by Zoe Brown
“When did that happen?” I asked, pressing on towards what I felt was the meat of the story.
“Uh, well, ‘Aphrodite,’ first came out around the summer of ’15, right?” She checked the details with me. I shrugged and reached for my phone, punching up Google.
“Hmmm… yeah, that looks right.”
“Alright, so it was like… middle of November, 2015?” The foxy dark-haired girl leaning against my chest took a bite out of another whip-creamed strawberry and savored it. “I was thirty then.”
I gave a little start, glancing down at the young woman pillowed on top of me, and blinked. I mean, I’d seen almost-thirty ‘Greg’ turn into early-twenties-something ‘Brianna’ less than two nights ago, so I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised, but I still was. The young woman lying in my arms didn’t look like she could have been more than twenty-one, or maybe twenty-three at the most – certainly not thirty – and definitely not … what, thirty-three now?
Jade caught my surprise and gave a little giggle and a shimmy against me, “I know, right!? I look fantastic for a thirty-three-year-old, don’t you think? Not a day over… twenty-three! It’s kinda awesome. Also, it makes passing as someone totally different from your old self a hell of a lot easier, but… yeah, I was thirty then, and I’m thirty-three now! Though,” she scrunched up her perfect face with a thoughtful look, “I guess in a way, I’m kind of reliving my years as a twenty-something again, only this time in a girl-body, which is a wildly different experience, and I’m kinda having to relearn again a bunch of the adulting shit, from a female perspective, that hits you when you’re in your twenties, so… I don’t know, maybe inside I’m a lot closer to what I look like on the outside than my old, male body gives me any reason to be.” She shrugged and tossed the rest of the strawberry into her mouth. “Anyway.”
“So it was middle of November, 2015. ‘Aphrodite’ had been out on the street for a couple of months already, and a bunch of the girls in our little community had started using it now and again to make themselves look hotter on race nights and date nights, including one of my girlfriends at the time: Sofia Lorenzo. It was expensive, and a lot of times too expensive for the girls from our neighborhood to pay for at the corner drug store, so… a lot of the time when a girl could get her hand on the drug it was because some guy she was seeing had swiped it off of a shelf for her somewhere outside of the neighborhood. I did that for Sofia.”
“Now, not all the guys in our community approved of girls using TCEs to make themselves prettier; there were a bunch of gross and disgusting guys who insisted that only the girls who were ‘born beautiful’ deserved their attentions and that anyone who was using ‘drugs’ to make themselves hot was tricking the guys she was flirting with and needed to be taught a lesson, which usually meant uglying-her-up to the point where even TCEs couldn’t make her beautiful again—” Jade shuddered, horrified by the memories, and I squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, “—it was really fucked up, but most of the girls who were on ‘Aphrodite’ knew well enough to steer clear of guys like that, so it was something we just … let fester in the heart of our community, like in a hundred other communities at the time. And when people found out that guys could turn themselves into beautiful, completely-passable-even-while-having-sex girls by taking the drug? Things only got worse. A lot of homophobic and transphobic shit started coming out of the shadows, and things got really ugly for a while. There was this one big, Hungarian mother fucker, Mihály. He—.” She pronounced the Hungarian for Michael, Me-hial, but then cut herself off, pursing her lips for a moment.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I told her, giving her an out from the conversation. To be honest, I was more than a little disturbed myself. I’d been around, of course, when news of ‘Aphrodite’s’ unexpected side-effects in men had broken out, and I’d been aware of the ‘born-beautiful’ bullshit when it first broke out, but I’d never actually had to deal with it face-to-face. Jade made it sound like it had happened all around her, which actually made a horrible kind of sense: in a community that was too poor to avail itself of other, more expensive cosmetic options, and where being the best at traditional femininity and conventional beauty could make or break a girl’s position in her neighborhood, it made sense that so many young women would try to get their hands on ‘Aphrodite,’ and that the backlash from horrible men who lashed out any time young women took a little bit of control over their own sexualities and gender expressions out of male hands and into their own would be so concentrated in a neighborhood like that. It sounded awful.
