A Toast to New Friends

 

Given the Chance to Change

by Cute Little Thing and Pirategrrl
© 2000

 

1. This is the newest award level for your frequent flyer miles.

I felt like the hollowed out shell of a bug, trapped in a spider web, all of its bodily juices slurped out in some slow arachnid lunch.

That is a really crappy way to start telling a cool story of how I met a new friend, but to understand it, you need to put that night into a little bit of context. See I have a generally interesting sort of job that calls for me to be in a different time zone with alarming regularity. I had been in Los Angeles all week, locked in a small airless room with prospective business partners, who insisted on being such complete dill weeds about the equity structure for a new joint venture. Worse yet, there idea of breaking tension was to tell dumbass Survivor style jokes: ending conversations by saying shit like "the tribe has spoken," or "there are two kinds of people, snakes and rats."

I had a headache that would not go away; everything with these people had been a constant source of stress and tension. I felt like I was doing business with my parents. As the week wore on, we managed to make some progress, like your mother's grudging acceptance of the fact that you will never be going to medical school, but we had not done as much as my boss would have hoped.

Listen I know that it is a total cliché for guys to start talking about work, as though men are defined by their jobs. I know that there is more to me than my career in the business development arm of a multimedia company, but sometimes there just is not a lot of room for the other parts of me. But stop me if I start making too much self-aware finance geek talk; it even bores me sometimes, after it starts sounding like an episode of Dawson's Creek meets Wall Street.

The only lucky thing that happened to me that entire week was that I got to the airport early, and managed to talk my way on to the 4:30 flight to Newark. Sure Newark was not as convenient to my apartment in Queens as La Guardia, but it beat the hell out of waiting until 10:30 for the red eye.

Sitting on the flight, it was a marvelous opportunity to catch up on e-mail, reviewing reports and other sorts of quiet time catch up work.

Oh who the hell do I think that I'm kidding, I never did that crap on a plane, and I was not about to start after a hard week of having my ass kicked in that sweaty little conference room. Sure I might spend a few minutes getting caught up on some office crap, but I loved these long flights because they gave me a chance to brush up on my reading.

The guy sitting next to me fell asleep soon after the plane took off, and I took advantage. I opened a few of my favorite T* stories - some obscure, non-violent stuff by Melissa Virus, the most unfortunately named stroke fiction talent around. I also had a few early Raven tales, and some primo Morpheus. But what always did it for me were those cool Ovid, Oklahoma stories. There was something sweet and endearing about the way that the author handled the T* and sex stuff, sort of like a Norman Rockwell portrait of Rupaul. And I was psyched - I had just downloaded the latest installment in the chronicles of the Judge, Diana, Officer Mercer and the rest of the Olympus posse: Ovid 43, The Ballroom Dancer.

"Chanted in an ancient form of Latin?"

Giant hands squeezed the air out of my lungs as I realized that the passenger in the seat next to me must have been reading my screen.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, I thought, this is going to be one uncomfortable flight if I have to sit next to this guy for the next five and half hours, with him thinking that I am some weird sort of transvestite.

But after all, isn't that really what I am? I mean, I am not some sort of freaky mustachioed guy who wears a tutu and five inch heels, but when I close my eyes and my imagination runs free, I am recasting myself as a woman. Every time I masturbate, I imagine sex with a beautiful woman, except that I am that beautiful woman. Hell, I even had a few pair of thigh high stockings lying around my apartment somewhere.

I turned and looked slowly over at him; he was grinning, snuggled into a tiny airline blanket.

"I love the Professor," he said, his grin turning to a full- fledged smile, "but does he have to have to use that same turn of phrase to describe the court room scene?"

"Excuse me?" was the best I could manage to squeak out.

"Oh relax, I love those stories too. I'm Alex, by the way. Generally I introduce myself before I scare the holy shit out of strangers, but for you I made an exception."

"So, you umm, know the Professor?"

"Not personally, but I am a huge fan of the work. My personal favorite was Ovid 29, the normal white guy who fantasized about being a panty clad high school chick."

"Yeah that was good," I replied, my breath slowly returning, "but it was not as good as Ovid 32, the world class athlete who gets turned into a fat dowdy housewife who reads harlequin romance novels in the Stop and Shop check out aisle."

We both chuckled, the tension rapidly fading between us.

"I guess that these stories can be sort of goofy sometimes," Alex offered, "but they are fun to read."

I turned to face him, and closed my laptop. "Did you ever notice that when a guy gets forcibly changed his wife or dominatrix always 'barks' at him?"

"Oh yeah, but my favorite story foible is that every time a guy changes and the author mentions the boobs, they are always enormous; there are never any normally busted women in these stories," Alex replied.

"Oh I don't know, there have been a few B cups here or there."

"Maybe a few exceptions that prove the rule," he said, "but think about how many 'JJJ' cupped bimbos are strolling around the stories in Fictionmania."

"I know, that is pretty foul, isn't it?" I said. "Could you really imagine having udders like that weighing you down?"

"Oh please spare me," he said. "But the worst weird body thing is that whenever a guy whips it out, it can never be normally sized. It is always some 14 inch howitzer, as thick around as a coke can. Hold your hands fourteen inches apart, and ask yourself if you would want to lose your virginity to that monster dong."

"Look at us," I said, "this is like the lost Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George log onto Crystal's story site."

"Don't you hate it when you stop paying attention in the gene splicing lab," Alex said, with a pronounced New York accent and a rising comedic tone, "and you accidentally stick yourself with the super secret feminizing drug that also changes your Driver's License to reflect a female persona?"

"Not that there is anything wrong with that," I replied.

Time really must have been flying, because as we stopped laughing at that, we heard the tires touching down in Newark.

"Hey, you have a ride back to the City?" Alex asked me.

Of course I didn't have a ride, I mean, what kind of young kid in their twenties can afford to have a car in Manhattan - It's bad enough affording rent. I figured Alex meant for us to split a cab back into town, and hey I was willing. The only thing, was that now that we were on the ground, there was a bit of a charge to our friendship. Its one thing to talk about crossdressing when you're safely within your role as anonymous airline passenger, but it was something else entirely to have the same conversation with a person you would call your friend. Being honest with myself, I had to secretly admit that I had never really shared this side of me with anyone before, and the fact that I was becoming 'friends' with someone based on our mutual crossdressing fantasies made me markedly uncomfortable. Still, I was kind of broke and didn't want to front the cash, even if I would be reimbursed later, so splitting a cab sounded good to me. Which was why I was surprised when Alex walked right by the Taxi stand.

"Where are you going?" I asked, my voice cracking a little pathetically. Alex turned around and looked at me.

"I have a car of course," said Alex, disappearing into extraordinarily expensive confines of the hourly parking deck.

"This guy parks in hourly for a trip to LA?" I thought to myself.

And what a car it was! A classic Black Mercedes Sedan from the mid 1960's. Alex stepped into the car without looking at me. I sort of just stood there for a moment, feeling a little hesitant - and I admit, a little self-conscious. I mean, Alex wasn't THAT much older than me - two, maybe three years at the most. How could he afford a classic Mercedes that he parks in hourly parking for weeklong trips to Los Angeles?

"Wow" I said, easing myself into the hand tooled leather interior. "Just kind of work are you involved with anyway, Alex?"

Alex chuckled. "Are you familiar with rites of passage Jeremy?"

