Why Can't I Be A More Successful Chaser/Encourager? Where are the fat guys who want ME?

Hope you don't mind a question or two. So I've been out to myself as a chaser/encourager now for over a decade and in all that time I've only had the luck of being intimate with about five happily fat guys, and only three would be bonafide gainers by their own self-definition. All five said they liked trim guys like me, but only ONE seemed to be as turned-on by my body as I was his. So my first question is:

1. You've conversed with enough of us fat-fetish folk that maybe you have an anecdotal sense of just how many guys are TRULY turned-on by their physical opposite? I understand the whole desire of a fat guy being with a fat guy, but this is getting tiresome... I like having my navel sucked on and my abs rubbed just as much as the fat boy likes his jelly being worshiped.  2. Again, from your chats do you have any sense just how many gainers really not just foreplay activities with measuring, weighing, talking about their gains, eating, but in fact are less interested in the 'traditional' activities that lead to the big "O."  Maybe that's what I'm missing - I want the fat foreplay to lead 

to climax, not the fetish replacing "real" sex. What am I missing here?

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Wow—it’s so seldom someone actually asks me for a response based on my personal experience and anecdotal evidence. Stepping away from the research aspect (and as a heads up, a friend of mine and I are in the process of putting together a gainer-related survey that we hope will answer a lot of our own questions with solid data, as opposed to anecdotal stuff) from a personal level, let me relate three of my experiences:

1)      The guy towhomIlostmymalevirginity was someone with whom I maintained regular contact, and would see him whenever I was in his city (in another state). When we first met he was a bit stocky. He then hired a personal trainer with the anticipation of going on a vacation with some friends, and he wanted a 6 pack ab body.  And he got it. Amazing transformation, the sort you see on some sort of late night infomercial (yawn). He took photos during his vacation, and after I was in town about 3 months after he had returned from his vacation, he had buried those abs in flab. He would also stay with me if he were in my home city, and the next time he came up, he was “just my type,” as the abs were further buried, and he was the largest I had ever seen him. When we were in bed, I was rubbing his wonderful roll of fat underneath his navel, and he said, “Don’t touch me there, it makes me feel fat.”

2)      I was with someone who would (unexpected for me at that time) later end up as a long-term partner, and he had gained weight.  I will admit his weight gain was most likely due to the fact he had been spending a lot of time with me.  We were spooning on the sofa watching TV, and he got a phone call.  While he was on the phone and we were still spooning, I caressed his new growing belly.  He turned to me and said, “Stop playing with my fat.”

3)      I met up with someone on the East Coast with whom I had had corresponded through e-mail for some time, who belonged to one of the gainer sites. He met me at my hotel and I ordered room service.  At his request I had brought along a number of items of clothing that would be tight on him. As we had discussed, I took many photos of him in various outfits.  He was very excited the bathing suit I had brought was a large, since he had never worn a large before, and he was pleased it fit him so well. In fact, he was so pleased it was as if I had as much physical presence in the room as my camera. He was so turned on by himself, I thought of a quote from George Bernard Shaw when he was asked, “Mr. Shaw, are you enjoying yourself?” To which he replied, “Yes, and that’s all I’m enjoying.”

My point? I think these three experiences point out something of your own. There are guys who gain weight who are not gainers. There are guys who gain weight who resent the fact they have gained weight and get irritated at anything that reminds them of the truth.

Just so, as I’ve shared before, as an American Indian I have waist length braids, and as a result, I attract the attention of a number of gay men with a long hair fetish.  I have no erotic association with my hair—it’s just part of my spiritual heritage. But it does mean I have a firsthand experience being involved with a kink that has no relevance to me personally, but it has taught me what it’s like to be completely objectified.  And sadly, this is an experience I share with well bellied men who have no fetish/kink arousal around their size.  I’m going to take a wild guess that some of them don’t have a fetish/kink interest in a trim guy like you. That doesn’t mean a connection is impossible—it just means it’s likely not to be very intense and unlikely to be repeated. This is a variation of something I hear a lot “in the community” of gainers/encouragers/fat admirers who try to date “civilians” (i.e., those who are not connected in any way with the gaining community, except some of them are big guys themselves). What’s missing? What Emeril the Chef used as his catch phrase, “Bam!” There’s no extra kick—no juice between the two people involved (or it’s completely one sided, supplied by you, or supplied by a fat guy who doesn’t identify as a gainer for whom being intimate with you is simply being with a jerk off buddy.

