Golden Ticket 4: Chris (musc)
by kdumd
It was a hot day at the amusement park, and Chris was sweating. Not that it took all that much heat to make him sweat. At 5’7”, he carried 270 pounds of fat around with him each day. Chris was, by far, the fattest kid in his high school, short and round, almost like a water balloon filled with Jello. Just walking a few dozen yards was a challenge, but spending a day in the hot sun, walking the entire time and being too fat to fit on most of the rides? Chris was truly, profoundly miserable.
Of course he really only had himself to blame for his predicament. From a very young age, Chris had preferred activities that weren’t very active. When the neighborhood kids would invite him out to play, he’d just keep playing a video game, or reading a comic book, or generally doing something that required minimal expenditure of physical energy. And like all kids, he loved to eat. Chris ate a lot, and almost none of it would remotely be considered healthy. His parents had blood—or more likely ketchup—on their hands, too; they never tried to push Chris off the couch and into a gym, or onto a bike or anything. Chris didn’t even know how to ride a bike because he’d always been too big to sit comfortably on the seat. Having just turned 18 a few days earlier, this was one of many sources of embarrassment for Chris.
As if it wasn’t hard enough being a short, hugely obese kid in high school, Chris was a singer in the glee club. Beneath the folds of fat, he had an impressive voice, a baritone-almost-tenor that could blow the roof off the auditorium. Within the glee club he had many acquaintances, more than a few jealous rivals (all of whom, not coincidentally, had comparatively great bodies) and one or two actual friends. He’d never taken a drink of alcohol or inhaled any kind of smoke in his life, which did him no favors with the other loners in his age group. For a guy everyone could see coming a half-mile away, Chris was the living embodiment of the word “outcast”.
So on this hot late spring day, during the glee club’s annual outing to the park, Chris had slipped away—no small feat for someone who moved at a glacially slow pace—to the arcade, an air-conditioned refuge that allowed him to catch his breath and kill some time playing video games. He’d been playing Donkey Kong for close to an hour and standing up that long was starting to take its toll. His enormous belly and flabby breasts were pressed tightly against the front of the cabinet, his fat-filled forearms rested against the surface, and his chubby legs were beginning to buckle under his weight. He had long ago decided to keep his hair cut short to help reduce the amount of sweating he did on a minutely basis, but today, even that was doing no good, and he was starting to get drenched. Chris knew he would have to go take a seat somewhere soon.
As he killed Mario for the final time on his final quarter, Chris peeled himself—literally—away from the machine and felt each of his pockets to make sure his phone, wallet, keys and cash were there. The self-administered pat-downs had become routine since bullies had made it a habit of playing pickpocket with Chris. As he checked each item off his mental list, he noticed something under his size 12EE shoe: a yellow piece of paper. With great difficulty, Chris bent over until he could pick up the paper with his sweaty sausage fingers. As he did, he realized it was a ticket, just like the ones dispensed by machines throughout the arcade. Breathing hard from having exhausted himself, Chris said quietly, “Huh. Thought they were blue.”
He waddled over to the prize counter as kids half his age ran all around him at what seemed like lightning speed. When he finally got there, beads of perspiration now soaking his size XXXXL t-shirt, he got the attention of the teen working there and held up the ticket.
“Um, excuse…excuse me, um, is this, um, does it mean, um, something that this ticket is, um, you know, uhh, yellow?” As always, Chris found himself nearly paralyzed at the prospect of having to talk to someone he didn’t know. Add another embarrassment to the list, he always thought during these times.
This time, the kid behind the counter did nothing to ease the tension. All he did was smile. Chris was really sweating now, his social anxiety combining with his morbid obesity and the ambient temperature to completely overwhelm his glands. After a minute, when it became clear the teen wasn’t going to be any help, Chris sighed and began shuffling toward the door with his head hung low. “Another awesome job, Chris,” he said loud enough that only he could hear it, his somewhat high speaking voice cracking slightly.
