An Alma-Mater for My True Self Part 4

 

“Are you sure this isn't a bit...much?” I asked. Don't get me wrong, I was almost giddy with excitement. The outfit that I was wearing was streets beyond anything I had ever worn at Camp Ihduhapi, both the reunion and ten years earlier. The silk stockings that encased my legs felt divine and the towering heels were luxurious, even if I couldn't walk in them properly. Simply put, there were levels to my experiences so far, and the red designer dress with the thigh splits, the lacy lingerie set, the padded bra that gave me the illusion of real cleavage – they made my wildest dreams seem like a cheap Halloween costume.

“Nonsense, Darling,” Penny grinned, watching as I tried to figure out how to sit femininely in the hotel's ornate chair. “This is Broadway – if you don't upstage it, it will upstage you!” She moved across to where a huge mirror stood so she could put the finishing touches on her own outfit. “Besides...have you seen this room?!” It was true – we had spared no expense on our trip to New York and the five-star hotel suite dripped with moulding, delicate trimmings and over-stuffed upholstered furniture like the chair I was sitting on. You only get one second chance to introduce yourself to the world, Penny had explained, and on our first trip with me exploring the part of myself I had discovered at camp, we were going to do it right. We had spent the afternoon up and down 5^th Avenue, shopping for clothes and visiting salons, making sure we would be ready for the evening. I had been waxed in places I didn't know wax could go and my skin glowed. I had spent 90 minutes in a chair while two separate women groomed and painted my face. It was a strange experience – I am not going to pretend all this feels normal yet, and it was the first time any one other than Jonathan had done my makeup – more on him in a minute, but with Penny by my side, I feel supported and celebrated. I don't want to be on a pedestal, she understands that now, but I do want to be seen. I want to be the person who makes me feel at home in my own body and while I don't completely know who that is yet, it is an old dirt road that I continue to walk.

Okay, so back to Jonathan – we're here in the Big Apple to see the Broadway musical he works on. It has been three months since the reunion and it felt like the perfect excuse to explore my identity a little more. New York is a long way from Minnesota and I am taking baby steps – anything bigger and I will fall on my ass in these ridiculous heels. Besides, who doesn't love a musical? And, Jonathan got us backstage passes.

“Hey, you know your dress isn't fastened all the way up at the back, right?” Penny asked as I finally stood up to collect my purse. I blushed and she gave me a curious smile. “The only reason you would do that is if you wanted to be able to get out of that dress easily.” She knitted her brows and I could see the cogs turning behind her eyes. “But, why would you want that? That dress is exquisite.” She continued, frowning – and then her lips parted as realisation dawned on her. “Hey, did Jonathan promise to get you into the theater's costume room?” She grinned as I smiled coyly, tucking the roomkey into my purse.

An Alma-Mater for My True Self Part 3

 

That week back at camp progressed far too quickly, and, to Penny's credit, she found so many different and creative ways to get me into a dress without making it obvious what she was doing. In her role organising activities, she had me assigned as the now legendary Girls' side Head Counsellor for a skit, join the girls team for tug-of-war to even the sides with the caveat that I had to look the part, and made me raise the flag in a cocktail dress as a 'forfeit' for sleeping through breakfast.

All roads, as they had during my eleven summers at Ihduhapi, led to 'Play'. Traditionally, 'Play' was a musical production that always took part on the last night of camp to close Color War. The two teams would face off across the gym and produce competing musical productions with singing and dancing in full costume to win the final available points from the judges. At our reunion, we hadn't gone as far as having a Color War, but we would be doing 'Play' and, as with everything else that week, Penny was running the show, casting me in the titular role of Mary Poppins.

I should make it clear – I don't blame Penny for doing this. Everything I had done up to that point had suggested I would love nothing more than to sing and dance the last evening of the reunion away with petticoats and an umbrella, but the idea left me feeling empty. I had taken part in two pageants, yet it was never above making an exhibition of myself. In fact, being on stage had been my least favorite part of the experience. It was about how it made me see myself, not how it allowed others to see me that I enjoyed. I didn't want to perform in a musical any more than I wanted to do the talent round of Miss Ihduhapi. And so, I told Penny I didn't want to take part and left the gym to sulk by myself while a clear offended Penny attempted to direct two dozen half-drunk adults around a rendition of 'Let's Go Fly a Kite'.

