The Fat Cheerleader

The fat cheerleader stands on the green like an awkward elephant. We, the audience who have paid to be here, stare at her with surprise mingled with malicious pleasure. Barely muffled laughter ripples through the crowd. If I can hear it so well, perhaps it isn’t muffled at all.

She stands there, under the glorious Friday night lights, but she might as well be floating: a big red balloon, barely contained by her glittery costume. It is stretched over her bulbous breasts and tucked under her expansive belly, it presses against her blubbery body, which explodes out wherever it is exposed.

Her pale skin bulges and ripples, at places taunt with so much filling, soft as it is, at others drooping out and down with sheer weight. Her torso expands into a huge smiley face, with her breasts as two protruding eyes and the creased tire of her belly as the mouth. It is a larger version of her face, on which has appeared her real smile, enormous and jolly, a great gap of pleasure which expands over her three chins and between her huge oval cheeks.

The music starts, and the choreography begins. The squad is supposed to be one, with a chain of simultaneously harmonious movements and dances, but we have eyes for only one of them: the fat cheerleader, dead center.

I’m not quite sure what I expected of her. Something less graceful, probably, less enticing, certainly. It would have been logical for her to be as awkward when she moved as when she stood, her movements impeded by so much of her. And yet, how wrong I was. How wrong we all were. Those who laughed laugh no more. We all stare, instead, awestruck by her grace. She moves not against her bulk, but with it, shaking her stomach, waving her arms, jumping up and down, sending waves of blubber across her surface. Her body is no longer deformed and graceless, it is rambunctiously sensual. She moves like a goddess, and I long to touch and lick her.

The audience gets up, as one, feverish with pleasure. We smile at the sheer beauty of her. The music reaches its climax, soon it will be over. The squad assembles in the middle, all the cheerleaders are now grouped around their queen. Their limbs look like sickly toothpicks as they grab her arms, legs, back, and butt. They lift her slowly, and she sends the audience her most humongous smile. The squad lowers her, and then pushes against her body again, giving her the greatest heave, a push that sends her flying out of their arms and into the air.

The fat cheerleader does not come down, however. She has tricked gravity. Pushed by the other girls, motivated by our cheerful applause, she floats upward. She really has become a great balloon, inflated with our love, for which she has so much room. We are not worthy of her love – we could scarcely contain it all together – and so she flies away, beyond the glare of the football field and into the night sky.