Feeders and Gainers
Story by: Jeff Leavell
Photography by: Illustrations: Carlos Rodriguez
January 1, 2022
“Look,” Mickey says to me. “If I were being honest, this isn’t something I set out to want. It’s just…It’s what gets my dick hard and no one’s getting hurt and come on…nothing is hotter than standing over my Daddy, wearing nothing but pink panties, and feeding him pasta I just made. I like it when it spills on him. Red sauce on his chest, so I can lick it off him. Then I get to lay next to him and rub his belly and nurse on his nipples. I just don’t fuck with guys under 300 pounds.”
We are sitting at a park on Van Ness. Mickey is 26, tall, muscular, handsome. He is the kind of guy who can have any man he wants, which in LA is saying a lot. It would be easy to dismiss his desires, his sexual identity, as some mis-aligned psychological disorder.
“People don’t get it,” Sammy says to me over Zoom. I can see his partner Robert in the background. They have been together for 16 years. They look more like brothers than lovers: tall, slender, shaved heads, matching locks on silver chains around their necks. “They think we are perverts. Maybe we are, but who isn’t? You like to get fisted, suck a dick through a glory hole in your laundry room or whatever else gets you off. To someone that makes you a pervert. So what? I’m ok being a pervert.”
Sammy and Robert have taken a third, Tom. Tom is a big guy, six feet, 340 pounds. Sammy and Robert are his “boys.” They get off on feeding him steaks and mashed potatoes and homemade cakes while Tom jerks off. Tom wants to be 350 pounds. Sammy and Robert want to do anything they can to help him achieve his goal.
Working hard to make Daddy Bear proud of his big boy.
“I want to be as huge as humanly possible,” Clayton tells me. At 32, he is on a mixture of steroids and bulk eating. At 363 pounds, he calls himself a huscular chub. “I’ve thought a lot about my fetish or whatever you want to call it. My therapist thinks it’s linked to my childhood. My dad was pretty abusive. My mom never stuck up for us. My therapist thinks I’m building a wall of flesh to protect me. What’s the difference in what I’m doing and what a bodybuilder does? There’s also this intimacy to my feeder. My Daddy Bear curls up next to me and feeds me ice cream and cakes and pizza and then he rubs my belly and we share this thing together, this closeness, this understanding. I’m his piggy boy getting as big as I can for him.”
Clayton tells me that people often misunderstand the feeder/gainer relationship, that it’s not so different from a dom/sub relationship. He sees himself as the sub, working hard to get bigger to make Daddy Bear proud of his big boy.
“There have been times when I thought, if I take one more bite, I’m gonna explode. But I do it because Daddy Bear is there watching me, ordering me to finish my plate. I’m learning to really push my limits and I trust him to help me achieve my goals safely.”
Clayton tells me one of their favorite Saturday night rituals comes after hours of Clayton shopping and preparing an elaborate meal that his Daddy will feed to him. On Saturdays, Clayton proves his dedication to his Daddy’s pleasure. “I do all the shopping and cooking, All my Daddy has to do is feed his little piggy. I even do all the dishes when we are done. It’s all for him. My body is for him. My body reflects my Daddy’s needs.”
I wonder about the health of the feeder-gainer relationship – not the psychological health. If we were to judge our sexual desires on our psychological health, I think a lot of us would be in trouble. But what about physical health? Being overweight leads to a host of diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.
I won’t lie: I don’t understand the feeder/gainer fetish. Maybe all our desires are just fetishes? But, here’s the thing: Do I have to understand someone else’s sexual desires? I have fetishes of my own. For instance, when I go out with my partner, I love to have him piss in my water bottle a little. That way I can stand next to him, while talking to our friends, and drink from my bottle of piss-water. Why does this turn me on so much? I think it’s because it makes me feel linked to him in some way. It makes me feel like I am his.
At first I think this idea of our bodies being extensions of our partners’ desires is unrelatable. But after all the hours at the gym, all the dieting, the steroids, the constant obsession on how I look: is it for me or for those I’m dating and fucking? Is it any healthier to pop black market pills to help me build muscle or lose weight, all the while knowing the negative side effects those pills will have on my body?
In the end, maybe more of us are sacrificing our health for someone else’s desires then we think. We all have fetishes. Some of them are more destructive than others. What struck me was, when I reached out to people I knew in the feeder/gainer community, how afraid they were to talk to me. They didn’t want me to use their real names. They didn’t want to provide me with links to their online communities.
“We come under attack all the time,” Sammy says to me. “A friend of ours doesn’t even go to the bars anymore because guys are so mean to him, calling him a freak. When I try to explain to people not in the community about our lifestyle I can tell they are either disgusted or they just don’t get it. I don’t understand – why do they have to get it? Can’t they just accept this is what turns us on?”
The Queer community has a long history of accepting sexual desires that the mainstream world might look down on: Dad/Son, Handler/Pup, Dom/Sub relationships, Bondage, Piss and Scat. I personally have some pretty intense fantasies and desires about being owned. Nothing turns me on more than the idea of my man finding strangers to use me while he holds me.
Every pound he gains is because of our love for him.
It’s physical proof.
Feederism opens the door to the idea of what it means to explore our desires in healthy, positive ways. What does it mean to sacrifice our health for someone else? Is there a way to have this conversation without judging and persecuting those who share this fetish?
“I don’t think of myself as a pervert,” Sammy says. “I’m not hurting anyone. Robert and I really love Tom. We want to serve him and make him happy. We want to feed him. Every pound he gains is because of our love for him. It’s physical proof.”
