A couple of weeks ago, I was waiting for the bus and across the street I saw what was clearly a feedist couple. It was a little jarring as I don’t think I’d ever seen one so overt in broad daylight before, not without seeking one out at an event or for a date or meetup.
The road on which we waited for our transport is five or six lanes wide; it’s a main thoroughfare of the city and yet I could tell almost immediately what brought them together, despite being several yards away and having no other information about them.
They were stereotypes of the kink; a tall lanky man doting on a petite plump woman. It’s possible she may have been pregnant and it was not easy to tell from the distance but even if she had not been gravid she still would have been BBW and unmistakably so.
As much as I miss sex, I fantasize more about who I will hug first and if they would have the patience to let me cling for awhile.
What grabbed my attention though was the look on the woman’s face. Something about the man’s attention on her was frenetic and disconnected. He would touch her, kiss her, embrace her, then step away to make a call and then return again. She stood in one spot and didn’t appear to really focus on anything.
We caught gazes more than once. I looked away every time. It wasn’t their contrast that got my attention—something that drives me wild in the most primal sense—nor was it her fatness, either. It was the look on her face, the firmness of her posture, the resolution she committed to not making a single move while they awaited their bus.
Mass transit in Los Angeles is notoriously awful. Quarter-hour headways in rush hour on a main road is considered frequent service. I had plenty of time to observe these two. My phone was dead, I had forgotten my Kindle, and there was nothing else to do but watch them. Even if I wanted to look away, I simply couldn’t bring myself to.
This is a bad habit I have formed in the pandemic. Being single and without any touch for a year leaves me so desperate for human contact that the best satisfaction I get is watching others interact. I don’t mean sexual gratification; just the safety and security of skin-to-skin contact. Holding hands. Cuddles. Closeness without fear of spreading disease. As much as I miss sex, I fantasize more about who I will hug first and if they would have the patience to let me cling for awhile. Will they be soft and pillowy like me? Or will they be sinewy and firm, where I can feel their muscles flex against me? Will it be a romantic partner or a friend; do they know how to bear hug and truly embrace someone? Will they squeeze and grope or just drape loose arms over my shoulders?
Consensual objectification is fun and exciting in the bedroom, in play, in feeding sessions where those fantasies can be realized and brought to life. But it’s a whole different thing when it takes over waking life, when strangers on the street can see the fraying strings that tie people together.
It’s hard not to envy those right now who have partners and families residing with them. In a world where we are all alone together, so distant from our own neighbors and friends around the corner, I feel I’ve forgotten what it means to be with someone. To just enjoy quiet company together and relish someone else sharing space. Conversely, those in families and cohabiting partnerships may be itching for some space. There’s no right or wrong or win or lose; we are all in a world right now where there is too much of one thing and never enough of another.
I did not envy this couple; I pitied them. Their interactions clearly demonstrated at least on the surface what brought them together. I felt a pang of sadness for both of them. I thought about their story. What brought them together? Did they meet on one of the several feedist community and dating networks we are so familiar with? Maybe it was a passion neither of them were aware of until they were in the middle of it; something that almost always ends up in a broken heart for both parties.
Sometimes you see a couple and they are the walking definition of a power couple. They don’t even have to really hold any social or financial status, it’s just in the way they exist and carry themselves. With proud shoulders and in our cases, full stomachs jutting outward, buffering anything that dares threaten their security and senses of self, they make no apologies for the way they take up space in the world. They are powerful simply because they exist and know their own force of will to live the way they choose is its own magic. They’re secure and satisfied.
This couple across the street, waiting for the bus, was not that. What made me uncomfortable and unable to look them in the eye wasn’t the shame or badness of seeing fatness in public, the way so many fat people are silenced into hiding and self-hate. But it was that the man with his nervous and unfocused energy, at least in this moment, clearly only saw his partner for what she was: big and fat. I’m not sure if he even saw her as beautiful. The look on her face was the same one I would give myself in so many selfies in the early aughts: it was pain and sadness and self-despise. In that moment it was clear she did not feel seen or beautiful and my shameful glances away and inability to hold eye contact likely did not help.
I think about scenarios like this a lot, about the trust it takes for a gaining feedee to place into their FA or feeder, to be willing to subject themselves to that. Consensual objectification is fun and exciting in the bedroom, in play, in feeding sessions where those fantasies can be realized and brought to life. But it’s a whole different thing when it takes over waking life, when strangers on the street can see the fraying strings that tie people together.
I don’t know their whole story. It was just a few minutes on the street and we never exchanged words. I just observed and noticed body language and sat with the impressions it gave me. I could be dead wrong, even! Maybe they were having a bad day or got some rough news. Who knows? But something about their energy oozed off them like an infected wound that day. Something wasn’t right and it was impossible not to notice.