Alex asked me as we pulled out of the parking lot and eased onto highway 95. I was a little taken aback, not only by the bizarre nature of the question, but also by the fact that I had been addressed by name. I had never told Alex my name during the flight.

"Did... I... tell you my name." I hesitantly offered as a response.

"Oh, maybe not, maybe not. I must have gotten it from your computer screen." I instantly relaxed a bit and was about to comment on the magnificent Skyline, and its contrast with the industrial wasteland of Northern New Jersey, when Alex said.

"Rites of passage are a pet interest of mine I suppose. A kind of habit. They are somewhat lost in our complex, modern society if you ask me, but they are ever so vitally important to the life of a vibrant culture."

I made a note of the hint of contempt in Alex's voice when mentioning the words "Modern Society." I have to say; I found his line of discussion a little off. I mean, it's not the type of thing we generally knock around the office down in marketing.

"Rites of passage were essential in the ancient world however. A tribe wouldn't dream of sending their sons out on the hunt without them passing through the ritual. A Sovereign wouldn't dream of anointing a Prince without a form of ritualized passage. Sure, from the perspective of our modern eyes some of these rituals appear fairly brutal - tattooing, piercing - goodness even variations on crucifixion and, don't mean to creep you out or anything - - Genital mutilation. Sure, some boys died, or failed to make the passage, as they say, but for the rest, they experienced a transformation, and that transformation guided their understanding of the world from that point. That's really the whole point of a rite of passage, now isn't it Jeremy?"

Alex pulled a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his Gucci Blazer, extracted a thick filterless cigarette. From the smell I would have to say it was French. With a truly impressive dexterity, he fished a lighter from his pocket and proceeded to smoke. I sat a bit mesmerized. I hated smokers. I find smoking disgusting, but I was amazed at the nearly magical way the thick lines of smoke danced about Alex's face. Thinking about it, I was a little curious at how Alex and the Car had lacked that tell tale musty cigarette odor, and how Alex's skin maintained its youthful elasticity despite the fact he was a smoker.

"The transformation!" Alex said, startling me back to the present.

"Uh... Oh, yes, uh, excuse me; I wandered off for a minute. Yes, yes, the transformation, that's right, um, Alex, what line of work did you say you were in again?" I offered.

At this point we were pulling out of the Holland tunnel and onto Hudson Street in Manhattan's West Village. As we drove up Hudson we passed multi-million dollar brownstones inhabited by the super wealthy - Financial barons, and rock stars, people whose money came from the Mayflower, and original investors with Warren Buffet.

"You live in Manhattan Jeremy?" Alex said, turning suddenly west towards the River.

"Queens." I replied, a little embarrassed "You know, I prefer the space out there to the little rabbit holes here in the..."

"You'll have to take the Subway then. I'm not driving all the way out to Queens." Alex said.

He pulled the car up in front of industrial warehouse type building overlooking the river. These types of buildings once housed meat packing plants and longshoreman, but had been refurbished over the past 15 years into some of the most exclusive and most spacious property in Manhattan. A large, African American doorman, hurried to the car, and opened Alex's door.

"Mr. Anderson, so nice to see you home safely." The doorman said as Alex stepped out of the car. Alex smiled but otherwise barely acknowledged the man.

"Unless you'd like to stay here for the night." He said to me.

"Um, excuse me?" I said, scarcely believing his words and a bit terrified on top of it.

"Oh, I know I'm an odd bird, but I won't hurt you, besides Sue saw you come in with me. I couldn't possibly do anything without Sue getting suspicious. He knows every one who comes and goes in this building."

"Sue? He?" This was getting stranger by the minute.

"Yes, of course. Sue, the doorman - you know, like a boy named Sue. You do like Johnny Cash, don't you? Anyway, I have plenty of room right now, too much for little old me. Of course if you'd prefer, the subway is four blocks that way. If you go all the way out to Sixth Avenue, you can catch the... "

"Okay, I'll stay." I said, catching myself by surprise.

I immediately regretted it. After all there was a serial killer who had been picking up gay men, and surgically removing their body parts, leaving them in Hefty bags all along the waterfront. What on earth did I think I was doing - and with the ritual, rites of whatever, on top of it! Brother. Then again, life as junior financial analyst gets pretty dull, and who wants to be an Ikea Boy all their life. Worse yet - why did I stumble over the Johnny Cash reference, after all, it had been in that movie, Swingers, and it was really funny. But here was adventure looking me in the face. I took the bait.

"Excellent, excellent." Alex replied. "Cigarette?" he offered. I hesitated.

"Oh what the hell," I said, and put the unfiltered but tightly rolled cigarette to my lips.

 

2. Pain is just the exit wound of fear leaving your body.

This is one of those New York paradoxes that people in the South never understand - for years no one in Manhattan wanted to be anywhere close to any river. In modern boomtowns - Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston - people pay thousands extra for the privilege of looking out on any body of water - a man-made lake, a drainage ditch, a mosquito pond, anything. But Manhattan, an island lying between the Hudson and the East Rivers, was different.

When Manhattan came into its own as a modern city late in the nineteenth century, the thought of being close to a river was as appetizing as bacon at a Bar Mitzvah. All the garbage and sewage from the tenements of Brooklyn, South Queens and Manhattan sluiced into the East River, the first stop on its fetid trip to the ocean. As more and more immigrants streamed into the City, the truly dirty work - the slaughterhouses, the rendering plants, the sausage factories and horse stables - was all along the East River and its stench.

As time went on, and property values went up, the blood and waste industries moved out of the City. The slaughterhouses became warehouses - perfect for close storage of documents that the moneychangers of midtown and Wall Street generated. Then, the United Nations built its headquarters in the Fifties, near midtown with a spectacular view of a rapidly improving river. Into the Eighties, the opulence and wealth generated by the legions of analysts, associates and brokers began to grow. More and more people with more and more money began cramming into the already established residential areas of the Upper East and West sides. Then the pasty faced shock troops of the Reagan Revolution began pushing their gentrifying wealth further south, into Chelsea, Murray Hill, the Village, and even the East Village.

That left the old warehouses further to the east and south, with their high ceilings and huge footprints squarely in the path of development. Given that they were former warehouses and factories, they had virtually no internal walls, and therefore they were blank slates on which residential dreams of lofts, apartments and huge living spaces could be written. Because they were new, and came onto the market during times of silly opulence, anyone who lived there was money. Granted it was new money, but the residences of these former sausage factories had lots of it.

Alex was no exception. The neighborhood itself was impressive, and the apartment's interior did not disappoint. Everything in it screamed rich, without being coated in solid gold the way some dumbass first generation wealthy were wont to do. The Maurice Villency furniture, the authentic Julian Schnabel artwork, the rugs woven by the tiny, laboring hands of far Asian children all added to some serious totals. It certainly kicked ass on the hand-me-down couches, coated in plastic, which I took from my Grandmother as she moved to Florida.

I rolled my still unlit cigarette around my mouth, wanting to show my appreciation for his gift, but not wanting to ask for a light inside the museum quality bachelor pad. It seemed a little strange that he did not take one himself, but I gave that no real thought. I could smell the perfumed tobacco, exotic, but not trite in the way that those Indonesian clove cigarettes were. I wondered what it would taste like.

"You know," Alex said, "I am not really as tired as I thought. In fact, I am feeling better by the minute. Want to step out for a quick drink?"

"Sure," I said, feeling strangely compliant with this very wealthy new friend. "Did you have some place in mind?"

