~BHM, ~WG, ~Magic --- Some people have to work over the holidays. Magic-users can be among them!
(Full disclosure: this was pretty much a stream-of-consciousness piece hammered out over half an hour, inspired by a recent article I read stating that UK women prefer bigger men in bed, on average, because of how gentle they are; a curiosity about doing a gender-bent version of a particular style of story I've seen around these boards; and a general need to just sit down and *write* something, anything.)
(I've not even proof-read it, so please forgive any spelling errors. Think of it as a late Xmas present for you folks. Hope you enjoy!)
The movies have ruined things for us. Comic books, too - dear god, those comic books. The one feeds things into the other and then the other feeds things back into the one, and they sit there pumping each other full of bad ideas like some sickly two-monster ouroboros, and let us watch them doing it for a couple of bucks. It’s sick. Take it from me, kids: nothing is like it is in a movie. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
I’m not explaining myself. Put it this way: things that are difficult in life aren’t ever so in the movies. You got your, whassisname, your Steve-The-Goddamn-Weakling who wants to sign up and serve his country. And what do you know, the lucky fuck catches the eye of some goddamned science freaks, and they pump him with drugs until he’s so cut you could slice open a watermelon on his abdominals, and they call him “Captain America” and throw him out there to punch the world’s problems to death. That’s the dream, ain’t it?
And you got a generation of young, impressionable persons who look at that nonsense and think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Or they think they can do it like Rocky Balboa, and just by drinkin’ eggs and going on runs they’ll be a superman in five days. Or they go to the drugs, god help ‘em. Muscle ain’t the half of it either. Goin’ by movie logic you’d think you could blow up like a blimp after two consecutive nights getting dinner at Maccy D’s.
It’s a short, sharp shock to ‘em when they find that real life’s not like that. It’s hard (heh), and it makes ya sweat. Some, they look at the work they gotta do and the reward they’re gonna get for it, and they shrug their shoulders. They give up. That’s their right, I don’t judge. Some, they push on, and when they get the body of Monroe or Samson or whoever, they think to thesselves, “That’s it, this is who I am ferevver now,” and aren’t they surprised when they hit 40 and look down and see a beer gut.
But, hey, here I am complainin’, when this is all what makes up my customer base. See, some of them, if they’re lucky, they hear about someone like me. If they’re lucky, they find me. If they’re luckier, they can afford my rates.
H. M. could. Thought he could, anyway.
To this day, I’m fucked if I know how he found me. The night of Crissmas I spent with Zeke, an ol’ buddy I used to screw back when we both worked in the mailroom in ————, Illinois. He’d wanted me to be his date to a Crissmas party (the sap), seeing as how he was all alone in the city, gal-pal-wise, ‘cept for me. I knew what he really wanted, but I managed to palm him off on some chick from New Orleans, with huge eyelashes a tuchus like a - anyway.
When H. M. found me, it was Boxing Day. Late Boxing Day. I was crashed out on Zeke’s ugly-ass leather couch. Mem’ry serves, I was wearin’ my leopard-print tights and a giant red leather jacket I got off some bearded guy outta Kansas City at the party. God knows how blasted he was when I took it offa him, didn’t say a word. My hair was all over the place, them fake fingernails were on only *one* of my hands, and there wuz the tell-tale feel of dried mascara all over my cheeks and jawbone. Oh, and I was still holding the bourbon bottle. Classy broad, you’re thinking. On a non-holiday day, you’d be half-right.
When he coughed, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but pink. Turned out some piece-of-shit prankster put a lampshade over my head while I was passed out. It was probably eight, nine in the morning? I can’t tell from sunlight anymore. When I’d squinted, rubbed my eyes and got black mess all over my fingers, I knew right away I had a client.
Lemme give you a picture of H. M.: pretty much a ideal definition of “Fucking Loser” from outta the imagination of every high-school bully, stretched out into the body of a 24-year-old dressed entirely in black, tight-fitting clothes. He looked like Peter Pan woulda, if he’d been raised by one’a them icky things outta “Alien 2”. (See? There I go again. Movies, fucking weak-ass written movies, they come into your imagination and multiply like rabbits. I used to know poetry, goddamnit!)
H. M. looked like he watched the movies, way too much. Sounded like it too, the minute his candy-ass mouth opened. “You’re her, right?” he said, or words to that effect, and smoothed some of his the-whole-goddamned-bottle-of-hair-gel Hitler-combover out of his eyes. I knew right away, if I said one thing outta place he’d run for the hills. His fingers were tremblin’.
“Depends,” I grumbled, trying to sit my ass up and hoping he didn't hear the hangover leaking out of every pore. “Does “her” have a name?”
He said my names. All three of them, from all three of my business. I’ll say this for ‘im, he knew how to ask around. If I cared I’d’a asked how he found me sleeping on someone else’s couch in the other side of the city from my home turf. By this point, I know they’ll find me wherever the hell I go, and none ‘a them can ever tell me how. Rat bastards.
“I want to be…I’m too nice,” he said, and grimaced. I got the sneaking sensation he’d been practicing that grimace ever since way back when Momma told him he couldn’t have that cookie before dinner.
“What I do ain’t hypnosis, kid,” I said. That was mostly true. What I do ain’t about changin’ people’s minds. Usually they do anyway, but it ain’t deliberate. It’s a, whatdoyoucall’em, symptom. Bodies, they’re more my forte.
You don’t know bodies the way I do. And let me cut you the fuck off before you goddamn start about glass houses or black pots or any more’a that moralising bullshit. There’s rules in this business, and the cardinal of ‘em all is that you don’t play around on yourself. I’m like, like Bee-tooven, you know? Guy could fill an opera-house but couldn’t hear nuthin’. Same rules.
You look at my fake tan and my bleached roots and my five-foot-goddamned-motherfucking-three-inches even with heels, and these little doll’s teacups up front, and you leap to your ugly little conclusions. 

You don’t see what I c’n do. You’d not even know the name of it. Hell, even I don’t know the name of it. Fella out of Norway, he had the gift to, said he wuz an “Anatomy-mancer”, or some shit. Feh. I prefer it when they use my name.
“I’m too nice,” H.M. said again, and oh boy, I saw a little monologue comin’. Lit one up so I’d have something to keep my hand from slappin’ him. “I had it all planned out. Right after Christmas dinner, I was gonna call L—— from accounting” (he said it like I’d have an clue who that was). “I was gonna ask her if she’d be my date for the New Years’ party. She’s…she’s got this hair, and…I mean, anyway, I worked for her. I fuckin’ worked for her! I helped her with her finals, and I made nice with her friends, and I sat through all those stupid chick-flicks on Saturdays, and, and last night I called her up, and you know what she said? And I’m a nice guy! I’m a perfectly nice guy, and, and - you know what she said, the - the slut?”


