A Few Things To Think About free porn video

A FEW THINGS TO THINK ABOUT by Alana Alsace I wanted to start this story at the good part: that massage with the strange rose scented oil. Without that, I wouldn't have a story to tell. And when I was living it, that was when it seemed like everything started. But a story and a life are two different things. In my life, I've done a lot of work to forget about the real beginning. I didn't know at the time, but looking back I can see that this story began in worst time of my whole life to that point. I was a programmer. I had been a programmer for years and years, but I was dogged by a feeling that I wasn't good enough. Every new project I started had to be that much more ambitious to make sure that this would be the one that would get rid of that feeling nipping at my heels. But it was never, ever enough. Naturally, my current project was the biggest yet. And it was a humdinger. My manager said that it was either going to be a huge success, or a flaming disaster. But it wasn't going well, and I was all alone. I'd go to work and walk straight to my desk to sit by myself and work as hard as I could. I didn't want anyone's help. Needing their help made me weak. What relations I did have with my colleagues weren't reassuring, either. My most recent meeting with my boss Dmitri was typical: "How are you doing this week?" "I'm feeling great. I'm working a lot of hours, but the sleep problems I was having are getting better. I'm getting a lot of work knocked out. I'm seeing a light at the end of the tunnel now, I'm feeling good. I'm optimistic." I don't know why I thought I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn't one. "Well, okay. I guess that's good. What happened with that pull request this week, though? Why was that late coming in?" "Oh, that was stressful. I barely got that into the release! I wish I had been more on top of it, but I'm glad we were able to get it in. That means the project is right on schedule." "Well." He paused for a moment, averting his eyes. Then he looked right at me: "That may be so, but this kind of schedule handling is not what we expect from engineers at your level." I nodded to show that I understood. We went on with the meeting and from then on I acted like he had never said that at all. # After work I always came straight home and got on the computer. I had friends in town, I guess, but I never saw them. Never made plans. I didn't date. I had a raging porn addiction. Video games until 4am sometimes. All this time I said to myself, "Look, all you need to do is finish this project. Maybe you hate the job, maybe your life is falling apart, maybe your apartment is a mess. If you finish this project, though, you can go to work and say, 'I did what I promised to do,' and leave with your head held high." This whole routine gave me a lot of stress. How could it not? I tried to fix it with massages. Like, one a week. Always an oil massage, an hour and a half. They would give me a little laminated picture and a dry erase marker so that I could circle a particular area of my body to work on. I wouldn't even bother to do that, though. Too much responsibility, no thanks. Let Luck take care of it. Pressure? "Hard" - yes, please. As hard as possible. Oh, Luck. Luck was my masseuse. I was this tall, middle aged, blonde bearded guy, and she was a sweet, quiet older Thai woman with shoulder length hair and a slightly stocky build. We weren't friends or anything, but I asked for her every time. Even if I didn't want to talk, I didn't want a completely anonymous therapist, either. So we were on a first name basis for such deep conversations as: "Undress and get under the covers, Mr. Alex." "Tea or water, Mr. Alex?" "Thank you, Luck." "Yes, that's great, Luck." Sometimes I'd get excited during our massages. She would go further and further up the leg, and would even brush against me. I'd fantasize about her doing more than inadvertent penis grazes, but I'd never dare ask for anything. After all, there was a sign on the front: "NO ILLEGAL SERVICES PROVIDED HERE." I can tell you now that if you see the same masseuse regularly like I did, they get to know you much better than you would think. I'm so happy that Luck knew me as well as she did, but I was so, so clueless. I trusted her completely, and half dreamed that she'd make all my problems go away. Which she did. Not without me asking her, though. # Anyway, that conversation with Dmitri? That was a Friday. I worked super late, as usual, and slept in late the next day. I don't know what I was planning that day, but after I had showered and everything, I was so restless. That conversation must have been bubbling around in my head. I had to get a massage. I needed one. So I called the parlor. This was not usual for me -- short notice is not how I do things. What the hell, though? It can't hurt to ask: Do you have appointments? Yes, we do. With Luck? Yes, we do. When? When can you come in? Fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes. I'm in luck. I was there in a flash. Next thing you know, I'm taking off my shoes, putting on spa sandals, and walking back to our usual room. And we have our usual conversation: "Hi Luck." "Hello, Alex. Please undress and get under the covers." "Sure thing." I hope they hadn't called her in early or inconvenienced her for my sake. Well, she didn't seem put out. I undressed and got under the covers face down. Usually when she comes back, she just gets to work. But this time she didn't. "Alex, your work is... not good, no?" I was caught off guard by the personal question, but like I said -- I trusted her. "Uh, no. No, Luck, it's not." "Life is not good?" That was getting a bit too far into my personal space, but here I was responding anyway: "No. No, it's not, Luck. Work is not going well, but it will get better. It will get better. Everything will get better when I finish up this project. I'm pretty close." Luck paused. I wonder what expression was on her face. "You want life to be better?" "Of course. I have faith. It always gets better." "Do you want me to help?" What? "Yeah. You help me every week, Luck." "Yes, but I can give you some special help. Do you want special help?" I thought about her soft hands around my thigh, moving against my cock and balls. "Yes. Yes, I want special help." "Okay, good." "Extra?" She laughed. "No, no. Free." # And then she got to work. She started with the sheets still covering me, Thai-style. I was relaxing already. Half the reason I liked the massages was that, for an hour and a half, I didn't have to do anything or think about what I should be doing. It was when she took the sheets off my upper body and started in on the oil massage that I noticed things were a little different. The oil smelled different: it was a rose scent. She applied it liberally to my upper back. The rose aroma was pungent, bracing. It was so much rose scent that it woke me up. My nostrils were so full of that fragrance that I could feel it deep in my sinuses. Her hands swirled around my arms and back, over my face, caressing my bearded cheeks, my temples, my receding hairline. I could feel my body even more than usual, but the way the tension was going out of my muscles was unfamiliar. You know how it can feel like you have a little knot in your muscle, and then the massage untangles that knot to make the muscle slack? This wasn't like that. She would pull along my arm, along my shoulder, and it would just.... slacken. The process was slow but inexorable, and soon all my muscles felt that same slack easiness. I can tell you now that my body was changing this whole time. That was the slack feeling: my bones were changing. I couldn't see it, though. Why? I was out of it, but in the same way you'd be out of it if you were getting a massage. My arms and legs were shorter, my shoulders became less broad, and I managed somehow to not notice any of it. I think that I did see it, I just... didn't acknowledge it. Sometime after that I was angry that I didn't do something, that I let myself miss my one chance to stop her. I think that's unfair to me, though. It's not like I was expecting it. It's not physically possible. I thought, I'm so relaxed, I must be seeing things. She's giving me "special help". Oh, I'll knock this project out of the park eventually, sure. Was I longer when I first got on top of this table? I must not remember correctly. If I'd had my head together, I'm not sure that Luck would have tried this in the first place. But I didn't. So by the time I was willing to object, it was already too late. Oh, and the feeling on my skin! The smallest and most subtle sensations spoke to me with this new oil. That's what I thought: the oil feels so, so slick against my skin this time. Luck's hands felt smooth and soft playing along my lower arm, against my hands and back. It was nice. She did the same with my legs, my feet. All those feelings were from my body hair thinning out, of course, and my skin becoming softer. She played up and down my calves and my inner and outer thigh. And she did stroke my groin, with clear intention this time. Her hands were all over my cock and balls; I got so hard that I tried to reach down and move it out of the way, but she swatted away my hand. That was when she pulled away the sheet and exposed me to the cold air. My hard-on flopped off to the side. She grabbed it with one hand and massaged my scrotum with the other. She squeezed my cock. I had secretly wanted this for a long time, and I was so excited about getting... a hand job? A blow job? About getting off, I guess. You can imagine my surprise when ever so gently, with my balls in her left hand, my cock in her right, she used her fingers and hands with one smooth motion to pull and splay my scrotum, and then firmly squeezed and massaged my shrinking hard cock down onto it. I knew something strange was definitely happening when she did that, but then this happened: she