The Tourist Trap

A block away all was peaceful, here it was hell on earth. A big-hit action/thriller movie had been filmed at the nearby museum, so now this little spot was in every tourist guide. You had people jammed into each café, lane and square, idiots on their two-wheeler segway things, stalls with gimmicky crap, stallholders with bored hard faces and contempt for the endless flood of tourists. A shame. I was renting a place in the university precinct, by the river, where all was silence and charm; I'd come to this very square two days ago, but very early, about eight am, when it too was nice. The hell breaks out after nine.

Apart from the museum, the area's selling point is the beach. Hotels had commandeered the sand out front and filled it with their dainty umbrellas and seats. But beyond that was something that finally took my attention. Fat tourists were riding small figures half their size or less, frail ankles making their way through the soft sand. It was incredible to see. Here was a heavy man clothed only in shorts: the thin girl in front of him only came up to his chest. His great hairy belly alone looked heavier than the whole of her, then you noticed the meatiness of his arms, legs and ass. But he stepped onto a low bench, the girl crooked her spindly arms, and he hauled his bulk onto her back! And they moved off! Her arms were now holding up the weight of his slack thighs. Her feet disappeared into the sand, but she pulled them up and plodded on and there he was, at total ease, piggybacked by the tiny thin thing.

I might have been him, so vivid was my sense of how it would feel to haul my body onto that girl and feel her take my weight.

These human mounts, all adults but mostly 18 or 19, had all been fed the notorious Angelic drug. Angelic, of course, has the twin effect of providing exceptional amounts of energy while stopping physical growth dead in its tracks -- an almost magical trade-off between your present and past, like a pact with the Devil. Not that these creatures had much magic in their lives. They'd been on the drug as soon as it was legal permitted at age 18. Since then they'd been hired to carry people, and/or simply get sat on and squashed.

A craze, it had been called, the riding-sitting-squashing craze. Pundits predicted an early demise, like the fleeting hobble-skirt fad of the early 1900s. Instead it had sunk deep roots and kept spreading. Every city now had its riding/squashing scene; media portrayals moved from hostile to neutral to affirming as they followed shifting public opinion. The half-hearted protests had fallen away. Not everyone liked it, but it was now established -- a thing.

Here before me were two 20-something men, both strong and lean, both looked like they could run a marathon. But they rode the shoulders of two other women, feet hanging level with their ankles. I looked closer at these females, who seemed similar enough to be twins: thin, nearing middle age, but neither more than five feet high.

And then came two fat women wallowing on the backs of thin short young men no bigger than those females. The women were both in one-piece bathers, pale puffy thighs and cellulitic arms -- bodies so solid, so heavy! Still drying off from their swim, their weight borne first by the sea water then these slave-like humans. And in fact I soon discovered that the human mounts were often told to wait for the women in the water itself: the women loaded themselves up there, and were carried out, so that they'd never had a moment of hauling their own weight. It was sold as an experience of total relaxation, in a package including sauna spa and massage.

I'd just turned 40: 5 11/180cm, getting pudgy but with quite a bit of male muscle. I weighed 220lbs, 110kg. Should I? It was pricey, but not outrageously so; there were no hostile stares. Still, I held back, and wandered a bit further.

There were spin-off attractions of a similar kind, in a row of small pavilions or tents, each with its ticket person at a desk outside. In one tent, a thin girl lay on her back, ready to be sat on, for a modest fee. The squasher could take their own selfies or else have an old-fashioned polaroid photo. Couples were permitted to sit on the girl, and group sits could be negotiated. In peak season, how many asses sank every day onto that frail chest, that concave abdomen?

"Would you like a seat?" asked the 40ish woman at the ticket desk. The idea did excite me -- the girl was so very thin! -- but self-consciousness won out. I said nothing and wandered off.

The next tent was much larger. One taste and you're addicted, a large sign promised. Inside was a corpulent woman ready and waiting to sit on you. The volunteer-victim was not charged: here, it was onlookers who paid. Don't try this if you have eaten in the last hour, volunteers were warned. They also had to sign away the right to sue for injuries -- a mere formality, we were assured. Girls do it as a dare, I was told -- and the volunteer was almost always female, since you had to be under 120lbs/55kg to qualify. I was told that fatter victims would spoil the "mystique". There was no lower weight limit, as long as you had proof of age.