“She said ‘I wanna just be friends’,” I said, mostly to shut him up. He looked genuinely shocked, poor kid, and I could see the lines on his zitty white forehead creasin’ as he tried to work out if I was in on the big worldwide female-led conspiracy against his poor little pecker. Men, I swear to christ. If he hadn’t been a potential client, I’d have put out my ciggie on his crotch. Then again, why waste a sweet little ciggie? It’s not like the fuckers’ll kill me any time soon. “Instead’a ‘OK, let’s fuck’. And lemme guess, she’s already goin’ out with someone. Someone…much bigger than you.”
“Well - I mean - how’d you - huh?”
“Woman’s intuition,” I said. He probably didn’t take that sarcastically. “So whaddaya want from me, kid? You want to be, what, the Incredible Hulk?” (Goddamit!) “You wanna bust in there and cave this guy’s head in, scoop her up in your arms and take her inta the mountains for some of the ol’…” I mimed my cigarrette going in and out of two looped fingers.
“No - I mean, not like that - just…” he sighed, his little lip trembling and making that awful pedo-stache’a his wobble like a drunk lap-dancer. “I want to be - ”
“Hold up.” At this point, my attorney says I need to set out clear terms, just in case I ever get a customer who goes away unsatisfied (that’ll be the day). I sat up for real this time, found my purse under Zeke’s ridiculous coffee table - you gotta see this hunk of junk, it’s indescribably sad, like someone turned a 70-year-old widow’s bad breath into a piece of wood - and got out one of the xeroxes of the little contract he made for me. You’d love my attorney, E—. Good with his tongue in many surprisin’ ways.
H. M. read it with tiny squints in his eyes. “So you know what you gonna give me.”

He nodded, and I understood that he really, really didn’t.
“Now, tell me what you wanna get.”
“I wanna be big,” he said, sitting up straight. “Like the guys L——— likes. I want to be a man.”
He didn’t even need to sign the contract. He didn’t know it, but that was the point the deal was sealed. Even if I’d pushed him out the window he couldn’t a got away. So let’s have some fun, I thought.
“Step into my office,” I said. The drink was still in my legs even if it just left a pile of stinging puke in my cranium, so dignity went out the window maybe a little bit. He probably checked out my ass as we walked over to Zeke’s kitchen. I didn’t mind. It’d be the last time.
Zeke’s one of those guys who keeps his liquor cabinet the way some of those Redneck bastards keep their gun cabinet. All of the harmless vanilla stuff in the front, but behind it is some of the good shit, that might alter the way you walk if you ain’t careful.
I’m not gonna tell ya the drink I mixed. Knew a fella back in the bad old days, some Limey bastard with big fuckin’ ideas about himself. Might have heard of him, name of Alice-stair Crowley. Wrote down all of his secrets in a book, even though we all told him not ta, every one of us. We know where that leads. You still read in the papers ‘bout some stupid fucker who’s read that book and blown hisself up trying to follow the recipe. Or hell, maybe that was the point. Never liked ol’ Alice-stair. Can’t trust any man, calls himself a beast.
Oh for god’s sake, you greedy fuckers. Just trust me that I had set the drink on fire, and give it a spoonful of brown sugar before I gave it to him. It’s good shit, is what I’m sayin’.
“It’s Nine-Thirty in the morning,” said H.M., when I handed it to him.
“No shit,” I said. “What, you think you need ta hold it up to the moonlight or sumptin’? Be a good boy, drink your medicine.”
“And this’ll…this is where the magic is?”


I chuckled. “Naw, honey, this is just to get you nice and calm while I work. This, here - ”
I waved the hand that still had the fake nails on it over my short-ass self.
“This is where the magic is.”
He swallowed, shut his eyes, and drank down the little martini like an old bum downs surplus mouthwash. Poor bastard, probably couldn’t even name what I put in it. I had to catch him so he wouldn’t bump his little emo-head on Zeke’s kitchen counter.
I laid him down on that long-dark-pukestain-of-the-soul coffee-table. Then I found the radio. Then I turned it on. Then I got to work.
First thing was to strip off his clothes. Coulda burned ‘em, but it was better to leave no trace. Waved a hand and they flew out the window, on their way back to Hot Topic where they belonged. Next thing, look in his wallet for his driver’s licence. Still only a learner, what a surprise.
That name - for his sake, I’m not gonna tell you that either. No wonder that poor girl didn’t see anything in him. Parent names a kid that, they’re just fucking with him from the day he was born. That was what was gonna change last. But I have to get a taste of what I’m workin’ with, don’t I?
He was pale and unhealthy-lookin’ all the way down, from his little Nazi hairdo to those damn tighty-whities, to his black-nail-polished toes. Ribcage stuck out so much you coulda kept your pencils between each bone. This was a job, alright. First thing first - the head.
I twirled one finger in his hair. It wrapped around me like an ol’ tom cat who needs a little love, and I said the first of the Unutterable Words from the Book of Footsteps, and it all came off in my hands, like a wig. Every hair, straight outta that little boy’s scalp until he was bald as the day his bony ass came into this world.
Looked at the licence in my other hand. You gotta check these things. Sure as shit, there he was in the photo. Still a skinny-lookin’ runt, but now a bald skinny-lookin’ runt too. That’s my trade, ladeez an’ gennlemen. I don’t so much bake a cake as I make it so that there was a cake in the fridge yesterday, baked the day before.
The hair was still movin’ in my hands. You can’t throw anything away. Either you put it somewhere else or you keep it for later. I whispered to it, smoothed it with my hands (it really was like a little kitty), and got most of the gel out of it and wiped on Zeke’s rug. Then I made a few adjustments and laid it over his face.
Boom. Now lil’ ol’ H. M. had a big ol’ beard, with whiskers and shag going down to his neck, like that Chaz Darwin who thought up how we come from apes, or whatever. Checked his pulse. Sometimes - and I don’t wanna alarm ya, or nothing, but it happens - sometimes they don’t take to it, their bodies don’t like the magic. Messin’ around with the hair’s a good test. Make no mistake, the three or four times that’s happened I’ve called an ambulance and gone without them payin’. I’m a bitch, or I can be, but I don’t need to steal anything.
So here’s H.M. with a beard, now. Still, you’ve seen a skinny guy with a big beard. Not many times he c’n get away with it, less he’s a Rabbi or an A-Rab. Naw, H.M. wanted ‘big’. So that’s what I gave him, two flavors ‘a big.
First was muscle. Muscle’s easy, you just gotta talk to the ones that are already there, give ‘em a little lullaby. Tell ‘em mama wants ‘em to stretch out, get up, be bigger. Just a little bigger, there we go. So now, maybe H.M.’s memories, in that little head of his, maybe they weren’t so mizzerable any more. Maybe instead of spendin’ his teens jerkin’ off to Beetlejuice and listenin’ to Radiohead day-in, day-out, he saved up for a goddamn gym membership and took out his angst on the runnin’ machines.
Like I said, I don’t go changin’ people’s minds. Their bodies, obviously, and their pasts, by neccessity. Their brains can’t help but adjust.
So there he was, all he-man, now, a little more Thor than Captain America. His skin looked a lil healthier, too, the way it’ll look when you’re not spendin’ all day indoors. “Bronzed”, they call it. The first flavour a’ big was done, and he made it look good. But I wasn’t done, not yet. I reached in my pocket. Remember, the jacket wasn’t mine, but in the pockets were everything I needed. That always happens. It’s one of the perks of being me.
I took out a sharpie and started drawin’ on H.M.. Gave him a huge long fuckoff Chinese dragon around one arm, with little mountains under the feet and a big jet of fire going out its mouth and down his back. On his left pec, a big life-sized heart, with a thorny rose stuck in the top, whatdayacallit, blood-hole, and a snake wrapped around the bottom. Writing on top: “If you got nothin’ good to say…” Writing on the bottom: “…then don’t say nothin’.”