“You would have made a terrible Mary Poppins.” A voice called out to me as I tried to hold back tears. I saw that it was Jonathan and I shivered nervously. We were alone in the bunk and he was the last person I wanted to console me. “She was practically perfect in every way.” He raised an eyebrow. “You on the other hand, haven't even had your makeup done...” Wordlessly, he walked over to his cubby and removed a small steel case. “Let's fix that, shall we?” He said as he flicked over the clasps.

As Jonathan worked his magic on my face with a flurry or powders and brushes, he told me about his life as a makeup artist at a theater on Broadway. I know it's easy to stereotype, and I never asked, but as a male makeup artist, I supposed he had done his own fair share of hiding his true self over the years. I thought back to my memories of those summers of him as the sullen sarcastic lifeguard and realised we probably had a lot in common.

“You don't always have to be the belle of the ball,” Jonathan told me as clipped on some costume jewellery. “You don't have to be the main attraction.” He flipped over the lid of the case so I could see myself in its mirror. “But the true version of yourself will always be the hottest one.” My mouth dropped open at the sight of myself and Jonathan smirked at my reaction. “Simply scrumptious...” He mused.

An Alma-Mater for My True Self Part 2

I didn't win Miss Ihduhapi. That honor fell on a senior counsellor wearing a DIY Hawaiian skirt and a shaving foam bra. In fairness he played the whole thing for laughs and that was kind of the point. I did get a lot of compliments though. General consensus was that I made easily the most convincing girl and I got a ton of people commenting how brave I was and how I was a good sport. I showed just how good a sport I was by staying in costume long after the evening activity had ended and later that night I kissed Penny for the second time down by the lake under the huge Minnesota sky while I was still wearing her skirt. I kept my nails painted for a whole week afterwards and all my co-counsellors seemed to treat it as a good natured joke – with the exception of a Lifeguard called Jonathan who seemed to be one of the few people not onboard with my performance at the pageant.

I didn't know it at the time, but it would be my last summer at Camp Ihduhapi. It was never a conscious decision not to go back – life just got in the way. First there was needing to retake some classes to make up college credit, then there was a summer job to pay for books, and before I knew it, I was grown up and in full time employment. I would never again sing the alma-mater around the campfire, and I never again connected with that version of myself that came into being while standing on stage in a skirt. My holiday from real had finished.

Ten years passed before I received the invite to the reunion. Ten years of hiding within myself, living inside the frame of the life that had been built for me. I wasn't unhappy during this time, I just felt like I was merely persisting, longing for something that didn't exist. The reunion was in spring not summer – Camp Ihduhapi's off-season. One week on camp grounds, living in bunks with now grown up former campers and staff reliving traditions and activities from our youths. Penny was there, she had a husband and two kids now, as were countless other friends who in those summers had made me feel more accepted than any other time in my life. I was surprised to find even Jonathan had returned for one last week by the lake.

Penny had by now matured into a full mother hen and slid naturally into a kind of master of ceremonies role. It was with a wink to me that she announced on the second night we would be doing a Miss Ihduhapi pageant. There was minimal protest from some of the guys but once the rest of the girls got behind the idea they started giving themselves up to be drafted to the women for their makeovers in no time. Only Jonathan, with a sarcastic eye-roll flat out refused to take part.

And like that, I was in heaven again. Not a home away from home – just home. Wearing a flowery summer dress and strappy heeled sandals, I closed my eyes in the cool Minnesota sunshine and was reunited with a long lost part of myself. There would be no kissing Penny this time, but this was a greater gift than she could have given me with her lips.

 

An Alma-Mater for My True Self Part 1

 

I'm not the only person whose heart belongs at sleepaway camp. 'A holiday from real', 'a home away from home' – not just slogans on camp marketing materials or the lyrics to a thousand alma maters, they were mantras that I and thousands of kids like me grew up with embroidered on our hearts. We lived ten months for two to return to those old dirt roads and spend another endless summer by the lake. They were not just places where we could be our true selves. They were places where we could be more – places where we could leave behind the pressures and expectations of our supposed real lives and spend eight weeks discovering things we never expected about ourselves and each other.

My home away from home was called Camp Ihduhapi, a coed camp in Northern Minnesota where I spent eleven consecutive summers – seven as a camper and then four more as a counsellor. I don't think I can explain what that place means to me even now. Before my time there I was an awkward kid – the kind that never seemed to fit properly inside their own skin, but over those long summers at that lake I made my first ever friend, I told my first ever secret, I held my first ever hand, I had my first ever kiss. I blossomed into the person writing this today – confident, strong, proud...

