Born this way

“Bob when Kathy Jo stepped all over your heart you had a couple rebound relationships… flings really in the intervening months between senior year of high school and leaving for college. They were meaningless and more than anything else helped you to understand that you needed to leave that one horse town behind you.” The spotlight shines on the entryway. “But if you had half the sense you do now, and learned to accept yourself sooner you might have seen that everything you were looking for was much closer to home. Miss Thompson?”

Darlene steps through the doors with confidence, the red cocktail dress hangs below her knees but is split right up to the hip showing amazing legs. Bob’s gaze is drawn to the sway of her hips first, then her modest bust. Finally her face… something about it is familiar but the memory just won’t gel. She reaches her chair and sits, crossing her legs, and looks at him with a pout. “I’d be hurt, but I don’t blame you for not recognizing me, Bobby”

No one’s called me Bobby since… “Charlie?”

“Not for the last ten years. It’s Darlene now.”

Bob remembers his childhood best friend, a skinny little guy with a big mouth who had gotten both of them in trouble more times than he could count. Charlie had always thrown around a lot of bravado and had tried his damnedest to be macho, stirring up shit and starting fights with much larger opponents, often forcing Bob into fights he wasn’t looking for.

Looking at the woman in red, he sees something of Charlie there, but at the same time, what he sees also makes more…sense. The woman… and she definitely is a woman… is at ease with herself, seems comfortable in her body in a way that Charlie never did.

“Now let’s see… I can’t leave her unchanged when I’m handing out transformations, can I?” Heidi waves her hand again and the flurries swirl up around Darlene’s chair. “Bob, you accepted your bisexuality in your twenties. It took Darlene a lot longer to understand who she was, and the world has never been kind to people born in the wrong body. So let’s give her a chance to be the woman she was always meant to be…”

The flurries dropped away showing Darlene once more, but years younger. Her bust swelled up another cup size, straining against the dress’s fabric and her hips added on a layer of padding giving her the hourglass figure that six months of corset training had failed to. Crows feet were gone, and her pores closed up. This was Darlene at twenty-five if she’d begun transitioning at fifteen. Bob can only stare open mouthed, and Darlene is openly weeping with joy.

“Thank you Darlene. Our next contestant was also a formative influence on Bob’s development, both educationally and sexually. Alicia!”

With the aid of her cane Alicia enters the room. Her shoes, unlike those of her two predecessors, are flats, but her little black dress is still cut to show off her legs which, though marred with spider veins are still quite impressive. Her close cropped salt and pepper hair is styled in a slightly spiky manner, and although her makeup is professionally applied it doesn’t quite cover up the wrinkles that line her face.

Bob immediately recognizes his old English teacher, although that recognition is clearly one way. The look of confusion and consternation over her situation is clear in Alicia’s face as she makes her way to her seat.

Heidi is already waving her hand. Again the snow globe is shaken up. “Mrs. McDaniel was the one who encouraged you to take to the stage, Bob. You were her star pupil, and she could always count on you to go out for the school play or participate in class. Little did she know she was also a star in your teenaged masturbatory fantasies.”

Once more the years have dropped away from a contestant, leaving Alicia in her mid thirties. Her hair is far more pepper than salt now, the stoop gone from her back, her skin tightened and regaining elasticity. Her ample bosom now standing high and proud on her chest as thirty years of being dragged down and dried up disappears. And those legs…

Heidi pats Bob on the head, “Close your mouth, dear. Flies are getting in.”