On the Run

I could tell that Brian was completely exhausted. As we lay there in silence, I tried to rationalize what had just happened. I told myself that I had to do it. Now I was safe from his advances until morning. A moan from Brian brought me back down to earth. “Oh baby, that was so good.”

“Almost as good as the real thing?” I asked, the double meaning lost on him.

“Definitely. I always thought it would be a drag getting married and having to lay off sex when my wife was on the rag or pregnant. Will you marry me?” he said.

I punched him on the arm. “You really know how to make a girl feel great,” I said with a sigh.

“Want to spend the night?” he said out of nowhere. Maybe he thought my period might mysteriously end before morning.

“Sure, lover boy. I’ll wear your pajamas and cook you some breakfast in the morning.”

* * *

I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost three o’clock in the morning. For hours, I had snuggled next to Brian, dressed in his pajamas, trying to come up with a plan. His breathing was slow and regular, and I could tell he was dead to the world.

Slipping out of bed, I crept into the living room. Although my eyes had become adjusted to the pitch black apartment, I had to get down on my hands and knees and feel around the floor until I found Brian's free weights. I picked up several, until I found one that weighed about 10 pounds. I carried it back into the bedroom and made my way around the bed until I was standing directly over his sleeping body.

I lifted the dumbbell as high as I could and brought it down squarely on the back of Brian's head. I held my breath as he groaned and twitched once, then he lay perfectly still. I lowered my head and listened for breathing. This was not supposed to be a murder. To my relief, I heard labored breathing, and when I felt for his pulse, it was steady.

I switched on the light by the side of the bed. A thin trickle of blood was coming down the side of Brian's face from a cut above his hairline, but he was definitely alive. I picked up my stockings from the floor next to the bed and used them to tie his hands tightly behind his back. Then I balled up my panties, which were encrusted with dried semen, and stuffed them into Brian's half-open mouth. His unconscious body had a gag reflex, and I waited until I was sure he was breathing normally through his nose before I looked around for something to tie up his legs. I remembered that I was still wearing my bra, which was adequate to the task.

Next, I found a pair of scissors in the kitchen and took them to my hair. When it was chopped as close as I could get it, I started in on my head with Brian's electric razor. Before long, my scalp was shaved smooth. I took a hot shower, scrubbing off my makeup as best I could. There was little chance Brian would have any nail polish remover, but after I dried myself off, I rummaged around in his drawers and found some turpentine, which did the job. I cut my nails with Brian's clippers, and started trying on his clothes. He was one or two sizes bigger than I was, and it took me some time to find a sweatshirt and jeans that looked all right. His sneakers fit perfectly. I picked Brian’s trousers off the floor and rummaged through his pockets until I found his wallet and keys.

I took a hard look at his driver’s license. Although our faces were not alike, our vital statistics and coloring were close enough, and with any luck my shaved head would seem to account for the difference between my appearance and his photograph. I combined the contents of my wallet into his, stuffed it into my jeans pocket, and had a last look around the apartment. The only thing left of Victoria Ross was a skirt, a blouse, a pair of weejuns, and a cum-stained scarf. I made sure Brian was sleeping comfortably, turned off all the lights, and headed out the door with his keys in my hand.

It took me twenty minutes to drive to Sky Harbor. I made a brief detour past my apartment complex, where several police and unmarked cars were still clustered around my building, and the lights still burned in my apartment. I switched on the radio, and searched for any news reports about me, but there was nothing.

The airport was deserted at that hour. I parked Brian’s Integra in the short term lot and walked up to the America West ticket counter. Phoenix and Las Vegas are twin hubs for America West, and there are planes running between those cities around the clock. The first flight to Las Vegas was in forty-five minutes, and I had no trouble making it, purchasing a ticket with cash in the name of Brian Robbins.

It was a short flight, and the sun was coming up over the desert as I caught a taxi to one of the strip hotels. For the next twenty-four hours, I walked from casino to casino, cashing in and cashing out at each of them after playing craps and roulette for high stakes. I made sure the surveillance cameras got a good look at my face each time I made my way through a different casino.

I was exhausted when I presented myself at the downtown office of the FBI the following morning to turn myself in.