pushed her whole hand, fingers first, into my scrotum and then inside me. # Denial had done a lot of work in my life, but that was where it reached its breaking point. I did not handle it gracefully. I think I yelled? Something like, "Luck, what the fuck?" She had already pulled her hand out by the time I got my wits together enough to scramble away, grabbed the sheet at my side and pull it around me. "Special help, Alex. You said you wanted special help." She didn't seem frightened, which was weird. I stood up and got off the table. "I know what I said, but this is... That was..." I stopped in my tracks. Luck was right about the same height as I was. "...that was... what happened to me? Luck, what did you do to me?" With her hands held in front of her, she looked at me right in the eye. It reminded me of the way Dmitri had looked at me when he said that thing I ignored. Like she was shrugging with her eyes. "Don't worry, Alex. You needed special help. You said yes, please, give me special help. This is special help for you. You will be okay." My right hand was trying to figure out what happened to my penis. All I found was a tuft of pubic hair and... lips? I flushed and turned my mind to other things. "This is special help? Luck, what did you do to my... I thought you were going to give me a blow job?" Can you believe I asked that? I could have asked something like, "Why did you just fist me through my nutsack?" Sigh. I'm such a people pleaser. She laughed and smiled. "Alex, you know that's illegal. Why did you think I would do that?" "Why did you do this?" "Because I want to help you." That actually got me angry enough to maybe get into a bit of conflict. How dare she act like the perfect servant. "That's not okay, Luck. I didn't know what you were going to do. Why didn't you tell me? Or ask someone else to tell me, I guess? You should be undoing this right now. This is an accident, a miscommunication." "You don't think I know enough English to say what I was going to do to you?" "No, I don't." Probably not the best thing to say. "Well, I do." Hmm. "I can tell you exactly what I did to you. I could have told you before, too, but I didn't." Her voice was raised now. "And do you know why?" Being upbraided by a matronly Thai woman looking at me from eye level was a new experience for me. When she broke the thrust of my righteous anger, I broke down in confusion. "I don't know. I don't. I don't know, I don't know..." "Because you don't know what's good for you, Alex." "How can you know that? You barely know me." "Don't I?" I didn't know how to respond to that. I never imagined that she knew the slightest thing about me. "Every week you come here and we try to help you, and every week you are worse and worse. You keep on working harder and harder. I don't know what sort of job you have, but I can tell you it isn't getting you anywhere you want to be. I know, I can feel you." "That's not true, Luck, I'm... I've got it all under control. It's almost done." "Your way is not working, Alex." "It's working fine." "You are killing yourself. You are trying to be something you can't be." She patted the table for emphasis: "Special. Help. You have a special problem, Alex." I closed my eyes. "And this is your solution?" "No. This is something for you to think with for a while." "Well, I want to be back how I was." "I can do that." "But.. you won't?" "Not today. Today you will keep it. To think with." "And what is it I need to think about?" "Whether you want my solution." "Which is?" "Good question. What have I given you?" "Given me? You took my height, and my... my..." "You are here, Alex. You are fine, you will be okay. Many of the things that make you a man, though, you now instead have... things to think about." I felt my beard. "Not my beard, then. Or my voice." "Or your voice. Or your..." She pointed with her fingers back behind her hairline. "My receding hairline." "Right." "But I'm short. And I don't have a penis." "No. You are not short." "Uhh, look at me. I'm short, Luck." "And you are not missing a penis." I laughed. "Do you want me to show you?" "Alex, am I short because you looked down on me? No. Am I missing a penis? No! I'm me! I'm the right size and I have what I have. And so too with you." I looked down at my proportions, my legs, my hips. My feet. I looked at my hands. "And I have what I have." Luck nodded. "You are like a young woman." "And so the solution I'm supposed to think about is what?" "Alex, you are smart enough to know the answer to that question. But yes, the solution is that you come back and we finish our session." "And if I don't want your solution?" "Then you can return all these things." I looked down again. "But no boobs." She laughed. "Something to think with. This is a lot to think with, but not too much. You can still live your life the same way with all these things." I laughed. "You're kidding, right? How do I explain this?" "Oh, I don't know. Tell them you are in a secret science