So after a grand total of fifteen seconds in the luxurious former abattoir, we headed back downstairs. I guess that Sue did not have time to park the Mercedes, which was still in front of the building. We climbed in.

"So where did you have in mind?" I asked.

"Oh, I thought that we might try Tangue," he said.

"Sounds familiar. But if I know about it, the line of people from Jersey trying to get in will be like all the way to the Garden State Mall."

Alex just smiled as we turned onto Houston Street.

It was vaguely familiar, in the way that clubs in the city often were. The name: Tangue - was obscure enough that it sounded exotic. And everyone had their own idiosyncratic pronunciation -- tang-ee, tahn-gay, tawn-gway, tan-gee - that everyone felt both put off, as though there were some secret that they weren't in on. The fact that it sounded like a combination of "Tanqueray" and "Tongue" made it sound even more lascivious.

It was stupid popular, and drew plenty of the famous and the wannabees. Crowds lined up around the block, as fresh-faced twenty something's freed from their veal fattening pen sized cubes in midtown sought a brush with fame.

The famous could have their assistants call, hoping to warn the bouncers of the imminent arrival of some B minus level star - the actor who played that buddy from the recent Freddie Prinze Jr. high school romance film, a minor character from the fourth season of Melrose Place, the singer from that band that opened for the Cure on their last tour. If they were lucky, the bouncers might grunt, and pull aside the velvet rope, allowing them access.

The bouncers at Tangue, like every club du jour, were mountains of tattooed muscle meat, wrapped Christo-like in several acres of Armani designed fabric.

The camaraderie of those in line led the telling and retelling of what surely had to be urban myths. The most popular was the story of the 27 year old compliance officer from Chase Manhattan Bank who called Tangue, and said that he was the personal assistant for Mr. Spielberg. Of course, the Tangue people said, we would love to have Mr. Spielberg come to Tangue. When the appointed hour came, a rented limo pulled up, and the young compliance officer and his date hustled out, and said that "Mr. Spielberg will be along shortly."

The bouncers took the daring guy back into an alley and, as the story goes, "Louima-ed" him, plunger and all.

Truth be told, that urban myth of brutality missed much of the subtlety in the life of a bouncer at a hot club. These were full time jobs for very serious people. After all, the bouncers were as far as most people got at these sorts of places, and they needed to convey the proper amount of seriousness and exclusivity to continue the brand name of places like Tangue. But they also needed the social sense to know just which rising young stars to let in, and which fading, Fantasy Island retreads to shun. It was almost as though these media savvy mesomorphs spent their days pumping iron and reading Variety.

Alex circled the block several times, and then pulled in front. Alex put the passenger side window down, and leaned across me toward the bouncers. He snapped his fingers in the general direction of the bouncers.

For the jaded New Yorkers in line, this was exceptional - Tangue was not some restaurant in Passaic in tune with customer service - this place became famous by being rude to its patrons. There was no valet parking. All along the line, people had an expression of shock, as if the Queen of England hopped out of an alley and did a strip tease while "Rock Me Amadeus" played on a nearby boom box.

My adrenal glands pumped enough of their terror juice that my body was chemically convinced that it was going to die - soon. The bouncers stepped towards the car, with a look on their faces that indicated that my body was correct.

Then they recognized Alex, and the largest of the bouncers stepped around the car, and opened Alex's door.

The walk from the car to the club's door was the greatest five seconds of my life. Everyone in line looked at me as though I were the most important person on Earth; the expressions of hatred and jealousy fueled the zenith of my ego. The fire of the bouncer's lighter as he lit my cigarette was reflected in the thousands of eyes that stood staring in contempt and disbelief at our most grand of entrances.

Inside, the music blared, not deafeningly loud, but enough to let you know where you were. It was fast, it was modern and it was industrial. Not as intense as that house party in Darien a few years ago, but it was more than just your average trip hop.

"Wanna dance?" I screamed into Alex's ear.

You would have thought I had suggested public defecation judging by the look on his face. His furrowed brows shook softly from side to side as we walked towards the back, into a table that the staff cleared for us. Alex had this like sly, knowing power the whole time. It was difficult to describe, but it was almost the same as the mental image that you have when a girlfriend tells you that she finds self-confidence bordering on arrogance to be attractive. He was generous as the club owners fawned over him, thanking them for this, expressing appreciation for that. But the whole time he acted as though he expected this to be done for him.

Everyone in the room saw that, and although they would never change their New York game face of aggressive indifference, each one knew that this guy was different, that this guy was power.

Alex was also a paradox. I mean think about it; there were all these famous people in there - the guy who had impregnated Madonna, the male lead from the Broadway adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls, the former porn star who married the 72 year old publishing billionaire. None of them got even a whisper of the attention that Alex got.

A virtual conga line of people started walking by our table, trying to figure out who Alex was. I loved every minute; sure everyone looked at me like I was the bully's annoying little friend, but mine was the toughest bully in school. Kind of like Billy Jack and Jackie Chan, all rolled into one, I thought as I finished my cigarette. I was drunk with the power of being the object of their envy.

"Isn't he the guy who runs Tristar?" One guy said, screaming to his companion to be heard.

"No way, that's the new Sony music dude."

"No-no-no," said a third guy. "He directed a few Marrzz Barrzz videos."

"He directed candy commercials?"

"No dumbass - Marrzz Barrzz, the dyed blonde rap star. You know, he had that one song – 'that Bitch Paula'"

"Not ringing any bells, dude," his friend said. "Sing some of it for me." So then his buddy started dancing around like a rap star, shouting like he had just fed a rhyming dictionary and hive of Africanized killer bees into a popcorn popper.

She's a ho but not for sale The bitch is a rental And when she opens her mouth You know the bitch is mental If she gets on my nerves, then Rat-a-tat-tat goes my gat at her temple And so I say to you Paula You're so dumb I wanna fuckin maul ya Cuz everybody hates that Bitch Paula

 

3. "So I just have to know..."

She said, asking Alex with an inquisitive smirk, elbows on our table leaning forward in a way that made her cleavage hang, leaving the enormous round globes of her breasts to be suspended by her lacy bra top.

"You're the new silent partner in the Yankees aren't you? You're the guy who's funneling Steinbrenner all that cash. You're the guy whose going to build the West Side stadium out of your spare cash - - -Am I right?" She leaned back and placed her hands on the hips of her highly fashionable Versace Snake Skin pants, giving a self satisfied and flirtatious grin.

It wasn't that she really thought Alex was some silent partner on the Yankees; it was that in her mind she had pulled off the trick of the first line. She silently congratulated herself on the way she had combined the male fantasies of absurd wealth and power, with their obsession with professional sports into one single and clean line of entry.

I looked at the woman, scarcely containing my disbelief. She was perfect. At least to my recollection, I had never been this near to a woman of this caliber. Every ounce of her body screamed sex, but in a peculiarly expensive way. She was like the perfect whore. An incredible figure, thin, muscular and toned, young but with an air of sophistication, breast that were large and full, but not absurdly enormous. You could tell from her devilish smirk that she enjoyed sex, and was entirely open about it, but at the same time her diction and posture indicated good breeding and class. Of course she scarcely noticed me, except perhaps to mentally calculate how long it would take to get rid of me. Her pearly blue eyes were fixed on Alex's face. She threw back a lock of her silvery blond hair and giggled, causing her perfect little midriff to wiggle just a bit. I swore she looked like Jamie Pressley with bigger breasts.

