Sweetness - Chapter 9

Sweetness

By Mike

Chapter 9

Downsized

                I’ve given a lot of thoughts to firsts. Once, long ago, I had my very first kiss. That wasn’t my first first, of course. Once, long ago, I took my very first breath and at some time in the time of far-from-now, I will take my last. I’ve done so many firsts. I caught my first fish; I drove for the very first time; I received a puppy as a gift; I tasted a woman’s kiss and felt her lips upon mine. Life is full of countless firsts and even today, after living for over three decades, I was going to live something new.

                As always, I was the first to arrive. Another first. The parking lot was deserted, and I was happy for that. I hate to admit how scared I was but that was the truth of it. I was terrified. Yes, I’d braced my staff as best I could but that did not mean that they were truly ready for the reality of seeing me in a skirt. How many of life’s little moments are that way? Haven’t we all studied for a test only to fail the damned thing? Would I fail at what I’d sent into motion? I hoped I wouldn’t. Peyton and I had planned and discussed, sometimes for hours at a time, and my staff had all given me words of either encouragement or apathy and either one was fine as long as there wasn’t a mutiny.

                I walked across the parking lot feeling the cold air riding underneath my skirt. The sun seemed unusually bright as if God was shining a spotlight on me, making sure that no one would miss the show I was putting on. Even with the sun shining down I could feel a coolness inside my skirt where a few inches of bare thigh was left uncovered. My stockings covered most of my legs but there was a good five inches or so that was left bare and I could feel the cool morning on that naked skin. It was a tantalizing feeling that left me trembling in nervousness. Yes, I was scared and for now the office was empty. How would I feel after my staff arrived?

                I made it inside and after making a cup of coffee I went to my office and shut myself inside. I wouldn’t be able to hide. In fact, I planned on calling a meeting and introducing myself, my new self, to the staff. Peyton and I had discussed it and, well, you can’t call a woman Mason. I had needed a new name to go with the new me and I had to introduce her to the office.

                I heard Gayle before I saw her. My first test. She knocked and even though I wasn’t feeling ready to meet her as I was dressed, I did not really have a reason to hold off on it either. “Come in.” Did Gayle hear my voice crack? I’m sure she did.

                “Mister, oh,” one hand came up to cover her mouth. She let out a gasp, her eyes went wide, and then she giggled.

                I didn’t expect a giggle. I did expect people to laugh although I hoped it was behind my back and not to my face. I thought I looked good. Definitely passable even if I was a little taller than most women and maybe a few pounds heavier. I wasn’t exactly svelte, but I wasn’t fat, either. I was an average man of average height and weight making me just a bit heavy for a woman. Hell, I was wearing a size twelve skirt, so I knew I wasn’t that heavy. My makeup was perfect, Peyton had made sure of that and my wig was combed and styled, and I thought it looked great even if it was hot and a bit itchy. I frowned at Gayle’s giggle. “What?” I said.

                She stifled a fresh giggle. She coughed, trying to hide her merriment, “I can’t call you mister anymore,” she said, following that up with a fresh bit of laughter.

                I smiled, “No, I guess you can’t.”

                “Well, then, Miss Sweet, I take it today’s the day.”

                I nodded, shrugged my shoulders and then did both at the same time. I was having second thoughts and third ones and even more after that. So far only Gayle had seen me. It wasn’t too late to race home and change. Put this whole situation behind me. Maybe Gayle would forget about it and even if she didn’t, I didn’t think she’d bring it up all that often.

                “Stand up, let me see you.”

                I stood. I didn’t even think about it. Was I so submissive that when I heard a command, I had to obey with no thought involved? Maybe or maybe I needed to be judged. If Gayle said I passed muster, then maybe I did. Wasn’t Peyton obligated to say I looked good? We were dating; we were a couple. White lies were expected but Gayle didn’t have that connection that Peyton and I shared. The one that made us want to spare the other’s feelings.

                “Turn around.”

                I did a pirouette.

                “I’m amazed, Miss Sweet,” she said though I couldn’t tell if she was toying with me or if she was truly impressed by how I turned out.  “You look like a woman.”