When he reached the threshold of the door, Chris took a deep breath of the hot, humid air. Taking a step onto the gravel, he found himself compelled to take his shirt off. Stopping his march to the nearest bench, he felt a battle being waged inside his mind. Why would he ever want to take his shirt off in public? Hell, he hadn’t taken his shirt off anywhere other than his bedroom and bathroom in years.
The façade of the arcade was reflective sheet metal, and the young man turned to himself displayed on its shiny surface. He saw what everyone else saw: a dangerously overweight kid sweating his ass off in the late-evening sun. So why in the name of all that’s holy would he ever be compelled to remove his shirt in front of all these people?
“Because it’s fuckin’ hot, man,” Kriss said with a slow, deep almost-drawl of a voice. “Waaaaait…whaaaaat?” Where did this voice come from? His voice was supposed to be much higher, a tenor’s voice, the product of a body so fat its testosterone production had almost ground to a halt. But no, that wasn’t right. Kriss had always had a lower voice, and it was slow and slurred because he was stoned. Kriss was always stoned. No, he had never gotten stoned. The internal struggle was confusing the guy mightily. After a few seconds, he just laughed out loud. He was confused because he wasn’t very smart, and again, really fucking high.
Still staring at his reflection, Kriss lifted his t-shirt over his head and removed it. When it was off, he saw what everyone else saw: a tall, well-muscled dude with long dirty blonde dreadlocks, emphasis on “dirty”, and multiply pierced ears. Now he was confused again; didn’t he used to be fat? Like, really fucking fat? “Heh, naaah,” Kriss drawled, replacing a wayward lock of partially sun-bleached nappy hair behind his ear. Of course he wasn’t fat. Kriss had always been a skinny kid, but when he hit puberty, he found it really easy to pack on muscle. He began weight training at 12, focusing first on the vanity muscles—abs, pecs, biceps, calves—but eventually developing a more balanced routine. The pubescent hormones flooding his body helped the muscles grow very quickly, but Kriss found himself wanting more.
Enter marijuana.
One of Kriss’s buddies from the neighborhood—the two had been running around and playing together since kindergarten—told him smoking weed would help his training twofold. First, it would help dull the soreness after his punishing workouts. And second, it would increase his appetite, allowing him to eat more and give his muscles the calories and protein they needed to grow. To the then-15 year old Kriss, this made nothing but sense, and he began smoking. At first it was only post-gym, but then he’d got high with his buddies after school, then he’d get high with the buddies before bed at night…then he’d get high with his buddies during school, and before school, and on weekends, and so on. By now, at age 22, Kriss was smoking six to eight times a day. He was a true stoner, and the perpetually slow, slurred speech was one of the byproducts. Kriss loved it. He wore it like a badge of honor.
In the mirror, Kriss smiled vacantly at his reflected image. “Soooooo diesel, man,” he drawled to no one. But he was right. Kriss was jacked. Those greasy, thick dreadlocks rested atop a meaty pair of shoulders connected to a set of traps that made it nearly impossible to wear collared shirts. But then again, Kriss noted, he never wore collared shirts. He’d recently showed up to a wedding in a t-shirt and boardies. For a second, the confusion set in again; he couldn’t remember going to a wedding, didn’t own a pair of board shorts because they didn’t make very many big enough for his chubby body, and he was still pretty sure he was supposed to be fat and not a chronic pot smoker.
Then came another chuckle. Kriss’s mind cleared, the fog—or more likely smoke—lifting. This was right. His chest, certainly, was right. The muscles were big and hefty, with large nipples pierced with matching neon rings. Kriss smiled as he bounced them up and down. What he lacked in definition he made up for in sheer mass. He used to be much more shredded than he was now, but as his marijuana habit increased, so did his food consumption. He still lifted as hard as ever, but Kriss was now way more likely to take a few bong rips on the couch with a dozen (or five) hot wings than hit the treadmill.
