Fat Chance (18 page)

And so, Gregory Milton’s evening comes to an end with having a stern finger pointed at him, and the kind of verbal abuse no man with a caffeine addiction should have to suffer.

That’s a complete lie. My evening does
not
come to an end at that point at all, given how much coffee I’ve drunk throughout
the d
ay.

My evening
actually
comes to an end at about three in the morning, a good four hours after Zoe has gone to bed.

I spend most of that time shaking in the corner of the living room, flicking the TV repeatedly between a ‘Location, Location, Location’ marathon, and four episodes of ‘Australian MasterChef,’ both at a very low volume.

By the time I feel tired enough to go up to bed, I could easily have told you how long you need to cook a three-bed semi in the Lake District to get the right consistency, and exactly how large a mortgage you should be paying on a chocolate and maraschino cake with excellent views of Windermere.

. . . or something like that anyway. By this time my brain is crashing from the caffeine high and I may have become a little
confused
.

I climb out of bed the next day at about ten fifteen. My eyes are glued shut for a good twenty minutes after that.

I stumble into the kitchen and immediately start looking for the Kenco Finest.

‘Oh no you bloody don’t, pal!’ Zoe snaps at me. ‘You’re not drinking another cup of that stuff unless it’s decaf.’

‘But the diet . . .’

‘Fuck the diet! Have some orange juice and we’ll buy a jar of caffeine-free coffee later.’

Which, when you think about it, is something I should
probably
have done at least three days ago.

The change to decaf is painful. Very,
very
painful.

Withdrawing from the chemical I’ve become so quickly
dependent
on is a trial I never intend to repeat. Within forty-eight hours I am lethargic, confused, irritable, and suffering from the worst
constipation
of my life.

It’s now been five days since I last had any caffeine, and I only took my first decent crap this morning. It was like a war zone dow
n th
ere.

I’m still bloody tetchy, and have been snappy with everyone I’ve come into contact with.

Still, better I walk around like a bear with a sore head, and not the Tasmanian Devil. I may have been pretty rude to people over the past few days during my withdrawal, but at least I haven’t told them my entire life story in five minutes while showering them with spittle.

I have to confess that I just couldn’t take on the Israeli Army Diet after my experience with the Russian Air Force equivalent. It called for even more coffee consumption, and even less food.

I just didn’t think my brain or my bowels could take it.

There’s a very good reason why diets like these don’t become more popular in the mainstream. It is because they are incredibly
stupid
. Stupid and highly detrimental to your well-being.

A reliance on coffee and very little else may be good for members of the Russian and Israeli armed forces, but for a fat
middle-aged
bloke in England they are a distinct no-no.

I am absolutely
done
with these diets.

I may eat my words and live to regret this decision if we’re ever invaded by hordes of screaming Chechnyans and grenade-flinging Arabs, but it’s a chance I am most definitely willing to take.

ZOE’S WEIGHT LOSS DIARY

Tuesday, June 10th

12 stone, 5 pounds (2 stone, 2 pounds lost)

I
can’t believe we’ve been at this for three months now. Time seems
to be slipping away as fast as the inches around my waist. Despite
the horrors of the cabbage soup diet, and some of the other
methods
of weight loss I’m employing (which I can’t bring myself to write about here yet; it’s too disturbing to my fragile mental state. Check back with me when I’m not so calorie starved) I’m managing to just about maintain my sanity.

I think I’ve reached the stage where both my body and mind are getting used to the massive change in lifestyle . . . but it’s touch and go sometimes. Yesterday, for instance, I spent a good twenty minutes fantasising about going for a swim in a lake of double cream. At the centre of the lake was an island made of Jamaican ginger cake. The swimming wasn’t easy—double cream is quite thick, after all—but I managed to make the going a bit easier by opening my mouth and eating as much of it as possible.

When a telephone call snapped me out of the fantasy, I was miserable for the rest of the afternoon. I would quite happily have lived the rest of my life out on that brown squidgy island.

To make myself feel better, I picked up some holiday brochures for Jamaica on the way home from work. It looks like a nice place, but the sea is far too blue, not at all double cream like, and the island itself doesn’t look edible in the slightest.

. . . As I say, it’s touch and go sometimes.

I tell you one thing all this dieting is definitely doing, though.

It’s making me horny.

Nymphomaniac
levels of horny.

I’ve now lost two stone, Greg’s dropped over two and half, and by golly, that collective weight loss is enough to set a woman’s thoughts to all kinds of dirt.

