare, only I was awake. I turned to look at her, and due to the darkness and the fat, I barely recognized her face. 1 was so upset, I actually woke her up. Monica's increased heft required more sleep, and she got very irritated when she was disturbed at night. What a far cry from the days when all I had to do was nudge her with my hard rod and a wet orifice would be waiting for me! But I lied and told her I was having chest pains, then added, "it's probably just gas," so as not to cause too much alarm. I simply had to hear her talk in order to reassure myself that her soul hadn't departed from her body. If it had been daylight, the incident would never have happened. But as Fitzgerald once said, "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning." This time it was only 2:45, but that was bad enough.

The days of our fond embraces were over. But a couple learns to find other pleasures. That was General Shapiro's message from the first days of our counseling. And now that Monica was getting interested in microwave cooking, 1 felt we were hitting our stride. We would sit on the sofa with our tray tables, watching television and eating what in Monica's case turned out to be four or five TV dinners. The Boneless White Meat Fried Chicken Hungry-Man was a favorite we both agreed on, but Monica would go on to a turkey pot pie, a pot roast, a Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, and sometimes even the Weight Watchers Fish Sticks, which she gobbled down as the equivalent of an after-dinner digestif. My theater work has always come in fits and starts. However, I have my busy periods, which can be disruptive. We were just starting to get used to microwave cooking and TV dinners around the time of the latest episode of "The Apprentice," only to find our idyll broken. I was asked to work on a touring production of Annie, which was moving from the Boca Raton playhouse to Toledo's Center Stage Rep. Monica was going through a vulnerable period and I'd been afraid of leaving, but when I returned we quickly resumed where we had left off, celebrating our first night back together by sampling some of the Banquet line of TV dinners.

While Monica's heft had increased since 1 first went to bed with her, my stomach had simply become more round. After my first run-in with weight gain, I'd been shaken up. Now with obesity threatening again, I started a program of intensive exercising that became a compulsion in and of itself. Once I saw the benefits of exercise, I couldn't stop. If I was feeling depressed, an hour's worth of exercise would put me in a good mood. If I was planning to eat a bunch of fatty TV dinners, I could either work off the extra calories before I ate or right after. I stopped seeing the point of not exercising. If I was having a talk with Monica, watching TV, or even eating dinner, I'd climb on my stationary bike or grab some hand weights. After all, if I hadn't stayed in shape then I wouldn't have been able to help Monica do basic things like getting up from the sofa. It's always important to have at least one person in a household who isn't suffering from obesity; that way there is someone who can get up quickly and have his wits about him enough to dial 911 if his obese significant other has a stroke or heart attack.

More often than not, Monica was left having dinner alone on the sofa with her tray table while I pedaled on our True, a stationary bike that has a basket in front to hold nuts, fruits, protein bars, and a bottle of water. Trues are enormously stable, but it's still hard to balance a hot meal on the basket top, especially due to the grooves created to hold water bottles. When I wasn't frantically bicycling, I was doing pull-ups or lying on my new bench with its forty-five-pound bar and complementary set of plates. I also kept hand weights, grips, jump ropes, and a Pilates ball nearby. Even though we were only separated by a few feet, we felt miles apart because my interest in getting in shape was causing me to limit my intake of foods, while Monica's modus operandi was to intake as much as humanly possible. As I started to see a six-pack emerge from my formerly distended stomach, I wanted to deprive myself, while she increasingly needed more. My improving physical condition, in fact, seemed to egg Monica on. As she watched me pedaling furiously, the beads of sweat accumulating on my forehead, she'd intone, "I know you're going to leave me," while stuffing her mouth with one of the buttered rolls that hung in a plastic bag around her neck in case she needed a snack between meals. She looked a little like a Saint Bernard with that bag around her neck, but I never complained to her about it.

Despite the fact that we were traveling different roads from the dietary point of view-with me becoming svelte and handsome and her becoming increasingly fat and ugly-Monica and I were building trust. We broached the subject of marriage on several occasions. Usually it's the woman who wants the financial security that marriage provides, but in our case both of us had brought it up at one time or another only to dismiss the necessity of creating a legal bond. We knew that a marriage could be complex and often involved hiring more than one caterer. In our case, there wouldn't have been any question about whom to invite since we had no family or friends besides Bill, and we would hardly have expected Bill to fly in from Kansas. But it would have taken weeks to agree on a menu, and then there would have been the problem of prying Monica away from the buffet to perform a ceremony. Monica had become a responsible adult in many ways, but she could be intransigent when she was hungry. We decided we had enough on our plates as a couple. We didn't need to complicate matters any further by exchanging vows and inviting the government into our lives.