As a result, where his abs had once been—and they were fucking sick abs, he thought—Kriss now had a stomach that showed the slightest bit of paunch beginning to form. He wasn’t fat, far from it—no wait, yes he WAS fat, he was really fat. “Shit, dude, no I WASN’T!” Only after the fact did Kriss realize he had just yelled at himself, and that caused him to laugh uncontrollably. As he doubled over, his 20-inch biceps—shrouded in a bonus quarter-inch of fat—compressed against the steaks on his chest, which where quivering with each shudder of laughter.
When the fit of hilarity ended, Kriss did what he always did when he found himself embarrassed in public: he flexed his muscles, first into a double-bi pose and then to a bizarre, random sequence of self-invented poses. Now that voice in his mind was back again, telling him he would never do that kind of thing in front of total strangers, that he was way too shy and painfully awkward for that.
“Yo brother, can I bum a light off you, man?” So much for shy and awkward. Kriss had shouted his request at a guy smoking a huge, black cigar as he walked toward the parking lot. The guy looked a lot like a cop who had pulled Kriss over once for getting stoned behind the wheel. The guy didn’t hear him and continued waddling away. Undeterred, Kriss shook down several more park patrons until one of them obliged. He scampered up to the couple, hugely muscled thighs rolling around one another as he did, and pulled a cigarette out from behind his right ear, replacing the dreads afterwards out of instinct. Kriss didn’t smoke tobacco very often, but he’d been kicked out of this park too many times for trying to light a blunt next to the ferris wheel, and he was really tired of it. And he had to smoke SOMETHING to tide him over, so the cigarette—bummed earlier off a chunky-looking hipster wannabe—would have to do.
As he lit the tip and handed the lighter back to the woman who’d loaned it, he put his hands together, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and bowed. “Namaste,” he said in an absolute deadpan voice. Kriss began walking back to the arcade wall, taking a few more drags. When he saw his reflection again, he began to panic. He couldn’t help but feeling this was all wrong. That these muscles, the chunky dreadlocks, the smoke billowing from his lips, the baggy shorts hanging low on his tree-trunk legs, the patterned boxers exposed underneath, the well-worn skate shoes, the obsession with weed and the doofy, dumb persona—all of this was wrong. The tall, jacked man reflected in the wall was not supposed to be him. He was supposed to be…what WAS he supposed to be…
“Fuckin’ shit, man, I think all this weed is making me paranoid!” Kriss began to laugh again, puffing on the cigarette all the while. He could be so stupid, sometimes. “Well shit, smokin’ a fuckton of green all fuckin’ day will do that,” Kriss mouthed as he sucked the life out of the cigarette and threw it in the nearby receptacle. Speaking of green, he thought, it’s time to get high again.
So Kriss, all 6’4” and 280 pounds of baked muscle and nappy hair, began walking back toward his car. Well, more sauntering, really. Kriss liked to draw attention to himself however possible, and he figured a jacked, shirtless dude taking a jaunty walk down the path would do the trick. For a moment, he thought about singing a song while he strode, but that wasn’t gonna happen. Kriss wasn’t a singer. His voice was pretty well shot from all the smoke he’d inhaled. Oh well.
No, Kriss was just a stoner and a meathead all at the same time. He remembered he would have to go to work tomorrow—a part time job at the 7-11 near his place. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t need much. His parents had left him a nice trust fund to play with once he turned 21. It had already paid for plenty of weed and protein shakes, and it would pay for plenty more. Kriss kept the 7-11 gig because it was fun for him. He didn’t have to think too much, and he got to talk to people. Sometimes they were hot. Men, women, it didn’t matter. Kriss would fuck anything that walked. More than once, he’d struck up a late-night conversation with a customer, convinced him or her to come over for a joint, and ended up sending them out the door for the walk of shame the next morning. Kriss was a slut, and he loved that part of himself, too.
For now, though, he couldn’t think of fucking anyone or working at the 7-11. All he could think about was getting to his Volkswagen GTI so he could drive home and smoke a whole bunch of weed. This was Kriss’s life: smoke weed, fuck around, lift heavy things, repeat. He was young, dumb and full of cum—and THC, if anyone ever bothered to test him. Kriss was king of the stoners, and he loved every second of it.