By Patrick Patterson-Carroll
Day One?
Brent woke up to find that he wasn't in his own bed. In fact, he realized that he wasn't in a bed at all. He was driving with velocity, accelerating and decelerating-- with each shift of the gear-- down North Central Expressway in a convertible. Top down. This he knew because despite-- and perhaps because of-- the streaks of light whizzing artfully by and the strands of hair interrupting his vision, there was a city glowing, blaring around him unimpeded by glass and metal, slapping him about the face with its totality.
While attempting to make out the reading on the speedometer, he noticed the fingers on the hands that clutched the wheel. They weren't his own. They were small. Slender. Punctuated by candy-apple red colored endings. Fingertips much like the ones that arouse him so when digging into his back during sex. He wondered why he couldn't have awakened to that.
The right hand went from the steering wheel to the gear shift, and then to the dashboard panel that operated the stereo-system. Soon music thrummed around him, heavy on low end, very muffled. A feminine voice erupted into indecipherable lyric bursts; on top of the music; they were off-key, even for shouting.
Brent began to worry. He wanted to believe he was having some drug induced trip, but knew that that was impossible because his employers had a strict drug testing policy, which they faithfully adhered to. Because he feared the possibility of being fired and having to move back in with his mentally unstable aunt who had taken to evangelical Christianity in recent years-- the woman thought everything from binge drinking and casual sex to watching TV on a Sunday was a sin-- he stayed on the "straight and narrow."
This meant not turning his apartment into an opium den even though he knew some Puerto Ricans down the street who would practically give it to him. Even his landlord said that he didn't give a shit what his tenants did as long as they made themselves seen and not heard, and most importantly, paid their fucking rent. And here was Brent, immobile-- paralyzed, in fact-- and with tactile anesthesia but aware that what was happening was not normal.
What happened?
He suddenly blacked out and awakened again. Still immobile. Still with tactile anesthesia. How much time had passed (?) he did not know. His shaven left leg-- obviously not his-- stuck out from under a pink, frilly bedspread.
The sun radiated into the room, its rays illumining everything he could see. He thought he could faintly hear the chirp of birds, but it was difficult because of the throb. The pulsating sound of hangover. The symphony of audio-visual sensitivity. The remnants of the previous night’s dirty deeds, which of course, he had no knowledge of.
Moments later he was in a bathroom looking at his reflection in a toilet bowl. Beautiful, he thought. I’m beautiful. I am a beautiful young woman. But he knew that, though. What else was knew? What happened?
Being that he only seemed to have the benefit of perception from the girl’s POV, could he really in fact say that he was the girl? Or was he in reality lying in a ditch somewhere-- an out-of-body-experience courtesy of yet another decision to drive home drunk-- ethereally floating through different “planes of existence” when he happened upon the most fortuitous of opportunities-- the chance to be a woman?
Either way, why did she look eerily like Prissy Swain, the daughter of that 80’s “heroin chic” fashion model and mogul Erin Swain? Because that’s precisely who she was.
Swain, the latter-- the senior, the mother-- was part of the mid 80’s shift from cocaine to heroin amongst the southern set. She was the American version-- the precursor-- of/to Kate Moss. In the mid 90’s, and at the height of her influence, she retired from modeling, got clean, had her name attached to a hot clothing line, and became even richer than she was when strutting runways.
That, marriage into money, and a busy professional life due to the preponderance of business connections made for the kind of environment that brought both privilege and neglect to her young daughter Prissy.
Not inconceivably, Prissy grew up lonely and starved for attention. As a result, her rebellious, mischievous behavior brought her all the attention she could ever want.
Her crowning achievement, the event that made a media darling of her was when it got out that she was trying to sell sexual services on an internet ad page. She was even keeping a barely literate blog on her every encounter; visuals included. In one photograph she was dancing, topless, on a bar counter. In another, she was giving an older gentleman a lap-dance.
This sort of behavior, expected of, in a social sense, the “lower class:” those unfortunate inhabitants of the ghetto, the barrio, and most humorously, the trailer parks, is mostly greeted as scandal when it comes to the rich, the famous. For them it's regarded as a byproduct of the worst excesses; something that that level of social notoriety will give cause for the public to view you either as victim or villain. Or both.
So it came as no surprise that these views varied. On one hand Prissy was lauded for her beauty and charitable nature, and on the other, people derided her lack of intelligence and deficiency of moral character due to her nymphomania. Her head was empty but her bank account and willingness to fuck anything for the right price runneth over.
Brent, consigning himself to being trapped inside the nightmare, watched as the water in the toilet suddenly turned shades of green and yellow and became foamy. She was vomiting. The retching sounds were loud, clear, and fucking awful. It was usually enough to make him toss his own cookies, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel the need nor have the ability. It was refreshing.
A feeling of disorientation began to overcome him. From what he could see, the best he could surmise was that Prissy was propping herself up against the door frame in the threshold separating the bedroom from the bathroom. Everything was at a slant, the room tilting and blurred. Brent noticed a lump in the bed. Shrouded in comforter. Also pink.
Already this sight was more intriguing than anything he’d normally see on a Saturday morning. It wouldn’t last long however, as he blacked out again only to awaken to a guy thrusting into his host, sweat dripping into his vision. Her moans overtook his auditory senses-- why? The guy’s stroke was pathetic.
Then came the thoughts and feelings that weren’t his, rushing into his head-- or what approximated it. Stuff like wondering when mother was going to put more allowance into the bank account and what kind of cute skirt she was going to buy; when this pathetic fuck was going to finish; “Oh! That feels good, I guess. Getting kind of tired and sore, though.”