Alex squinted his eyes and crinkled up his nose, looking the girl up and down as though he were inspecting her like an investor would a prized thoroughbred.

"I'm sorry." He said "But who are the Yankees?"

She joined us of course, but more out of her own volition, than by any invitation from Alex. I watched her and had to give her credit. She was expert in the way she played the flirtation game, capturing space between her and her prey with an easy manner, moving in shrewdly for the kill with soft touches on Alex's arm, placing her manicured fingers on his knees, leaning over to mischievously whisper a naughty word or two into his ear. As I watched her I had the strange and unpleasant feeling of jealousy. Jealousy of Alex, that he wielded such power and wealth so effortlessly and deeply envious of his control over the incredible female specimen who was now practically in his lap. At the same time, I was strangely jealous of the girl. I was Alex's new friend. He had found me on the airplane, and had invited me to sleep over at his place. Who was this woman to suddenly intervene? At the same time I realized I was jealous of her in a more complicated way as well.

I had never been so close to such an attractive woman. A normal male would feel raw animal desire. A wish to strip her of her clothing and fuck her until she screamed for mercy - - or more for that matter. I realized, in an inwardly humiliating way, that this was not at all what I was feeling. I didn't want to fuck her. I wanted get fucked like her. I wanted to be her. To own those incredible breasts, to laugh an easy laugh and have every man in the bar look at me. To giggle girlishly, exposing my flat belly for the world to see and desire, while I wore snakeskin Versace pants, and pretty lacy thong underwear beneath it. What was the matter with me? I thought to myself alarmed. Have I become that much of a fairy that when placed in a room swarming with incredible women my only reaction is too long to be one. I was even jealous that she was stealing my man. I looked down in my drink ashamed.

"Jeremy, it was a long flight, huh... Are you ready to go yet?" Alex's voice startled me from my self-loathing.

"Huh..." I said.

"I'm sorry... ahhh..." Alex hesitated.

"Estelle" The woman quickly filled in, her face looked as though she had been slapped.

"Yes, Estelle, well it was lovely to meet you, you really are a very charming young woman, but I will need to be going right now." Alex rose, and Estelle sort of half rose out of her seat. She was shocked. It must not be often that men willingly walk away from her. I inwardly celebrated.

"Unless..." Alex mentioned. Estelle leaned forward waiting anxiously for his next word. "Oh, I'm sure a nice girl like you wouldn't want to..." You could see Alex inwardly calculating, thinking of something.

"Want to what?" Estelle nearly screamed.

"Well you know, Jeremy and I were just going to go back to my place, maybe open up a bottle of something nice, put on some music... I dunno, it could be fun."

***

I could scarcely believe what was happening. Here I was, Jeremy from Queens, naked in a marble and tile Jacuzzi smoking cigarettes and drinking champagne with Alex and Estelle. Even though I had seen her in all stages of dress and undress, I was still having difficulty fathoming the perfection of her body. Was it legal to have belly that flat, and breasts that perfectly large. Not that she was shy about showing them. Estelle exhibited no squeamishness at all when Alex suggested we all go skinny dipping in the tub. She practically squealed as she dropped her clothes.

But as incredible as she was, I couldn't help but admit that I felt like the third wheel. Alex was sitting with his back against the tub, Estelle straddling his lap grinding her freshly waxed vagina against his dick under the water, while he squeezed the perfect orbs of her breasts, pinching her elongated pink nipple.

"Oh my god baby, I'm gonna cum just from rubbing against you. I just can't fucking wait to get that big dick inside me." She cooed, lest what they were doing be less than obvious to me.

His dick was big too. I had seen it before we got in the tub. I mean flaccid this thing hung down like a horse, full and meaty and swinging back and forth. I tried to hide mine as I jumped into the tub, but I could swear that Estelle stifled a laugh. I know for a fact she was taunting me when she was riding Alex. She looked over his shoulder as she cooed into his eye and looked me right in the fact.

"Fuck you are such a man. Look at you - - all this money, a perfect body and big huge fucking dick to boot." Making sure she didn't lose that connection you get when you really stare someone down, Estelle leered at me and said to Alex: "Nah, you're not a little fairy faggot are you. Not some pathetic little weakling of a man that works for other men. You'd never just sit and watch your friend feed his huge, massive cock into the hot pussy of some bitch, while you sat their and jacked off, what kind of a little sissy fag would do that."

I felt like saying "Uh hello, are you for real?" but of course she was for real, and she was right, I was watching, and I was getting turned on, and I couldn't help but touching myself, and as I did I couldn't help but think how much smaller I was than my new friend Alex, and as I thought about that, I thought about how turned on I was getting, and I realized I was turned on because I was imagining myself as Estelle, and imagining that that big fat Dick of Alex's was shoved up MY pussy instead. Of course I was always conscious of the fact that of course I didn't have a pussy, but that I sure felt like one wishing the things I was wishing for.

I watched transfixed as Alex backed up and out of the tile Jacuzzi, the water foaming around his calves, as he sat on the ledge. Estelle kneeled on the step of the hot tub an arm on each of Alex's thighs easing her perfectly pout lips over his thick shaft. Alex pulled her up and out of the tub until she straddled his dick. I was the spectator of course, but rock hard at the site, as Estelle reached behind her perfect ass cheeks and fitted Alex's big dick into her tight pussy.

"Oh, FUCK YES!" She yelled as she rocked her hips back and forth on Alex's lap. "You are such a fucking MAN." She shrieked.

I watched feeling more and more pathetic all the time. I watched as my new friend Alex fucked the most incredible woman I had ever seen, let alone seen naked. Estelle was one of those perfect creatures separated from the world of mortals. To this day, women like her had only existed for me in the pages of 'W' and on advertisements pinned to the sides of newspaper kiosks. They didn't exist in reality to be unclothed and ravished for the fun of it. And yet, I could tell that Estelle was getting ready to cum by her short breaths and her plaintive whinings. I held my breath waiting for the moment. Then Alex held her tight, pinning her down on his dick, keeping her from moving.

"Oh baby, come on baby, I want to cum baby. Keeeeeeep goooooooo- iiiiiinnnnng." Estelle cried.

"I got something even hotter, baby, just trust me."

Alex fumbled with the pile of his clothes behind him with one hand while he steadied Estelle by grasping the perfect globes of her ass with the other. He lit one of his thick smoked French Cigarettes, the smoke curling, purplish, in waving rings up through the air.

"Baby, this is REALLY fucking hot, you got to trust me on this, you'll never feel ANYthing like it, I promise." Alex said.

Estelle nodded and bit her lower lip, still yearning and eager to get off.

"I'm going to take a deep, deep hit off this special cigarette, and then I'm going to kiss you. When I kiss you, you inhale all of the smoke down deep into your lungs and hold it there. I'll be fucking you good the whole time. This is the important part, DON'T EXHALE, until you cum, and when you cum. I want you to kiss me back and exhale all the smoke into my mouth. Do you understand?"

Estelle nodded, nearly in a trance with lust. Alex began to slowly rock her back and forth on his dick, his shaft rubbing back and forth against her pink little button of a clit as it stretched open her girly hole, and filled her like a slut.

"Oh Baby, It's getting close... " Estelle yelled.

Alex grabbed the cigarette and sucked on it hard. Almost incredibly, he drew down the length of the tobacco with one giant toke, and flung the butt away across the tile floor of the poolroom. Grasping Estelle on the ass with one hand and behind her head with the other, he pulled her mouth toward him.

