Wallflower (Rear Entrance Video, #2)

by Heidi Belleau

  His technique wasn’t perfect, but neither was the webcam. He could do this. He could do this. He fought down the urge to pump himself up with some jumping jacks to the Rocky soundtrack.

  Instead, he threw himself into his computer chair and popped his headphones on over his satin headband—hmm, maybe Bobby needed some earbuds or a Bluetooth headset or something like that; something that didn’t interfere with the accessorizing—and logged on to Kingdom of Elves, purring into his microphone, “Hey there, boys, ready to kill some motherfucking demon spawn?”

  The raid took about three hours, and Rob practiced his Bobby voice by spending almost all three of them shouting orders and trading insults and baby-talking his way into getting more than was strictly his fair share of the loot, all in all spending far more time on voice chat than he normally ever would. Soon, though, the last rare item and gold coin had been divvied up, the last insult had been traded, the last in-joke had been recited. One by one, the members of their raid went their separate ways.

  “We still on for tonight?” Mike asked into Rob’s ear once they were alone.

  “Of course!” Rob trilled back. “You didn’t get cold feet, did you?”

  “I didn’t if you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “So . . . Skype?”

  Wow, Mike seemed just as nervous as Rob was about this whole thing. Was this where Rob found out that Mike had been a girl the whole time? Or a middle-aged man?

  Would serve you right.

  But then Mike’s webcam invitation opened in front of him and he wasn’t any of those things: he was just a very slightly pudgy white dude wearing a My Little Pony T-shirt and a huge set of expensive headphones, looking so cute and harmless it should have been criminal.

  Rob swallowed his Adam’s apple, took one last deep breath, and accepted the invitation.

  Mike’s mouth fell open, his blue eyes glued to his screen, not looking up to his webcam lens even once. Which kind of felt like he was staring at Rob’s tits. A patently ridiculous assumption since he didn’t have any, and what was tit-level on his end of the camera was face-level on Mike’s.

  “What?” Rob asked, and felt an awkward little laugh rise up in his throat.

  “Wow. Just wow.” Mike grinned.

  “What?” Rob asked again, but the heat in his cheeks was all Bobby, flattered down to the tips of his toes.

  “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

  Bobby ducked his head, brushing shyly at his bangs, and wasn’t it fucking weird that the fact that someone found him pretty seemed to have ten times more impact on him than the revelation that he could successfully pass? “Come on. I’m wearing a sweatshirt.”

  “I’m serious! You could be wearing a garbage bag and I’d still be saying that.”

  Bobby still couldn’t look at the camera. “Yeah, well, you say that now, but you should see me in the morning,” he hedged.

  “Babe, I would love that.”

  O. M. G. “You did not just say what I thought you said.”

  “What?”

  “You are totally hitting on me, Mike!”

  “I’m not!”

  “In what universe is ‘I want to see you when you wake up in the morning’ not a proposition?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Yeah, caught you, didn’t I? What, no comeback to that?”

  “God, I’m sorry, I guess I was, wasn’t I? Damn though, can you blame me? I mean, your voice is pretty cute but the real deal is even better.”

  Bobby laughed, drawing his knees up to his chest and hugging them. His computer chair swayed with the motion, the shut-in nerd version of a girl twisting on her ankles. “Okay, I forgive you.”

  “Good. So, will you forgive me if I ask you to . . .” Now Mike’s eyes flicked up to the camera. His pupils were huge, and at this angle Bobby could see the freckles across the bridge of his nose, the twitch of his tongue flicking out to wet his lower lip. No no no no no don’t you fucking dare, don’t you dare fucking finish that sentence. Don’t you dare try to turn this into cheap camsex.

  Before he knew what he was even doing, Rob was X-ing out of the webcam window. Blocking Mike’s accounts. Panting like he’d just dodged a fucking bullet.

  “That was close,” he said aloud, surprising himself with the masculine sound of his own voice.

  What was close? It wasn’t like Mike could force him to do anything. Rob could have just said no or changed the subject, after all. And yet saying no to Mike under false pretences—as if Rob’s refusal was for any reason other than the fact that he didn’t have tits to show off—seemed to make his whole act feel strangely artificial, like that was just one lie too many. And then Mike’s request of “Can I see your tits?” became a demand of “Prove you have them.”

