Aidan had never given much thought to his sexuality. As the adopted son of two gay men, he was open-minded about it, but only recently had started thinking that his innocent crushes on several of his classmates - male and female - could label him a bisexual. He hadn't even discussed such matters with his dads yet, but the curse could see right through him.
Aidan remembered seeing the preacher onstage before. Reverend Ernest Sullivan was handsome, well-dressed, built, rich, and evil as hell. His sinister charm was always getting him interviews and TV bookings, where he peddled his brand of hate to the masses. Aidan's dads, Craig and Steve, ranted against him whenever they caught a glimpse of him on the TV. Aidan couldn't believe someone had the gall to assemble a 'Christian Pride' countermarch during actual pride. Everything Reverend Sullivan was saying was terrible. What Aidan didn't realize was how much of it he was absorbing. The undergrown teen was even standing on his tiptoes to see over the shoulders of the crowd around him, to get a better view at Reverend Sullivan and that big chest and belly pushing against his shirt.
"Aidan!" said an angry voice, and Aidan turned around to see his two dads looking at him angrily. "You wandered off!"
"I didn't! I just turned around and you guys weren't there, so I stayed here and waited," Aidan insisted.
"Well, even if that's true," Steve said, "I'd rather you be anywhere else than listening to this idiot. Come on."
"He's not an idiot," Aidan blurted out. "He has some bad views, but he's very well-spoken."
"What did you just say? Have you lost your mind?"
Aidan was too angry about being yelled at in public to care about hurting feelings. "No! I'm just saying, someone being a Republican doesn't make them an idiot, that's all!"
"That's right, buddy," said a man behind them, and both Steve and Craig shot him an angry look that made him turn back around. As they were distracted, a word that Reverend Sullivan said was pounding around in Aidan's head, and he found it was all he could think of. He was trying to clear his thoughts out but they were all jumbled and wrong and he couldn't make sense of them. He was thinking of weird images, unfamiliar memories - questioning his beliefs, even.
"Solla...suh..." he said, trying to sound out the word Reverend Sullivan kept using. "Hey, are you guys Sodomites?"
"That is enough, young man! Let's go!"
"I'm not going anywhere with you Sodomites," Aidan said firmly. "I am staying right here." He stomped his foot into the ground, and the impact shot him six inches into the air, his skeleton extending longer and making his tee and shorts fit him poorly. The black asphalt under his shoes stained their soles and crept up into the canvas, turning it to leather that assembled into a pair of black leather dress shoes that shone like mirrors. Aidan's brain was so foggy that he didn't notice these alterations, so when his dad Craig lunged for him, the boy rebelliously stood his ground and stomped his foot again.
His dress shoe clacked against the ground and sent reverberations through his whole body, lengthening it again, this time all the way up to an imposing six-four. His youthful clothes tore apart as he sprouted, and from the torn edges out shot new material - structured twill cotton up top, and shiny wool below. Aidan's new clothing melded together from the bottom up: nylon dress socks were quickly covered by a pair of hemmed suit pants that yanked higher on Aidan's scrawny torso, just in time for his shirt to turn a pleasant sky blue. Racing down Aidan's arms, two pairs of sleeves formed, one the elegant blue fabric and one heavy black. Aidan's hands were held out in front of him as he tried to balance his new towering height, and he noticed the new blue shirt cuffs forming around his wrists, an inch of fabric poking out from the ends of his jacket sleeves. A line of shiny white buttons materialized in the middle of his torso, leading up to a huge shirt collar that unfolded out menacingly around Aidan's entire pencil neck.
As all these changes took place, Aidan was trying to think of how he could explain to his dads that how they lived was wrong, and that if they let women into their lives they'd be much happier. He just needed to make sense of how to say it, and that required making sense of other things, like his memories, which were now sorting themselves out in such a way that made Aidan think he was a staunch lifelong Republican raised in the church. He knew it wasn't true, and it worried him, but it was all he could remember now...not just Republican, but so Republican that many conservatives found him far too right-wing...
Aidan's black suit and light blue dress shirt fit him terribly, and the curse went to fixing that next. The teen's lanky frame blew out with multiple layers of size. First came muscle - thick, well-trained muscle that sculpted Aidan's body into the ideal masculine form. The next wave covered the muscles with well-placed fat that bulked Aidan out like a linebacker, his shoulders broadening so far that they were wider than both his gawking fathers put together. After that was more muscle, this time added just for pure size, as Aidan's beastly form filled every inch of his suit, the shirt button over his chest snapping open to show a mighty pair of pecs dusted with the manliest of brown curls. His shoulders covered themselves with so much muscle that his open shirt collar was pushed up to his lower face. His untransformed head poked out between the wide collar points like a turtle.
"Oh my g-god what's happening-" Craig gasped, holding Steve upright. Before them stood a 6'4, 300 pound suited body with the head of their teenaged son.
Aidan frowned and crossed his arms - or attempted to, before the breadth and protrusion of his chest blocked their way. "I hardly think using the Lord's name in vain is appropriate, sir, and I'll thank you to not do so in my presence." Aidan blinked and looked down at the two shellshocked gays. "Do I know you?"
"I'm your father!!"
"Well that can't be right," Aidan said. "Herman Colyer never dressed like that a day in his life." He waved an enormous, thick hand dismissively in Craig's direction, before turning to Steve. "And I certainly didn't have a second father. What is this country coming to?" Aidan's head popped all the way out of his shirt collar finally, and as he spoke the next sentence, his neck thickened with muscle, slowly deepening his voice into a low baritone. "No, I had a mother, as all children in this great nation should. Libby Colyer, God rest her soul."
Aidan's jaw was next, broadening into manly prominence above his collar as five o'clock shadow sprouted instantly. He struggled inside his strapping prison as his new conservatism took hold, bringing with them three degrees - bachelor's, masters, and JD - and beliefs so Republican that most members of his party shunned him. But it didn't matter, because he still got elected. First to the city council, then to the chairman of the state Republican party, then Congressman Aidan Colyer, before heading back from Washington to run for Secretary of State. He won that too, of course. He always won. Secretary Aisan Colyer, before running for the highest state office and becoming Governor Alson Colyer...
Alson stood tall and proud now, his brow broadening as a tidy salt-and-pepper haircut erupted out of his scalp. Governor Colyer...he liked the sound of that...or he did, until term limits reared their ugly head and forced him out of office and a...a...DEMOCRAT won the race to replace him. The very memory made Elson's blood boil. But he'd be back. He hadn't lost, only his party had. Nelson Colyer never sat still for long. Maybe it was time to head back to Capitol Hill, the handsome fifty-year-old thought as he turned his back on the two queers who were falling all over themselves at the sight of him. Nelson was proud of his titanic physique, but it was only for him and his dear wife to enjoy, he thought as he gave his wedding band a twist. The notion that gays were salivating over him made him shudder, but it was not his fault that he was attractive. The Lord had made him that way.