Valentine, Be Mine Ch. 03

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters herein described and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

***

I had to go back to work Monday; there was no way to avoid it. It may not have been much of a job. It may have even been counter-productive, in terms of the case against my wife (I wonder if that had been a factor in her placing me there? Joanna had always had a sharp, detail-oriented mind and was meticulous to a fault in long-range planning), but it was all I had and I didn't dare give up the income just now.

Leave it to Helen to have the clout to get an order of protection signed by a judge on a Sunday. I had stared in fascination at the initial application for the writ, to which I had just, without thinking, signed "Bobbi Valentine" in flowing script, dotting each "I" with a cute little heart. Needless to say, that warranted a 'do-over'. Helen had Joanna served as she stepped out the front door to go to work Monday morning, ordering her to stay away from me at both my place of business and my 'residence' - listed as Helen's house.

Oh, Helen tried to get me to move in for safety's sake. She didn't think I was in any immediate physical danger, but her experience with previous clients – and their husbands – taught her to err on the side of caution. I was sorely tempted, but just couldn't do it. I was already imposing on her so much by having her take my case on not much more than speculation. It just didn't feel right to mooch on her further. I wanted to maintain some modicum of independence; if for no other reason, to hold my head up and say I could contributesomethingto my own life. We listed Helen's address on the O.P. for disinformation's sake – and, perhaps a little counter-intimidation. The writ declared not only my intention to fight, but who my 'champion' was. Let Joanna stew on that!

We discussed following up immediately with the second blow of the one-two punch; the motion for Dissolution of Marriage. In an age of no-fault everything, I didn't realize "Extreme Physical and Mental Cruelty" were still valid grounds for divorce. Helen felt the same about this action as she had about civil and criminal charges; until we had more solid,admissibleevidence, Joanna held the upper hand, owing to my gender status. If I filed now, it would have to be "Irreconcilable Differences" – and I would fare badly in the eyes of the court. My attorney counseled a wait-and-see strategy; she wanted to know what Joanna would do, given the certainty she knew by now we had the laptop and disks in our possession.

Helen had Stan Waters, her investigator, review some basic security procedures with me. He convinced me to change motels. As unlikely as it was, people (okay, two sexual partners) knew where I was and there was no sense tempting fate. My cell phone went into a drawer in Helen's desk for the duration. She provided me with a new one – a nice one at that – with herself and Stan on speed dial. They set up a schedule for me to call in regularly at specific times each day, so they would know I was okay. We even established an innocuous code phrase I could use when I called in to let them know I was not alone and under duress; send help!

The wily investigator taught me some basic survival skills; random routing, doubling back, staying away from usual haunts and normal routines (no moreBBG; in light of what I did the last time I was there, that was probably for the best) and keeping my eye on the rear-view mirror as I drove, to watch for cars that might be following me.

"It's the same advice I would give any girl as beautiful as you," Stan asserted. "I'm sure you already know; you turn heads. Sometimes you attract the right sort of attention, sometimes not. About the only way to keep people from noticing you would be to throw a gunny sack over your head. At least I can make you aware of your surroundings, in case... well, just keep your eyes open, Kiddo. Okay?"

"Thanks for the compliments," I noted dryly, then, with more sincerity, "and thank you for watching my back."

Per Helen's and Stan's assertions, I supposed I had to start getting used to being 'a girl as beautiful as me' – not that I hadn't already been basking in all the attention I had been receiving the previous months, when I wasn't consciously aware of the reason for it. After all, it was "perfectly natural," wasn't it?

Stan also began separate investigations on Joanna and Joyce Mayweather, her secretary. I had always wondered about Joyce. With her face and figure, she had struck me as movie star material herself, rather than being resigned to just reading about them inPeopleorUs. She and I had been flirtatious since we first met, but always in a friendly way. I hadn't had any notion to cheat on Joanna and I sensed Joyce wasn't willing to betray her boss, whatever her feelings towards me. She couldn'tnotbe aware of what Joanna had been doing to me these past months. How had she felt about it?