None of it moved him to anything except thoughts of “perfect, I am inhabiting the body/consciousness of the paradigm of vapidity. I should be the guy pounding into her joylessly. Let this boring fuck get the benefit of her ‘thoughts.’”
It got worse.
He was beginning to feel things. Things he’d never felt before. It was like he’d acquired the nerve endings to this girl’s pussy. It really WAS sore. The guy finally pulls out and he hears the thought, “Oh, no. Not that.” Yes, that. Darkness.
He can feel her face as if it’s his own. Something warm and wet splatters all over it in globules. Brent blacks out again.
Awakened by a rush to the head followed by snuffling that pulled at what he thought he could feel were his ears, he saw lines of white powder lined regimentally on top of a surface reflecting his new countenance. Certainly, it had been a long time! He hadn't seen that much blow in one sitting since his trip to Toronto a couple years back.
Bitch lives good! If he couldn’t get used to feeling like his penis was being uncomfortably inverted or having his face ejaculated upon, he could definitely get used to the idea of never being at a loss for coke.
In the wake of this indulgence, the brunt of which Brent was able to experience, the weight of euphoria had carried over into what was supposed to be the inevitable come-down. He didn't understand what was happening to him or why, but his worry and the sense of urgency that normally accompanied it was replaced first with unconcern, and then with joy. Joy that it was happening.
Day Two?
Brent woke up in a shower. He knew this because he was looking down at those same angrily colored fingertips kneading small, perky breasts, the sensation of which he could almost feel because the tactile anesthesia he'd been hitherto experiencing was gradually wearing off. It started, of course, with the sex. The sore vagina, the gooey semen about the face, and now the wet water, hot; the expert fingers.
Thoughts of dirty possibilities overcame his entire awareness. He found himself praying to a god that he found to be-- at least conceptually-- silly, that his condition would better itself to the point that he could control his “host,” enough to get those fingers further south. Yes, what Brent wanted was to finally experience the female orgasm firsthand.
Deciding that his desire, his want, his craving to feel EVERYTHING wasn’t merely some empty male curiosity spawned from a need to have something to say when it came time to “talk shop” with other men, that it was the absolute sensation that he wanted, that he needed for a more comfortable, more complete experience, he willed the words into a mouth he did not have:
Can you hear me, god?
It’s me, Brent.
I could not give two shits
about whether or not you exist.
I don’t know what the hell is happening to me,
but since this is happening and I have no options,
I’m stabbing in the dark here.
Let me please be this woman long enough to experience
that much conjectured female orgasm.
But this god either didn’t hear, didn’t grant these things or didn’t exist. And the last part suited Brent fine. “Fuck it,” he thought. The idea that he’d even supplicate in such a disgusting manner upset him. Prissy hopped out of the shower without even putting soap to her genitalia. Or maybe that’s what she was doing while he was thinking of how he’d ask god for a chance to reach climax as a woman.
Voyeuristically, as if he were behind a one-way mirror, he watched her dress in front of her own reflection. The clarity of vision was even better than before. He wasn’t blacking out anymore. Prissy’s thoughts were becoming clearer, that is, more easily heard. The muffled wall blocking her thoughts from his had been brought down and Señor Raygun was nowhere to be found.
The humdrum emptiness of this young woman’s ramblings, which could also be clearly heard as she argued over the phone with her mother about her allowance, combined with the inner thoughts that consisted of little more than, “Woe is poor little impoverished me, I can’t spend hundreds of dollars on absolutely useless shit,” was beating at his consciousness ferociously.
Yes honey, you’re so fucking poor, he thought. Poor little old neglected you. She sat on her bed, the reflection in the mirror looking progressively uglier to Brent. Despite this-- definitely because of this-- he was then ever more childishly optimistic for his own satisfaction, hoping she would get bored and start playing with herself. Or at least go out and trick for money.
Depression snuck in and began to do an even more exhausting number on whatever it was he consisted of. It wasn’t just orgasm he desired. He hadn’t even experienced hunger since he first came to his realization; cruelly awakened to as he sped down North Central Expressway in a car that he wished he had when he had a penis.
Prissy deluged her nostrils with the remnants of the coke. Brent once again received the same high; the “umbilical cord” separating her tangibility from his intangibility seemingly located in her nasal cavity. A coke high combined with boredom for most probably lends itself to spring cleaning or the rearranging of furniture. For Prissy, it was going through her closet and alphabetizing her clothing by designer.
Thirty minutes later, with this arduous task complete, she stripped completely naked, and stepped onto her balcony. Suddenly, Brent could feel a slight breeze as it bounced off her flesh, her body-- which now felt like his-- splitting itself against her as if it were two superstitious lovers on a sidewalk with hands clasped together making a last desperate effort to avoid doing so. As one, Prissy and her male parasite leaned over the railing and inhaled deeply.
“Those pills are really kicking in,” she yelped with joy. And before he could object or question anything-- because he couldn’t remember her ingesting any fucking pills-- she leaned so far over the railing that her grip, her body untrammeled, in fact, betrayed by its recently bathed, silky smooth dermis, allowed her to freefall ten stories to her death. And poor Brent felt every bone shatter, ironically enough, all over the interior of her convertible, parked illegally in a fire lane.
The only thing the police found in the empty apartment aside from his corpse, slumped against the tiled wall of the bathroom, naked, gun in lap, with a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, was a note:
If you're reading this right now, I'm dead. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, considering I've given away all my worldly possessions-- impending suicide hint 101, really-- and it's okay. It's no one's fault per se. There's just... well... there's gotta be something better. The only thing that could possibly depress me more than my current existence is waking up to find that I’m some empty headed moron with more money and tits than good sense. Here’s hoping.
Good bye. Brent.
© Patrick Patterson-Carroll (2009)
