After moaning about my hemorrhoid and flossing steak out of my teeth, I stand naked in the doorway from the bathroom to the bedroom.

“How badly do you want to have sex?” I ask, tilting my head, twirling one dark strand of hair around and around my finger.

“I don’t know. Not a big deal to me.” My fiance shrugs, and spits in the sink.

“So you don’t want to?” I stop twirling my hair. Cross my arms over my chest. He sighs, as if we’ve had this conversation a million times. We have. A big crop circle, flattened corn. We know the path by heart. We bent these stalks ourselves.

“I never said that.” He brushes past me and starts pulling back the sheets on the bed. The dog groans, when he lays down, shifting the sheets and bumping her wide ribs with his feet.

“It’s fine. We can just go to sleep.” I try to hide my disappointment, my rage, my regret— by pulling on an old T-shirt and crawling under the covers.

“Okay.” He is already reading for the evening, some self-help book about male fertility. He is kind, and educated, and washes his socks with lavender-scented detergent. He wants three children and has picked out their names. He makes six figures. He is taller than other men. When we have sex, he goes slow at first, so it doesn’t hurt. He loves eating me out. He is perfect and I love him and I want, so badly, for the scenario to have played out differently. I see it in my mind’s eye—a pre-composed script. I ask if he wants to have sex. He smiles and says, more than anything in the world. He tackles me onto the bed and takes what he wants from me, using me like bread to scrape a plate clean.

But is it my own fault, being unsexy, spitting pieces of meat into the sink?

I know what it is to be unsexy. I used to be fat. Obese, actually. Clinically overweight, a body swelled to the point of illness. I didn’t have any boyfriends. Men never looked at me. Then Ozempic came out. I stabbed my thigh each night with the self-hatred required. Food became a forgotten lover. I could stare at a bucket of fried chicken thighs and feel nothing. I could pass by a bakery, leeching the smell of buttered pastry into the street, and want to vomit. I could go to a party and frown at the bowl of tortilla chips, salt crystals shimmering in the low light. I lost 200 pounds. I took up jogging. I had many, many lovers.

Feeling wanted was the best part; the eye contact, the game of cat and mouse, the slow descent of a hand down my back. I felt like I could have anyone I wanted—they waited in a crowd outside my door, panting like dogs. But physical sex was a planet of disappointment. All those men with hairy toes and an inflated ego, poking me in the back with a baby carrot. I wish I could’ve at least enjoyed the dinners they took me to. I would stare at the sushi, lifeless fish glittering silver in the candle light, and want to sob. A $60 meal as some sort of consolation prize for mediocre dick. All sex is work. Women should be asking for more money.

When I met Charlie, we talked for six hours before we fucked. It was insanely passionate, intense, frantic—as if we would disappear if we weren’t touching. It felt so delicious, his sashimi tongue in my mouth. Afterwards, he asked if I was hungry. I wasn’t. In fact, I had never been so full in my life.

He was the most satisfying meal I’d ever had. But now that the wedding is in a week, I’ve had to get the dress altered half a dozen times. I thought Charlie would fill me up, push my hips back out into the right shape. But I kept losing weight. I couldn’t stop. Charlie tried at first, bringing me all sorts of decadence: handmade peanut butter fudge, chocolate-dipped ice cream cones, truffle French fries drenched in garlic aioli.

Sex with Charlie was all I wanted to eat. But recently, Charlie hasn’t been keeping me fed. The last time we fucked was seven weeks ago. The longer that he stays away from me, the hungrier I get. Last night, after he fell asleep, I ordered a large pizza, extra cheese, double black olives, triple pepperoni. I ate the whole thing, piece after piece, grease dripping down my chin and staining my clothes. Afterwards, I washed them to protect my secret, standing naked in front of the machine, watching the bubbles in the glass. I stared down at my bloated stomach, pressing on it from every angle, amazed at its girth, its turgid nature. The next morning, I shit out perfectly formed olives; smooth black blimps floating in the water.

Tonight, as Charlie kisses my cheek and drifts off to sleep, my stomach rumbles. I lift up my shirt and stare at it, a flat savannah, begging for mountains. I slip down the stairs, open the fridge. On the top shelf is an enormous sheet cake for our rehearsal dinner, ribbed with pink flowers, swooping vines, and fondant pearls. I use both hands to lift it, mammoth beauty, from its perch. I lay it on the counter.

I do not bother with a fork. I do not bother with a spoon. My hands find their place, digging into the layers, tiny shovels that carry the spongey yellow cake into my mouth. I cannot eat fast enough. I am starving. My stomach groans and pops and stretches.

Vanilla foams around my lips.

I bury my face as deep as it can go—until I’m breathing in buttercream. I imagine the frosting filling my lungs. I picture it, smoothing itself flat along my alveoli, piping itself in swirly lines around my bronchioles. I am decorated, and beautiful, and desirable.

Someone will come and eat me. They’ll look at me and say I’m so hungry for you.

I’m so hungry I could eat you alive.

And I’ll fall asleep, somewhere in the warm pool of their stomach. Wanted, consumed.

Delicious.