                For this first test, that was the best grade I could have received. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it. I gave a small, serious smile, “Do you really think I look okay?”

                “Just like a woman,” she laughed, “fishing for a compliment.” She kept looking at me, her eyes taking in my shoes, my skirt, my pinstriped blazer. The way my faux hair framed my face; the color of my eyeshadow and the bright, glossy pink of my lipstick. She studied me, smiling and shaking her head. “I swear, if I didn’t know any better.” She ended by bringing her hands up as if in surrender. “You must really like her to do all this,” she said.

                I did really like her but that wasn’t why I did it. Or at least it wasn’t the whole reason. “I didn’t do it for her.”

                Gayle looked at me skeptically.

                I didn’t owe her an explanation, did I? Maybe I did. I was taking a big risk but wasn’t I also risking her livelihood? There was a chance that this could blow up and lead to consequences that neither Peyton or I had foreseen. The what ifs and the unknowns led me to believe that maybe I did owe Gayle an explanation. Maybe I owed the whole damned company one. Myself most of all. “Set up a meeting at ten,” I said. “All hands. I think I need to introduce myself.”

                Gayle nodded and turned to leave. Before exiting my office, she said, “you need to work on your voice. You don’t look like Mason, but you sure do sound like him.”

                She was right. Peyton and I had worked on my voice a little bit in preparation for this terrifying day, but I guess when you were used to being one person, the person you’d always been, then it was hard to be someone different. For now, I was an actor playing a role. In time, maybe, the new me would be the real me but for now I was Mason pretending to be someone else and maintaining that persona would take real work and some focused concentration. I raised the pitch of my voice and added a soft breathiness, “like this?”

                Gayle nodded. “Better. You sound weird. It needs some work.”

                In my girlie voice I could only agree. “It’s a work in progress.”

                “Move your hands more. It’ll help.”

                And it did. Moving my hands seemed to free up something in me that made my new voice come out a little softer and more animated. I sounded more real. I guess that’s the best way to describe it.

                I did some work until ten and then it was time to introduce myself to the staff. They’d known me for a while, some of them for nearly a decade and while they all knew this transformation was coming, I don’t think they could truly be prepared for it. Still, thinking about it didn’t do me any good. I was committed.

                The conference room was packed. Gayle had gotten just about everyone in the company to attend the meeting. She was good and for a moment I hated her efficiency. Not that it would matter. Even if half the staff was present before the end of the day everyone would know what I was doing wasn’t just an idea that I’d discussed. It was a reality.

                I entered the conference room, hearing the clickity-clack of my heels on the tile. I heard gasps and whispers and two different people coughing. I heard papers rustling and what I was sure was the shutter of a camera. I wanted to look, to see who had taken my picture but I kept my attention focused on the front of the room. Looking behind me would show everyone that I was just as terrified as they were even if it was for very different reasons.

                I paused at the podium that Gayle had set up. Behind me the whiteboard was empty. To my right the blinds were pulled open letting in far too much sunlight. God was still keeping me well lit it seemed. “Good morning,” I said, moving my hands as Gayle had suggested. My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. I tried again, “Good morning, as you can tell I’m a little bit nervous.”

                The laughter that came back was every bit as strained as my voice.

                “As you can see,” I stepped to my right, no longer using the podium for cover. If I was going to do this, I had to do it fully, “I finally decided to do that which I’ve been discussing for a few weeks now. Gayle asked for an explanation and she was right to do so. I owe her one and I owe it to each of you as well. For as long as I can remember I’ve had this need to wear clothing that didn’t belong to my outward gender. It really isn’t much more than that. No, I don’t want to become a woman. No, I’m not gay,” I thought of Peyton and of all the things we’ve done, “not even a little bit. I just have this need to wear women’s clothing. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, since my early teens. Every day since I’ve opened this company, I’ve worn one article of female attire or another. It’s escalated, as you can see.”

                I scanned the faces staring back at me. Some wore bemused smiles, like I was a young child trying to get away with something. Others wore grins and smiles and were nodding. A few were frowning.