Speakin’ of bottom. (Heee…I slay myself.) Turned him over, drew a nice little zen thingy, you know the one, the little black-and-white circle with the dots, on his now perky little tushie. Added a couple more designs on his upper arms and the back of his neck. Now, ol’ H.M., at this point he’d gotten a job when he was 17 at his uncle’s garage. Got hooked on Heavy Metal while he learned to fix up cars. Read “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and it blew his little mind.
I turned him over again. Reached in my other pocket, found a little tube of talcum powder. Sprinkled it over H.M. and blew. Ink sunk into him, spiralled, turned that green colour they get when they’ve been on ya awhile. Perfect marks for the man he was gonna be.
So that led me onto the second flavor of “Big”, and boy oh boy, that one’s an old fav’rite. Crawled onto the table is what I did, kneeling on his chest, and I took his head in my hands. Them cheekbones were still sticking out over his big ol’ beard, but not for long. Gave him a little kiss on the forehead. Then he started bubbling up. It’s somethin’ to see, I wish you could, I can’t describe it. Like someone getting a big jar of honey dripped over them, but from the inside.
It was only a little subtle at first, but it spread from his cheeks - getting big like ripe apples, and just as red too - to his nose, now a bit more like Santa’s nose in them ol Crissmas cards, ya know the ones I mean? And down to his shoulders, to his pecs, gettin’ a little softer, making a pair of man-boobs that could probably stay in his shirt without needing to borrow a bra, to his abs. Heh, that there was like watching a little island getting washed over by a tidal wave. He got a nice round gut on him then, straight over the waistband of his underwear (now a nice pair of black boxers). I tapped it once, and the whole of his torso got covered in curly black fuzz, like a teddybear. I tapped it again, and that innie belly-button of his turned into a nice little outie, now that it had an actual belly to belong with.
Old H.M. got him a booty too, now, and some nice thick tree-trunk legs, and if you shaved off that beard ‘a his - he’d probably wrestle you first - you’d find a little double-chin. So maybe H.M., when he gets to college he’s gotta spend his money on books now, so he can’t get any more gym subscriptions. But he’s still eatin’ and drinkin’ like a lumberjack. So he gets even bigger. So he gets used to it. I like it when they’re used to it.
Now, you might call me crazy, or kinky, for holdin’ to this particular preference. And alls I gots to say to that is: you ever met a fat guy, honey? You ever fucked one? A good one, I mean. They’re gentlemen, every one of ‘em. Put it this way - I gotta sister, loves watching the nature channel. One night I’m at her place borrowing a hundred or so for the tanning parlor, and she’s got the TV on, and they’re doing a show where they cut up a zoo elephant what died under mysterious circumstances. Damn strange things they put on TV now. Anyways, what they said was, and you won’t believe this, is that elephants, they got a little cushion in their feet, right under their skeleton, like a big squishy high-heel. So even though on the outside, their feet look flat, on the inside, they’re always walkin’ on tip-toe, careful-like.
That’s what a big guy’s like, on the streets, in the sheets, wherever-the-fuck. They know they’re big, they know it. So they’re always careful. (Plus, in the winter, they’re extra-fun to cuddle. You don’t even need a blanket, I swear to god.)
H.M., the way he was now, he’d have made it with a girl when he was 18, instead of how it was before, when he never spoke to ‘em til he was 21. Probably she jumped his bones in the back of her daddy’s borrowed car on prom night, ‘cos she’d seen him woodworking in his spare time at home and knew that he knew how to be careful with something fragile. Probably he asked her, very nicely, if she wanted just to cuddle that night, and said it was fine with him, and meant it. Probably she said no, maybe just ‘cause he asked.
He’d have a lot more women than he’d had in his old life, too, and maybe some guys, as well, since he’d be a braver boy now he was a bigger boy. Them fingers of his were puffy little sausages now, but they still knew what to do and where to do it, if ya know what I mean. And you just know a fat guy knows how to eat.
H.M., he’s now a good guy. Works in a soup kitchen once or twice a month. Stands up on the bus for old ladies and pregnant gals. Tryin’ t’go vegetarian, now he can afford it. Holds open doors, because it’s the polite thing to do, and not to get tail. He can get tail when he wants, and more than anyone’d think. Shows what you get when you actually are a nice guy, don’t it?
Still…he didn’t look quite done. I thought about it, gave his little belly a jiggle. Said I’d have some fun with him, didn’t I? And all he’d said was “Big”. And “A Man”. And “The Kind of Guy L——— Likes”. Didn’t say the guy she’d actually be dating, now did he? 