  All those questions Rob was so afraid of people asking. All those suspicions and accusations.

  Shit. Being a part-time girl was a fucking minefield.

  And yet, as precarious as it was, Rob didn’t want to stop.

  Because it made him feel good, dammit. Confident. Pretty. Genuine, somehow, as contradictory as it sounded.

  He just . . . needed to find an outlet. Yeah, that.

  A place where he could safely be Bobby, where there was a low likelihood of anyone recognizing that Bobby and Robert were the same person. A place where nobody knew him, at least not yet, not as Robert. A place he went regularly enough that he could get some real practice on a consistent basis. A place where, if people noticed anything off or eccentric about him, they might be more likely to shrug it off.

  Which all led to Rear Entrance Video, of course.

  After all, he’d only been working there a few months, and only on his own for a couple of weeks. Nobody had seen him enough to know his name or his face, he didn’t think, but he was still at the store several times a week, which satisfied the consistent practice requirement. And as for the last bit, well. He was working the counter at a seedy porn store on Davie Street, at the heart of Vancouver’s gay village. After last night, Rob was pretty convinced of his ability to pass, but on the off chance that he didn’t, was there really anything remarkable about a cross-dressing Asian kid in that setting?

  He thought not.

  But if he was going to do this IRL, that meant committing to it. And committing to it meant he needed more than just a pink sweatshirt and a headband. He needed a wardrobe, one that could get him through a couple of days, one that included the stuff below the waist. He needed suitably girly hair. He needed . . . breasts.

  So that Saturday morning, he once again begged out of his sister’s post-yoga invitation. “I, uh,” he said, dabbing at his sweaty throat while she stared at him with her pretty, questioning eyes. “I have to go shopping. Today.”

  She perked up at that, smiling and nodding. “Well, I’ll go with you, then!”

  Shit. Should have expected that.

  “God knows you can’t be trusted to dress yourself,” she added, and her douchebag friend in the head-to-toe Lululemon menswear snorted.

  Rob put up both hands, bowing and ducking back, desperate to escape her circle of admirers and pleading gaze. “No, no, no. You go with your friends. Have smoothies. I’m going all the way out to Metrotown, you’ll end up wasting your entire day.”

  For every step he moved backward, though, Bernice took one forward. “It wouldn’t be a waste! I could, um, go to Zara!”

  “They have a Zara on Robson. No point bussing all the way out to Burnaby for that.”

  “Aha!” She prodded him in the chest. “But does the Zara on Robson have my kid brother there to hold my bags?”

  “Uh, not selling me on your company much there, Bernie,” he countered, but he realized that if he wanted to get her off his back, he was going to have to break out the big guns. Scare her off for real. “Besides. I’m already going with someone. My, uh . . . my boyfriend. Yeah.”

  Her expression glazed over, not quite comprehending, not at first, and then the realization came over her
face, her mouth falling open in surprise. “Your . . . Rob! Oh my God, Rob!”

  Rob wrinkled his nose, and whether it was at her overreaction or at the fact that this was the way he’d chosen to come out to her after all these years, he wasn’t sure. “Like you didn’t already know,” he said. Another step back, but this time Bernice was too stunned to follow.

  “Well, yeah,” she stammered, “But you hadn’t actually, y’know, said anything about it to me before this. And now you have a boyfriend?”

  “Seems like a good enough reason to come out, don’t you think?”

  She shook her head, unimpressed, but then seemingly decided not to press the issue. “Well, what’s his name? Can I meet him?”

  Ah, double shit. “Uh, sometime. Maybe. Look, I gotta go, I’m running late. Don’t wanna be responsible for us breaking up, do you?”

  Before she could reply, Rob turned tail and ran.

  On the train ride out to Metrotown in Burnaby, Rob got roughly thirty texts from Bernice, all of them begging for more details on his make-believe boyfriend, apologizing for not reacting better, wondering if he was okay, etc. He was starting to feel like an asshole, but telling any more lies, even just to support the existing ones, seemed counterproductive.

  “Whoops, my battery died!” he said aloud, and turned the phone off.