                “Nope!”

                I turned as Jack climbed to his feet. He was one of my best salesmen, I think I mentioned that before, and seeing him stand and start to flee the room stung just a bit. He and I had joked about what I was doing, and I had thought he would be okay with it. The tone of his voice and the angry look on his face told me that I had read those earlier conversations wrong. “Jack?”

                “I quit!” He didn’t say anything else. He just left the room.

I stood next to the podium, shaking my head, feeling angry and ashamed. I called after Jack and a moment later I called out after four more employees. “Anyone else?” I asked. “There won’t be any hard feelings and I promise glowing recommendations.” 

Three more people took me up on that offer. By the end of the day I’d lost over a third of my staff. I hadn’t expected it and it hurt. These were good people and just the thought of working for me as I now presented myself was more than they could take. Did that reflect poorly on me or them and what did it matter if the results were the same?

I finished talking to the staff that I had left, truncating what I’d meant to tell them, and went to my office to pout or mope or cry. I couldn’t say which; maybe all three. I tried calling Jack on his cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. I left him a message to call me back knowing that he wouldn’t. The angry, disgusted look on his face as he exited the conference room told me all I needed to know. Jack wouldn’t be coming back. By the end of the day I learned he’d taken some of my customers with him. That hurt but not as much as that look he’d flashed as he’d left the room. The look of hate.

“How’s it going?” Gayle was standing in the doorway, holding a fresh cup of coffee in her hand.

I shrugged, “I’ve been better.”

She smiled but her heart wasn’t in it. “I bet. You did the right thing, telling us,” she said.

“Thanks. I didn’t expect that reaction.”

“No?”

I could hear the incredulity in her voice. I shook my head, “It wasn’t a secret. I let everyone know it was coming. I spoke to Jack about it. I remember him laughing when he asked if it was okay if he hit on me.”

Gayle took a sip of her coffee. Funny, when I saw her with it, I thought it was for me.  “You can’t predict everything, Mason.” She looked at me, “weren’t you supposed to tell us your new name?”

                I hitched a weak little snort. “So much for that. Jack walking out really surprised me.”

                “So what name did you pick?”

                The excited tone of her voice perked me up just a bit. Someone wasn’t disgusted by what I was doing. Gayle seemed genuinely interested and not put off at all. I respected her for that. “Peyton kinda picked it for me,” I said. “We’ve talked about it, a lot. One weekend she called me every girl’s name she could think of as if she was tasting them, seeing how the felt on her lips. She called me everything from Amber to Yolanda. ‘Brittney, can you pass the sugar please?’” I did my best to sound like Peyton not caring that I failed miserably. “‘Where should we go for dinner, Phyllis?’ Each name she tried that she liked she used a few more times. I asked her if I got a say. ‘Nope!’ Then she stuck out her tongue.” I laughed at the memory. “Why not? I asked her. ‘When does anyone pick out their own name?’”

                “So, what did she settle on?”

                “Louise. It’s a play off my middle…”

                “Louis, yeah, I know. I’ve worked for you a long time, Louise.” It was the first time I heard the name spoken by someone other than Peyton and I liked the way it sounded and that bothered me a little. I’m not exactly sure why. Or maybe I did. It made it real in a way just wearing my lovely pinstripe suit did not. I put a name on it and as anyone who’s seen Toy Story, names have power. Ask Buzz how he felt when Andy stenciled his name on Buzz Lightyear’s foot.  Hearing Gayle say my new name, my feminine name, somehow solidified what I was doing. Changing one’s clothes was one thing; changing one’s name was something else entirely. Something far grander.

                She said my name a few more times, growing into it. I liked how it sounded. Still, I was bothered by it. The finality of what was happening seemed to clamp down on my thoughts. I wasn’t just wearing women’s clothes to work, satisfying some rising fetish, I was taking a woman’s name and presenting myself as a woman. I didn’t want to become one. I was telling my staff the truth when I explained that to them. I didn’t want to take hormones; I didn’t want to have some disfiguring surgery – having things added to my chest or taken off below; I just wanted to wear the clothing that both Peyton and I enjoyed, and I wanted to do it in a way that minimized the upheaval my coming out had already wrought. I failed at that. It was enough to make my head hurt.