Jiggled him a bit more, and added a couple inches, just for fun. By now the coffee-table was creaking, so I hefted him up onto Zeke’s armchair by the TV, just in case. H.M. probably weigh a good three hunnerd fifty Ell Bees by then - the sweet rewards of spending all your twenties writin’ essays and takin’ the motorcycle to school and drinkin’ PBRs by the six-pack with your buddies in front of the TV on a Friday night while you finish off the pizza before it gets cold.
So now, you’re probably thinkin’ I did all this to punish him, to be a dick. But don’t get me wrong: I may not do hypnotisin’, but what I do has the same rule. I only work with what’s there, the same way a hypnotiser can’t make you do nothin’ you wouldn’t wanna do anyway. Somewhere in H.M. was a big, bearded biker-dude with a law degree, just waitin’ for the right kind of talented somebody to let him out. Lucky for him, I’m a very talented somebody in-deed.
He was a weekender now, too; kept his tats under his sleeves at work, went out and had fun onna weekend. Out from my endless jacket pockets I pulled a classy-looking suit ensemble, with vest and bow-tie, in lavender and charcoal. They slipped over his big fat frame, snuggling on him tight, a couplea buttons not quite comin’ together - clearly he’d had a nice Crissmas dinner. Pants weren’t zipped up either. Plus a couple of piercings, one of which slipped into his ear and another in his eyebrow. Two big lace-up boots rested by his feet, which were now puffy and snug inside a pair of stripy socks his mama probably sent him.
Checked the driver’s licence. He was now “Harry Mackenzie”, a damned good name for a damned fine-lookin’ fella. He looked like a storybook giant, and snored halfway as loud as one. His hands were crossed, rested on his big belly, and now that was where they usually were when he sat down. 

It was a job well done, and I hadn’t even gotten paid yet. But he looked so sweet lying there, and if I’m tellin’ the truth, the work takes it out of me; and that hangover wasn’t shifting any time soon. (Wouldn’t bother him, I knew. Lucky fatso.)
So I curled up on what little of his lap wasn’t taken over by belly and snuggled close. So sue me. You’da done the same if you’d seen him.
When I woke up, hangover faded like a flag in the breeze, I was on the sofa again, with that red leather jacket laid over me like a blanket. I sat up on my elbows, and there was Zeke on the armchair, watchin’ the game.
“Hey, fuckass,” I murmurred, sitting up. “Didja see a big fat guy — ”
“Hey yourself, jerk,” he said before I finished. “Damn right I saw him, and heard him, and the two of you damn-near broke my goddamn couch last night the way you were going on.”


“Oh…oh yeah,” I grinned. You’ve never had the pleasure of remembering a pleasant memory that definitely wasn’t there the night before, but it’s inde-fuckin’-scribably luscious. I was right; the new, improved H.M. was a hell of a lay. No wonder Zeke looked like he’d been trying to sleep in a warzone. “I’ll crash at my own place next time, I promise,” I lied. 


“Who is that guy, anyway?”
“Ah, just some kid.”
Zee sighed, looked at me, his cheek rested on his fist. “I was a kid too, ya know,” he said.
“The cutest,” I said, and blew him a kiss. He jumped like a dog catching a treat. That’s Zeke for ya, goddamn little cute weirdo. He had a girl in his life now, name of Tamika, so he was…mostly off the table. Heck, maybe we’d have a nice sleepy foursome sometime. Hadn’t had one ‘a those that was worth having, since, lessee, 1895. I’d seen her - or, now, I remembered having seen her - checking out H.M.’s cute tush sashaying around the corner of the street when I walked him to the club last night.
Speak of the devil. I heard a little shuffle and felt that padded gut of his press against the back of my head. Jumped up like a wildcat, scaled that big mountainous body of his and planted a kiss on him instead of a flag.
“Hello yourself,” H.M. said in his big rumbling voice, handing me my purse.
“What time is it, sugar?” I asked, nuzzling his chest. The button still wouldn’t do up there, and there was some fuzz.
“Two-thirty, why?” he said, stroking my hair.
“Well, fat boy, I think this tank of yours needs filling,” I said, wobbling it under his vest. It rumbled and gurgled in agreement, and he smiled in that cute-ass bashful way he does. “And I know I could use a nice hot coffee. Waddaya say we head over to Waffle House, get some steak and eggs, my treat? And then…” I whispered in his ear. He knows how hot ’n’ bothered (by which I mean horny as all fucking hell) I get from seeing him eat too much. 

“Sounds like a plan. I gotta go and help L——— with her thesis at 5, though.”
“Hey, she’s the one who’s gotta pass that test. You can’t do it for her.”


“I know, I know…just, she got me that job interview with the firm. I owe her.”
“Ah, you’re a nice guy, Harry Mackenzie.”


He shrugged, the same way an avalanche looks like a shrug. “I don’t know ‘bout that. Try my hardest, that’s all. Oh, reminds me - ” he turned to Zeke. “Thanks for letting us crash, dude, and uh…sorry about the…”


“Don’t worry about it. You’d do the same for me, I guess.”