* * *

TEN YEARS FOR HIGHROLLING CROSSDRESSER

CHICAGO: US District Judge Mary Wright sentenced Derek Buxton, also known as Victoria Ross, to ten years in federal prison today following Buxton’s guilty plea to one count of embezzlement and one count of bank fraud. As part of Buxton’s plea agreement, seven other bank fraud charges against him were dismissed, and prosecutors indicated that pending assault charges against him in Arizona would also be dropped.

Buxton became the subject of a nationwide manhunt last year after he embezzled over half a million dollars from Eon Company. He surfaced in Phoenix under the identity of Victoria Ross, and lived briefly as a woman before his arrest in Las Vegas, where he was using identification stolen from a Phoenix man whom he had assaulted.

Judge Wright agreed with prosecutors that Buxton, 23, had shown genuine remorse in turning himself in and confessing to the FBI after he lost all of the stolen money during a marathon gambling spree in Las Vegas. The fact that he had no prior criminal record was also taken into account. He will be eligible for parole in seven years.

* * *

“Good luck, Derek. You’ve paid your debt to society, and you’re a free man. As I say to all my departing guests, don’t let me see you again.”

I shook the warden’s hand and walked outside the prison walls, breathing free for the first time in seven years. My new shoes pinched my feet, and my new suit felt as cheap as it looked, but who cared? As I waited for my bus on a beautiful April morning, I knew I wouldn’t be wearing them for long.

Seven years! I went into the big house as a callow youth of twenty-three, and I was leaving as a thirty-year old man. Still, my body was lean and limber, and by the grace of God I still had a full head of hair. Physically, I had never looked better. Mentally? One of the benefits of being incarcerated in a federal institution was unlimited access to psychiatric care.

After countless hours of analysis by a revolving cast of shrinks, I was well and truly certified as a pre-operative transsexual. Although my pleas for hormone therapy had been rejected, and to all outward appearances I was a normal man, the piece of paper in my pocket would authorize any board-certified physician in the United States to slice and dice me into a woman.

There would be a six month waiting period while I lived as a member of the opposite sex, and it seemed unfair that the past seven years didn’t count for that. God knew, that was how the boys inside had treated me. How many times had I taken it up the ass in prison? Hundreds, perhaps thousands. I had long ago forgotten what it felt like to be with a woman, and I no longer had any interest. My goal was to become one.

* * *

The bus ride from Leavenworth to Las Vegas is not to be recommended. After sitting and sleeping in my prison-issued suit for over twenty-four hours, I looked as dreadful as I felt. As I watched the barren desert go by in the window, I reflected on how, on my last day as Victoria Ross, I had removed most of the money from her bank account, in the form of five $100,000 cashier’s checks. My original intention was simply to disburse my fortune into separate, FDIC insured accounts. Fortunately, I had the checks in my wallet when I realized the FBI was onto me. After I flew to Las Vegas and turned myself in, they swallowed the story that I had managed to blow it all in twenty-four hours, losing an average of $50,000 in each of the ten casinos I visited.

In fact, although I spread a lot of money around on the tables, and made a point of cashing in and cashing out in large amounts, I was basically recycling the same cash over and over again as I made my way through the city. And before I turned myself in, I walked into a brokerage house and purchased $500,000 in AAA rated zero coupon municipal bonds, which I stashed in a safety deposit box in a downtown bank. When the bonds matured in seven years, they would be worth almost a million dollars, tax free. More than enough to pay for a sex-change operation and set me up for life as a woman.

For seven long years, the key to the safe deposit box where my fortune was hiding lay buried under a small patch of grass in front of the Tropicana. After I got off the bus, I grew sick with worry as I walked down Las Vegas Boulevard, eyeing with astonishment the new mega-hotels and casinos on every corner. What if the Trop had been torn down, to make way for another new monstrosity? I held my breath as I approached the intersection. There, in the shadow of the Empire State Building and the MGM lion, was my beloved old Tropicana, serenely oblivious to the frenzy of new development around it.

After I checked in, I bought myself a tee shirt and swimming trunks. For the rest of the afternoon, I lolled around the tropical themed pool, sipping margaritas as I dreamed about the last time I drank one. I was a pretty girl, driving a red convertible, on a lunch date with a handsome man in Phoenix. I wondered what ever happened to him? I drifted off in my lounge chair, only awakening when the sun dipped behind the ersatz New York skyline across Las Vegas Boulevard.