Connecting lips, Alex exhaled deeply. Crawly out of the hot tub on my hands and knees I saw Estelle's eyes go wide open like a deer in the headlights as Alex continued to rocket his hips up and down into her tight little snatch. Never did he let go of her head, and eyes still wide, I saw her body convulse, and her try to pull her head away. Within an instant, her expression went from ecstasy to terror. I grew uneasy fearing Alex was suffocating her, but finally, Estelle threw her shoulders back. Her arms shot strait out into the air for a moment before falling limp onto Alex's back as her chest contracted, and she exhaled into her mouth.

 

4. "Is she dead?" I asked.

Crying, in shock from the experience. By now, Alex had dragged Estelle's naked body into his sitting room. There she lay on in front of me on the couch.

"Don't be ridiculous." Alex said, buttoning his loose Prada pull- on cargo pants. "She's got goose bumps, can't you see. Dead people don't have goose bumps. Hup, she there - she just breathed."

I ran over and threw a thick woolen blanket over Estelle feeling embarrassed and ashamed at the same time.

"What is this, one of those roofie things? One of those date rape drugs? Why, why would you want to knock her out like that, I mean you already had her willingly? I don't want anything to do with this." I said starting to cry, feeling guilty though of course I had nothing to do with it.

"What are you talking about?" Said Alex. "What the devil is a roofie thing?" I heard the distinctive tone of a cellular phone. Alex pulled out a chrome Nokia from his pocket.

"Go." He said. I heard animated talking on the other side, as I tried to creep for the door.

"No, I never said such a thing." Alex explained to the caller patiently. "I never told you I had that kind of power... Listen, you had a nice little run there, what was it thirteen, fourteen years? Okay, only thirteen years, I understand. Well look, you called me, and I told you not to hold elections. That you were leaving too much to the other guys to determine... Of course I couldn't influence the elections, of course I didn't abandon you, you did this to yourself... Listen do you honestly think I am the only power in the universe? What do you take me for, omnipotent? In life there are winners and there are losers. You've had a nice run, but you didn't listen to me and now it's over... How do you suppose you would pay for something like that now? No... no... listen. My involvement in this situation is over. The situation is no longer palatable to me... I'm afraid you are on your own on this one. What should you do? Well I suggest you run, there's got to be some place you can... Wait, hang on Milo... No... I said hang on."

Alex put the phone on the shoulder and looked across the room at me struggling with the doorknob.

"It's locked." He said to me with a simple and casual certainty. "I forgot to tell you, you can't get out. Give me one more second, I have this little thing with this client." He returned to his phone call.

"Milo, you should have left last week when you had a chance. Look if you don't have a rainy day plan, is that my fault? C'mon Milo, don't tell me there isn't a single Balkan country you can hide out in... well you know there's always Paraguay. Listen, LISTEN Milo, I'm a little busy right now. I suggest that you leave the country immediately, that's the same that I suggested last week... oh please! Strung up by your ankles, don't you think that is a little extreme. Okay, Milo - got to go." Alex put the phone in his pocket and said exasperated.

"Clients, Jeez! I have GOT to get that cell phone number changed!" I stared; my emotion wasn't exasperation, as much as it was terror.

"Oh yeah, what were we talking about..." he placed his hand on his chin and tapped his foot; glancing around the room he spotted Estelle.

"Estelle! Oh yeah, we were talking about Estelle. Oh she's not dead. She's in here." Alex said, pointing to his chest. "But soon, all things working out, I'm gonna eat her, and she'll be in here." Pointing to his stomach now. Spotting my perplexed and horrified face, Alex said,

"Oh stop it. Weren't you the one who's been asking what I do all night. All curious and wondering." Making a high pitched squeaky and yet convincing impression of me; Alex said: "What kind of work are you in Alex? Just exactly what do you do for a living Alex?" My mouth was agape.

"Well now you know. I'm a witch, a little demon, kind of a vampire. Don't even ASK how I got into it because it's a long story, and I do NOT have the patience to go through the whole thing. Lets just say, I've been doing this kind of stuff for a long, long time, hundreds, maybe thousands of years at least, and life gets a little boring. Yes, yes, I know, you're a little scared right now, and that's probably for the best because, you know, I just inhaled this girl's soul and all, and I have to eat souls to sustain myself, but I assure you, you Jeremy have nothing to worry about. In fact your fun is just beginning. You see, being a demon, a wish fulfiller, having all this power is fun, but you just live for SO damn LONG. And the days get SO damn BORING! You can't even imagine. So anyway, I play little games to amuse myself. I saw you on the plane with your little sissy, want to be a girl stories, and I figured, hey - here's a GREAT way to kill some time."

"You wanna be a girl Jeremy? Here's your chance. As I said, I sucked out Estelle's soul. Basically, when she came, she exhaled it into my lungs - and yeah, I AM that good baby. So anyway, I left her with enough to breath, and blah, blah, blah, and there she is on the couch. You can see her right. Seems all right, just asleep. You give me the word and I'll give gorgeous Estelle a big fat kiss and I'll exhale her right back the way she started. She'll wake up thinking she just had the best orgasm of her life, which by the way she did, and I'll have Sue the guard downstairs see you two to the door. And that will be the end of that."

"Or... " I said a little afraid to hear the answer, and guilty I was offering anything other than to immediately save Estelle and getting the hell out of there.

"I was hoping you would ask that. Now we can have some fun. The or is you can suck on that same cigarette, give me a big kiss, and when I exhale, I'll exhale YOU into Estelle - you'll be Estelle..."

"... And then you'll exhale Estelle into me?" I asked hesitantly and hopefully.

"No." Alex said, looking confused and furrowing his brow. "Why would I do that." He paused. "I'm gonna eat Estelle. I already told you, I'm hungry."

"But can't you just exhale me into Estelle, and Estelle into me, and then we both get to experience what it would be like to be the opposite sex, and then... no one would get hurt." I offered.

"Sure, I mean, I could do that - - but I'm not gonna. I mean. Listen, Estelle tastes good, I can kind of taste her right now. All yummy and young and succulent. The only reason I don't swallow her right off is because I want to play this little game."

"What Game?"

"Well I've killed tons of people you know. I mean, I kill for a living basically. And you know, even when I'm not killing myself, I'm always helping other people do things that will lead to lots of killing getting done. So you know. Killing no big deal to me. I don't really even get a thrill out of that part anymore, just that sometimes the souls taste so delicious, but that's kind of different right? But for you... I mean look at you; you're SUCH a typical, mid-thirties drone. I mean, where do you think you're gonna be in five years? I'll tell you, sitting in your apartment, still in the closet, secretly reading Nancy Drew novels, and wearing frilly underwear, while you pet your rapidly aging cat named Potato. Here I am, it's nothing to me, I could eat you both for all I care, but here I am and for the fun of it I'm gonna give you the chance to BE someone. And not just any old drone, but you get to be..."

Alex walked over to the couch and pulled the blanket off Estelle's perfect, and incredible 19 year old body.

"You get to be Estelle. Do you have any idea what life is like for a woman like Estelle, Jeremy? Do you have any idea how good it feels to be Estelle getting fucked? I know you don't have a clue, trapped in that plain little dumpy thirty year old drab MALE body. But here I am, I'm gonna let you be Estelle, and all you have to do is make the choice to kill her." Alex giggled to himself, and lit another one of his thick, purple smoked cigarettes. "I really am a little devil. This is almost too fun for words."