Self-discovery is a slow and accidental process. I never set out with a map showing me exactly where to find the true version of myself, and the stops along the way were often strange and confusing. One of the earliest of these was a day at the lake while we were preparing for watersports and given the choice of kayaking and canoeing, I opted for the former. I don't know if you've ever tried kayaking, but if you do it properly, you have to wear a skirt. It's not like a real skirt, more a piece of waterproof material shaped a bit like a submarine that goes around your waist. Yet, all the same, as I walked down to the water to collect my kayak with that thing around me, I realised that the rest of my group was female. Every single boy had elected to go canoeing in lieu of wearing the skirt. As I realised this, the first piece clicked into place.

In the following years, there were much more obvious signs. There was the afternoon I was sent to tidy the drama closet and I latched myself inside so that I could try on all the different costumes. But, probably the clearest marker on my journey came when I was a counsellor. Miss Ihduhapi was a traditional camp evening activity where the female counsellors from every bunk chose a male counsellor to dress up for a beauty pageant. I had grown my hair out long by this point and my relatively soft features made me an ideal choice. A female counsellor named Penny, who happened to be my aforementioned first held hands and first kiss chose me for her bunk and an hour later I was taking the auditorium stage in front of a big barn door wearing an ensemble of collected clothing from Penny's co-counsellors while hundreds of people watched on. For five minutes I strutted around and posed, completely lost in the moment, adrift in the new persona I had just created for myself. I hadn't even prepared something for the talent portion of the pageant. As far as I was concerned, there was no pageant, no audience, nothing else – just me and those shoes and that skirt, just me in heaven.

Stick Shift

 17/25

Darren had expected lectures, not a life overturned. When the court ordered him into the mesh-assisted driver rehabilitation program, he thought it would be a handful of classes, maybe a stern instructor correcting his habits behind the wheel. Losing his license would have meant losing his job, so he chose the implant without hesitation. He could handle a tiny scar behind his ear.

At first the changes were almost invisible. The mesh encouraged him to keep a journal of his driving habits, to reflect on moments of impatience. It nudged him to set off earlier in the morning, to avoid peak traffic so he would never feel rushed. It felt harmless. Sensible, even.

But the logic crept further. Women, it concluded through carefully surfaced statistics, were safer drivers. Women had fewer serious accidents, showed more patience on the road, took fewer risks. If he wanted to be safer then why not be of the gender who drove best?

Darren was powerless to stop the transition – as subtle as it was at first. He began sitting straighter at the wheel, knees together, both hands resting neatly at ten and two. He wore softer clothes because they made him feel calmer, lighter dresses in the summer that made crossing his legs second nature. .

Surgery came later. The mesh never asked, it just drove him forward in his mission to become the safest driver possible. It spun its web in the back of his thoughts in a way that his ideas and the ones created by the implant behind his ear were completely discernable. Wouldn’t it be safer with less testosterone? Wouldn’t softer features and a smaller frame make him calmer? Wouldn’t permanent change protect him from himself? By the time Darren booked the appointments, it felt less like surrender and more like inevitability.

Now the photo on his license no longer bore his old name. A woman with glossy blonde hair and painted lips smiled back at him from the laminate surface. His final assessment had been almost anticlimactic. The instructor had handed over the certificate with a warm grin. 'Women always make the best students,' he’d said. Darren had laughed with him, just as the mesh instructed.

She drove differently now. Slower, smoother, patient at every turn. Other drivers waved her through at junctions. Strangers smiled at her at stoplights. She had not had so much as a parking ticket since the implant. The scar behind her ear had faded to nothing, and the mesh no longer stirred. Its work was finished.

Darren pulled to the side of the road and listened. The implant was silent. He opened the door to let cool air wash over him – to be sure he wasn't hallucinating – and put a hand to the side of his head, his other resting on the soft feminine skin of his leg. Still Nothing. He looked up at the rear view mirror and just sat there in silence. The mesh was silent – his thoughts were finally his own, but his appearance would forever belong to that implant...

Whatever Happened to Archie? (The Bare Minimum)

 This week's Flashback Friday is for a recent one. You can read The Bare Minimum here.