Boyfriends or girlfriends urged on each suffering girl. The victims who endured it well were clapped, as were those who passed out, but there were boos for girls who gave up quickly. The fat woman just sat on them, usually side-on with one buttock over the girl's chest and one over her abdomen; her face never showed a thing. I found her magnificent.

One astonishingly short thin young woman got applause before she'd even started, while she was still stepping up to the stage; later they negotiated with her for an ongoing act.

It was so engrossing I paid for a second half-hour, and I wasn't the only one. Addictive indeed.

At the end of that they took a break, the ticket taker went out for a smoke.

"Do the girl victims ever come back for more?" I asked, when she returned.

"A few." She nodded. "There's one who came back."

She was indicating about a girl-mount on the sand, staggering under the weight of a great heavy man; they were just coming past us as I realised that I knew her.

************

Her name was Cobby. It was a full ten years ago we'd dated, when I'd been 30 and she 21. Then one day I'd ghosted her -- cut her off without a word.

It wasn't preplanned, I just didn't reply to her messages one day, nor the following ones, until at some point embarrassment kicked in. A sorry from me would be required, but she's not the sort of person you apologise to.

Slim, but plain faced. To be honest, most of her appeal had lain in the quiet way she put herself down and raised me up at every chance: the perfect doormat girlfriend and future wife. That would suit me now, I thought -- a man still single and on the edge of middle age -- but back then I had nobler and larger hopes for my life.

While I was dating Cobby, other girls came into my orbit: prettier, sexier, more dynamic; she didn't complain about my roving eye, but still I resented her for holding me back. So, I ghosted her.

Deep in these thoughts I wandered slowly away, only stirred from memories when two middle aged men passed in front of me, riding on the backs of thin, very short females less than half their weight. The men's hairy bellies pressed against the girl's frail backs. Studying these creatures more carefully now, I could see that the girls were not carrying their burdens easily, not at all. The Angelic drug got them over the line, but they staggered slightly every few steps; the strain on them was extreme at every moment. The men had plenty of muscle and plenty of fat; those heavy bodies would be feeling every step the girls took, I suddenly realised: every slight lift and fall. The girls' spindly arms stayed wrapped obediently around the men's slack thighs.

"Hi Mark."

"Cobby." Here she was, free of her burden now, but her shoulders were stooped and she leant forward a little on one side, as though her body remembered the burden of the weighty thickset man she'd just been carrying on her back. And perhaps it also recalled the burden of many other heavy men and women, over time.

We inspected each other closely. She was about 5 4, just over 160cm, but even thinner than I remembered her. Her jawline was exposed more sharply by the loss of weight, with a new, haunting appeal the result. It brought to mind actresses who kept their weight right down -- knowing that if they gained a particle of fat they'd shift from sublime to average in a day, and get no more parts in movies. Cobby now had that kind of beauty, but in a ragged way. Her face was faintly lined.

Apart from romance, life had been good to me in the last decade -- less so to her, it seemed; I'd gained the weight she'd lost, almost as though I'd taken it right off her body.

It was very awkward to meet someone you'd ghosted, even from that long ago. And it was awkward to talk to a "carry girl", as they were called. I didn't know the protocol. But she cut through the discomfort.

"Want a ride? You might as well."

Riding on her would avoid the need for difficult discussions. Maybe she sensed that. Or maybe I was just another customer. At any rate it was a good way to break the ice.

"How much do you weigh?"

"One-o-five," she said. "Forty eight kilos."

"I'm just over double that," I said, feeling good about it.

"Well, I'll be grateful if you choose me to ride. I admit I'm not in the same class as the short girls." My loins did stir at the thought of one of them struggling under my weight. At the same time I was stirred by Cobby's humility, the way she put herself down... it was her old I'm-nothing-you're everything trick coming out, now used to make up ground against more appealing rivals.

"I do choose you." For old time's sake, I nearly added -- but didn't.

"Sorry, but you have to pay and stuff." She led me towards the booth which she worked from. Her grey shirt was loose, but short sleeved and V-necked, revealing the almost skeletal arms and chest. Her grey pants were loose too, but of some soft material that showed the shape of her bone-thin thighs. By now I was filling up with excitement at the thought of loading my weight up onto her.