“Would we, now?”, I asked, thinking about that four-way. H.M. squeezed my hand in the “Now’s-Not-The-Time-To-Be-A-Fuckin’-Lech, Dear” way that he’d practiced many times before.
“Still, man, next time I’ll buy you a beer. You better hold me to that one.”
“Will do. Have fun, kids.”
We stepped outside, H.M. going first so I could watch his luverly hips brush the doorways. One ‘a these days he’s gonna get big enough he has to go sideways. He gave me a show, ‘cos he knows I love it. Held open the door, too, because that’s the right thing to do for your lady.
It was cold outside. I didn’t notice. I had a big jacket, and a big fella to lean against while we walked a block or two down to the diner. He smiled at me, ol’ H.M., with his big red cheeks like a younger, sexier Santa Claus. How could I not smile back? It was too early for sunset, and we’re no supermodels, so I s’pose we got some stares - little dishevelled cougar in a leather jacket arm-in-arm with a huge bearded lumberjack fella, well...doesn’t exactly look like some happy-ever-after ending from outta the movies.
But...like I said...nothing is really like it is in a movie.
FIN...
(Full disclosure: this was pretty much a stream-of-consciousness piece hammered out over half an hour, inspired by a recent article I read stating that UK women prefer bigger men in bed, on average, because of how gentle they are; a curiosity about doing a gender-bent version of a particular style of story I've seen around these boards; and a general need to just sit down and *write* something, anything.)
(I've not even proof-read it, so please forgive any spelling errors. Think of it as a late Xmas present for you folks. Hope you enjoy!)
The Boxing Day Client
by
JimBob
by
JimBob
The movies have ruined things for us. Comic books, too - dear god, those comic books. The one feeds things into the other and then the other feeds things back into the one, and they sit there pumping each other full of bad ideas like some sickly two-monster ouroboros, and let us watch them doing it for a couple of bucks. It’s sick. Take it from me, kids: nothing is like it is in a movie. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
I’m not explaining myself. Put it this way: things that are difficult in life aren’t ever so in the movies. You got your, whassisname, your Steve-The-Goddamn-Weakling who wants to sign up and serve his country. And what do you know, the lucky fuck catches the eye of some goddamned science freaks, and they pump him with drugs until he’s so cut you could slice open a watermelon on his abdominals, and they call him “Captain America” and throw him out there to punch the world’s problems to death. That’s the dream, ain’t it?
And you got a generation of young, impressionable persons who look at that nonsense and think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Or they think they can do it like Rocky Balboa, and just by drinkin’ eggs and going on runs they’ll be a superman in five days. Or they go to the drugs, god help ‘em. Muscle ain’t the half of it either. Goin’ by movie logic you’d think you could blow up like a blimp after two consecutive nights getting dinner at Maccy D’s.
It’s a short, sharp shock to ‘em when they find that real life’s not like that. It’s hard (heh), and it makes ya sweat. Some, they look at the work they gotta do and the reward they’re gonna get for it, and they shrug their shoulders. They give up. That’s their right, I don’t judge. Some, they push on, and when they get the body of Monroe or Samson or whoever, they think to thesselves, “That’s it, this is who I am ferevver now,” and aren’t they surprised when they hit 40 and look down and see a beer gut.
But, hey, here I am complainin’, when this is all what makes up my customer base. See, some of them, if they’re lucky, they hear about someone like me. If they’re lucky, they find me. If they’re luckier, they can afford my rates.
H. M. could. Thought he could, anyway.
To this day, I’m fucked if I know how he found me. The night of Crissmas I spent with Zeke, an ol’ buddy I used to screw back when we both worked in the mailroom in ————, Illinois. He’d wanted me to be his date to a Crissmas party (the sap), seeing as how he was all alone in the city, gal-pal-wise, ‘cept for me. I knew what he really wanted, but I managed to palm him off on some chick from New Orleans, with huge eyelashes a tuchus like a - anyway.
When H. M. found me, it was Boxing Day. Late Boxing Day. I was crashed out on Zeke’s ugly-ass leather couch. Mem’ry serves, I was wearin’ my leopard-print tights and a giant red leather jacket I got off some bearded guy outta Kansas City at the party. God knows how blasted he was when I took it offa him, didn’t say a word. My hair was all over the place, them fake fingernails were on only *one* of my hands, and there wuz the tell-tale feel of dried mascara all over my cheeks and jawbone. Oh, and I was still holding the bourbon bottle. Classy broad, you’re thinking. On a non-holiday day, you’d be half-right.
When he coughed, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but pink. Turned out some piece-of-shit prankster put a lampshade over my head while I was passed out. It was probably eight, nine in the morning? I can’t tell from sunlight anymore. When I’d squinted, rubbed my eyes and got black mess all over my fingers, I knew right away I had a client.
Lemme give you a picture of H. M.: pretty much a ideal definition of “Fucking Loser” from outta the imagination of every high-school bully, stretched out into the body of a 24-year-old dressed entirely in black, tight-fitting clothes. He looked like Peter Pan woulda, if he’d been raised by one’a them icky things outta “Alien 2”. (See? There I go again. Movies, fucking weak-ass written movies, they come into your imagination and multiply like rabbits. I used to know poetry, goddamnit!)
H. M. looked like he watched the movies, way too much. Sounded like it too, the minute his candy-ass mouth opened. “You’re her, right?” he said, or words to that effect, and smoothed some of his the-whole-goddamned-bottle-of-hair-gel Hitler-combover out of his eyes. I knew right away, if I said one thing outta place he’d run for the hills. His fingers were tremblin’.
“Depends,” I grumbled, trying to sit my ass up and hoping he didn't hear the hangover leaking out of every pore. “Does “her” have a name?”
He said my names. All three of them, from all three of my business. I’ll say this for ‘im, he knew how to ask around. If I cared I’d’a asked how he found me sleeping on someone else’s couch in the other side of the city from my home turf. By this point, I know they’ll find me wherever the hell I go, and none ‘a them can ever tell me how. Rat bastards.
“I want to be…I’m too nice,” he said, and grimaced. I got the sneaking sensation he’d been practicing that grimace ever since way back when Momma told him he couldn’t have that cookie before dinner.
“What I do ain’t hypnosis, kid,” I said. That was mostly true. What I do ain’t about changin’ people’s minds. Usually they do anyway, but it ain’t deliberate. It’s a, whatdoyoucall’em, symptom. Bodies, they’re more my forte.
You don’t know bodies the way I do. And let me cut you the fuck off before you goddamn start about glass houses or black pots or any more’a that moralising bullshit. There’s rules in this business, and the cardinal of ‘em all is that you don’t play around on yourself. I’m like, like Bee-tooven, you know? Guy could fill an opera-house but couldn’t hear nuthin’. Same rules.
You look at my fake tan and my bleached roots and my five-foot-goddamned-motherfucking-three-inches even with heels, and these little doll’s teacups up front, and you leap to your ugly little conclusions. 

You don’t see what I c’n do. You’d not even know the name of it. Hell, even I don’t know the name of it. Fella out of Norway, he had the gift to, said he wuz an “Anatomy-mancer”, or some shit. Feh. I prefer it when they use my name.
“I’m too nice,” H.M. said again, and oh boy, I saw a little monologue comin’. Lit one up so I’d have something to keep my hand from slappin’ him. “I had it all planned out. Right after Christmas dinner, I was gonna call L—— from accounting” (he said it like I’d have an clue who that was). “I was gonna ask her if she’d be my date for the New Years’ party. She’s…she’s got this hair, and…I mean, anyway, I worked for her. I fuckin’ worked for her! I helped her with her finals, and I made nice with her friends, and I sat through all those stupid chick-flicks on Saturdays, and, and last night I called her up, and you know what she said? And I’m a nice guy! I’m a perfectly nice guy, and, and - you know what she said, the - the slut?”