So—I suspect there are:

A)     Real Gainers, for whom gaining engages them on a primal and erotic level.  This might involve stuffing, inflation, actual weight gain, etc.  For some of them, they will have an interest in detailed documentation, keeping records of weight, the use of tape measures, and regular photos or videos of them as they grow.  But here’s an important issue—there are probably (based solely on anecdotal information) just as many guys like this who don’t own a scale and have never bought a tape measure in their life. They update their photos or videos rarely and in no consistent basis. They’re really into “living the experience” rather than keeping track of it. What would involve “gainer foreplay” for you isn’t part of their reality.

B)     Fat guys who have always been fat. They accept their size, but it has no real special meaning for them, since they have no other point of reference. They don’t have an erotic connection to gaining or being fat, and will have no comprehension of why someone like you would be turned on by them simply because they’re blubbered. Oh, intellectually, they’ve been around enough to understand there’s something out there called a “gaining community,” but these guys probably don’t belong to any gaining websites, and if they do, it’s more likely a “hook up site” like Bigger City than a more social site like Grommr, Beefyfrat, or Bellybuilders. Why should they join a social site when they don’t identify as part of the “community?” They are also likely to be bored out of their minds when you ask them about stats. Years ago I had a client from Eritrea, and she had a cross tattooed to her forehead. I had a Muslim interpreter and when I asked what sort of Christian she was (I’m sharp-I notice things like a cross tattooed to a forehead), the interpreter looked very confused and she replied, “She’s Christian!” I calmly said I understood this, but wanted to know what denomination of Christianity. That’s when I understood my interpreter was fluent in English, but didn’t make any distinctions around the idea there were different types of Christians. My client, by the way, was Coptic Christian. This is what it’s like for many fat guys who are not gainers—they get confused at all the sort of documentation and elements of gainer “foreplay” you desire. You want to know things like their waist size and for them it all just comes out as “blah blah fat blah fat blah blah.”

C)     There are thin/lean/fit guys who have become fat. This is sort of a natural progression of a lot of twinks. Partying, drugs, and all night dance sessions, not to mention being barely legal enough to get into a bar tends to keep the waistline in check. Becoming responsible enough not to regularly use drugs, and keeping a steady job means they’ll often start to fill out, which frequently synchs up with their age. The older they get, the fatter they get. By this time, they’ve learned they can’t party all the time and use certain type of drugs and still hold down a job.  But they also discover how relaxing it is to get home from a stressful job and light up a bowl of 420, which leads to munches and a larger pants size. These are often the ones (for me, Number 1 and Number 2 I mentioned above) who remember what it was like to have size 30 jeans feel loose, and are now shocked to discover size 38 jeans aren’t going to button. They probably cruelly mocked fat guys when they were still fitting into their own size 30 jeans. Karma’s a bitch. This type of guy often becomes the self-hating fat guys that are the bane of an encourager/chaser/fat admirer’s existence. A guy who has always been fat accepts the fact some guys are turned on by his size, but it’s not reciprocal. It just means it’s easier for some fat guys to get laid by a chaser, but it’s with that self-awareness of “I’m being objectified,” that can leave a bad taste in the mouth of the fat guy. I want to emphasize some chasers/encouragers/admirers may indeed want “the whole package,” but the perception of a lot of fat guys is “you’re just in it for my gut.” The twink who ends up as a chub (like Number 1 and Number 2 from my history) gets pissed off at the idea of a chaser/encourager/admirer, because it forces them to accept the fact they’re fat enough to attract someone with this sort of kink. They’ll also devalue someone like you, because they take the attitude you have to be crazy to find fat erotic. Again, this doesn’t encourage a relationship.

I also want to come back to a subset of the “real gainers” where my “Number 3” fits in. These are guys who are so turned on by their own experience someone like you (or me) is simply a distraction. You might want to do “gainer foreplay,” but they just want you to get out of the way of the cake slices or to stop blocking the mirror so they can get a better glimpse of their bloat. Some of these guys are not looking for a relationship at all. Some of them have “compartmentalized” their lives with a “civilian,” so they get all of their emotional and social needs met with their regular partner and every now and then hook up with someone like you to get a different part of their needs met. But for some of them who compartmentalize in this way, you’re pretty much replaceable, because they aren’t looking for a partner within the gainer community.