"If you're not familiar with this," she said quietly, "it's better to start with a piggyback. You can always work up to shoulder rides later."

I paid my fee, stood on the low bench they provided, and up onto her back I went.

From the first moment she took my weight the pleasure was unreal. It was the sort of thing you might do at a beach party, horsing around, when a girl much meatier than Cobby could carry you for maybe two or three steps then half-collapse and slide you off her, with lots of complaints. But Cobby's weak arms and frail bony torso kept me in place, very comfortably for me, and her spindly legs moved us smoothly forward. I felt the slight twist in her upper body -- yes, from the strain of too many, too-heavy burdens, I was sure -- and that definitely added to the experience for me.

She took me on her set path walking around the beach, and now I was the one getting glances: curious, amused, or disapproving, though one or two people clapped or gave me a thumbs-up. And then we were back at her booth.

There were no other customers waiting.

"Can you go off for a coffee?" I asked, not knowing that I was going to ask it.

"Yes I can do that," she said mildly.

"Is that OK?" I asked the man at the booth. He waved us away; I learned later that the carry-girls got no wage, they were paid per ride, so she was free to leave when she wanted. At the café I ordered my drink, she recommended the doughnuts so I ordered two of them too.

"Same for you? My treat." But she said no to any food, or drink. I didn't push it; her abstinence felt right.

I avoided our past.

"How did you -- I gestured -- get into this?"

She laughed mildly -- her gestures and voice were uniformly mild now.

"It started the day I got sat on by the big lady in the other booth. The one who just squashes people." That kind of made sense -- that Cobby would get sat on and squashed. It was harder to think of her being a tourist, though -- coming to this place for fun.

"What brought you here?"

"I did some waitressing. But really it was the trolling. I was on different social media accounts and some of them were OK but I always attracted trolls for some reason. And these days, once they know you're a thin weak girl, a lot of the trolls tell you to get sat on. You know, whenever I posted a comment they'd put it their nasty replies, but also send it in private messaging." She looked down at the table. "It was enough to make me come down here and see what this squashing fad was actually about. And when I did, when I saw that huge fat heavy woman, I thought, the trolls are right, I should get sat on. So I did. But then a pimp for carry-girls checked me out and got me onto Angelic, and into harness so to speak. As long as they keep feeding me the drug, I can keep carrying folks double my weight or more. So, here I am."

Impulsively I reached across the table and took her hand in mine, with thoughts of asking her back to my motel -- and then what? Take care of her like a good man should? Or to turn her into a doormat girlfriend-then-wife, as I'd been fantasising about? Her hand didn't pull away, but nor did it squeeze mine. It just lay limp. It felt like a polite, passive rejection, of sorts.

"This is my life now," she said. "I think."

I withdrew my hand.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?"

"I don't know. I don't think I want anything."

"We both know what I did to you. Is this limp-hand-act your version of revenge?"

"No." She laughed her mild laugh. "I'm not the sort of person who takes revenge." When I did not reply she looked up at me, for a moment. Then her gaze fell again to the tabletop, and she spoke again, as quietly as before, just a little more intense. "I don't blame you one tiny bit for ghosting me. I'm exactly the sort of girl who gets ghosted. Every time someone heavy rides me or sits on me it's that much clearer to me who I am. And where I'm headed."

I felt a strong impulse to take command of the situation, override her, and take her -- whether as a doormat wife, or woman to love and cherish, I still didn't know. She sensed it in me, I could tell; it was as though the whole world was on hold. But I did not act, and I would not act: each passing moment made that clearer.

"It's time we went back," she said at last, and again she took my hefty body onto her thin one, this time free of charge -- that was her idea.

At their booth a fat woman was waiting to ride and then sit on Cobby. They went off straight away, Cobby dragging her feet wearily through the soft sand, keeping her abundant-bodied rider in total ease. As their figures diminished in the distance I reflected that I hadn't really known the girl very long at all.

It was only much later that I'd understand my moment of paralysis back at the café. There was simply too much poetry in her self-destruction: the two sides of her, destroyer and destroyed, were locked in a dance too meaningful for me to interfere with or challenge.

"How was she?" The staff at her booth asked me. They offered me a feedback form. I pushed it back their way, but said I'd be recommending her to heavy people I knew back home. And I did.