They were standing at the doorway to her apartment building, and he reached for her hand.
Bedamned if I'll let this guy get away with just a handshake, she thought. Before he knew what had hit him, she had reached down and kissed him full on the lips. Hard. His arms went around her without conscious volition. Her arms in turn wrapped around his skinny little body. Neither of them wanted to break the embrace.
"I guess there's no help for it," she sighed. "You might as well come on up. Let's get to know each other."
And they did get to know each other that night. In the biblical sense.
At dawn's first light he lay pinned beneath her massive body. She was stretched out prone atop him, her full weight pressing him deeply into the soft mattress. His right hand encircled her, clutching at the massive twin mounds of her ass. His head was buried between her breasts, and his penis was buried . . .
"I won't let you up. No! You're mine. You're my prisoner, my prisoner of love."
"Jen, darling, they'll be expecting me at work. I need that damned job to pay the rent."
"Fuck your job!"
"It's you I want to fuck, baby. Only you."
"You just said the magic words, Lonnie boy. I release you. Conditionally. Temporarily. Call me tonight, you hear?"
"Yes, dear."
Word got around. It always does. People started giving Lonnie strange looks. His friends delicately skirted the subject. At work, his merit raise somehow got buried in the paperwork. His neighbors whispered behind his back. He had violated one of society's most potent taboos -- he had taken a romantic interest in a fat woman. He was a loser.
Lonnie prided himself on his problem-solving abilities. And this was by no means the most fiendishly complicated problem he had ever tackled. It was, in fact, fairly straightforward: how could he get social sanction for his relationship with a fat woman?
He'd enlist Jen's help on this one. She had a fine logical mind and a much better grasp of the workings of the social machinery than he did. Surely they could come up with something if they put their heads together.
"Look, Jen. It doesn't much bother me if people give me a hard time about us being together. I've never been one to care what others think. But it really pisses me off that they're hassling you."
"Lonnie, I've had to put up with this sort of thing all my life. Fat! Gross and ugly! Morbidly obese! Blimp! Lose a hundred pounds, you fat pig!
"It's no longer acceptable to persecute ethnic minorities, but fat people are still fair game. We're everybody's scapegoat.
"And don't forget how much money there is in the weight loss industry. How much profit there is to be made off women who hate their bodies and hate themselves. These are powerful vested interests we're talking about."
"You're right on the money, Jen. I've done some research. It seems that the turnaround in public attitudes toward fat women began in the decade following World War II. The culprit was the fashion industry. Designing clothes for ever skinnier models and then brainwashing the American public that this was the ideal female look. There was money to be made. Big money."
"So, Lonnie, it's all an insidious conspiracy to exploit women and make money off them? That makes sense, I guess, but how can the two of us take on the whole world?"
"Looks hopeless, doesn't it babe? Good thing I've got an ace up my sleeve."
Lonnie had an ace, all right, but in fact it wasn't up his sleeve. The ace was an ex-lover of his, the very woman who had initiated him into the mysteries. He called her on a private line at the consulting firm she owned.
"Kari, darling, I need a small favor."
"Lonnie, is that you? Of course. It would tickle my fancy to help out my dear little sweetmeat. How's your love life lately, by the way?"
"No complaints, and that isn't what I need help with. Well, not directly, anyhow. What I'd like to know is whether there's any way to change society's attitude toward non-standard sized women. I'm deeply involved with a wonderful lady who just happens to be, well, let's say chubby, and we're both catching major flak over it."
"Lonnie, I can well understand both your problem and your predilection for classically voluptuous women. You and I both recall that you lost your virginity not so very long ago, with a slight assist from me as it happens, to one of those selfsame butterballs. And, yes, fat women and the men who love them happen to be on the receiving end of ridicule and outright persecution nowadays. Give me a little while to think on this."
Journalists are so easy to suborn. Chronically underappreciated, they respond gratefully to any opportunity to supplement their income.
Articles on the abrupt shift in the perception of feminine beauty began appearing in certain influential periodicals. It seemed that thin was no longer in. After a lapse of decades, men were once more finding attractive classically curvy women, women with breasts and pronounced hips. Women with lush, rounded posteriors. The anorexic "supermodel" look was passé. Doomed. "A new study calls into question previous findings that overweight persons are at risk for . . . " From June 5 issue of Scalpel (Official journal of the American Society of Physicians and Surgeons).
Clothing designers have always been notoriously corrupt. They follow orders and pocket the accompanying gratuity without breaking stride. FAT CHIC by J. Thurston McNeill Staff writer, Female Fashion Monthly
Thursday, June 24.
The rag trade hasn't seen anything like it since Christian Dior's New Look altered the landscape back in '48. The big news is that the industry has finally come to the earth-shattering realization that women have breasts and hips and round fannies. Unbelievable.
Models built like teenage boys from the waist down are suddenly oh-you-tee. Unemployment checks, anyone? Supermodel Olivia Keene was recently glimpsed at the deli counter stocking up on cheesecake and Boston cream pies. The Dorff Agency issued a call for classically feminine models, i.e., voluptuously chubby ones. It's like waking up and finding out the moon is made out of green cheese.