“No, it’s alright, it’s a few years behind me now and I’ve got those experiences to thank for where I am now and who I am now, so…” The gorgeous young woman on my chest shrugged her shoulder, sipped some more wine, and carried on. “Anyway. Sofia had an older brother, Alessandro, who was twenty-six at the time. He wasn’t very well liked in the community. He was nerdy, he went to community college and kept kinda to himself most of the time, he was a bit soft and effeminate, he didn’t like cars, he didn’t care for racing, and he’d never had a girlfriend as far as anyone could remember. He was an easy target for the kind of masculinity-shaming that I got subjected to now and again for spending too much time with the pretty ladies, only he got it worse. There were all these rumors back then that Alessandro was gay, and since he never spoke up to defend himself or fought back when one of the bigger guys in the community set out to punish him for his… lack of manly-bullshit, or whatever the fuck, we all just sort of assumed that they were true. But it wasn’t ever really a big deal until the day that I came home from the garage to find Sofia fuming on my mom’s front porch, steaming mad because her older brother had stolen one of the bottles of ‘Aphrodite,’ that I’d originally stolen for her, claiming that he was going to give it to his girlfriend. Sofia was outraged; she hated her brother, she hated the embarrassment of being related to someone who was so universally picked on in the community, and she wanted me to go and beat him up and get the pills back for her.”
“And did you?”
Jade shook her head, huffing out a breath and ruffling her hair with her fingers as she started to get more agitated. “No fucking way,” she spat, angrily. “Look, as much as I was a… fucking shit storm of toxic, macho garbage, I had nothing against gay dudes, or whatever the fuck he was, and I wasn’t going to go beat him up for his bitchy younger sister, even if I was fucking her on the regular at the time. But I did plan to get the pills back. I’d gone halfway across the Bay for those, and had to outrun one fit fucking mall cop to get away with them, so I wasn’t gonna let her older brother just give them to some other girl. I went over to his apartment building, crept up the stairs towards his apartment, a lock-breaking wrench in my hands and hoping that he’d left the pills sitting out somewhere so that I could just take them and leave and get the pills back to Sofia before she had any more time to get upset over the whole affair. Only, as I started to get closer to the top of the stairs, I began hearing some…” Jade’s cheeks colored, and she licked her lips, “pretty erotic fucking moaning, coming from her older brother’s pad. The moans started out sounding pretty male at first, but as I got up to his door they began to… change, and started sounding a lot more… um… feminine, instead.”
“Oh shit,” I muttered, reaching out to the coffee table to pour myself another glass of wine. I’d seen that coming, of course, but I’d bet it had been kind of a shock to Jade – Giuliano – at the time.
“Yeah, no shit ‘oh shit,’” Jade snorted, grinning at me. “The news about guys taking ‘Aphrodite’ and turning into girls was still pretty new, but I had heard about it, and I had a pretty good idea what was happening on the other side of the door. But, um, instead of being freaked out about it, I… uh…”
“You were turned on, instead,” I guessed, remembering my own reaction to finding out that Jade was a gender-being Werewoman herself, a few nights back, at the bar.
“You betcha. I got
, like…” she made the shape of a hard, erect penis coming from her flat, empty, decidedly-female crotch with her hands, and then giggled slightly, amused by the ridiculousness, “like, rock fucking hard. But that just freaked me out, so before I knew what I was doing, I wrenched the lock loose, opened the door, and stormed inside to see Alessandro halfway through his transformation into becoming Alessandra, this hot, sexy girl who was like a prettier, girlier, more feminine version of his sister. She already had long hair, and a beautiful face, and she was shorter and smaller than she’d ever been as a guy, but the rest of her body was still male. We locked eyes when I came in, and saw him – or her – panic, but I shushed him-slash-her before she-slash-he could cry out and closed the door behind me, and then we locked eyes for a moment before the transformation made her back arch and breasts started to push their way out of her chest and her waist caved in and her hips widened and her ass sprouted and… I was fucking enraptured.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, having to discreetly adjust my crotch at her description of the events. “What did you do then?”
