Copyright 1993(c)

                             Encore
                          By B.J. Higgs


     She tugged on the body suit, a struggle every inch of the way.
Why, oh why, she wondered again, had she let herself droop into
this blob of fat. Well, maybe not fat like the lady in the circus,
but certainly a larger front end than back end. Of course, she'd
never had any rear end, remembering that one suitor had even said
that. "Don't be working your ass off," he'd joked. "As it is, you
don't have enough to last you 'till midnight."
     Well, it hadn't been so noticeable when she didn't have so
much front end. Having a front end like this could only be excused
if one intended to produce from it a life form. 
     She regarded it as a life form of its own, much like a
tenacious growth that, once whittled down to a manageable size and
consistency, kept returning like a corn dispatched with a razor
blade. Each time she whittled it down, she swore to keep up with
maintenance; and each time she found herself some months later,
standing in front of a mirror she avoided looking into and tugging
on a lycra (holds in the excess -- at least the excess that is
containable) body suit.
     Little Feet sang "Baby, I hate to lose your lovin, don'cha
know?" as she tried to make the lower half of her body do what the
lower half of her body was capable of, considering the extra
poundage it was carrying.
     Exercise, she told herself, is almost pleasant when you are
moving to a beat you enjoy. She tried the hunch that always worked
off the extra inches so well, and found that the excess poundage
made it virtually impossible; her attempts grotesque. She put on
Willie Nelson singing "The Party's Over," and began to Texas two-
step herself around the room, feeling the muscles in her right calf
scream on the corners, and wondering if she could just buy a muu-
muu cut to the floor on a slant on the left side, and flash no more
than her right calf muscle for the folks.
     Damnit, why had Fred agreed to this stupid party, anyway. It
would be a roomful of people with nothing in common aside from the
fact that they donned their three-piece uniforms and reported to
the same location five days a week, where they did things they
didn't particularly enjoy in a prescribed time frame, or they lived
on the same block. She could imagine little that thrilled her less,
unless it was the contemplation of the catty remarks of the
neighbor wives and co-workers about the cow Fred had married.
     "Oh, nuts!" she remarked aloud and promptly plopped into the
La-z-boy. She glared down at what once had been her cleavage,
noting that the wrap-design body suit persisted in slipping the
right inside of the "warp" underneath her right boob. The effect
was nothing at all like cleavage, she admitted, but looked to be
soft, saggy, cloth-wrapped packages with a deep canyon separating
them. She reached down and manually returned them to the height and
slant at which nature had maintained them for a number of years,
wondering if they made anything more confining than lycra. The
right one promptly slipped back into its comfortable position
outside the underlying material on the right side. "Just nuts!"
she cried again, and moved to the bathroom where she removed the
body suit and slipped into the loose pullover geometric print she
normally reached for like a comfort blanket, which fell to her
knees and nicely concealed everything.
     In that outfit, with nothing hanging out or over that was
visible to the naked eye, she decided it was okay to look at the
dress again. Maybe there was something she could do...
     She pulled it from the rear of the closet and hung it on the
bedroom door, gingerly removing the plastic to step back and stare
at it. The damn thing did what it always did, it jumped into her
mind looking the way it would have looked on her a year ago this
time, clinging just so over the relatively slim midriff and draping
cleanly over the stomach. With it's belled sleeves and skirt, the
draped bodice, fitting cleanly from shoulders to hip, was striking.
     She tried to persuade herself there was a jacket or vest she
could add which would improve and not detract from the dress, and
narrowed her eyes at the bell sleeves, knowing that even a designer
jacket would make her look like a frump. There might be a vest
somewhere in the world that could pull it off, she decided, but
she'd lay odds against finding it.
     The Morton Myles was a deep, black-navy with a raised braided
pattern of the same color navy in the skirt, and while it did have
a foldover flap located in the vicinity of her appendix which
detracted a little from its form cling, the size six was going to
fit her like a sausage wrap. She thought about the bangers she'd
seen described in a recent BBS conference, and the explanation that
sausage was once made with something that caused it to explode when
placed in a hot skillet, unless pricked with a fork. She was going
to look like a banger in it, no matter what.
     She debated changing her outfit to the Carole Little black
slacks and muted-pattern top. Of course, the top was muted only on
one side, and tended to have a checked pattern on pocket and
sleeves on the other side. When she'd bought it, the complementing
patterns of mutes and checks against the predominantly black
background emphasized her slim body. Now, she feared, she'd look
like Emmet Kelly. Even the chinese red silk tunic from Carole
Little wouldn't work, and would make her look like a fire truck on
tarmac. A big fire truck on a little tarmac.
     Ah well, if you can't disguise it in pants, you can always
find a blowzy top, she told herself, and remembered that that only
made her look like she was trying to hide something even David
Copperfield feared to tackle.