He spun around and took a deep, deep, deep inhale on the cigarette, drawing all the tobacco in so only a long gray ash hung from the cigarette holder. His body was immaculately sculpted, and without his shirt on I had to admit, he was one of the more attractive men I had ever seen. He held his arms out wide, still holding his breath, he whispered.

"What do you say tiger? Come on over and Kiss me."

I could swear, he had on a wicked, wicked smile.

 

5. I THOUGHT I’D LIVE FOREVER, NOW I’M NOT SO SURE

As though there were any choice.

It seemed so simple, everything I had ever wanted – ever wanted to make love to, everything I had ever wanted to be – was lying there, in a still-warm beautiful body slowly breathing at Alex’s feet.

So why was I hesitating to just walk over and kiss Alex?

Was it the kiss? I had never kissed another guy. Sure there was those two times in college when I messed around with that lacrosse player, but he was into playing it off like it wasn’t a gay thing, just pair of guys getting each other off, you know. So of all the things that I could focus on, it seemed sort of strange to be focusing on the fact that this guy had just asked me to kiss. I mean, I sort of glossed over the fact that I had apparently watched some soul stealing demon in action with a budding porn starlet, he had literally fucked the soul out of her with some demon donkey dong, but all I could focus on was the kiss. In fact I was not even thinking about the choice; it was so obvious and so right to be in that body that the choice was so simple as to not even merit a "duh." But I could not get over the kiss.

Or maybe I could n’t accept was it that this kiss and its abandonment of my life represented failure? After all, it was my life, and I had accomplished so much, even though my super-successful uber-father had never given my PhD any sort of credit, and my mother’s only comment was that I could now wear one of those corduroy jackets with the suede elbow patches. Even if they thought that grad school just gave away doctorates, I know how hard I had worked. Becoming a teenaged fuck muffin would be throwing away all of the effort.

Or maybe it was that the whole situation had just gotten too bizarre; I was ready to walk away.

"I, I ,I just . . . don’t know."

"After all I’ve done you for you, you will just walk away?" he said. "I don’t think so. Get back here right now."

That Sleater Kinney lyric really did describe me perfectly: "close my mouth was I born to accommodate?" Any difficult situation, I would always give in to avoid conflict.

I took one trembling, naked step forward, and melted into his kiss.

 

6. CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES, THIS IS MY LAST RESORT

I was shocked that he was serious about cutting up the Jeremy body.

The strangest part of it all was how unfamiliar my own former body looked. I guess it’s logical; after all the best that you ever see of yourself are bits and pieces, or maybe a mirror image. Seeing it from a new set of eyes, though, was really quite different.

"I’m serious, the spell requires that you cut up the body," he said, handing me a knife. "Get to work."

Sue, his manservant, had dragged the body to the oversized Jacuzzi tub that was now drained of water.

Strangely, the cutting process was simple after the first cut. It was all mechanical, kind of like making a really weird dinner, like the first time you cooked Thai, or brisket, because it was easy to focus on cutting up this inanimate object, and not think of it as a person.

And all of that was sort of funny because I always spent so much time cleaning. It was the one thing that I was really really good at. By the time I had graduated college, I had virtually double majored in cleaning.

Grass stains, soaked in cold, soapy water, wash clean.

Bleach most clothes that say no bleach. The color won’t change much, if at all, and they are guaranteed to be completely clean.

Pre-soak. Always pre-soak.

"Cut the face off," he said.

His words jolted me back to reality from the mindless. I was in a bit of a trance, not focusing on the fact of what I was doing. Had I not been able to turn my consciousness off and go about the grizzly business of finishing what was required for the spell, I probably would have gone mad.

"Cut the face off," he said again, more insistently.

"What?"

"Here, take this exacto knife and cut the face off."

"Do I have to?"

"It’s part of the spell," he said.

Sue snuffled again in the corner.

 

7. THE ONLY TIME YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE IS WHEN YOU’VE FALLEN FAST ASLEEP

"So, what do you think?" Alex asked. The carcass was fully, finally dismembered, and I had just finished washing my new, naked, 18 year-old gorgeous body.

I had a strange thought: how would famous Fictionmania authors describe the moment? Would they focus on the changes, on the clothes? What it was like to have breasts? To be shorter?

Would some wonder whether this was a bimbo body? You know the types, they develop the sexual proclivities of a character based on how she looks. Like the more attractive she is, the more slutty she is. As though women worried about being attractive just to be come receptacles.

I looked into the full length mirror and thought about the Professor. How would he describe this? Shit, he’d be useless, because his transition scenes always focused on the feelings of panty hose and one inch heels while driving a minivan, as though each of his characters was turned into a librarian or a soccer mom on her way to the Lutheran Church social.

Would Melissa Virus be able to describe this scene in a characteristically brilliant way, with some turn of phrase like "wet electricity" to describe the feeling of my new sex?

How would Vickie Tern describe it? "Do it – don’t stress out about being a girly little queen – become one!" She was even more worthless to this; I really was a girl. There was no need for contrived plot lines to take an otherwise normal, red-blooded heterosexual into a dick sucking tranny girl in under 100 pages.

I was there, staring back at a gorgeous body in the mirror, rolling my hips side to side as I struck model pose after model pose.

Alex clearing his throat brought me back to reality.

I looked at him, and the practicalities of my new life struck me. "Wow, I don’t know how I will go back to my old life, I mean after all, I’m a girl now," I said, cupping my ample Estelle breasts with my slim fingered hands.

The big guy in the corner snuffled.

"That’s cute," he said. "You don’t need to worry about your old job, after all you have a new one."

"A new one?" I said.

"Yes, you have a new job, a new life, a new identity." He paused, looked at me, then began again. "Look at you, you don’t really think that anyone would take you seriously as a junior project manager at some dopey middle market company?"

"But it’s still me, I still know just as much as ever."

"Which is to say that you know nothing. No one listened to you anyway. As Jeremy, sometimes you managed to make a point through luck or persistence, but no one will miss you."

"But, but. . . what will I do?" I felt emotion welling. Not that it was a different sort of emotional reaction, but I just felt helpless in the same ways that I used to feel as Jeremy. "Project management is all I know; I can’t do something else; it’s just not right." I was crying.

"Estelle, I am not bargaining with you," Alex said.

"You have to," I said between sobs. "I’ll go to the police, they’ll be so excited to capture the person responsible for the lower east side bodies that have been turning up dismembered."

"And what will you tell them what exactly?" the increasingly evil, implacable demon said.

"Well, I’ll tell them what you did to me," I said.

"Oh really?" he said, amused with his head cocked and his eyebrows raised. "As I recall, you are the one who did everything to poor Jeremy." It was strange hearing him talk about me as though I were not there; I may have become a beautiful girl but this was starting to feel familiar, just like grammar school all over again. "So I can almost see the scene now – a beautiful eighteen year old girl named Estelle goes to the police station, claiming to have the soul of a man whose body she dismembered as part of some sort of devil spell."

He paused to give me his incredulous look again, then continued.

"Don’t forget Estelle, you were seen leaving with poor dead Jeremy last night. So Sue," he said, looking at the large black man in the corner, " I have a lot to fear here, don’t I? I’m just the guy who brought poor Jeremy to the bar – nice boy, met him on a plane that night. He and Estelle – and she seemed like an insane little whore -- obviously hit it off. Won’t the headlines be delicious? Vamp tramp kills lover? But go ahead Estelle, it would be sort of funny."