  Which was a bit of an asshole move on its own, now that he thought about it. Shit. Well, he’d avoid her for a couple days, lay low, and then construct a breakup as phoney as his imaginary boyfriend had ever been. As long as he didn’t let the story get convoluted, it should be okay, right?

  He had a sudden image of himself with an entire constructed relationship, a made-up man with made-up looks and made-up desires and made-up quirks, going on made-up dates with him, getting into made-up arguments, having made-up . . . make-ups?

  Better to keep the artificial constructions in his life limited to his time on the internet. Maybe not even that, anymore. He hadn’t yet figured out what to do about the whole Mike situation, but his gut was telling him to cancel his Kingdom of Elves account, or at least start afresh with a new name and a new guild. But then, maybe a couple days on blocks would cool Mike’s head so he didn’t push Rob’s boundaries again.

  And Rob wanted to be Bobby more of the time?

  Yes, yes, he did. No matter how complicated it got, no matter what it cost, he did. He’d figure out the details.

  One blessing to living in a city as liberal as Vancouver: it wasn’t too much of a hardship to find a store that catered to his particular needs. The aptly named Butterflies (because they transformed into something beautiful, get it?) did a weird trade, catering to drag queens, trans girls, and cisgender women requiring weaves or wigs. Rob bypassed the shelves of flashy man-sized high heels, and went straight to the little display of silicone bra inserts. If he was going to wear anything tighter-fitting than his sweatshirt, he needed boobs for his bra. Nothing excessive, of course, but just that little something. Itty Bitty Titty Committee versus flat as a boy—er, board.

  Next item: girlier hair. He stared at the wall of wigs and extensions, absolutely overwhelmed by options, until the Filipina salesgirl came to stand beside him. “Can I help you?” she asked, her sharp gaze landing on the bra inserts in his hand and then discreetly slipping away again without comment. Rob thought he’d be more embarrassed, but something about her put him at ease. He had a feeling he was hardly the first would-be cross-dresser to come across her threshold. Maybe this was the way his Rear Entrance Video customers felt.

  In which case, she felt about Rob the same way Rob felt about them. Okay. He could do this. After all, getting help and guidance from a real person was the whole reason he’d come here instead of shopping online. Well, that and getting his stuff faster and without the shipping charges.

  “Um, yeah, actually. I need something . . .” He circled his hand, trying to come up with the word. “For everyday, I guess? Easy to put in?”

  “Something that looks natural?”

  “Yeah!”

  “So no pink wigs, then.” She laughed, and the sound put Rob at ease.

  “Not an anime character, so yeah, maybe not.”

  “Sure! We have nice clip-in human hair extensions. Match your color. I show you how to use them here, then you can do it yourself at home. Very easy.”

  She led him to one of the store’s three salon chairs and he took a seat, trying not to meet the eye of the woman getting her weave sewn in in the seat next to him. Luckily, she didn’t even look up from the game of Angry Birds on her phone, so Rob took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He wasn’t going to be ashamed. He wasn’t going to be ashamed. He wasn’t going to be ashamed.

  The salesgirl brought him several samples, which she held up next to his face for his approval in the mirror. The language of texture and quality and human hair versus synthetic flew right over his head until finally the salesgirl clucked and asked him straight-up how much he wanted to spend. “I dunno, medium?” Rob had replied, and she’d laughed again before listing off price points.

  At last they settled on a full head of shoulder-length clip-ins, black and wispy, and Rob tried not to think too hard about whatever woman had sold her hair so his dreams to be Bobby could be realized. The salesgirl walked Rob through the process of clipping them in, how to blend them into his own shaggy hair, and he sat watching as inch by inch he was transformed. He couldn’t help but smile at himself. Even in his boy clothes, the long hair made him feel undeniably pretty. When he tossed it over his shoulder, the salesgirl applauded.

  Rob was too busy staring at himself in a mixture of awe and vanity to notice that the salesgirl had left his side, which meant he was surprised when she reappeared again with a photocopied neon pink slip of paper.