     Okay, so the choice was definitely between this dress and the
black cocktail dress, which also had bell sleeves and skirt, though
not the poof-skirted hem of the navy one, and it didn't clink, but
fell in a straight line from shoulder to hips. Of course, it fell
in a clingy material, and though not figure-molded like the navy,
it did have a nasty tendency to cling to her body just at the
fullest part of her tummy, and it didn't have a foldover flap to
blame for the pooch. She felt as though she would find herself
saying, by way of introduction, "How do you do, and yes, I am
pregnant. Yes, it is a miracle at my age but we're so pleased," to
the complacent wives and girlfriends who all looked 17 and wore
those dresses that roll up in a tube and fit in a key ring, except
when velcro'ed, bosom to mid-thigh, around a luscious young body. 
     Well, she wouldn't do that, and she wouldn't think about any
of this anymore, she decided, re-bagging the dress with less than
the care she'd used in extracting it. Perhaps a wrinkle or two in
the right place would make her look less like two-ton Tillie in it,
she told herself.
     She had a croissant and a grapefruit for breakfast - the
croissant for her, and the grapefruit for the diet and the ethereal
vision of a size six body.
                              ****
     She woke that Friday morning with frantic thoughts of
laxatives, fasting, and the theft of a car and a dash for another
state; a punk haircut, half a dozen muu-muus and a bag of Twinkies
her only accessories. At one time, she'd have chosen the latter
without hesitation, which just made her realize how old and fat and
lazy she had become. Where was that rebel who 'would have scrubbed
floors first' and felt secure enough to announce it and back it up.
When had she accepted and settled for comfort, and should she have
done it sooner? And what did it matter, anyway? Here was here and
it was pretty much where she was, and she wasn't going to run off
and join the circus, so she'd better get off her butt and go out
and buy the tightest, smallest, more uncomfortable girdle she could
find.
                              ****
     The girdle, and the fact that she'd eaten only watermelon all
day, got her in the dress looking not too shabby. Of course her
stomach rumbled ominously every few minutes, and the watermelon was
going through her like stuff through a goose. The girdle made it
necessary to find a bathroom often and fast, and pulling it off
and on was torture that made her break out in a sweat so that she
had to settle herself and partially re-apply her face after every
tug-of-war. That meant the first blissful minutes without pressure
on her bladder were wasted in the ladies on every trip. She figured
she was averaging 7 minutes out of every fifteen in gracious chit-
chat, and the other 8 struggling in and out of the girdle and
recovery. Not great odds, but the price was almost worth it when
the evening drew to a close at long last.
     As they said their goodnights to the assembled guests and
thanked them for the party welcoming them to the company and the
city, Fred spoke a few words about their delight with the work and
the lifestyle here, and she stepped slightly back and to his side,
thinking ecstatic thoughts about removing the girdle. Visions of
her bright muu-muu filled her head as Fred spoke on, and she idly
picked at the thread she noticed near the foldover. 
     The stitching must have been from the attachment of the
foldover, she realized, as it came loose and dropped at her feet,
the heavy satin making a soft thud that sounded to her like a
trumpet blast. She wondered if she should pick it up or just shove
it out of sight with her toe. She was standing far enough behind
Fred that it had fallen without notice, but she needed it for
camouflage as they made their exit. Or did she?
     She looked down and smiled. You could usually tell if your
tummy was just the right size because you could feel it, but with
this girdle on she could no longer feel her extremities with any
certainty. Still, even without feeling, she could tell by looking
that the foldover wasn't needed. Her tummy looked almost as flat
as it had ever been, and the girdle which extended to her cleavage,
which wasn't a girdle but a something else that sucked it ALL in,
up and down, was doing such a good job that she almost thought she
might wear it again. Sometime.
     She mentally congratulated herself. The one thing they would
have to admit was that Fred's wife wore well. She looked better at
the end of the evening than she had at the beginning, she told
herself. She was really glad she'd taken the time to hoist the
girdle-thing that up to its top notch on her last trek to the
powder room. She figured Fred would have to hit several gas
stations on the way home, (and maybe she'd just pull the damn thing
off in one of them and let the fat hang out), but by golly she'd
make a grand exit here.
     She decided she'd better keep the foldover, though, just in
case she didn't get right back on her exercise kick and lose this
blubber, and because when she finally did slim down, the foldover,
reshaped and with a tad of netting and a rhinestone or two, would
make a killer hat to complement her *real* figure in the dress.
     She circumspectly bent over and scooped up the foldover and
her right breast, the one that had been in training to drop below
the inner wrap of her body suit proved it had learned its lesson
well. She looked down at it in mild horror, wondering why something
that old and flabby would want to appear before a crowd.
                               END