experiment." "A secret science experiment? To give men vaginas?" She rolled her eyes at me. "You have one week. Do what you want! But I think you should not spend it deciding how to answer questions about your private parts no one will ask." # When I left, my clothes were all the wrong size. I didn't dress well in the first place, so I went to a thrift store to pick up new jeans, tennis shoes, t-shirts -- just enough for one week. I figured out my shoe size. It was tiny. So was my shirt size. Even small men's t-shirts hung loose on my frame. The blue jeans were trickier. I didn't want to be caught in the women's section, but none of the men's jeans would stay on well. I found a pair of women's jeans that kinda sorta fit okay. One week, one pair of jeans -- this would have to do. My plan at that point was to make it through the week, and then go to Luck and get my old body back. The easiest thing to do would have been to take the week off, but with where things stood at work, I felt sure that I'd get fired for sure if I took a vacation like that without any advance warning or a doctor's note. So I'd have to go to work. I had no idea what I would tell them when they saw me in all my ridiculousness: six inches shorter, small hands and all. I figured that I could scramble through it for a week, and after that everything would be back to normal and things would be fine. I can't help but laugh at myself when I think about my plan. There I was buying size 7 shoes and struggling to find jeans that wouldn't fall off me. Yet all I could think about was my project. I was completely delusional. I even bought new underwear: more men's boxers, but in a smaller size. How dumb is that? # "Oh, it's all because of... a... secret science experiment." My HR rep Linda raised an eyebrow. "A secret science experiment?" "It's something that, ahh, I got roped into through a friend. A friend at UCSF." Linda shook her head. "Mr. Wells, your manager Dmitri got in touch with me this morning to let me know that you might have had a major life event that we needed to talk about. I'm glad he did, because I think he might be right. Are you going through some kind of transition?" "No, no no. I'm definitely not. Everything is fine and totally normal. I'm just doing this week long science experiment, and they have me doing this thing where I... I get to be short for a week." "Short for a week. With UCSF." She glanced at my hands. "How did they make you short?" "I, uhh. I don't know. And it's secret, I can't say." "And it will be over next week?" "Right." "Do you have a contact you can give us?" I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I really can't. It's secret, and I don't know why, and... you can't know." She sighed. "Well. Legally I'm sure they have to be able to give us some kind of contact. But legally, if you're going to be difficult about it, the company doesn't actually need that. All we really need is some assurance to protect the company. Can you sign a statement?" I exhaled. "Sure." They bought it. I had it all under control. # I suppose it sort of... was under control? I had isolated myself so much that all the consequences I feared so much never came to pass. Dmitri mentioned that I was shorter, and I had to give him the same line about the secret science experiment. He and my other colleagues bought that line even more easily than HR did. And yet things were different. People didn't take me as seriously. I would call them over to my desk for help and they would sort of ignore me. Conversations at lunch were different. I wasn't as big of a guy in a literal way -- people walked all over me. I tried speaking up more, and puffing myself up more. I got angrier. I was never any good at that, though, and it didn't work. I gave up and faded even more into the background, working even harder on the project that I knew would save my ass and prove my worth. Here's the funny thing: I was used to being this big guy and being able to speak up. When Luck did what she did to me, I thought it would make me even more miserable. I didn't know how I would live without this privilege, my big presence. But I liked it. I liked being small. I got to work on my own more. People expected less from me. The mountain of stress got a tiny, little bitty bit shorter. # So I mostly forgot about my other things to think about. I pretended that life was going exactly as it had been, and I spent a lot of time not thinking about my genitals or my tiny hands and feet. I couldn't pretend in the bathroom, though. So every few hours I would have what I thought was a surreal break from reality where I went into a bathroom stall and sat on a toilet to pee with a temporary vagina and pat it dry. How weird! I couldn't help but be fascinated as I sat there, though. How much time had I spent looking at my penis? And here I had something new. I was kind of turned on initially. It was like when I first found out my penis could get hard -- just play with it, you know? It