Stan tried to get me to tone down my appearance to make me less conspicuous. I'm sure he meant well, but that lasted about two days. First, there was no way I could be a 'plain Jane'. I'm not even sure if Stan's gunny sack would have helped. I juststood out. Second, attempting to look plain while working in the offices of an adult video company – where heavily-made-up starlets in varying stages of undress roam the hallways and relax in the lounge for hours between takes – made me stand out that much more.

"Are you feeling all right, Bobbi?" I was solicitously asked about a dozen times the first day. "You look... pale. How about some nice chicken soup?"

Third, I just felt...creepygoing through my day with no makeup and my hair in a bun. I'm sure that was Joanna's influence at work, for which I would have liked to wring her long, delicate neck, but for better or worse, I was now a woman who dressed to impress and that was the way it would have to be - to be able to live with myself.

There were a couple of basic facts in my life beside my centerfold good looks which rendered attempts at maintaining a low profile absurd. My silverSL55 AMG(a recent gift from my wife) may have been ubiquitous in the "Three B's" (Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Brentwood), but was not the ideal vehicle for getting lost in a crowd in the Valley. More to the point, the thirsty supercharged V-8 was not a good mix with a limited budget and soaring gas prices. Used car lots are more omnipresent in this area than McDonald's. Any one of them would have gladly traded me, even-steven, for a 'gently-used' (i.e., police-impounded or repossessed, then purchased at auction) Civic or Celica. Such a deal – NOT! In the end, I wasn't tough enough; I just couldn't bring myself to part company with the beautiful little Mercedes. Grrrrrr; sometimes being a little bimbo sucks!

Problem solved. I laughed until I cried at the cliché; the dutiful little secretary motoring down Nordoff Avenue to her job in Chatsworth in her 'chauffeur-driven limo' – the MTA # 166. In a cursory nod towards anonymity, a brunette wig and sunglasses became asde rigueurfor my commute as my bus pass, and I did not put on my makeup and heels until I arrived at work. A trench coat was fine for covering up the rest, but I would need a better solution when summer brought its bone-dry, triple-digit temperatures to the Valley.

There were other 'adjustments' that required addressing. Helen had wondered aloud how these changes in me had messed with my perceptions of my own sexuality. Prior to Valentine's Day, that hadn't been an issue. I had dressed and made myself up the way I did, then gone to work, because it was 'natural' to do so. I had made love to my wife – rather, she had made love to me – for the same reason. The attention lavished on me by men had merely been an amusing, if puzzling footnote. Now that I wasawareof myself and what those men saw in me, Helen's off-handed remark took on a life of its own.

I was still attracted to good-looking women. They still made me hard and wet, although it was embarrassing to admit to myself it was my nipples that now got hard, rather than my drooling, hormonally-shrunken little 'clitty'. Worse, I realized I was now checkingmenout in more than a casual way. My multiple sexual encounters of Valentine's weekend were etched vividly in my psyche, although I could not for the life of me understand what had made me do it.

I made a conscious decision to reject any further male advances, no matter how much my body might persuade otherwise. After all, I was a kid in the candy shop. There was no end to the parade of sensual, nubile nymphs stepping off before my eyes every day at the office. If that weren't enough to remind me, Helen Henderson was one hell of a desirable woman, despite the difference in our ages. Contrary to popular mythology, you don't just flip a switch in your head one day and decide: "Hey, I'm Gay." Yet every time I stared myself in the face in the mirror, I struggled with the perception of what "Gay" really meant in my case. WhatwasI?Whowas I; Bobby, Bobbi, or Evie? Whether I was male or female, the fact that I was attracted to both men and women meant I was Gay one way or the other, didn't it? This kind of trauma could drive a girl into therapy!Wait a minute; I've already tried that....

It wasn't possible to avoid Matt Michaels completely. He was a 'star' – to the extent any male performer could be in a market driven by the attraction of beautiful women to the mostly-male customer base – and my job required me to be nice to him, just as I was to the other 'talent'. He continued to be as smug, self-absorbed and cocksure as ever. "Being nice" did not mean I had to have sex with him. I continued to rebuff his advances and went out of my way to ensure we were never alone together. I don't mean to imply it was easy. Even knowing what I knew about his involvement in my wife's plot, I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair whenever he was around, pressing my thighs together a little more forcefully. Damn her for what she had done to me!