  “You take this to the hair supply store by the Bay,” she told him, pressing it into his hands. It was a list of hair products to buy. Care instructions. A return policy. All of it illustrated with a grainy photo of Beyoncé that whoever ran this store almost certainly did not have permission to use.

  He saluted her, and she was just about to lead him to the till when he caught her by the elbow. “So, uh . . . sorry for wasting your time, but can you maybe take them out now?”

  She clucked at him, then smiled in apology. “Of course.”

  He was sad to see them go so soon, teased by his own half-fulfilled transformation, but it turned out to be a good learning opportunity, because she guided him through how to unclip them, how to keep them neat and prevent them from tangling. At last, she wrapped them in tissue paper and led him to the till. He set the bra inserts right on the counter in front of her, making no apologies and offering no explanations.

  Turned out she didn’t need either. “Is this all?” she asked, “You need shoes? Nails?”

  The ol’ upsell, same as Rob asking if people wanted batteries or lube with that.

  It was easy, after that, to buy his girl clothes at the Chinese mall across the street from Metrotown. Easy even to buy bras, especially since he’d read a how-to on the internet and figured out his nonexistent cup size the night before. 34AA. He’d thought he’d have to offer up some excuse about buying them for a women’s center, or for his kid sister, or his girlfriend, anything but letting the salesgirl think he was some kind of sex pervert, but the confidence of those few minutes of seeing himself in the mirror with Bobby’s beautiful hair carried him through.

  When he’d reached the end of his list, he had an early dinner at the mall food court (mmm, food court pho), and hopped on the train back downtown, not just ready but excited for his first Bobby-shift at Rear Entrance Video.

  No apologies. No explanations.

  “You’re gonna be okay here on your own?” Noah asked, still lingering halfway out the door like he was afraid to leave. The guy had some serious puppy dog face going on, like he’d been hit on the nose with the newspaper one too many times.

  “Um, of course?” Rob, sitting behind the coun
ter, forced himself to smile. Wow, things between them had gotten awkward lately, and for what, because Rob was jealous of Noah’s new girlfriend? Well, Bobby sure as hell wouldn’t get all weird—plenty of fish in the metaphorical sea, and if Noah didn’t realize how amazing Bobby was, then the dude didn’t deserve him in the first place—so Rob wasn’t going to be that way either.

  There. Resolved. His next smile was more genuine. “Seriously, go. It’s your night off, isn’t it? You going out with Jenny?”

  Noah must have keyed into the lack of bitterness in Rob’s voice, or maybe the thought of Jenny just made him that happy, because he beamed. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

  Rob flapped his hands at him. “Then go! Go-go-go!”

  But just as he was about to leave, Noah paused. Half turned. “So we’re cool? You and me?”

  Thanks to that bit of Bobby inside him, they really, really were. “Yeah.” Rob smiled. “We are.”

  “Good. Goodgoodgood. Okay. Going.” Damn, Noah had it bad. Rob gave him a jaunty wave, almost enjoying Noah’s dopey puppy love all of a sudden, and then he was gone.

  Right. Time to set his plan into action. He put up the Back in 15 Minutes sign, grabbed his bag out from under the front counter, and hurried to the bathroom at the back of the store. Locked the door behind him.

  Stripped naked in more ways than one, he stared down at his backpack. Funny, how everything he needed to bring Bobby into existence—a massive, maybe even life-altering transformation—all fit into one measly bag.

  Well, one measly bag, plus Rob’s own spirit. After all, without the breath of Bobby inside him, all he had here was a bag of clothes and hair.

  Jeez, he was getting kinda philosophical about all this, wasn’t he? And he only had fifteen minutes, at least according to the sign. God only knew if Charlie VIP was standing outside the door right now, anxious to be let in. Or Sweatpants-and-boner Guy, pounding down the door with his dick.

  Bra and panties first. Rob tore the tags off them, fumbled with the bra a bit before figuring out the trick of doing up the hooks and eyes in the front of his chest first and then spinning the bra around and slipping his arms through the straps, and then stepped into the matching panties. Couldn’t help cupping his soft dick and balls through the floral pink cotton with its lace edging. No denying it, he loved the look of it, the way he filled out the front of the panties, nearly overflowing them, a bulge they weren’t meant to take but that looked so fucking good.