There was a big pause as he stared at me, and watched my ego deflate as my last plan for gaining control of the situation evaporated. I was sobbing at my fate.

"No Estelle, here is what you’ll do. You work in my business now. The wish fulfillment business. It’s time for your first assignment. Sue here will drive you out to your first date."

He paused again, seeming to enjoy the fact that he now had complete control of the situation.

"Oh I know, I know," Alex said. "In those stories you love, this is the part where the helpful male friend, your business partner, your frat brother, your best buddy, begins to emerge as your love interest. He counsels you by saying ‘everything will be ok, we’ll find a way to manage.’ Well, can you tell the readers out there what the problem with that plot convention is?"

"Um . . ."

"That’s right, you don’t have that friend. There are no frat brothers, and there will be no sweet romance with an old friend. There won’t be any emotional rescue through which you rationalize the fact that you are prime piece of fuck meat."

The word fuck never sounded so harsh.

"Good, with that out of the way, Sue can help you get ready."

 

8. SUFFOCATION, NO BREATHING.

It was a large house. The wind was blowing in, a hard November wind, straight off the ocean. I can never keep my Hamptons straight – whether it was Bridgehampton, East Hampton. I don’t know.

After helping me dress in a thin white, diaphanous dress and small open toed sandals, Sue drove me out there in the Mercedes, silently chuckling to himself the whole way, with some tape of what sounded like reggae, with lyrics in French or a French-sounding language playing. He bobbed his big, bald head slowly in time with the beat, mumbling to himself under his breath, occasionally deigning to look over at me, heavy lidded glances from the corners of his eyes, followed by that same amused snuffling sound that he made back at the apartment. We went like that for the ride out of the City.

As I walked away. I walked up the crushed stone path, the gravel crunching under my sandals. I was about twenty paces from the car. "Hey little girl," he said, with a thick Franco-phone accent. I was surprised because I had never listen to him speak before. Sure I had heard a few words, but not really listened for an accent, but there it was, quite thick. I admit to an American prejudice – it was weird hearing a black person speak with a foreign accent. As a white person, I had sort of two models of the way black people spoke – the "yo yo yo" ghetto slang thing, and the affect-less neutrality of say a Bill Cosby accent. A black person sounding French threw me. And yeah, I felt a moment of white guilt for thinking that.

"Little girl," he said. "Make no mistake - Mr. Alex will let you be scared, he will let you be hurt, but he will not let you die. Now go in, it’s not locked." I guess he was trying to comfort me, judging by the earnest glimmer in his eyes, but standing there alone, with the frigid salt breeze cutting through me, he freaked the shit out me as said that, nodded, then drove off. I stood there for a few moments, becoming conscious of the cold wind blowing off the Atlantic, cutting through the thin white dress as I watched the black Mercedes roll down the access road, softly crunching gravel as it turned onto the main road and disappeared into the fog, Sue’s large head bobbing in that same reggae rhythm the whole time.

I walked into the house, and sure enough, this enormous mansion with a security system that must rival the Pentagon was unlocked, the security panel beside the door was covered with lights, buttons and indicators, all of which were dark.

The door opened into a two story foyer, 400 square feet, with a stair case to the right. I walked around the first floor, conscious that every step with the hard-soled sandals echoed for miles off the cold marble floor. On the side of the house that faced the water, each wall had huge floor to ceiling windows, all partly opened, with diaphanous drapes blowing inward with each gust off the Ocean. It smelled fresh and salty all at the same time, in the way that well maintained beach houses did. I took another step from the marble on to an inlaid hard wood floor. I jumped up and let out a yelp when I heard the floor squeak.

I took another step, and the floor squeaked again, and again I let out another yelp, this time less loud.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up

I walked into the next room, and sat on the one piece of furniture, a large chair covered in a white drop cloth. I felt every inch of my body as I curled up into a tight fetal ball, as though the tighter I wound myself, the better my fate would be. I concentrated on my breathing. Each breath long and deep, but inhaled and released as quietly as possible.

I counted each breath, to keep myself sharp and to keep focused. I reached a hundred breathes in what felt like fifteen seconds. I kept counting, breathing in, breathing out. As I reached a thousand I realized that I had begun to relax. The last memory that I had was when I reached about twenty five hundred, my comfort growing as the count went higher and higher, my focus the key to my survival of the situation, as though my ability to concentrate on this point

I dreamed that I met Estelle, and she was pissed. She met me in that fog shrouded dream world where you feel that you are in some place familiar that is wholly without details. She slapped me, and I was conscious that the slap was loud and painful, but I was removed from feeling. The strange thing was that I did not really see her – she had no face, no form, no substance – but I knew that there was a presence that was Estelle. She shouted, words that flowed like choppy water washing ashore, as though her words were the wake of a boat, breaking on the beach some time after the boat went by.

"You are so weak," she said. "You were weak as a man, and now you are even weaker as me. Sitting here afraid, just waiting for something to happen to you, you do not deserve my body."

I heard other voices, close, muffled voices, interrupting Estelle.

"I can’t change what happened and neither can you. But you damn well better fucking deserve it," she said.

She faded and was gone

My eyes snapped open, and I was back in the room, in my fetal position. I saw figures, shadowy, moving in front of the curtains. My head shot up, and so did my pulse.

"There she is," said a gruff voice.

I was up and moving, the sandals pumping as my feet carried me back towards the foyer, and away from the figures. I heard them behind me, their heavy footfalls booming off the floor and echoing through the house. I turned and ran up the stairs, not conscious of anything, moving and reacting.

I heard them behind me, my focus not allowing me to turn and look. I kept moving, and turned right at the top of the stairs

"Get her," one voice hissed.

I sprinted, as fast as I could, heading for a door at the end of the hall, the handle almost in my hand, when I stopped. Not willingly, but someone grabbed the dress, and held me. My inertia kept me moving forward, and my body pushed into the now immobile dress. I lost my balance, and fell towards the floor, my long athletic legs splayed under me.

Strong hands pulled me up then turned me around. There were three or four of them, each was wearing black sweaters, black pants and a ski mask, like the stereotype of 1970’s terrorists off for a skiing vacation or an Olympic slaying. The one behind me took my hands apart on either side of my body, behind me. Two others came up and each took a leg.

"We have her, boss," one of the men said.

From the darkness, a fourth came up, obviously the leader. He moved more slowly, and stepped up, close enough to be seen and stopped. His head went up, then down, eyes trailing all down my body. It was then I became conscious of how hard I was breathing. He moved slowly, walking around me, slow deliberate steps with heavy foot falls. The sound of his heels as he walked, with each step in time with three or four of my ragged gasps for air.

He came around the front, and pulled off his ski mask. He was fair skinned, with wavy black hair cut close to his scalp. His face looked moist with the effort of chasing me down. He also looked familiar in the way that powerful people you have never seen before look familiar because every Senator, every big company CEO and every wealthy investor comes from essentially the same mold.

He nodded slowly, and undid his belt. My eyes were wide with terror as he pulled his heavy leather belt off, stopping at loop on his pants with exaggerated calm, demonstrating his absolute control over the situation, and his enjoyment of that fact. Even though I knew what it meant, I was desperate for him to just get his belt off because he was lingering, revelling in his power over me, over the men holding me, over the moment. The belt finally off, he smirked, and started swinging it slowly in front of him – figure eights in the air between us. He was moving slowly, but I could still feel the breeze as he quickened his pace. He took a step closer and the tip of the belt started to brush against my dress, making small slapping noises as it hit. I couldn’t feel it, but the noise let me know that he was close, very close to me with the belt.