felt so sensitive and... wet. I would stroke myself slowly, pushing my finger inside. I would smell it. What is it like being a teenage girl? Maybe they do these things? I don't know! I'll never know. I tried not to get up to too much funny business in the work bathroom. After the science experiment story successfully went over, I didn't want anyone coming up to me and saying something like, "Hey, Alex, about those squicky vagina sounds you were making in the bathroom..." On Wednesday, though, I was finishing up and found blood on the toilet paper. I hadn't seen it on my underwear. (Men's boxers don't show spotting very well, FYI. If you have a vagina, even a temporary one, for heaven's sake just wear women's underwear.) Thank god we have a trans friendly workplace, or I don't know how I'd have gotten away with finding a tampon. That was a strange little science experiment. I thought it would be hard to put in the tampon, but it was simple. I was freaking out so bad that someone would notice what I was doing. I hid everything! I was like a spy. Secret Period Man! By Friday, I was an old pro. I stole a bunch of tampons from the work bathroom, too, so I wouldn't have to buy tampons myself. (Because when people see a short man buying tampons, they immediately report a rogue vagina to the police.) But by then I had other problems. ` # I know after that last section that you want to know what I did at home, so fine. Yes, I masturbated, and yes it felt so good. I would slide my finger in and feel around, to get to know myself. Then I would find a spot that would feel unusually good. My little woman's fingertips felt good against it, and they felt even better the faster I slid them back and forth. I felt light headed, and I moaned, and I rubbed myself harder and harder, I felt like I would sneeze my skull off, and I yelled, and ugh. I shook. Masturbating isn't the greatest thing in the world, you know, but that first time it kind of is. I got to do it for the first time again. And I did it every single night. That day that Luck changed my body, I was terrified that I would miss my penis and I'd never get it back. I didn't miss it at all, though, and I never had a fantasy where I used it again. I didn't fantasize much about anything, actually. I just felt what I felt, and I was happy. Being excited was easy. But whenever I was done, I would look down at my body, the unfamiliar way my apple bottom spread out below me, at my soft, fatty mons, and I would think. I'd run my hands over each other, over my legs and my feet. I'd feel my Adam's apple and talk to myself: "Are you going crazy, Alex? What doesn't fit here? What isn't working? Is it this body?" It was a lot to think about. But at least I wasn't thinking about work anymore. # And then I got fired. "You will be extended a severance package proportional to your time here. Three months COBRA, unemployment services..." My face was blank. "What about the project?" Dmitri was there. "We'll make sure the project is taken care of, Alex." "I didn't write any documentation, though. I thought everything was on track." "Alex, this isn't about how much work you did or didn't do. Your behavior in this role hasn't met our expectations for someone at your level. That's all there is to it." I shook my head. "But..." Linda from HR spoke up: "We know this is not an easy transition to make, Alex, but you've been aware of this for months. Everything is documented and in order." I kept on shaking my head. "Can I say goodbye?" I can laugh at it now, at least. Who was it that I wanted to say goodbye to, anyway? I didn't have any friends! Oh, I was such an idiot. Things were so hard then. I was doing my best. # I was walked out in the early afternoon. They left me at the reception desk, where I sat there stunned for a moment. The receptionist noticed I was out of sorts. "Are you okay? Can I get you some water?" "Oh. Oh, thank you. But no, thank you, I'll be fine. Is there a bathroom out here I can go to?" "There's one down the hall and to your left." I didn't actually need to go to the bathroom, but I had to go somewhere. I felt like I was floating, I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. In the bathroom, I looked in the mirror. Even with my beard and hairline, my jawline was softer, my cheekbones less built up. As focused as I had been on trying to make everything work, I hadn't noticed. "Stay calm, Alex. This isn't as bad as you feel like it is right now. You'll get another job. You'll learn from this, you'll do better next time. The next big thing will be even better." I had said things like this so many times, but this time I could hear how ridiculous every word sounded. I looked at my face in the mirror. I looked at my hands, I looked down at my body, and suddenly I saw. My whole idea of how I'd finish the project, my image of myself as a... I don't know, a super hero worker of some kind. I had hollowed out my life to build this version of myself up for all these