The big fall fashion shows in New York and Paris featured large-sized curvy women. Some of the models were even, horror of horrors, fat. Very fat. The women in the audience gave the designers a standing ovation. Sales of the new Fat Look reached record levels.
The hottest new song on TVM was a lover's lament about his girlfriend's weight loss.
THEM SKINNY BROAD BLUES © 2002 by Dorpat Diem
Ah got them skinny broad blues Mah honey a hunnert pounds she lose She so bony now, it hurt When y' cop a feel unner da skirt.
She done lose that cushy tush No more bounce-bounce when I push Aint got no more them swingin boobs Now they no biggern ice cubes.
Ah strickly meat-n-taters man Lahk some gravy on mah pan An dats for why I so much hate Just lil string beans on mah plate.
I dont no more want ta bang her She feel jest like da clothes hanger No more got that booty butt Now dat she a skinny slut.
A rapidly-growing organization, called Weight Gainers, opened offices in major cities. It emphasized maintaining a healthy "pleasingly plump" look. Women waited in long lines to join.
High-fat weight gain products appeared on supermarket shelves. Reports of anorexia and bulimia declined precipitously. Cars began sporting No Skinny Chicks bumper stickers.
Lonnie's friends have lately been telling him how lucky he is to have such a fine looking girlfriend. Jenna attracts admiring looks on the street. When they're together, people tell them what an attractive couple they make. They've been talking about making their relationship permanent.
"So, tell me, how did you pull it off, Kari?"
"No big deal, Lonnie boy. Consider it a minor exercise in societal re-engineering. I dug out an old dogeared copy of a research paper my mentor, Dr. Abelian, had written way back before you were born. He's known for his pioneering studies on the physiology of sex, but his lesser-known work on mass psychology and the behavior of crowds has some interesting implications. Just think of it this way -- people are sheep. You can herd them in the right direction if
you use the proper techniques."
"So, am I a sheep?"
"No, Lonnie. You're a goat. A randy old goat, too, as I recall from our time together. Too bad you're spoken for right now. But, I guess I don't stand much of a chance against your fat girlfriend."
"Well, maybe if you'd put on about a hundred pounds . . . "
* * *
GenderChanger
He pressed the blinking red button on the cube.
A luminous three-dimensional display popped up in mid-air. There were blocks of text in easy-to-read glowing green letters, and what looked like a side panel of multi-colored push-buttons. This had to be some kind of fancy hologram.
Mark XXIV GenderChanger™
Choose an Option: [1] PARTIAL CHANGE (genitalia only, secondary sex characteristics unaffected) [2] COMPLETE CHANGE (down to the cellular level, and inclusive of chromosomes and germ plasm) * [3] ADVANCED MODALITIES [4] HELP SCREEN (option currently selected)
* WARNING: Gender change /male-to-female/ renders user subject to menstruation, pregnancy, and associated inconveniences and medical risks. Refer to publication 2Y8246-03.
Usage instructions (simplified): [1] Select change mode (PARTIAL or COMPLETE). [2] Select RANGE/FOCUS . * [3] TIMER SCREEN will appear. Set timer for duration of change (30 minutes - 100 years). [4] Press (red flashing) EXECUTE button.
* NOTE: The default {0/0} (0 meters range / 0 degrees deflection) setting operates on an effective radius of 0.4 meter.
Features: [1] Baseline gender of target(s) autodetected. [2] Autorevert to baseline gender at expiration of timer setting. [3] Changes may be manually reversed by repeat operation of GenderChanger [tm].
* ADVISORY: Use of this device is restricted to authorized personnel.
Patents pending.
It had to be a hoax. An exceptionally clever hoax, but still a hoax.
Orville Morrison was pulling the midnight-to-eight shift, assigned to monitoring the main instrument console in the control room. His job was to log any unusual happenings, and if necessary, contact the watch officer on the intercom. Just before dawn he'd heard a shrieking whistle, then a loud pop just on the other side of the vault-like door to the linear accelerator chamber. He pulled open the access hatch to check, and there was this small shiny object sitting on the floor. It was a 1" silver-metal cube with a blinking red button protruding from its top surface.
Rumor had it that artifacts occasionally winked into existence in nuclear bombardment chambers at energies exceeding 100 billion electron volts. Apparently, random combinations of powerful magnetic fields and gamma ray bursts from high-energy particle collisions could tear a hole in the space-time fabric -- and this sometimes sucked various "objects" out of alternate universes or sidewise dimensions. The net effect was that Things From Elsewhere mysteriously materialized. Some wit had dubbed it the Reverse Bermuda Triangle Effect.
Morrison was an involuntary test subject. He had been demobilized and shipped back from Saigon after spouting off to his commanding officer in a drunken outburst that there was no way in hell the "police action" in Viet Nam could be won. It was LBJ's fucking war, Morrison had said, and he could damn well figure out a way to clean up the mess he'd created. Hastily bounced from the combat theater and threatened with brig time and a dishonorable discharge if he didn't cooperate, Morrison had been assigned to the U.S. Army reservation surrounding the Jarvis Rivermore labs as a technician-observer. This meant that, for all his Army Corps of Engineering training and experience, he was nothing but an expendable guinea pig. For all practical purposes, a prisoner.