“She said ‘I wanna just be friends’,” I said, mostly to shut him up. He looked genuinely shocked, poor kid, and I could see the lines on his zitty white forehead creasin’ as he tried to work out if I was in on the big worldwide female-led conspiracy against his poor little pecker. Men, I swear to christ. If he hadn’t been a potential client, I’d have put out my ciggie on his crotch. Then again, why waste a sweet little ciggie? It’s not like the fuckers’ll kill me any time soon. “Instead’a ‘OK, let’s fuck’. And lemme guess, she’s already goin’ out with someone. Someone…much bigger than you.”
“Well - I mean - how’d you - huh?”
“Woman’s intuition,” I said. He probably didn’t take that sarcastically. “So whaddaya want from me, kid? You want to be, what, the Incredible Hulk?” (Goddamit!) “You wanna bust in there and cave this guy’s head in, scoop her up in your arms and take her inta the mountains for some of the ol’…” I mimed my cigarrette going in and out of two looped fingers.
“No - I mean, not like that - just…” he sighed, his little lip trembling and making that awful pedo-stache’a his wobble like a drunk lap-dancer. “I want to be - ”
“Hold up.” At this point, my attorney says I need to set out clear terms, just in case I ever get a customer who goes away unsatisfied (that’ll be the day). I sat up for real this time, found my purse under Zeke’s ridiculous coffee table - you gotta see this hunk of junk, it’s indescribably sad, like someone turned a 70-year-old widow’s bad breath into a piece of wood - and got out one of the xeroxes of the little contract he made for me. You’d love my attorney, E—. Good with his tongue in many surprisin’ ways.
H. M. read it with tiny squints in his eyes. “So you know what you gonna give me.”

He nodded, and I understood that he really, really didn’t.
“Now, tell me what you wanna get.”
“I wanna be big,” he said, sitting up straight. “Like the guys L——— likes. I want to be a man.”
He didn’t even need to sign the contract. He didn’t know it, but that was the point the deal was sealed. Even if I’d pushed him out the window he couldn’t a got away. So let’s have some fun, I thought.
“Step into my office,” I said. The drink was still in my legs even if it just left a pile of stinging puke in my cranium, so dignity went out the window maybe a little bit. He probably checked out my ass as we walked over to Zeke’s kitchen. I didn’t mind. It’d be the last time.
Zeke’s one of those guys who keeps his liquor cabinet the way some of those Redneck bastards keep their gun cabinet. All of the harmless vanilla stuff in the front, but behind it is some of the good shit, that might alter the way you walk if you ain’t careful.
I’m not gonna tell ya the drink I mixed. Knew a fella back in the bad old days, some Limey bastard with big fuckin’ ideas about himself. Might have heard of him, name of Alice-stair Crowley. Wrote down all of his secrets in a book, even though we all told him not ta, every one of us. We know where that leads. You still read in the papers ‘bout some stupid fucker who’s read that book and blown hisself up trying to follow the recipe. Or hell, maybe that was the point. Never liked ol’ Alice-stair. Can’t trust any man, calls himself a beast.
Oh for god’s sake, you greedy fuckers. Just trust me that I had set the drink on fire, and give it a spoonful of brown sugar before I gave it to him. It’s good shit, is what I’m sayin’.
“It’s Nine-Thirty in the morning,” said H.M., when I handed it to him.
“No shit,” I said. “What, you think you need ta hold it up to the moonlight or sumptin’? Be a good boy, drink your medicine.”
“And this’ll…this is where the magic is?”


I chuckled. “Naw, honey, this is just to get you nice and calm while I work. This, here - ”
I waved the hand that still had the fake nails on it over my short-ass self.
“This is where the magic is.”
He swallowed, shut his eyes, and drank down the little martini like an old bum downs surplus mouthwash. Poor bastard, probably couldn’t even name what I put in it. I had to catch him so he wouldn’t bump his little emo-head on Zeke’s kitchen counter.
I laid him down on that long-dark-pukestain-of-the-soul coffee-table. Then I found the radio. Then I turned it on. Then I got to work.
First thing was to strip off his clothes. Coulda burned ‘em, but it was better to leave no trace. Waved a hand and they flew out the window, on their way back to Hot Topic where they belonged. Next thing, look in his wallet for his driver’s licence. Still only a learner, what a surprise.
That name - for his sake, I’m not gonna tell you that either. No wonder that poor girl didn’t see anything in him. Parent names a kid that, they’re just fucking with him from the day he was born. That was what was gonna change last. But I have to get a taste of what I’m workin’ with, don’t I?
He was pale and unhealthy-lookin’ all the way down, from his little Nazi hairdo to those damn tighty-whities, to his black-nail-polished toes. Ribcage stuck out so much you coulda kept your pencils between each bone. This was a job, alright. First thing first - the head.
I twirled one finger in his hair. It wrapped around me like an ol’ tom cat who needs a little love, and I said the first of the Unutterable Words from the Book of Footsteps, and it all came off in my hands, like a wig. Every hair, straight outta that little boy’s scalp until he was bald as the day his bony ass came into this world.
Looked at the licence in my other hand. You gotta check these things. Sure as shit, there he was in the photo. Still a skinny-lookin’ runt, but now a bald skinny-lookin’ runt too. That’s my trade, ladeez an’ gennlemen. I don’t so much bake a cake as I make it so that there was a cake in the fridge yesterday, baked the day before.
The hair was still movin’ in my hands. You can’t throw anything away. Either you put it somewhere else or you keep it for later. I whispered to it, smoothed it with my hands (it really was like a little kitty), and got most of the gel out of it and wiped on Zeke’s rug. Then I made a few adjustments and laid it over his face.
Boom. Now lil’ ol’ H. M. had a big ol’ beard, with whiskers and shag going down to his neck, like that Chaz Darwin who thought up how we come from apes, or whatever. Checked his pulse. Sometimes - and I don’t wanna alarm ya, or nothing, but it happens - sometimes they don’t take to it, their bodies don’t like the magic. Messin’ around with the hair’s a good test. Make no mistake, the three or four times that’s happened I’ve called an ambulance and gone without them payin’. I’m a bitch, or I can be, but I don’t need to steal anything.
So here’s H.M. with a beard, now. Still, you’ve seen a skinny guy with a big beard. Not many times he c’n get away with it, less he’s a Rabbi or an A-Rab. Naw, H.M. wanted ‘big’. So that’s what I gave him, two flavors ‘a big.
First was muscle. Muscle’s easy, you just gotta talk to the ones that are already there, give ‘em a little lullaby. Tell ‘em mama wants ‘em to stretch out, get up, be bigger. Just a little bigger, there we go. So now, maybe H.M.’s memories, in that little head of his, maybe they weren’t so mizzerable any more. Maybe instead of spendin’ his teens jerkin’ off to Beetlejuice and listenin’ to Radiohead day-in, day-out, he saved up for a goddamn gym membership and took out his angst on the runnin’ machines.
Like I said, I don’t go changin’ people’s minds. Their bodies, obviously, and their pasts, by neccessity. Their brains can’t help but adjust.
So there he was, all he-man, now, a little more Thor than Captain America. His skin looked a lil healthier, too, the way it’ll look when you’re not spendin’ all day indoors. “Bronzed”, they call it. The first flavour a’ big was done, and he made it look good. But I wasn’t done, not yet. I reached in my pocket. Remember, the jacket wasn’t mine, but in the pockets were everything I needed. That always happens. It’s one of the perks of being me.
I took out a sharpie and started drawin’ on H.M.. Gave him a huge long fuckoff Chinese dragon around one arm, with little mountains under the feet and a big jet of fire going out its mouth and down his back. On his left pec, a big life-sized heart, with a thorny rose stuck in the top, whatdayacallit, blood-hole, and a snake wrapped around the bottom. Writing on top: “If you got nothin’ good to say…” Writing on the bottom: “…then don’t say nothin’.”