Archie sat up from his position on the yacht's sunbathing pad to admire the view as a rocky beach peppered with chalky white vacation homes whizzed past. The whole island was like this – a neverending highlight reel of paradise. He placed his hands behind him, careful not to catch his extended nails on the foam mattress, and felt the still unfamiliar bounce of his large breasts in his swimsuit. They bulged and stretched the one-piece to bursting point – tight against his smooth crotch and sculpted ass. He never had to work out to maintain his figure, hell, he never even had to use sunscreen. He was a permanently perfect object of affection – an exquisite hourglass as stunning as the views from the boat. Both the body and the life of luxury had been bestowed on him with nothing expected in return – well almost nothing...

Archie glanced over his shoulder to where the grey haired man was steering the yacht. He was staring back, as he often was, unable to take his gaze off Archie's new unwanted body. The former dock worker pushed a pair of designer sunglasses up a cute button nose to avoid making eye contact. The blowjobs were the bare minimum – the price of maintaining this existence in paradise. The man never asked for anything more, Archie supposed this had been a kind of mercy on Jeanie's part when she cast her manipulated wish, but the man asked often. He was helpless to resist, of course, and he found that he sucked with a skill as unearned as his toned body. Whether the man finished in his throat or on his delicate face, he was always satisfied and Archie's life of leisure continued. He sighed as he watched a family of dolphins frolicking off the side of the vessel – it was still better than busting his back all night at the docks – even if his new life of sucking and tanning was a little monotonous.

“Enjoying the view?” A female voice almost made Archie jump out of his new skin. He turned to see Jeanie sitting on the side of the yacht swinging her feet. She was dressed in some kind of stripper-witch outfit. Unlike his new body, she looked ridiculous in a spandex one-piece and oversized hat. He guessed the Ministry of Manipulated Wishes had introduced some kind of new uniform.

“You!” Archie scowled at her. “You did this to me!” He cupped his breasts to indicate what he meant. “You did this on purpose! You knew I would end up as some trophy wife deepthroat queen!”

“Doesn't look so bad...” Jeanie shrugged. “You should see the things I need to do to keep my job. This outfit ain't the half of it.” She nodded at the dolphins. “Seems like a nice life...”

“I suppose...” Archie softened realising there were worse things than blowjobs and boredom. “I just wish there was more for me to do...” He realised what he had said immediately and clamped a hand over his thick pink lips. Jeanie smiled and winked and Archie watched in horror as the yacht turned sharply towards a long wooden dock, where a line of large muscled men waited excitedly...

The Queen Maker Part 2 (Bimbo Note)

 16/25

The silence stretched until Azalea’s tablet pinged. Another notification. Another sneer from a new troll – another moron with no imagination for pseudonyms. She glanced at the Note, then at Rook, who raised a brow in amusement.

“Oh, don’t tell me—”

“Shut up,” Azalea snapped, grabbing the pen she kept with the book. She scrawled the troll's name into the page with a flourish. The letters shimmered, and for a split second she swore she heard giggling echo in the corners of the room.

On her phone, the troll’s comments froze mid-post. Then new pictures began appearing on the feed – a victim's life already rewritten. It was another blonde, more huge breasts, claw like fingernails. The newly minted bimbo was on her knees, a minidress riding up to just below her ass. 'I would get used to that position,' Azalea thought to herself but didn't share with Rook for fear of further derision..

Instead she threw her head back and laughed, wicked and giddy. “There. Amphitheatre enough for you? My whole fanbase gets to watch this idiot’s downfall live.”

Rook clapped once, slow and deliberate. “Better. Much better. But still…small. You’re a pyromaniac playing with sparklers when you could be setting cathedrals ablaze.”

Azalea’s grin faltered just slightly. “So what—you’re here to give me homework? Because despite my black catsuit, I am quite good at playing the naughty schoolgirl... for the right teacher.” Her tablet was pinging ten to the dozen now as her followers sent demands to the new bimbo. She knew they would exploit her creation with all their combined imaginations and the former troll would comply having been reduced to a mindless whore. In that moment, Azalea desperately wanted Rook to leave so she could get back to playing with herself watching the vacant blonde flop her tits around and try to stuff objects into herself.

“Think of it as a mission,” Rook purred, sliding gracefully down from the sofa back. She plucked the Note from Azalea’s lap without asking, turning its heavy pages with gloved fingers. “The world is full of institutions just begging for you to scribble their names. A university. A parliament. A bank. Something with real teeth.”

She handed the book back, her dark eyes glinting. “Do it with style, Azalea. Do it loudly. Otherwise…” She smiled sweetly, cruelly. “…the Note will grow bored. And you’ll find your pretty signature glowing back at you.” 

Azalea stared back at her with cold eyes – her horniness gone and a cold grip on her heart.