I never realised that going on a strict diet could be such a
kick-star
t to your libido.

Before the competition started, my sex drive was well and truly in the doldrums, and to be honest, our unhealthy lifestyles have put the dampers on our bedroom activities for the past few
years
.

When Greg and I first met at college we were, and I’ll put this as delicately as my near-constant state of sexual arousal will let me,
fucking all the time
and absolutely
everywhere
.

I was nine stone and fit as a fiddle. Greg was thirteen stone—most of which was muscle thanks to all the rugby he played.

Frankly, we were both beautiful and we knew it.

We met when we were both eighteen years old, and high on being young and stupid. The head of the college rugby team wanted me to model a ladies’ version of the new kit he’d just wasted most of the sport department’s budget on, and I was more than happy to oblige given that the hundred pounds he’d promised me would set me up nicely for clubbing at the weekend. The photo shoot was arranged with me alongside one of the rugby team modelling the men’s version of the kit. The guy chosen to do this was Gregory Milton.

Gorgeous, gorgeous Gregory Milton.

I still remember to this day the sharp bolt of electricity that passed through my whole body when I saw him for the first time.

I was sitting on a bench in the sports hall, pulling up the long white socks that came as part of the kit, when I looked up and saw him walk in through the double doors across the hall from me. Thankfully he wasn’t high on painkillers that day, so didn’t come stumbling in like a drunkard. No, back then Greg Milton strode everywhere with a confidence and poise that was enough to make this girl’s heart thump very hard indeed.

He was carrying a rugby ball, casually tossing it in the air and catching it again without even looking. By the time he’d made it across to where the camera was being set up for the shoot, I was having trouble taking my eyes off him.

It later transpired that he felt the same way. ‘The way you were playing with those long socks,’ he would tell me weeks later, ‘and the tight blue shorts? It was a miracle I didn’t trip over my ow
n p
enis.’

The photo shoot was conducted by Lionel, one of the photography department lecturers. Lionel was the kind of man who really shouldn’t be let near a telephoto lens—especially when around other human beings. He had a reputation for being a right pervert.

Legend had it that his house was full of black and white
photographic
‘art’ featuring young women in a variety of
compromising
positions. Legend also had it that he was on the
registered
sex offenders list, but that kind of rumour springs up very easily and is always almost impossible to verify.

The way Lionel had me seductively posed on and around Gr
eg du
ring the photo shoot gave me the distinct impression that there was something funny going on with him, though, I can tell you that.

‘Now, Zoe, why don’t you wrap your hands around Greg’s bicep and press yourself up against him?’ Lionel suggested.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, yes, I think that would look lovely.’ He didn’t quite wipe the dribble from his lips, but he was close, I could tell.

Now, had Greg not been six foot of walking sex I wouldn’t have gone along with Lionel’s request. As it was, I gave my future
husband
a speculative look and moved a bit closer to him. ‘You okay with this?’ I asked him.

Greg swallowed hard. ‘Er, I think so. If Lionel reckons it’ll lo
ok ok
ay.’

‘I’m sure it will.’

I couldn’t actually give a toss what it looked like, of course. I just wanted a grope.

I snaked my arms around Greg’s hard bicep, pressed myself up against him, turned to the camera, and smiled.

Greg smelled absolutely
amazing
and it took all my self-control not to fall on the floor in a gooey mess. A sight like that wouldn’t have made a particularly good photo.

‘Now, I think you should stand in front of Greg and hold his ball,’ Lionel instructed me.

I assumed Lionel was referring to the rugby ball Greg had brought along, though at this point I think I would have happily stuck my hand down his shorts and had a good old rummage.

‘Put your arms around her, please,’ Lionel said to Greg as I got into position.

I felt his strong arms gently rest across my shoulders and the breath was sucked right out of my body. I nearly dropped the bloody rugby ball.

By the time Lionel finally wrapped up the photo shoot I was so aroused it was a miracle I didn’t rape poor old Gregory Milton right there and then on the sports hall floor.

‘Thanks for doing this,’ he said to me as we walked back towards the changing rooms. ‘Selling these kits at the games was my idea and this will really help flog a few, with any luck.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘You certainly look a lot better in it than I do,’ he said awkwardly
as we reached the two separate doors leading to each
changing
room.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I replied. ‘You look pretty good in it, I reckon.’

The hormones were so thick between us by now you could almost see them floating in mid-air.

Greg licked his lips. I knew what was coming.

