Mind
by Waldo
7. Chapter
I took her arm and escorted her to the car. On the way to a restaurant, I asked “Do you think it is going to work? How can you be sure that they will live each other’s lives and learn what it is like to be someone else.”
Amanda looked at me and said “It worked with me. I was a rebellious kid. My father was one of these Hell and Damnation preachers and my mother was an alcoholic. Dad’s favourite hobby was beating me and locking me into a closet. I ran away from home to find something better after I was gang raped by a local bully. I lived by stealing until I became a prostitute. I was living with a man that was my pimp. He got busted one night and I got scared that I was going to wind up in jail and then turned over to my old man. I took a temporary job and wound up working for a hypno-therapist. He felt sorry for me and tried to help me. I needed someone to talk to and told him about my life and my dreams. How I wanted to try something but was scared to take the first step and to live my dreams. He hypnotized me into living my dream for a test. Then he helped me live my dream without being hypnotized. I decided what I wanted to do with my life and made my choices. I went to school and got my degree and worked with Dr. Baker as his common-law wife and business partner. He taught me how to dress properly and how to mingle with the upper-crust crowd. He taught me how to enjoy the finer things in life and how to earn the money to obtain them. My face wasn’t attractive to me and he helped me find a plastic surgeon to correct my facial faults and some other minor features. My life was a complete reversal. I went from being an underage prostitute to being an attractive professional woman. Then Dr. Baker found someone new and I knew that it was time for me to move on. We parted on very friendly terms with him bankrolling my office here.”
I pulled into the restaurant and we entered. After we were seated and ordered, I said “What makes you think that this identity reversal will work?”
She slowly smiled and said “What if it doesn’t work? Look at your life now. You hate your life. You are not getting along with your wife and your marriage is a paper marriage. You stay together because of appearances and you don’t have an easy way to divide the jointly owned possessions. In another year or two, you and Stephanie would probably be at each other’s throats regularly and maybe looking forward to a divorce. If it does work, then you and Stephanie will have several more years of happy marriage. There are also some side benefits. Valerie could become a household partner and provide the sexual release to both of you that holds the marriage together. Or it could be you and Val living together, with Steph on her own. Anything is better than what you have now. Or you wouldn’t have let me do this. Would you?”
I pushed my chair back. Damn her. She was right. If my marriage was ok, there was no way that I would let anyone interfere with it. Instead I let Amanda waltz in and change my wife and family. Before I could answer, she laughed and continued “See. You were ready for a change. I needed a challenge and saw the perfect opportunity in Steph and Val. They both came to me of their own accord and opened up about their problems. With their permission, I probed a little deeper and found a lot of hidden confusion and problems. My options were to help them find ways to continue, or to find ways to change. It would have been easier to have them change and move on, but I wanted to try to make a go of this marriage and friendship. And I know that it worked for me. Did I tell you about what I did when I went back home?”
“No, you didn’t. Please pass the salt.” I said as the waiter put our salads on our table.
“I left home in disgrace. My parents didn’t know where I was or bothered to look for me. After I had my degree and was living quite comfortably as Dr. Baker’s wife, I felt a need to go back home. So I packed up my BMW and drove home. I checked into the only hotel in town, in their nicest suite. Then I walked around town. I found my sister working in a restaurant. I went in and made sure to sit in her section. She didn’t recognize me, with the blond hair style, the perfectly applied make-up and the expensive clothes with the low-cut cleavage showing. I had lost every trace of my accent and was wearing colour-tinted contacts to change my eye colour. I told her that I was a tourist and asked her about the town. It was a slow day and before I got out of the restaurant, I found out that her husband was the bully that I knew quite well and hated. She had three kids and he worked at the service station. I left a generous tip and walked around town some more. I was welcomed into the store where the old man once had to save me from being charged with shop-lifting. I found out that my old man had died in a car wreck with one of the town sluts blowing him as he drove. I went to the church where he used to preach and was delighted to see that it was closed and needed a lot of repair.”
She looked away for a moment and I thought that I saw a glimmer of a tear starting in her eye as she continued “Then I went to my home to see my mother. I parked out front and walked up the steps. I rang the bell and she said to come in. I went in and it looked as junky and trashy as the day I left. She was a little drunk, which was the way the I remembered her, and wanted to know what I wanted. She didn’t recognize me. I sat down and said that I wanted to talk to her about one of her kids that ran away from home. She started cussing and talking about how ungrateful all of her kids were. The waitress never came by and the other kid left years ago and was probably dead. She drank a little more and told me more than I wanted to know about my father, about her poor state now that no one was looking after her, and about my slut of a sister and her cheating husband. I left the house without her knowing who I really was. I went back to my hotel room and thought about what my life would have been like if I had stayed in that little town. Then I freshened my make-up, put on my best smelling perfume and drove over to the service station. It didn’t take long to convince the bastard to get in the car with me and to drive out of town. I told him that he could fuck me if he would let me talk very soft to him. Before he knew what happened, I hypnotized him and found out every bad thing that he had ever done. I gave him a hypnotic suggestion to go back to work and to rob the beer joint. He had done it before, but hadn’t got caught. This time he got caught and wound up in jail. After they sentenced him, I sent my sister ten thousand dollars and set up a trust fund for the kids where she can’t touch the money. I set up a fund for my mother to make sure that she wouldn’t be hungry and couldn’t use the money for booze. Then I left and haven’t been back since. I prefer my life now to what I would have been if I had stayed there or had continued living with my pimp.”
Amanda paused and her voice changed pitch slightly as she continued “Did I tell you what my mother asked me about her runaway kid? No, I didn’t because I wanted to save that for the last. She asked me if I knew her son, Andrew. You see, I was born a male. Dr Baker helped me see what I wanted out of life and to find the means to change my life. My sister’s future husband raped me in junior high and my sister watched. I went home with my ass bleeding and cum all over me. My father whipped me because I couldn’t protect myself. I ran away from home that night. I turned my first prostitute trick in a strange town because I was starved and didn’t care if I lived or died. Then I thought about how nice the room was compared to the bridge that I was sleeping under. I had twenty dollars to buy some food. I found that men like boys. I was a male prostitute specializing in older men. I was spending my money on drugs and didn’t care about my life. So you see, it was quite natural for me to specialize and become an expert in Gender Dysphoria. I had to learn who I was and who I wanted to be before I could treat anyone else. Aren’t the best cooks, the ones that eat their own cooking. Please pass the salad dressing.”