Speakin’ of bottom. (Heee…I slay myself.) Turned him over, drew a nice little zen thingy, you know the one, the little black-and-white circle with the dots, on his now perky little tushie. Added a couple more designs on his upper arms and the back of his neck. Now, ol’ H.M., at this point he’d gotten a job when he was 17 at his uncle’s garage. Got hooked on Heavy Metal while he learned to fix up cars. Read “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and it blew his little mind.
I turned him over again. Reached in my other pocket, found a little tube of talcum powder. Sprinkled it over H.M. and blew. Ink sunk into him, spiralled, turned that green colour they get when they’ve been on ya awhile. Perfect marks for the man he was gonna be.
So that led me onto the second flavor of “Big”, and boy oh boy, that one’s an old fav’rite. Crawled onto the table is what I did, kneeling on his chest, and I took his head in my hands. Them cheekbones were still sticking out over his big ol’ beard, but not for long. Gave him a little kiss on the forehead. Then he started bubbling up. It’s somethin’ to see, I wish you could, I can’t describe it. Like someone getting a big jar of honey dripped over them, but from the inside.
It was only a little subtle at first, but it spread from his cheeks - getting big like ripe apples, and just as red too - to his nose, now a bit more like Santa’s nose in them ol Crissmas cards, ya know the ones I mean? And down to his shoulders, to his pecs, gettin’ a little softer, making a pair of man-boobs that could probably stay in his shirt without needing to borrow a bra, to his abs. Heh, that there was like watching a little island getting washed over by a tidal wave. He got a nice round gut on him then, straight over the waistband of his underwear (now a nice pair of black boxers). I tapped it once, and the whole of his torso got covered in curly black fuzz, like a teddybear. I tapped it again, and that innie belly-button of his turned into a nice little outie, now that it had an actual belly to belong with.
Old H.M. got him a booty too, now, and some nice thick tree-trunk legs, and if you shaved off that beard ‘a his - he’d probably wrestle you first - you’d find a little double-chin. So maybe H.M., when he gets to college he’s gotta spend his money on books now, so he can’t get any more gym subscriptions. But he’s still eatin’ and drinkin’ like a lumberjack. So he gets even bigger. So he gets used to it. I like it when they’re used to it.
Now, you might call me crazy, or kinky, for holdin’ to this particular preference. And alls I gots to say to that is: you ever met a fat guy, honey? You ever fucked one? A good one, I mean. They’re gentlemen, every one of ‘em. Put it this way - I gotta sister, loves watching the nature channel. One night I’m at her place borrowing a hundred or so for the tanning parlor, and she’s got the TV on, and they’re doing a show where they cut up a zoo elephant what died under mysterious circumstances. Damn strange things they put on TV now. Anyways, what they said was, and you won’t believe this, is that elephants, they got a little cushion in their feet, right under their skeleton, like a big squishy high-heel. So even though on the outside, their feet look flat, on the inside, they’re always walkin’ on tip-toe, careful-like.
That’s what a big guy’s like, on the streets, in the sheets, wherever-the-fuck. They know they’re big, they know it. So they’re always careful. (Plus, in the winter, they’re extra-fun to cuddle. You don’t even need a blanket, I swear to god.)
H.M., the way he was now, he’d have made it with a girl when he was 18, instead of how it was before, when he never spoke to ‘em til he was 21. Probably she jumped his bones in the back of her daddy’s borrowed car on prom night, ‘cos she’d seen him woodworking in his spare time at home and knew that he knew how to be careful with something fragile. Probably he asked her, very nicely, if she wanted just to cuddle that night, and said it was fine with him, and meant it. Probably she said no, maybe just ‘cause he asked.
He’d have a lot more women than he’d had in his old life, too, and maybe some guys, as well, since he’d be a braver boy now he was a bigger boy. Them fingers of his were puffy little sausages now, but they still knew what to do and where to do it, if ya know what I mean. And you just know a fat guy knows how to eat.
H.M., he’s now a good guy. Works in a soup kitchen once or twice a month. Stands up on the bus for old ladies and pregnant gals. Tryin’ t’go vegetarian, now he can afford it. Holds open doors, because it’s the polite thing to do, and not to get tail. He can get tail when he wants, and more than anyone’d think. Shows what you get when you actually are a nice guy, don’t it?
Still…he didn’t look quite done. I thought about it, gave his little belly a jiggle. Said I’d have some fun with him, didn’t I? And all he’d said was “Big”. And “A Man”. And “The Kind of Guy L——— Likes”. Didn’t say the guy she’d actually be dating, now did he? 