years, and after all this time it had only gotten harder to pull off. Now I didn't even have the job. All I had left was a beard, a receding hairline, a bad wardrobe, and a voice. They didn't look fake -- they felt fake. All I had to do was fight through one more day. I'd get my old body back, and I'd take it out to another job, another project. But why had I been fighting all this time? For all that work, what did I have? Who was I kidding? What would happen if I stopped fighting? What would happen if I let these last few things go? Would I be okay? Who can I trust? I pulled out my phone and called the massage parlor. Can I get an appointment with Luck? Yes, Luck. Please? Can you tell her that it's Alex? Now? Please? I don't know if she had an opening, or if she made time, but I showed up and she was there and we started talking. "I'm done, Luck. I've done enough thinking." "You have one more day, you know. That was what I told you." "I want to just do this, Luck. I... I like all the things you gave me to think about." I felt so silly saying that! In my baritone voice, of all things. It was pretty silly. "Do you?" "Yeah, I... I do." She nodded. "Okay. You are sure?" I swallowed. "I'm sure. Let's go ahead and do this." "What about your family?" "Oh. I don't know. I didn't think about that." "What will you do?" "Do? Oh, like, for a living?" "Yes, for money." "I don't know. I just lost my job, Luck." "Oh, Alex. I'm sorry." "It's okay, it's a good thing. I can see that now. Maybe I can get a different kind of programming job. Maybe I won't have to take it so seriously this time." "Is that what you want to do?" "Not really. But what else can I do?" She shrugged. "We don't get new girls that often, but usually we ask them if they want to learn to work here." "And what do they usually say?" "They usually say yes." "And what does it pay?" She shook her head. "Not much." "So where will I live?" "You can live with us." "Do they usually live with you?" She nodded her head. I looked to the ground. "And my family?" Luck put her hand out to my chin and pulled my eyes up to meet hers. "What kind of life do you want, Alex?" I sighed. "Not my old one." "A new one, then." "Yeah." She shook her head. "It's not easy to do. Work, life, we can help with. Family..." "Secret science experiment?" She frowned slightly. "Never lie to family." She wrapped me in her arms. "But maybe don't tell them everything, either." # What I did after that I didn't do perfectly. But if you have to do something, and you can't do it perfectly, you just have to do it anyway as best you can. My room was rent controlled, so it was month to month. That made that part painless: I wrote my landlord a check for next month's rent, and found a company that would take a fee to just clean out my place for me. Easy. The job was over, so that was easy, too. Assets were a little harder, but not that hard. Everything I owned was cash, so I arranged it with the bank to cash all my accounts out and send the money to my family. The family was the hard part. Dear Mom and Dad, I know we haven't talked much lately, but I've been so unhappy. I didn't want you to know. I knew it would only upset you. But now I have a chance to have a new life that I want more than anything. I don't know for sure what it will be like, but so far it's better than what I had. So I'm starting fresh. I'll have a new name, I don't know what. I won't see you again. I'm so sad to do this, but I don't think there's any other way. Please remember that I love you, and when you worry about me (I know you will), think about how much happier I must be. Love, Alex I wrote it out longhand. Sealed it in an envelope with a cashier's check for all my savings. I dropped it in the mailbox and walked around the corner to see Luck. # We started like we did before, with the same rose scented oil. I don't know if she needed to do a whole massage to finish up, but I'm glad she did anyway. I had been through so much in the past few days, and being taken care of meant a lot to me. She went hard on me, too, and that pain kept me from thinking about how crazy it was to take this step. I knew when I turned over that she would need to get to work on my chest somehow. How would that work? She pulled back the sheet and I turned over onto my back. After a moment looking at me she asked, "Are you ready?" And I nodded my head. But she didn't work on my chest. She came around to the top of the table and started working on my head and neck. More of the rose oil, and honestly it all felt the same as last time she worked on my face. But when she finished massaging my cheeks and scalp, she reached down with both hands to my neck. In the space of a few seconds, her hands had smoothed my Adam's apple away. Only then did she start on my chest. She put a generous amount of the rose oil in her hands and clapped them warmly onto me, one hand on each aureole. Right away the skin on my nipples felt hot, and at the same time Luck pressed down hard