Although I was sorely tempted to hit the buffet and gorge myself on real food for the first time in seven years, that was not the way to maintain my girlish figure. After a bowl of soup in the coffee shop, I took a long walk, stopping at a large drugstore to purchase some essentials. It would be hours before the pedestrian traffic on the strip thinned out enough for me to return to the grassy patch where my treasure was buried, and I killed the time by shaving off all of my body hair in my hotel bathroom. Every night in my prison cell, I had dreamed of this moment: the first small step in my metamorphosis from male to female. When I was done, I filed my long fingernails into feminine shapes. Without polish, they would not attract undue attention.

I killed a few hours in the casino, playing quarter slots until most of the other players had scooped their remaining coins into their slot buckets and drifted away. Finally, at three o'clock in the morning, I went outside and loitered on the small rectangle of lawn between the port cochere and the sidewalk. When I was certain that there was nobody nearby, I dropped to my knees and began to probe the soil with a knife that I'd stolen from a room service cart. Within seconds, I felt the blade strike the top of the sealed plastic container which I'd buried there that November morning, a few hours before I turned myself into the FBI. I dropped the knife and dug furiously with my hands, hoping as I did so that I would not ruin one of my nails. When the hole was big enough, I lifted the container out of the ground, stuffed it into a hotel laundry bag, and headed back to my room.

I bolted the door behind me and carefully shook the loose dirt off the container before I laid it on the bed. My fingers were trembling as I pried open the lid and looked inside. It was all there: Brian Robbins' wallet with his identification and credit cards. An Arizona driver's license and ATM card in the name of Victoria Ross. And at the very bottom, a slim brass key.

* * *

You can do almost anything twenty four hours a day in Las Vegas, except shop for a complete woman’s wardrobe. After a restless night, I had a modest breakfast in front of a kiosk in the hotel lobby and caught a taxi to a shopping mall a few miles from the strip. Here was where the locals shopped. If I were in search of a designer outfit to wear to a gourmet restaurant, no doubt I could have found one at any of the boutiques along the strip, but my needs were different this morning.

My cash on hand was down to three hundred dollars, and I knew I had to save enough for my final purchase as I made my way through the racks at Marshall’s. Soon I was paying for a knee-length denim jumper paired with a short sleeve cotton top, an all-in-one body briefer, a slip, two pairs of pantyhose, a gold plated necklace, and clip on hoop earrings. I attracted no unusual looks from the girl at the register or the other customers in the store. This was Las Vegas.

A Payless shoe store yielded a pair of brown moccasin flats and a matching shoulder bag, and after half an hour in a large drugstore, I had all the cosmetics and other feminine necessities I would need for my transformation. Except for the most important thing. I had a little over $100 left in my wallet to pay for it.

So I walked the two miles to another strip mall, and into a wig store which advertised heavily in all the throwaway tabloids distributed up and down the strip. “Showgirls!” blared the ad copy. And in smaller print, “Chemotherapy patients. Complete privacy.” When I walked into the store, my arms full of shopping bags, the woman behind the counter sized me up with weary eyes.

“Can I help you, dear?” she asked. She was wearing one of the store’s offerings, a bright red Sassoon bob which looked ridiculous over her weather-beaten face.

“I need a wig, inexpensive but very natural, that I can wear to a costume party.” Halloween and Mardi Gras had come and gone, but if she thought my request odd, she gave no indication. She sized me up for a second, and walked into a back room. When she returned, she had a short wig in her hands, light brown like my hair.

“If you want to try it on, put this net over your head first,” she said, handing me a thin mesh skullcap. Beyond embarrassment by this point, I thanked her, tucked my hair under the net, and sat down in front of a mirror on the counter. After looking around to make sure nobody else was in the store, I tugged the wig down over my head. It was sensational. A perfect fit, the curly tresses were indistinguishable from the real thing.

“How much?” I asked her.

“Retail is $129, but I can let you have it for $89,” she said.

“Sold,” I said, putting the last of my bills down on the counter. I would even have enough money for a taxi back to the Tropicana. Things were falling into place perfectly.