                “Don’t worry about Jack,” Gayle said, taking another sip of not-my coffee.

                “How can I not?”

                “You had to know that not everyone was going to be on board, right?”

                I had known, of course. It would be foolish to think otherwise and except for what I was currently doing, I did not think I was a foolish man. Hadn’t Peyton called me foolish? She had but that had been playful and light unlike my current, racing thoughts. Thoughts that were far too dark. I shrugged, “I know, but Jack? Really? We’d joked about it.”

                Gayle said nothing. Then she said, “shit.”

                I looked up at her and at the woman walking up behind her. Gayle had seen her first and I wish I hadn’t seen her and even more than that I wish she hadn’t seen me.

                “Oh, my God, what a sissy,” Linda said. She had her phone out and was snapping pictures. I could hear an imaginary shutter cycling as she took each photo. It was the same sound I had heard walking through the conference room prior to that failed meeting. She had a grin on her face that was part predatory and part amused. Her eyes were wide, looking at me with the same intensity a starving man eyed a steak.

                “Linda? What the hell are you doing here?”

                She looked at me some more, snapping another dozen pictures.

                “Put the phone away.”

                Linda ignored me. It wasn’t like she every listened to me anyway, but this was worse. This was intentional. She was enjoying my embarrassment and they way I tried to hide behind my desk while holding my arms up as if my hands could block the lens of her camera phone. I yelled at her to leave. I ducked even lower, trying to hide myself away from her phone. Linda stepped past Gayle to stand next to my desk, getting even better pictures. “Oh, this is priceless,” she crooned.

                She stopped taking pictures and a moment later, when I thought the worst had passed, I recalled a valuable lesson. Things are never so bad that they can’t get worse. I think I read that once in an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. I don’t remember exactly, but that was the idea and at that moment, when Linda stopped taking my pictures that bad got so much worse. Linda played with her phone and a moment later I heard a little sound. One I recognized. It was the sound the phone made when a text was sent. Linda hadn’t just taken my pictures. She did much worse than that.

                She shared it.

                “Who did you send that to?” I demanded. My hands were moving, as Gayle had suggested, by they were flailing in impotent agony. My voice was full-on Angry Mason. A tone I had used with Linda far too often during our demise.

                She laughed, “Oh, sweetness,” she said, making me wince. When Peyton called me that she was being kind and caring and playful. With Linda it was malicious. She had started calling me that after catching me in panties the first time. Sweetness or sissy or Nancy or faggot. Mostly it was the play on my last name and hearing it again, and the way she said it like a bully taunting a much weaker kid, grated on my nerves, “I sent it to everybody.”

                I heard Gayle demand that Linda leave before she “called the cops,” but Linda ignored Gayle every bit as much as she had discarded my plea to put her phone away.

                “What do you mean?”

                I heard my own cell phone beep. The first of a long line of texts coming in. Then it exploded in a cacophony of incoming texts. For a few long seconds it seemed that my phone would never stop bleating.

                Flashing a grin full of teeth, she said, “my parents, your parents, your two sisters, pretty much everyone you know.  Well, maybe not everyone, I didn’t have the time for that. Yet.”

                I fell into my chair. I knew that most people would find out eventually, that was inevitable, but I hadn’t expected it to come at the malicious hands of Linda and in one quick, angry swoop. My phone beeped again. And again. The sound of my phone seemed to echo, not in the room, but in my heart. What were people thinking? What were my parents thinking? My sisters who had to know by now that I’d swiped their panties when I was younger. What would they say? My phone announced its presence again, demanding that I look but I was too afraid to even glance at the screen. My head would jerk towards the phone every time it chimed but I couldn’t force myself to reach for it. There were too many problems coming in and maybe too much damage.

                “Why are you even here?”

                “Jack called me, and I had to see this for myself. I always knew you were a little sissy, you and your damned panties, but this, oh, Sweetness, this is too much.”