Jiggled him a bit more, and added a couple inches, just for fun. By now the coffee-table was creaking, so I hefted him up onto Zeke’s armchair by the TV, just in case. H.M. probably weigh a good three hunnerd fifty Ell Bees by then - the sweet rewards of spending all your twenties writin’ essays and takin’ the motorcycle to school and drinkin’ PBRs by the six-pack with your buddies in front of the TV on a Friday night while you finish off the pizza before it gets cold.
So now, you’re probably thinkin’ I did all this to punish him, to be a dick. But don’t get me wrong: I may not do hypnotisin’, but what I do has the same rule. I only work with what’s there, the same way a hypnotiser can’t make you do nothin’ you wouldn’t wanna do anyway. Somewhere in H.M. was a big, bearded biker-dude with a law degree, just waitin’ for the right kind of talented somebody to let him out. Lucky for him, I’m a very talented somebody in-deed.
He was a weekender now, too; kept his tats under his sleeves at work, went out and had fun onna weekend. Out from my endless jacket pockets I pulled a classy-looking suit ensemble, with vest and bow-tie, in lavender and charcoal. They slipped over his big fat frame, snuggling on him tight, a couplea buttons not quite comin’ together - clearly he’d had a nice Crissmas dinner. Pants weren’t zipped up either. Plus a couple of piercings, one of which slipped into his ear and another in his eyebrow. Two big lace-up boots rested by his feet, which were now puffy and snug inside a pair of stripy socks his mama probably sent him.
Checked the driver’s licence. He was now “Harry Mackenzie”, a damned good name for a damned fine-lookin’ fella. He looked like a storybook giant, and snored halfway as loud as one. His hands were crossed, rested on his big belly, and now that was where they usually were when he sat down. 

It was a job well done, and I hadn’t even gotten paid yet. But he looked so sweet lying there, and if I’m tellin’ the truth, the work takes it out of me; and that hangover wasn’t shifting any time soon. (Wouldn’t bother him, I knew. Lucky fatso.)
So I curled up on what little of his lap wasn’t taken over by belly and snuggled close. So sue me. You’da done the same if you’d seen him.
When I woke up, hangover faded like a flag in the breeze, I was on the sofa again, with that red leather jacket laid over me like a blanket. I sat up on my elbows, and there was Zeke on the armchair, watchin’ the game.
“Hey, fuckass,” I murmurred, sitting up. “Didja see a big fat guy — ”
“Hey yourself, jerk,” he said before I finished. “Damn right I saw him, and heard him, and the two of you damn-near broke my goddamn couch last night the way you were going on.”


“Oh…oh yeah,” I grinned. You’ve never had the pleasure of remembering a pleasant memory that definitely wasn’t there the night before, but it’s inde-fuckin’-scribably luscious. I was right; the new, improved H.M. was a hell of a lay. No wonder Zeke looked like he’d been trying to sleep in a warzone. “I’ll crash at my own place next time, I promise,” I lied. 


“Who is that guy, anyway?”
“Ah, just some kid.”
Zee sighed, looked at me, his cheek rested on his fist. “I was a kid too, ya know,” he said.
“The cutest,” I said, and blew him a kiss. He jumped like a dog catching a treat. That’s Zeke for ya, goddamn little cute weirdo. He had a girl in his life now, name of Tamika, so he was…mostly off the table. Heck, maybe we’d have a nice sleepy foursome sometime. Hadn’t had one ‘a those that was worth having, since, lessee, 1895. I’d seen her - or, now, I remembered having seen her - checking out H.M.’s cute tush sashaying around the corner of the street when I walked him to the club last night.
Speak of the devil. I heard a little shuffle and felt that padded gut of his press against the back of my head. Jumped up like a wildcat, scaled that big mountainous body of his and planted a kiss on him instead of a flag.
“Hello yourself,” H.M. said in his big rumbling voice, handing me my purse.
“What time is it, sugar?” I asked, nuzzling his chest. The button still wouldn’t do up there, and there was some fuzz.
“Two-thirty, why?” he said, stroking my hair.
“Well, fat boy, I think this tank of yours needs filling,” I said, wobbling it under his vest. It rumbled and gurgled in agreement, and he smiled in that cute-ass bashful way he does. “And I know I could use a nice hot coffee. Waddaya say we head over to Waffle House, get some steak and eggs, my treat? And then…” I whispered in his ear. He knows how hot ’n’ bothered (by which I mean horny as all fucking hell) I get from seeing him eat too much. 

“Sounds like a plan. I gotta go and help L——— with her thesis at 5, though.”
“Hey, she’s the one who’s gotta pass that test. You can’t do it for her.”


“I know, I know…just, she got me that job interview with the firm. I owe her.”
“Ah, you’re a nice guy, Harry Mackenzie.”


He shrugged, the same way an avalanche looks like a shrug. “I don’t know ‘bout that. Try my hardest, that’s all. Oh, reminds me - ” he turned to Zeke. “Thanks for letting us crash, dude, and uh…sorry about the…”


“Don’t worry about it. You’d do the same for me, I guess.”


“Would we, now?”, I asked, thinking about that four-way. H.M. squeezed my hand in the “Now’s-Not-The-Time-To-Be-A-Fuckin’-Lech, Dear” way that he’d practiced many times before.
“Still, man, next time I’ll buy you a beer. You better hold me to that one.”
“Will do. Have fun, kids.”
We stepped outside, H.M. going first so I could watch his luverly hips brush the doorways. One ‘a these days he’s gonna get big enough he has to go sideways. He gave me a show, ‘cos he knows I love it. Held open the door, too, because that’s the right thing to do for your lady.
It was cold outside. I didn’t notice. I had a big jacket, and a big fella to lean against while we walked a block or two down to the diner. He smiled at me, ol’ H.M., with his big red cheeks like a younger, sexier Santa Claus. How could I not smile back? It was too early for sunset, and we’re no supermodels, so I s’pose we got some stares - little dishevelled cougar in a leather jacket arm-in-arm with a huge bearded lumberjack fella, well...doesn’t exactly look like some happy-ever-after ending from outta the movies.
But...like I said...nothing is really like it is in a movie.
FIN...