with her palms and moved them in a slow circular motion. She was leaning over me with as much body weight as she could apply. The heat and the pressure both hurt, a lot, so much that I cried out in pain -- in a higher pitch than I ever would have before. She let up a little bit at that yelp, but not completely. The burning eased up to more of a tingling sensation and spread out, my nipples growing out and at the same time underneath them my new breasts pushing back, a little more tissue in them each time Luck pushed down, firming and filling out with each press and release. There was pain, too, each time. I stopped pretending to be so stoic. I let myself moan and scream. It sounded awful, but it made me feel better to make that noise, and to hear my new voice. Everything was starting to make more sense, even if it hurt. After a bit, they were big enough that Luck wasn't pressing so much anymore. She was was massaging them, pulling and teasing them out, pulling her fingers softly from the outside in. It felt so good, and I was starting to get erect. They filled out one final bit, and then, slowly, she unexpectedly stopped. "All done." "Wait, all done?" "All done." I sat up straight and pulled the sheet over me. "My voice." I hadn't talked yet. I was caught off guard by the result. The pitch was higher, but I sounded like a boy. "I don't sound like a woman, Luck." "You don't know how to talk like a woman yet." "I thought I would, though." "It will take time. There is a lot you will need to learn. We can help, and we understand." I put my hand to my beard. "What about...?" She pantomimed pulling at her own face. I put my hand up and pulled at some of my beard hair, and with a little tug it painlessly popped right out. "Oh. Oh! Can you help?" We started pulling at my beard hair, and bit by bit it fell away. I was pulling tufts out at random. "What about my hair?" I asked. Her hand was almost done methodically clearing out the last few tufts, leaving it totally smooth behind. "Well, that we will need to shave." "Shave? I don't get to have long hair?" "You can. It will take time to grow, though." I don't know why, but the idea that I wouldn't have long hair that day and that I'd have to shave my head put me over the edge. I started to cry. Just a bit at first. But then that little bit got me thinking about my project, and how tall I had been, and how sad I had been, and how my parents must feel, and then I was crying more. I thought that was a lot of crying, but that rivulet of tears cut through me bit by bit, and when it reached my insides it hit an ocean of feelings I didn't even know was there, and I wanted to keep them inside but I couldn't anymore, I was already crying and the crying got worse and worse and they came out in a rush and before I knew it all this crud was spilling out. I was bawling and crying out to Luck, "Luck, Luck, what am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing here? Why couldn't I make it work? What's wrong with me?" She folded me into her arms and held me tight. "It's okay. There's nothing wrong. We'll take such good care of you. You are so courageous! Look at how beautiful you are! How lucky you are to be so young and beautiful. You have a new life ahead of you, with so many new things to do. I'm so proud of you, Alex." She wiped away my tears, but you couldn't tell. I gave a little ugly cry sniff and shook my head. "I don't want to be Alex anymore, Luck." "That's okay, you don't have to be Alex. You could be Chuck." "Oh, hah hah, very funny. I would not make a good Chuck." "You could have been a good Chuck before, you know. But you weren't, you were Alex. Now you don't want to be Alex. Who do you want to be?" I wish that I had thought about my answer here, but I didn't. I said the first name that came to mind: "Jess." "Sounds good to me. Would you like us to go shave this Alex haircut off and paint Jess's nails?" I wiped my cheek and nodded an enthusiastic yes. # That was how the rest of my life as Jess began. It was not a big life when it started out. I didn't know how to do anything. I borrowed all my clothes from the other girls. I followed them around as they gave their own clients massages. On their breaks, I would practice on them and they would critique me. We ate our meals around the house, watched TV, and left only occasionally for a meal at a restaurant. That was it -- no jewelry, no makeup, none of the really girly things people think you would start doing the day you wake up as a woman. The only really girly thing I would do is get my nails painted. Other people did that for me, and that made it easy to get into. They would even let me try to paint their nails. I was so bad at it! But we all had fun, and it gave me a chance to talk about what I was going through. I would never have gotten through it without the other women from the parlor. That they knew everything about what Luck and I had done and what I was going through helped me so much. After all the