“Well, once her transformation was over, Alessandra and I had a really nice, long, pleasant talk, actually. She was so happy to be a girl, to be the version of herself that she had always wanted to be but had been afraid to try and become through the traditional medical means – she was kinda big, broad-shouldered, and heavy, as a guy, and might not have had much success in ‘passing,’ if you know what I mean – and just incredibly warm, womanly, and enchanting once she was in her female persona. She told me all about her years of aching, longing to be a girl, and losing all hope that she would ever have the chance, and about how the news that ‘Aphrodite’ could turn guys into gorgeous girls had been like a blessing from up above for her, and how she hadn’t been able to help herself when she’d seen a bottle of the drug sitting on top of her sister’s dresser back at their parent’s house… and then we just kept on talking, all night long. She told me all about herself – the real her, not the false face she’d been putting on for twenty-six years. She told me about her passion for art, and music, and how she was studying to get into art school so that she could become a professional, and how she’d never really been into guys – or girls – before but now that she was a girl she was looking at me with a whole new, more appreciative set of eyes…”
“And then you slept with her?” I smirked, rolling my eyes. Jade swatted up at my face with the back of her hand.
“No, not that night, you pig. I had just broken into her apartment, remember? But I was really fucking into her; I thought she was even more beautiful than her sister when she was on ‘Aphrodite,’ and a much more warm, kind, sensitive, soft-hearted, affectionate, and feminine person on the inside, and I was actually interested in a lot of what she had to say, and what she was thinking. Sofia and I were little more than fuck buddies who slept together a lot. She was using me for status within the community, and I knew that, but she was hot and she was beautiful, and I really loved being around feminine, beautiful women, so I’d been cool with that – up until I met ‘Alessandra.’ Now I suddenly wanted more. I didn’t know what ‘more’ exactly, but I knew it had something to do with Alessandra, so the next day I broke up with her sister, Sofia, and showed up at Alessandra’s apartment that evening carrying a bouquet of roses and with several more boxes of ‘Aphrodite’ in my hands.”
I laughed. “Nice move.”
“Thanks!” Jade leaned up and kissed me on the chin. “Alessandra stopped presenting as a guy pretty much immediately after that, and she and I became a couple pretty soon afterwards. Our first night in bed together – her first experience of having sex as a woman – was the most erotic and sensual experience that I’d ever enjoyed, and I couldn’t get enough of her, or she of me. The idea that this … hot, sexy, feminine girl who was lying naked beside me had wanted to be a girl, so badly, that she’d stolen some drugs from her own sister for the opportunity … it was a real fucking turn on. But… it was more than that, too.”
I felt the skin prickling on the back of my neck, and the hairs standing up on the back of my arms. “Yeah?” I had a feeling we were finally getting down to it. What had made Giuliano give up being a masculine, macho man, in love with a beautiful, enchanting young Werewoman like Alessandra, decide to give up masculinity all together and trade in his cock for a vagina and a pair of breasts instead? And was there any part of me that shared the same impulses?
“Yeah, um…” Jade muttered, choosing her next words carefully. “You know how… like, sometimes, when you find something you want, but you don’t understand what it is that you want, right away, so you just … you try to get close to it, to be around it all the time, to immerse yourself in it without really knowing why? Like… oh, with food!” She grabbed a strawberry off of the tray in front of us and then held it up before our faces. “When you want to eat something, but you can’t quite figure out what, so you try a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, until all of the sudden it just fucking hits you – ‘oh yeah! That’s what I want!’ –You know?”
I nodded, slowly, mutely. My skin was still prickling.
“Well, I had some really amazing fucking times with Alessandra, and I even started developing feelings for her. We went everywhere together. She started going out as a girl, both with me and on her own, even in our own neighborhood, showing up at the races and leaning into my car to kiss me before the starting signals went off, and I was thrilled to show her off to everyone. She really blossomed once she was able to be herself out in the world: she brightened up like a flower and made the whole world around her brighter, too. Everyone she came into contact with was enchanted by her, and how purely, simply happy she was just to be alive, to be herself, as a woman, in the world. She made friends with other girls down at the track, and in the beauty salon where she got a job, and guys all over the district started falling in love with her. Of course, we didn’t tell anyone who she’d been up until then, but we were stupid to think it wouldn’t get out, eventually – there were too many people in the neighborhood who knew things about Alessandro, and who knew I’d been dating his younger sister only a few weeks ago, and who could see a little bit of familial resemblance in Alessandra. There were suspicious looks now and again, and awkward questions that we didn’t always have good answers for. It didn’t take much fucking time before rumors started going around and somebody got my pissed off ex-girlfriend, Sofia, drunk, and then got her to out her older brother-turned-sister as a gender-bender to the rest of the community, and me as her ‘queer boy toy.’”
