Tonight after reading the rather awesome Sk8r Grrls story I was reading through some of my own fiction, and came across a passage in 'The Beauty Soap' (I'd link but my own site is being redeveloped and I can't find it here :S) which wonders if the shop has started using subliminals. This story came of that. It probably isn't that great as i knocked it out in two hours or so, and proofed it myself. Any errors are therefor my own. Without further ado...

“So what do you think Bob?”
“It’s risky, but if the boffins think it’ll work I think we ought to go for it.”
“Oh they do, in their tests they found the ninety percent of women will be caught be the device.”
“That’s good, and the remaining ten percent will be got by peer pressure?”
“Who cares? We’ll have ninety percent of the market shopping in our stores, buying our products and the competition won’t know why.”
“Well Sir Grover, made it quite clear this would be our make or break year, and gave me complete control over all in-store advertising. I want you to prepare a complete report on this suggestion, including what it will cost each store to implement the idea. With that I’ll make a final decision.”
“I have it right here.”
“Great, I’m sure you know there’ll be a bonus in this for you, and if it works even half as well as the projections show I think its safe to say that you’ll get a fairly hefty promotion out of it. How does director in charge of research sound?”
“Great.”
“Right leave this with me I’ll speak to you later in the week.”
“Righto.”

~@~

My name’s Jack Higgins, sadly I’m not a famous author, though I’d love to write, I never get much further than working out the catchy titles. This is handy as I work in a large London publisher, sadly my days work is normally answering the phones in the production department, but I’ve won several in house competitions naming books or chapters of existing authors.

This story is my first, and while not exactly believable it is true. It’s also likely to be my last, or perhaps the last writing as Jack Higgins. Where should I begin? I would start at the beginning but I’m unsure where the start was. It could have been when I decided to shop for a present for my mother, or equally when I took the advice of a female colleague as to what I should buy her for her seventieth birthday, or more likely where.

The department I work in is largely female, there is just myself and one other man, and he’s my boss. So I could hardly fail to notice how most of my colleagues raved over a new store that had opened less than a mile down the road. ‘Miss!’ with the tagline, ‘Everything for a perfect woman.’ It was the first of its kind I came across, and while I had of course read in the paper about its phenomenal success stories, not being even slightly interest in women, or women’s things I’d never been even slightly near any of the other London branches.

Amy who has a cubicle across the corridor from my own suggested that I might find a present for my old mum in there. Not that my mother and I saw much of each other, when I came out as gay after leaving university while she said that she just wanted me to be happy I did notice a profound cooling in her attitude toward me, we barely spoke for fifteen years, later I found out she had been desperate for grandkids so my ‘defection’ had hurt her more than I realised.

So back to ‘Miss!’ as I said I’ve never been in one so was unsure what they sold, Amy insisted that the store was just the place to go, and with most of the office now backing her up I vowed that if all these women said it was, who was I to demur. The store near us was a former department store, now it contained everything the perfect woman could ever want on four floors, and a basement.

I arrived slightly out of breath late on Friday 12th July; it was to be a day that changed my life, though at the time I didn’t know that, all I knew was the guy who held the door open for me was so cute, obviously hetero, but leaving me slightly breathless. My long term affair with a teacher from the college near my house had fizzled out over the winter and now I was footloose and fancy free, and didn’t I just fancy the guy. I didn’t fancy my chances against the cute girl he almost ravished on meeting, but such is life.

Through the second door into the ground floor and my eyes were astonished by the displays, there seemed no rational behind the place, jewellery was mixed in with clothing, which in turn rubbed shoulders with perfume and make-up. Everywhere I looked were well dressed young people, mainly female but with the odd man. Well young men who sell personal things to women are often odd. And yes it does take one to know one. Luckily I tend to prefer the more butch male so these simpering fools didn’t leave me drooling, though some of the smells seemed to leave me drooling.

I paused at the foot of the escalator, down would lead me to the salon, and up would lead me to Heaven. Literally that’s what the sign read. I went up, reasoning that while my mother wasn’t quite ready for heaven yet I doubted I could get her into one of these stores anyway and certainly not a salon.

The next floor was much the same as the ground floor, here though the products were less in your face, if the lower floor was a teenage slut this floor was more the discerning older lady, your secretary or perhaps the really sexy drama teacher. Up the escalator again and I wasn’t surprised to find that this floor also wasn’t quite Heaven. Heaven was still a floor up the smell from the food was, Heavenly. But it also wasn’t sexy in the slightest. In fact it felt loving, like the hug from a parent after you graze your knee as a child.