* * *

Later that day, Victoria Ross entered the lobby of a Wells Fargo bank in downtown Las Vegas. Her languid pace, and the glow in her face, were attributable to the three orgasms I had experienced while transforming myself into her in my hotel room. After seven long years of frustration and denial, my body had responded with unrestrained joy to the wonderful sensations of wearing women’s clothing once again. I ejaculated unexpectedly while I was putting on my makeup, again while I was easing my nylons up my legs, and once more when I surveyed the finished product in the full length mirror on the closet door. Seeing myself in a dress again, a pretty yarn bow in my hair to match the flowers on my top, wearing dainty shoes and stockings, had been enough to buckle my knees as my aching penis throbbed in ecstasy.

“May I help you, Ma’am?” a middle-aged man asked when I approached the mahogany rail separating the lobby from the officers’ desks. When did I go from being a “Miss” to being a “Ma’am?” I wondered to myself as I looked around. The bank was just as I remembered it.

“I’d like to access my safe deposit box, please,” I said in the feminine voice which I had practiced every night in prison.

“Certainly. May I see some identification?” The moment of truth! I had opened the box as Brian Robbins, but listed Victoria Ross as an authorized user and gave the bank her old address. I fished the old, phony Arizona driver’s license out of my purse and held my breath. But he seemed not to notice the expiration date, merely writing down my name in a logbook before he handed it back to me and asked me to follow him to the vault.

It was cool and dark, and I had to wait while he opened a waist-high door and led me into a chamber filled with row upon row of gray metal boxes. The little brass key was clutched in my trembling hands. He inserted a master key from a chain attached to his belt into one of the boxes, I inserted mine, and he slid the box back and handed it to me. He opened the door to a private booth and told me to buzz him when I was finished.

I waited until he was gone before I peered inside the box. There it was, a stack of zero coupon municipal bonds, which had been quietly earning interest for seven years and were now worth almost a million dollars, tax free. Suddenly impatient, I stuffed the bonds into my purse, along with a few thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills which I had placed in the safety deposit box along with the bonds before I surrendered empty-handed to the FBI.

I buzzed for the bank officer to return. When he did, there was a frown on his face.

“Miss Ross, we have a little problem.”

I held my breath. “Problem?”

“Yes. It seems that you haven’t been paid the annual rent for this box in years. In fact, our statements to your address in Phoenix have all been returned.” He looked at me accusingly. “You’re lucky we haven’t drilled the box. We just haven’t gotten around to it.”

The blood returned to my face. “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I’ve been abroad, and I completely forgot about it. How much do I owe you?”

“It’s up to $295.73 with penalties and interest,” he said in a stern voice.

I pulled three hundred dollar bills out of my purse and placed them in his hand. “Keep the change,” I said, spinning on my heel, a rich bitch once again.

* * *

I took a cab to the Forum Shops and treated myself to a long lunch at a nice restaurant, overlooking a bogus Italianate fountain under a vaulted ceiling painted to look like the sky. Everything in this town is artificial, just like me, I mused as I sipped a glass of expensive Chardonnay. Two losers in gold chains and open necked shirts at the next table were trying to flirt with me, and I noticed that they were staring at my legs. I looked down and realized that I was giving them a clear shot at my panties. My male ego, extinguished by my third orgasm, watched helplessly as I crossed my legs and tugged my dress down over the hem of my slip.

It was time to get out of Las Vegas. Through my prison connections, I had learned of a little shop downtown where I could get a phony birth certificate and social security card, which would be all I’d need to reestablish Victoria Ross as a lawful member of society. Once I redeemed my municipal bonds, I knew where I was headed. Like the mythical Phoenix which rose from the ashes, that was where my self-discovery had begun, and that was where I would start my new life.

* * *

Two months later, my hair was just long enough to style into a pixie cut. I checked out of my suite at a Residence Inn in Scottsdale and loaded two new suitcases crammed with a complete new wardrobe into the trunk of my blue BMW. It was the middle of June, and I was dressed for the blazing heat in a sundress, sandals and a sun visor. The tan leather seats burned my bare legs as I got behind the wheel and turned on the air conditioning.