He stopped and put the belt around his neck. "So," he said, with a vaguely Mediterranean accent "let me see what Mr. Alex has done for me this time." He stepped forward, and put one hand on the straps of the dress on each shoulder. He pulled them forward, until the dress was taunt against my back, then he pulled his hands apart, tearing the dress several inches in the center of the front, plunging even further down my cleavage. The rush of suddenly cold air against my chest, warm from the attempt to escape, was a shock and I gasped.

"Good," he said. "I like a woman not used to having her dress ripped." He chuckled, and moved his hands lower, to the point between my breasts where the rip stopped. Again he pulled the dress towards him, then pulled his hands apart, splitting the dress even further down. He kept this process going, tearing down several inches at a time until the dress was torn in half, hanging open. Then he stepped back, and took the belt from his neck, again swinging it figure eight style again. He sped up, moving it faster as he came closer to me. The belt brushed against me a few times; never hard, but always enough to remind me that he was there, and I was powerless. And with each swing I felt the rush of the breeze across my skin, still damp from the perspiration inspiring dash.

Then he pulled it back, and swung much harder. As it came down, I whelped, and winced, closing my eyes. The belt whooshed past my face, and the left side of my dress was hit, and fell away, leaving me untouched and terrified. An instant later the belt struck again, rushing cold air past me, and smacked the other half of my tattered dress away from my body.

And you would think that this moment that I would feel totally removed from my former reality.

I won’t waste your time talking about my past but belts are familiar.

The man then nodded, and the two men holding my legs lifted and spread them, despite my near constant squirming, I still could not loosen their iron grips.

The leader then came up, pulled down his pants. From my perspective, I could not see his erection, but I saw his arm moving as he stroked himself. He stepped out of his shoes, then out of his pants.

I jumped when I felt it. He had his dick – hard – in his left hand, and touched the inside of my right thigh. There was a drop of moisture on the tip, and it was a combination of sensations. The liquid was cold, his dick was hot, almost throbbing. I felt my breath catch, and I strained to see, but the men holding me had me angled so that I could only see my own struggles.

Then he spit on himself. Looking at me, in the eyes when he did it. He then rubbed himself around me. I felt the spongy hard warmth of him, tracing a soft line around me

All this shit was flooding back: my Estelle dream, Alex’s laughter, Sue’s bobbing head

This was wrong. I had a body built to fuck, but I had lost all control: of my life, of my destiny; I had even lost control of my new found pussy.

Something inside me just snapped.

At first I was embarrassed that my new vagina seemed to lubricate itself. I felt as he traced his throbbing hardness against it, tracing a warm line up and down the contours of my new sex. If there were any fear before, it had evaporated, becoming instead a growing warmth that acknowledged a submission to a male dominion.

He was pushing my buttons and my body was responding, I was soaked, his fingers sliding with a bit more ease. He put his hand up against me. I was moaning into the air, as he continued to put himself in me. He repositioned his body and began moving his hand faster, as I rocked in the arms of the men.

"Glasses," he said. "big piles of glasses," he slurped, big mucusy breaths, sloppy with the wet loose chest cough sounds of aging done poorly. Poinding away as his mumbling got louder, his eyes tightly shut. "The half glasses of older people, the tiny wire frames of children, the frameless lenses of young doctors.

He shuddered, mumbled something, and I felt him stiffen inside of me and twitch, his hands spasming, gripping and releasing in a ballet of contraction as he came.

And you know, it was sort of funny. I mean, you read all these stories about some woman getting fucked who feels like "molten come" or "rivers of jism flowing in hot waves" into her. But I didn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I felt him twitch, but as for feeling the come, that must have been a fiction.

"Leave us, she’s broken." They shuffled off. He looked at me. "I have to do that, or they will demand a turn."

"Umm, thanks." I realized that he had to keep talking, or he might get bored, and call in the cavalry again. "Just out of curiousity, what was all that about glasses?"

"Oh that? Well, I wanted to keep from coming to quickly, so I focus on images. When I was growing up I remember seeing one of the first pictures that came out of the Holocaust – and it was pictures of the eyeglasses that victims threw into a big pile right before they went into the gas chamber. So whenever I think that I am about to come, I just focus on that image, yeah I know that it’s a little out there, but I want to make sure that I get every penny’s worth from you."

I sat there appalled, as I felt a cold slimy rivulet of this maniac’s spooge dribble out of me in a ticklish little trail.

I had to find something else to talk about, but I was at a loss. I stared into his face for one of those moments that feels like hours and passes almost instantaneously. It all became clear.

"Hey, you’re Seamus O’Malley, the guy responsible for those serialized dramas on television," I said. The rumors about Seamus being gay were not true, but all of the other stories about him being a complete freak obviously were. The shows were famous; the "San Antonio Vicar" series about a husband who watches his wife cheat on him with half the town, then starts to enjoy it. I didn’t say the rest of my thoughts because every critic had written what I was thinking: Seamus O’Malley’s work was pretentious and boring, but because he self-consciously tried to raise the artistic content of television, he acted as though each of these weekly serials was as good as Schindler’s List.

Fuck you, Seamus O’Malley, fuck your stupid San Antonio Vicar. You’re just a shitty little man who has to hire people to provide you with rapes. Your art is derivative, pointless and produced only to allow you to be more pretentious. You’ll go to your grave knowing this, and it’s your own fear of your own irrelevance that drives you to be such a turd. But maybe I was just pissed because as Jeremy I had worked on a project for O’Malley and all of the credit had gone to someone else.

But I wasn’t like the other kids growing up. See, I always knew how to control my anger. Other kids would get angry, hurt things, hurt each other. I was the one who would clean things.

Baking soda sprinkled on carpet absorbs the smell of smoke.

Seltzer water, blotted with patience, gets out red wine.

Toothpaste, flour and water fills small holes in a wall.

But I digress.

I don’t remember the cleaning, but like those mornings when you wake up with no recollection of particular dreams, yet knowing that you had dreamt, sometimes cleaning just seems to happen.

 

9. SURROUNDS IT WELLS UP IN MY EYES, SCREAMING VOICE IT LIES

You must be scratching your head at this point because I began all this by saying that this was the story of how I made a great new friend, and nothing here has fit that bill. Thinking back to how this all began is funny because I don’t know anything about Karen – that’s my friend’s name. On one level she has been doing her court-appointed job, but on another level she has helped me to see perhaps for the first time. After all isn’t friendship all about how the putative friend makes you feel about yourself? To that extent, she has been my best friend ever.

Maybe I am just accommodating because everyone else has been rather judgmental. Sure, I remember Estelle and having sex as her as clearly as if, well, it were yesterday, and I really don’t understand how I came back to this body – I cut it up after all. Well, something was cut up because of the residue they found in the drain pipe in Queens.

But you can’t deny reality forever can you?

Karen has been good. I mean I had read elsewhere about how the hypersexualization of my years of surfing for internet filth left human relationships vanilla and unsatisfying. She was the first one who really brought that home; who made the connection between my lack of connection, and well, you know. Didn’t you read the stories about those bags of body parts that turned the east side into a human abattoir?

So if I were funny my last song quote would be from that Smiths song – meat is murder – but Karen has pointed out – correctly – that I don’t make jokes to make other people comfortable, but instead I joke when I am uncomfortable.

Ha.

 

 

 

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