~@~

I don’t recall what I bought for my mother, which is a little weird. I do recall returning less than a week later just to browse. I think that, first Amy then the other girls in my office were a little surprised to start receiving little, and not so little, gifts from me over the following months. Eventually I was given a formal reprimand by my boss as it apparently made them feel a little uncomfortable for the company’s resident gay man to be buying them lingerie.

I soon had a remarkable collection at home, and not just lingerie but makeup, outerwear and other oddments. I soon became known at the store and began to dress a little better when I stopped by after work. The staff at Miss! Didn’t care what I bought, and as I was spending more and more of my wage there they began to make suggestions.

"Would sir care to try this?" "Would sir care to look at that?" It almost became a joke, so when the sir was dropped form the joke I barely noticed, nor did I mind that occasionally someone would slip up and ask if I would like to try something on. And don’t get me wrong here, Miss! Sold no men’s clothing at all, and while some things could be almost described as suitable for men or women it still was designed and made for the female form.

One day I said yes, I don’t know why, maybe I thought they would laugh and pass it off as one of the jokes that we had shared collectively over the months. Or perhaps I just liked whatever it was that I tried on.

This started a new phase; I found myself very self conscious in what had been until now my normal workday clothing. Monday to Thursday I wore a suit and shirt with a tie. Fridays I got to wear casual clothing, normally blue jeans and a shirt. But now I felt uncomfortable in things I had been wearing for the last twenty years, day in day out. Though not I might add without the ocasional replacement and frequent washes.

The first thing that changed was my suit, I bought an absolutely gorgeous ladies trouser suit, slightly fitted, but totally perfect for me, everyone I met mentioned the fact that I looked good in it, my boss actually sent me a memo asking for the tailor’s name. Of course under such a masterpiece of good design proper foundation garments should be worn, and while for several weeks the bra chafed somewhat I got used to it, to the point that I wore it all the time. I had several anyway and after I was used to it I felt underdressed without.

To this point my body remained fairly masculine, but it seemed later that the change in underwear from boxers or Y-fronts to bra and panties seemed to change something in me, and gradually my body too started to change.

~@~

I’d got to the point where I wore women’s clothing all day every day, I slept in women’s night things, ate my meals in Heaven with other women (Heaven being the top floor restaurant at Miss!) I had even laid in a supply of women’s sanitary products. But through this all I had failed to notice, anything unusual. That was all to change.

I’m gay, I have been ever since I first started thinking about the opposite sex, while I may have wondered about girls at school, it was the boys (well some of them) that got me hot. Luckily I’m not stupid so didn’t come out at school. Firstly as if my father, may he rest in peace, had found out he’d have killed me and secondly if my peers had found out they’d have told my father then taken it in turns to kill me. I was far closer to the girls for friendships than I was ever to the boys.

Now I assume that if you’re straight you don’t fancy everyone you see, there’ll be people who do it for you but mostly they’re just other people. I was the same, most men did nothing for me, and I didn’t like my man too young or too old, mid to late thirties was ideal… Yes you heard that right, past tense. Suddenly as if overnight I started to find women attractive. Suddenly I woke up to the fact my life had gone weird on me.

I noticed my colleagues calling me Jackie; I noticed the admiring looks I got in the street from other men, which before I might have returned now made me feel slightly ill. I noticed that my boss had the hots for me, and that all the girls in the office treated me as one of them.

My body continued to change; on my mother’s seventy third birthday I was as female as she was, I remember the day as I couldn’t wear what I had wanted as my first ever period started on the day.

~@~

For years after I wondered what had happened to me, one day a gay man the next a gay woman. Mum got her wish though; just before her seventy fourth birthday I gave birth to twins, a girl and a boy. I don’t know who the father was, my partner and I had requested we wouldn’t know, and the straw of semen* had come with no identifying markings. Abigail my wife is sterile from a riding accident as a child, we’ll raise the kids as best we can, and their granny lends a hand when she can.

It came out in the end, not long after the final Miss! Store had closed for good, the damages for injured customers bankrupting them many times over, though no-one I ever heard of changed sex spontaneously. The culprits if they could be called such, were two advertising executives who had come up with the idea of sound, scent and visual subliminal messages, to not only control what people bought but how they thought of themselves and the shop. After much recrimination by all parties they were allowed to go free as there had been no laws, at the time, against what they had done.**

As for me, I have two beautiful children, a gorgeous wife and a job I still love. My first novel will be published in the autumn, by my own company. And yes the title and chapter headings are all humorous.

As told to JC by Jacqueline Higgins

*My only knowledge of artificial insemination is what the vet comes to do for our cows, so how AI is for humans I have no idea...
**Well there might be, I don't know, but the story wouldn't work as well without the subliminals...

~@~

All names, trademarks and other such things belong to their owners, and resemblance to anyone live or dead, now or in the future is totally intentional. And I can read minds too...