Jade blew out a breath and looked away again. “The ugly, disgusting homophobes and transphobes in the community got together and beat the shit out of me the very next day. Mihály was the worst. He got a tire chain, wrapped the end of it around his knuckles, and then used it to whip me over and over again until I was bloody, broken, bruised, and unconscious. Then he and the others tore apart the neighborhood looking for Alessandra. They never found her, but Mihály let everybody know that as soon as they did, they weren’t just going to stop at leaving her unconscious. Rape and murder were on the list for her, but nobody in the community would fucking stand up for her – not the cops, not the girls she’d befriended down at the track, or in the salon, back when no one knew who she was, not any of the guys who had flirted with her, and not even her own family. But Theo had my back, at least, and by extension, he got hers as well. I found out later that Alessandra spent the better part of a week cowering in the basement under Theo’s house, scared for her life but safe as long as she remained hidden, and that once he felt it was safe enough, he slipped her into his trunk and motored her out of the neighborhood and all the way out to Oakland, on the other side of the Bay.”
Chapter Eleven
“Wow, that really is one hell of a friend,” I told Jade, shaking my head in some amazement. For Theo to go against the rest of the guys on their crew, take that sort of risk, he had to have been.
“Yeah he was,” Jade smil
ed, affectionately, at the memory. But then her smile darkened again, and she sighed, running a hand through her inky black hair and frowning. “Alessandra never came back to the neighborhood, though. Apparently, Theo gave her a little money and she hopped on a train or bus or something and just got the fuck out of California all together, heading off to somewhere far, far away, somewhere where no one would know who – or what – she had once been, so that she could begin anew, start over, as herself this time. She left me a little note before she went, apologizing to me for leaving me behind, but explaining that she needed a fresh start. Theo handed the note to me after I got out of the hospital a couple of days later. I understood. I wasn’t happy about it, but I understood.”
“I moped around the community for months after that. My racing car was beat and smashed all to hell in front of my house, and I wasn’t allowed back into the garage where I’d worked after the news about me and Alessandra got around, or onto the race drag with the other guys. None of the cis girls in the community would have anything to do with me any longer, and all of the trans and-or gender-bending girls – if there were any in the community, aside from Alessandra – took off once the news of my epic queerbashing got around. The only person left in the community, apart from my mom and my siblings and one or two of my uncles, who would associate with me any more after that, once I’d become a social pariah, was Theo, who kept dragging me out of town to the Sonoma drag races, or across the bay over to the Oakland Port for some street racing there, down to San Juan and all that shit: anything to get me away from the neighborhood and the bad blood between me and the rest of my old crew, especially Mihály. I was grateful to Theo, and I enjoyed our adventures, but I was also starting to get mad. I felt cheated by the homophobes and the transphobes in our community, robbed of something beautiful and wonderful and warm and soft that felt right for me, something that I had barely just started to understand, and not having it any more, or any access to beauty, femininity, softness, womanhood or any of that shit now that I was a social pariah and on the outs with practically every girl in Mission, I started getting angry. And since I had no positive experience with how to manage my emotions back then, I did the ‘stupid macho masculine’ thing – I turned my anger against other people. I started getting into fights more. I started beating up on dudes who were bigger and meaner and tougher than me. I got pretty badly knocked up a time or two. And because Theo kept making it his business to stick with me, I kept getting him dragged into fights as well – fights he had no interest in, fights he was only in because he was there for me. I felt bad about that, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything more constructive with my anger – it just felt like there was a volcano bubbling up inside of me, threatening to explode unexpectedly at any moment.”