                There it was again, the same word Peyton called me only coming from Linda it didn’t sound appealing. It sounded like something that growled and bit and maimed. And killed. “You’ve had your fun. Just leave.”

                Linda gave me that predatory grin again, “I’m not even close to being done with having fun.” She rolled her eyes like I had said the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. “But, yeah, I’m leaving.” She brought her phone up and took a few more picture before I could even think to shout at her to stop. “I’ve got some more texts to send and a few posts to make on Facebook. You’re still on LinkedIn, right?”

                “Please don’t.”

                “Why, Sweetness, I think that’s the first time I heard you say ‘please’ in over two years. Fat chance, sissy.” She spun around, glowered at Gayle, “how can you work for this pansy?”

                “Easier than working for you.” Score one for Gayle. She deserved a raise. She would get one.

                Linda made some derisive snort and then left the office to do more damage. I had gone over countless scenarios about my dressing like a woman at work. Being outed to the world before lunch had never entered my mind. Linda coming, and wreaking havoc hadn’t entered my thoughts either.

                My phone beeped again. The tones were coming less frequently but they were still coming in and when Linda followed through on her threat, I knew it would be bleating even more.

                “Are you okay, Louise?”

                I started to say something, paused, closed my mouth, opened it again, shook my head, and closed my mouth again. Finally, “I will be.” That much was true. No matter what happened I would be okay. I had Peyton and that was enough. I thought about that for a moment. My world was collapsing, and my thoughts went to Peyton and how no matter what she would support me and be there for me. She was solid and strong and on my team. How could I not be okay? I looked up at Gayle, nodding, “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

                She looked skeptical, “you sure?”

                I smiled, and it was genuine. “Yeah. I mean it.  Thanks, Gayle. Loved what you said to Linda, by the way.”

                “She’s such a bitch!”

                It was the first time I laughed that day and it felt good, my face rising in a smile.

                Gayle went back to work as the office phone range. My smile faded when Gayle transferred the call.        

Most of my staff had been ready for my debut, save for the ones that left. My clients were not. Looking back, I find it funny that I barely gave any thought to what my clients would say, assuming that since I rarely met them in person that they’d not really concern themselves with what I was wearing. I’d been having such a good time with Peyton and my staff, while maybe not supportive, were at least acceptable to the idea, so when Gayle announced that Walter Smythe of Smythe Hardware was on the phone I didn’t think about what I was wearing. Maybe I should have.

                “Walter,” I said, not hiding my voice. Gayle was right about that at least. My voice didn’t even come close to matching how I was dressed. The tone of my voice, the timbre, belied how I looked. If I were a print ad I’d be out of focus.

                The conversation was brief. I’d lost a customer. By the end of the day I’d lost over half. The first wave had been the ones that Jack had stolen; the final crescendo by the ones that were too close-minded or too prejudiced to hire an advertising firm run by “a damned sissy,” or a “flaming faggot,” or my least favorite, “a pussy.”

                My thoughts of growing the company were shattered before the end of the day. Now I’d have to hustle to make up the ground I lost. I refused to release any of my staff for my actions. I’d take a cut to my own considerable wealth before I let that happen. In time, I was sure, my business would grow again. That led to a thought, which led to another. I made a few notes and finally, with the end of the day approaching, I picked up my cell phone. It was time to see what I didn’t want to see.

                True to hear word Linda had send the most damning pictures of me to my parents, my sisters, my friends, her friends, pretty much anyone that knew me before I started dressing like a woman. Most of the texts were derogatory and I knew I’d lost a few friends as I read their demeaning comments. The ones from my mom was sweet: What shall we call our new daughter? My sisters were equally supportive: It’s about time, from one, and Where did you get that blazer? from the other. Marie finally confirmed what I suspected all along. After the It’s about time, she followed that with: I guess you have your own panties now? That made me smile even if it was a weak one at best.

                Leaving the office for the day I had deleted about twenty-five contacts from my phone. I’d never hear from them again. That stung a bit, but the pain was eased by how many people either accepted or supported what I was doing.

                With them and Peyton it would be more than enough.