Damn it! He'd done the full ROTC bit and come out of school with a second looey's commission. Had helped bulldoze roads through the jungle to keep supplies flowing to Ranger outposts and their alleged allies, the ARVN support troops. Had done a tour of duty and put his ass on the line for his country. But the friggin' Cong were still winning the war, and they'd keep right on winning the way things were going. Only a fool or a rear-echelon officer or a politician would think otherwise. Yeah, sure, and only a fool would speak his mind to a superior officer in this enlightened year of Our Lord, 1967. And Lord help us all.
The mystery cube was a GenderChanger, huh? Morrison had heard the stories about Christine Jorgenson, the weirdo who had gone gallivanting off to Sweden for a sex-change operation. Had his dong sliced off and an artificial pussy excavated between his legs. If the guy was a freak before the surgery, he was a double-damned freak afterwards. As if you could really change your sex.
Well, even if this was a hoax, he was curious. And he had little to lose. He'd already been cashiered out of the army under threat of court martial and blackmailed into being a closely-guarded lab rat. And he'd just now smuggled this gender-whatchamacallit out of the Institute lab and into his room. That was probably enough to earn him a twenty-year sentence at a very unpleasant place surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire. Fuck it. What did he owe the army assholes running this place, anyway? Nothing.
Morrison pressed [2] COMPLETE CHANGE, then set ONE HOUR on the timer screen. He took a deep breath, then punched the EXECUTE button. There was a momentary beep and the display vanished. So, that was it? It really was a hoax. Ha, ha, very funny.
All at once his skin began itching fiercely all over and he felt a powerful urge to urinate. Damn, he wasn't sure he could hold it in long enough to get to the bathroom down the hall. He sighed with relief as he unzipped his fly. There was something missing down there. Something very important.
His dick was gone! What the fuck was going on???
He had gender-changed himself, that was what was goin on. Default RANGE/FOCUS setting of {0/0} had affected his own body! He was well and truly fucked.
Damn. He was starting to wet himself. But how? Hot urine was trickling down the insides of his thighs. He tore open his pants and ripped down his underwear. THERE WAS A FUCKING HOLE BETWEEN HIS LEGS!
Emptying his bladder was an enormous relief. Or maybe her bladder. Orville Morrison was a woman, or seemed to have the body of a woman anyhow. Sitting down to piss (or pee, as the girls would say), was something he (she!) wasn't used to. And there was a whole lot else (s)he wasn't used to, either.
Breasts! They weren't all that big, as female breasts go, but they stuck out and they were soft. The nipples were pretty sensitive, too. And below the waist the hips flared out. And that ass! It had become rounded, maybe even pear-shaped. Morrison had always been partial to women with padded, pear-shaped asses, and now (s)he was sitting on one.
Someone was banging on the bathroom door. "You gonna be done pretty soon, Orv?"
Damn. It was his roommate, Carlos. They shared this one bathroom, along with the two other guys down the hall.
"Wait -- " Damn. His (her) voice was breaking. It seemed to have slipped into a higher register. Shit! Every part of him (her) must have gone female.
"Wait!" Morrison croaked it out of the back of the throat to make it sound more masculine. "I've got the shits. Got 'em bad. It could be a while. Probably a good long while. Use the upstairs bathroom, would you?"
"Fuck you, man. If I piss my pants, you get to buy me a new pair. Asshole." There was the sound of retreating footsteps.
Forty minutes had gone by since Morrison had pressed the damn blinking button. Wait out the rest of the hour locked in the bathroom and hope everything went back to normal. No sweat. But meanwhile . . .
Hey, might as well do a little, well, exploring. Morrison reached a hand down below, down there. . . . There was a little nubbin right there, right about where it ought to be, right at the top of the slit. Ah, yes, that was the clit. And it felt good. Rubbing it felt real nice. And the hole was starting to, well, get wet. Might just stick a finger in there and see how that goes. Interesting sensation.
Itching. His skin itched all over. What was that? The hole was closing up and his dick was starting to grow back. What a relief! And yep, by his watch the hour was just about up. He was turning back into a man.
So, what now? He
had this fantastic magic cube that could change a man into a woman, and presumably vice versa, but of what use was it to him? Just having it in his possession would probably get him in a mess of trouble. Even doing the "right thing" and giving it up to his supervisor likely wouldn't help. Just his knowledge of its existence put him in jeopardy. People who knew things they weren't supposed to know had a habit of disappearing. Permanently.
Escape! He had to get out of this place. In four days he was due for his next "furlough" off the military reservation, accompanied by a guard, of course. Fuck that. He wasn't about to let them strip-search him and maybe find the cube secreted in a body cavity. And he wasn't going to try and hide it in his quarters, which were methodically searched at unpredictable intervals. So what did that leave? Walking out of the base right under the noses of the guards . . . as a woman.
The Syntax of Seduction Page 29