Stan was a happy camper at our next meeting. Joanna played it close to the vest for nearly two weeks, doing only the routine actions of her professional and personal life. Finally, she must have felt confident she wasn't under suspicion (Stan is very good at what he does) and she met Jake at a motel room. From there, the information flowed. Jake Holcomb was a personal trainer at Joanna's health club (how mundane!). His apartment was modest, his bank account showed no unusual pattern of deposits, and since Stan had begun his surveillance, the hunk had not returned to my former home. Aside from their 'workouts' – both in and out of the club – there did not seem to be any undue connection between the two. They didn't use the same room or even the same motel for their rendezvous, making it problematic to get video.

That was not the end of the story where Jake was concerned. 'Desperate housewives' seemed to be his stock in trade. He had a half-dozen or so whom he saw on the side with varying degrees of regularity. I wondered idly if Joanna was aware she was being cheated on by the man she was cheating on me with. Perhaps there might be some value in 'educating' her....

Joyce was a busy little girl in her own right. She supplemented her income as Joanna's secretary by doing occasional porn videos on the side. Although I had never seen her at the company where I worked, it wasn't difficult to deduce how Joanna had made her connections to get me hired. That put my suppositions about Joyce in a different light. She wasn't just aware of my transformation; she was, at least peripherally, a participant. This was like peeling back the layers of an onion. How deep would it go? What would we find when we got there? How badly would it stink in the end?

The nights were the worst. In the daytime, I was surrounded by other people with whom I could interact, communicate, bounce ideas off, even if I couldn't discuss the thousand and one things that were bothering me. At night, I had only myself to keep me company; that, plus a television, Joanna's laptop computer – and those insidious DVDs. The television got a serious workout. I hate so-called "Reality TV"; there is nothing real about it. Larry King is okay for a dirty old letch. Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace are a waste of good air, much lessairtime. A person can stomach only so many re-runs ofStar Trek, Law and Order or CSI -the same re-runs at that, over and over – before his or her brain rebels. There just had to be more to the meaning of Life thanI Love LucyandAndy Griffith!

That leftThe Erotic Network, to which the motel subscribed. I will admit; I derived more than my fair share of comfort from watching it;muchmore, thanks to the appropriate 'toys' I gleaned through the office (our 'Prop Department' is a bit different from those of most television and film studios). It was one thing to endure Matt Michaels, the arrogant ass, in the office. It was something else to watch Matt Michaels, the porn star, put one nymphet or other through her paces on screen. I almost tripped over my own jaw when, in a video produced by yet another of the Valley's many adult entertainment houses, the nymphdu jourwas 'Fiona Floussé'. Fiona – a floozy by any other accent – was none other than Joyce Mayweather!

Connecting the dots is a bitch.Ooooooo, I wanted revenge!What was I going to do; have sex with some guy, then flaunt it in Joanna's face? Isn't that exactly what she had set me up to do in the first place to justify her affair? I could make a video, then send her a copy.... I knew immediately that was a really bone-headed idea. Although my employers had been trying right along to get me into the studio, having that kind of video, starring me, floating around the marketplace would have been disastrous for my case against my wife.

One night, I decided to do something constructive. I had been wondering about Joanna's thoughts on the subject of my transformation since it had first come to light. I still had no desire to talk to her directly – partly out of fear of what she might be able to make me do, even over a telephone line. Ididhave her notes, on her laptop; it would almost be like having my wife there, whispering in my ear, telling me why she was doing this and what she was thinking. I had already voiced my plan for retrieving the notes and set about to implement it.

It was then that I got a healthy dose of Reality; the guys at Microsoft were a hell of a lot smarter than me. A security 'failsafe' had been written into the XP operating system; when you change an account's passwordexternally, access to personal files and folders is shut off, even when you log back on under that user's ID. Granted, a forensics technologist or other data recovery specialist – not to mention your garden variety teen hacker – could have retrieved the data for me, but that would have piled illegality on top of illegality. Without a court order, I was up the proverbial creek.I shoulda installed a key-logger....