Connected to this category are a number of individuals who might be best identified as “asexual,” where they aren’t looking for a sexual relationship with a male or a female, and may be much less interested in your size than being focused on their own. This subset may want to date-but they don’t want sex.  They might enjoy a cuddle, but don’t want to take anything further.

So—let’s do the math. Let’s say 10% of the general population is “kinda gay.” At the Kinsey Institute, we let the 10% thing slide because it’s become political, but if you really push us we’ll admit the figure is probably a bit lower.  But even at the most permissive, 10% includes bisexuals and lesbians, so if you’re a man looking for another man, your starting number is closer to 5-7% of the general population. Of this percentage of the general population, how many of them are going to be “overweight?” If you’re lucky enough to live in the United States, your chances of finding a gay guy with a gut are going to be a lot better than if you were living in Iceland. Let’s say 40% of the gay guys are plump enough to interest you. But now we have to slice and dice because fat gay guys fall into the categories of fat guys who have always been fat and find no inherent eroticism in being fat; fat guys who hate being fat; actual gainers—and then narrow down the actual gainers into those that don’t want a partner; those who want a fat partner, so you never make it through the gate; those that are already taken; those that will be so self-focused you won’t have much of a role in being with them. At this point the fact you’ve found at least 5 guys to be intimate with in over a decade starts to make a lot of sense in terms of probability theory.

Let me return to my American Indian heritage, where we have the concept of “Two-Spirit,” which is a category we use because LGBT are not our Native system of classification. Two Spirit people we believe have always been part of all Native communities in the past, although those Native Nations that had the most influence of Christianity and assimilation may be unaware of their own history. One of the things we’ve discussed in Two-Spirit gatherings, is traditionally, many bands or groups who formed a particular Native Nation might only be together as a whole for certain times of the year.  The rest of the time they were busy with hunting and gathering, and staying in smaller groups because their land base would not be able to support a large community for extended periods of time. Just so, if there was only 1 Two-Spirit person per 100, which means the only time you as a Two-Spirit person would ever see another Two-Spirit person would be during those ceremonial times when everyone got together.  Let’s say 300 people came together, which means we have 3 Two-Spirit people in the full group.  But one may be 60, one may be 20, and one may be an infant.

Bringing it back to you, once you diced and sliced a minority within a minority within a minority, the cold hard fact is—you might find a potential match in terms of the general “gainer” stuff, but you’re too old for him, or he’s too old for you. Maybe he’s only accepting applications from African-Americans, which means again, you don’t even make it through the gate. There are also criteria such as social class, educational background, financial income, etc. Maybe you’ve found the perfect match, but he only wants to be with another Muslim, or Orthodox Jew, and I’m going to take a wild guess that means you won’t qualify.

Finally, I suspect for a lot of us within the gainer community, we have survived by doing a lot of “fill in the blank” stuff. I think this is why the websites have become so important. With a few clicks we can identify someone who has a lot of characteristics we’re wanting in a partner, if only based on his profile. He may also live in another time zone or in New Zealand. With photos, cam2cam, and chats, we “fill in the blanks” by projecting into the cyber-persona of the person, just the way they’re doing with us.  But it’s a fragile construct, precisely because there are so many blanks involved. Because these constructs can easily fall apart, some people expect them to fail (or “all chasers/chubs are flakes”) which can end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I also find within the general gay community some individuals see if they are sexually compatible before they try to find out if they might make it as a couple. For guys like this, the more they get to know you as a “fleshed out person,” before you have a sexual encounter, the more likely you’ll be thrown into the category of “just friends.” Or as I was instructed early on, “In the gay community it’s easy to get sex, but hard to find real friendship and intimacy.” Based on that belief, someone who is seen as a good match for socializing and companionship gets removed from “potential partner” because there’s a fear once sex is entered into the equation, the companionship might be lost. The solution? To keep sex out of the relationship, which means being stuck permanently in the “Just friends” box. Anecdotally I would add there seems to be a strong generational aspect for this. The older you are, the more likely you may buy into this sex/friendship dichotomy. Younger people may be more flexible in terms of boundaries, and feel it’s just natural for friends to sleep with one another.

One of my old friends used to say, "If you're looking for someone who is just one in a hundred, that means you may have to go through 99 guys to find him." He would then snap his fingers and recit: "Volume, volume, volume." To find the minority within a minority within a minority may mean you have to step up your game in terms of the sheer number of contacts you need to invest your time to find the person(s) you are seeking.  There's just no guarantee once you've found the guy you've been seeking--it means you're the one HE's been seeking.