loneliness I had lived through, having a group of girlfriends who knew everything about me and didn't expect me to be anything other than who I was made this one of the happiest times in my life. I didn't have anything, I wore hats all the time to hide my fuzzy buzzed head, and I didn't even know how to live life as Jess yet, but somehow life went along fine anyway and I never wanted for anything. Well, maybe one thing. I wanted to be able to talk like a woman. But if you want to do something, and you can't do it perfectly, you just have to do it anyway as best you can. Hanging out with the other girls helped the most. They weren't surprised that I talked like a boy, and understood how I was trying to imitate them and fit in. Being a masseuse was a small safe place to practice, too: "Please undress and get under the covers." "Tea or water?" "Too hard?" I could practice these little phrases. Bit by bit, all these rough edges were sanded down. I stopped needing to try to talk "like a woman," and talked like myself, without ever feeling like I sounded like a boy. My hair grew out. I learned how to take care of it. I went from borrowing clothes from my friends to having my own idea about which clothes I liked most. I started buying my own clothes. I don't know why, but until one of the girls asked, "Jess, have you thought about men?" I really hadn't! I blushed and they all laughed at me. "What? I haven't thought about them, no. Why would I think about men?" "Look at you blushing! Jess, you're so beautiful, you would make a good man so happy." "Me? No, way. Look at all of you! I'm, like.. boring compared to you." "You keep on saying that, and then when we try to give you a makeover, you say no." I had always resisted putting on makeup. It seemed like I had so many other things to worry about, why add this to it? And what would be the point? But I was having so much fun with my wardrobe and I found that totally manageable. So at that moment, makeup sounded like it could be an easy bit of additional fun. So I said sure. And that little blush? I pretended it didn't happen! And soon enough I did go on a date where I got to dress to the 9s. Oh, I loved it. Red nails, high heels, jewelry... I loved it. My friends helped me do it all, and when he saw me I could tell from his eyes that I was a knockout. He was a little tall, maybe 6 feet, brown hair with a close cropped beard, shot through with pepper gray. When he recovered and took my arm, we were the perfect picture walking down the street. He had dressed to match, and we turned heads everywhere we went. Oh, every moment of that evening was wonderful. He treated me like a princess all night. Had that been all of it, I would have been over the moon. When he dropped me off, though, he suddenly pulled me close. I felt so small in his arms, and there was something about how important he made me feel. I held him back tightly and almost felt like crying. That's when he kissed me, and then I absolutely bloomed. I went home with him that night. Oh, reader. Some things we don't know we need until we have them. I pulled his shirt off, his pants down, and came face to face with the first penis I'd seen since... well, since Luck traded mine out. I was so hungry for him that I started licking it. He unzipped my dress and took it off, unhooked my bra... I licked him, and then took him into my mouth and sucked him and massaged his balls. I was wanting for him to come when he stopped me. He reached down and pulled my head away. I looked up. He leaned down and picked me up onto the bed. I pulled my wet panties off and before I knew it he was inside of me, and I was absolutely out of my mind. Each stroke felt so right and perfect, I could only think about how much more of him I wanted than I could possibly have. By the time he came, I had been screaming and coming for a long time. It's more fun to have an orgasm than to keep count of them, anyway. Wet, shaking, and spent, I clung to him and slept more soundly than I ever had before or ever would again. There's still more after that, too. I moved out of the house I had lived in with Luck and all the other girls. Luck pulled off the impossible one more time: she managed to get me a new social security number. I got married. I quit my job as a masseuse. I had kids. Life is even better now in middle age, but who wants to read about that? And now that I'm at the end, I have to wonder: was it such a nice thing to have written? You might read this and imagine yourself in my shoes, thinking it could happen to you. It won't. Luck never told me where she learned how to do what she did. I don't think there are many women like her, and I don't think even she does it that often. You could ruin your life searching for her. Even if you found her, who's to say she would do what you wanted her to do? So maybe I've been cruel, taunting you with the impossible. But then again, maybe it gave you a few things to think about. And who knows where that could lead?