Bob-bi! Come and waaaaatch me!

You know you are losing it when a pile of DVDs starts calling to you by name. The debate rages on about those guys who get hard watching their wives have sex with other men. I wasn't getting hard foranyone; not that way. "Betrayal" is an ugly word for an even uglier act, but therewasa certain prurient appeal to the 'Jake' disks. When all was said and done, Joanna was a beautiful, desirable woman and Jake was a really good-looking guywith a really nice cock.If taken in that context, what I had witnessed so far was at least on a par with the 'content' my company cranked out every day. Maybe if I could view it like those old porn movies where they blacked out the lovers' eyes to hide their identities.... There was a feeling of detached fascination as I watched the third 'Jake' disk disappear inside the DVD player and Joanna's face appeared on the screen....

"I don't carewhattime it is, you bastard! Get your ass over here and take care of me - if you ever want this pussy again!"

That exchange had taken place almost an hour before. I was pacing my room like a caged tigress that hadn't been fed in a week. My reflection in the mirror echoed my mood. The room lighting flashed across my shimmering black latex micro-sheath. Stocking-clad legs segued smoothly into black patent sandals with three-inch platform soles and rapier-like eight-inch stiletto heels. My heavily made up eyes, cheekbones and mouth were perfect for studio or street – and if this clown didn't show up soon, I was gonna take my act on the road!

You know those old National Safety Council films they show in high school Driver's Ed, where the car hits the brick wall at sixty miles an hour? I was feeling every bit of that when my body collided with Vince's in the doorway of my motel room. 'No prostitution', huh? I'm sure somebody would have gotten the wrong idea if they had seen us before my door slammed shut. I took him right there on the floor, his jeans tangled up around his ankles, and rode his boner like the devil himself possessed me. I screamed. I shrieked. I swore at him worse than any sailor. I ripped at every exposed inch of his flesh with my talons. He grunted heavily each time my weight crashed down on his crotch. After he came – I had already cum twice – I dragged his carcass to the bed and started again.

He did me doggie-style for a while, then rolled me over on my back and pressed my legs so far over my head, my ankles were resting on the headboard. My lover pounded me hard, causing me to whimper with each downward thrust. The exertion was getting to him. By the time he came a second time – my fifth – I was able to push him into the room's single straight-backed chair, positioned next to the bed. It took a skillful application of lips and tongue to bring Mr. Happy back to full staff, at which time I climbed the heights and plumbed my depths. We were only able to come once more apiece before he wasdone. He sat in the chair with a glazed expression on his face. I was the only thing holding him upright.

That's it?I thought to myself.I warned you what would happen if you disappointed me, you wus.

The bundle of clothesline was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table. I retrieved it and began looping it around his torso and arms, binding him securely to the chairback. Then I bound his ankles to the chair's rear legs. Vince wasn't going anywhere. I spent the next ten minutes repairing my hair and makeup. I was just applying a coat of gloss over my freshly-painted lips when the knock sounded at the door.Time for Act Two!

Mr. Right Now was the consummate gentleman – and a gentleman was alwayspunctual. I had made my best guesstimate of Vince's capabilities and done a damn good job of it. As it turned out, R.N. had a kinky streak too – and was up for it when I called him, right after I hung up with Vince. I welcomed him at the door with a deep, sensual kiss, rubbing my body up against his suggestively. Then I walked him inside, gloating over my hapless, trussed-up 'hubby'.

"My wimp can't satisfy me," I purred seductively, nuzzling up against by backup lover's cheek. "Want the job?"

He did – and suddenly, he wasn't such a gentleman anymore. That was fine with me; I let him use me any way he wanted me. I was deeply appreciative of his efforts and let him know – vocally. All the while, I gazed haughtily into Vince's eyes, daring him to complain in light of his previous 'inadequacy'. He didn't, couldn't. His eyes flicked between mine and the generous tent pole plowing my shemale pussy. His own pole was standing tall once more. I like that in a man!