‘Are you doing anything now?’ he asked, ‘I mean, would you like to maybe get a coffee with me in the canteen?’

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly an invitation to join him at the Ritz, but I was eighteen and a coffee in the canteen sounded
wonderful
.

‘Sure. That’d be nice. Meet you on the other side?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Great. That’d be great.
Great
.’

With that settled, Greg was off through the changing room door quick as a flash.

‘Greg!’ I called after him.

‘Yeah?

‘Don’t you want your ball back?’ I held it out, smiled, and cocked my head to one side in the most outrageously flirtatious way I possibly could with my clothes still on.

It had the desired effect.

Greg took the ball back. Dropped it. Picked it up again. Gave me a sheepish smile and disappeared from sight.

I, on the other hand, walked calmly and slowly into the girls’ changing room, feeling very smug indeed.

Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush here or lie to you: Greg and I wound up having sex for the first time about four hours later.

I am completely unapologetic about it as well.

My sexual experience up to that time had been with one guy called Chris, whom I’d dated the year before for a couple of months. As first-time sexual partners go, Chris was a fine introduction into t
he wo
rld of carnality, but he never really managed to knock my socks off. The only times I’d achieved an orgasm before the first time with
Greg wer
e on my own, and generally resulted in cramped fingers.

Greg had been with a couple of girls prior to me, but both had been one-night stands, so we were really on a par experience-wise when it came to that sort of thing.

The coffee in the canteen turned into a couple of alcoholic
beverages
in the local pub, which in turn led to a rather unsteady walk in the park, a good hard snogging session on a bench, and the aforementioned sex back at his parents’ house.

It was just as well they were out at the cinema, as the sounds I made during the huge, rushing orgasm I felt as Greg came inside me would have disturbed them to an enormous degree, had they been downstairs watching ‘Corrie.’

I felt a small pang of shame as I lay next to Greg on his single bed, as I tried to recover my wits. There’s a name for girls who sleep with guys on a first date. It rhymes with hut, nut, and rut.

That small pang would stay with me for another couple of weeks until I realised I had fallen in love with Greg at first sight. When that happens to you, all bets are well and truly off.

Over the next few months, we embarked on a marathon of sex that only two teenagers in love can possibly maintain without serious injury. In fact, as I sit here looking back on it now, I can safely say that our sex life was always incredibly healthy, varied, and very regular throughout the first few years of our relationship.

. . . right until we got married and both fell into full-time jobs. But even then, we always made sure that we had sex at least once or twice a week, unless I was on my period, or either one of us was working lates.

In fact, our sex life was very healthy until about seven years ago, when we both hit our thirties and started to put on weight.

A funny thing happens to your metabolism when you reach thirty. It decides that it’s had quite enough of burning off all that energy at a fast rate of knots, and figures it’s time to take things easier from now on. Where once you could stuff away over two thousand calories a day and care not a jot, now the ounces and pounds start to slowly pile on.

You don’t notice this happening, of course. If you did, you’d probably take steps to avoid it. But when you work thirty-eight hours a week and have things like mortgages and car insurance to worry about, it’s amazing how fast you forget about your health and physical well-being.

So there comes an inevitable day when you go to put on a pair of jeans that you haven’t worn since last summer . . . and discover that the bastard things won’t button up anymore. Then you rush into the bathroom, brush the dust from the electronic scales that have sitting behind the laundry bin for two years, and stand on them with your heart thudding in your chest.

That day was the first time I’d ever looked down at the scales and seen a weight reading of over ten stone.

Needless to say I went on a diet right there and then. And for a while it worked. I went back under ten stone and called it a victory.

But then more years went by. Thirty turns very quickly into thirty-three, then thirty-four.

And the metabolism keeps slowing.

And the mortgage payments keep coming out of the bank.

Life becomes all about staying financially afloat and the constant drudge of commuting to the office.

Sex unfortunately becomes a rare monthly treat, rather than a daily recreational activity.

It becomes less and less of a treat the more you start to notice your love handles getting in the way. Marry that with the sound of your newly acquired body fat slapping together and your libido doesn’t really stand a chance.

Where once you whispered filth into each other’s ears and dressed up for some sexy role play, you now just go through the motions with one another before falling asleep—and are frankly surprised anytime you actually manage to achieve an orgasm.

If a couple has been together for a long time and their sex life has gone off the boil, they will often try to inject a little excitement back into their relationship, either by trying something a bit risqué or by attempting to recapture the magic of their early lives together.