Thomas cut through the crowd, fighting his way to the DJ platform. His friend Alicia has dragged him to this club, and he’d obliged on account of her recent breakup. Anything for a friend, you know? But she’d vanished into a corner with a hunky Latino guy half an hour ago, leaving Thomas stranded by the bar alone as usual. He tripped over a foot and hastily apologized to a drunk girl who was practically bent in half against some dude’s pelvis. She took notice and launched herself at him. He found himself surrounded by a noxious cloud of beer breath and bad perfume as he struggled to prop her up.
“Wanna hook up?” the girl said, adjusting her bra strap. “I dig chubby guys. They-“ she hiccupped. “They always work harder, if you know what I mean.” Thomas’ face went pale as he deposited the girl on the nearest bro’s crotch. He was into dudes, but even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have gone near that drunk mess in a thousand years. As he passed through the dancing, sweating bodies, jammed together like sardines, he tugged at the front of his shirt. What the girl had said had ignited his old insecurities and he didn’t like the feel of his shirt against his jiggling belly. Thomas wasn’t fat. He knew that. But he looked nothing like the bronzed Adonises bumping and grinding on the club floor.
Always a little too stocky, a little too freckly, Thomas felt like he looked like a Keebler elf after eating one too many fudge cookies. He was ashamed at how much the crowd of straight men turned him on. It only reminded him of everything he wasn’t. These thoughts were pushed from his mind as he finally reached the DJ stand.
“Hey!” he called. The DJ took off his chunky headphones.
“What?”
“Is there any way you could play something else? This song is literally the same drum beat over and over. It’s been like twelve minutes. Maybe you could play a Gaga song or something? Something fun!”
“Get out of here, you little queer. You wouldn’t know good music if it fucked you in the ass.”
With that, the DJ put his chunky headphones back on and turned away, but Thomas didn’t move. He stood in a daze, angered by the man’s words. When he broke his concentration and shook his head to clear it, the music seemed a bit louder than before. Had the DJ turned up the volume just to spite him? It certainly seemed that way. He pulled two earplugs out of his fanny pack and shoved them in his ears, scanning the room for Alicia. Maybe he could find her and convince her to drive him home. He saw a flash of bleached blonde hair in the distance and headed toward it, but the music rose in volume again, cutting through the plugs. It was starting to give him a headache.
Silently cursing the DJ, he covered his ears, but the music coursed louder and louder until it drowned out all other noise, filling his brain with its pulsing rhythm. He felt a sudden pang of nausea and ran toward the men’s room, shoving past two girls who were giggling and whispering to each other, pointing at him.
“Who invited the fag?”
“Like I know. What kind of queen wears a fanny pack to a club?”
The words cut Thomas like knives and blood rushed to his cheeks as he pushed open the bathroom door and locked it behind him. The nausea had subsided but the headache remained, driven on by the deafening house music.
His earplugs were missing, presumably having fallen out during his mad dash across the room. He gazed at himself in the mirror. Yup, there he was. Same ugly freckles. Same tangled mop of ginger hair. Same wispy chin hairs that he refused to cut – they were the only facial hair he could grow and he had some measure of affection for them. His stocky body was covered with a baggy black T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. He felt another pang in his stomach and pulled a water bottle out of his trusty fanny pack. He took a sip and immediately spit it out into the sink. The water was so sour! It tasted almost like cheap vodka.
Confused, he reached into the pack to see if one of his aspirin had accidentally rolled into the bottle or something, but was shocked to find that the pack was missing from his hip. Setting the bottle down on the rim of the sink, he turned around and looked all over the dingy tile floor, searching for the missing pack. He didn’t notice, but as he was turned around, the bottle began to change. The crisp Arrowhead label dissolved and the plastic became thin and battered, as if it had been used and tossed around frequently.
Thomas turned back and something in the mirror caught him by surprise. His chin hairs were brown, as if he had accidentally spilled Coke on them. He leaned closer, trying to wipe them off, but the color didn’t budge. His chin hairs were now chestnut brown and, if he wasn’t mistaken, slightly thicker than before. The music rose again, as if somebody had opened the door behind him. He spun around, but nothing had changed. The door remained locked, only the music continued to grow louder and louder. Once again the pounding, pulsing rhythm pushed all the thought out of his mind, filling his brain with drums and thrumming bass.
In his mind, he saw himself at a gay club, dancing crotch to crotch with a handsome bearded man in a low-cut tank top. The jutting peaks of his nipples were just visible through the sheer fabric, and his chest was lost in a forest of swirling brown hair. To Thomas, this was the most handsome man he had ever seen. He wasn’t normally attracted to hairy guys, generally preferring twinks who tended to be shorter than himself (so he didn’t feel awkward), but this rugged man dancing across from him suddenly felt irresistible. He licked his lips and felt his boner throb against his zipper. In a sudden burst of lust, he leaned forward to kiss the man.
The second their lips touched, the Speedo clad go-go boys began to spin on their poles above the crowd. Thomas felt the room spin with them, blurring dizzily around him. He felt weightless for a moment, and when the room finally settled, he felt abuzz with new life. He opened his eyes and saw that he was now in the burly, bearded body of his dance partner. They were still kissing, except in Thomas’ place stood the drunk girl from before. The go-go boys had become busty women in leopard-print bikinis, shaking to the never-changing music that still swelled in his brain.
He tasted beer on the girl’s tongue, but now it turned him on like nothing had ever done before. Thomas felt a whole new world opening up inside of him. His skin crackled with electricity as he noticed for the first time that the girl’s hard nipples were visible through her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. With a thrill of excitement, he reached out to touch those perfect, round breasts- and suddenly he snapped awake, slumped on the grungy bathroom floor. He stood and, disoriented and feeling a little drunk (which was weird, - he was Alicia’s D. D. and all he’d had tonight was water), stumbled back over to the sink.
As he splashed water onto his face, he thought about his dream. Ever since he was 6, he had known that he was gay, but something about being in that body, kissing that girl felt so right. As he thought about her soft lips pressing against his, he peered blearily into the mirror. Those chestnut brown chin hairs were still there, but they had company. His face prickled as identical brown hairs began to sprout all around his chin, spreading down his neck in a thick patch of fuzz. The tickling continued as the growth spread up his cheeks and across his lip, giving him a luxuriously thick moustache and beard combo. He pulled at the hairs cautiously. Real. They tugged at his skin and didn’t budge.
In awe, he watched as the brown hair spread up to his sideburns. The second they made contact with his lank, ginger hair, the greasy strands began to retract and turn brown, becoming sheared stubble about the same length as his beard. The only length remained on top as the brown hue spread to the tips of his hair, which he reflexively pulled back and tightened into a manbun with a rubber band that appeared in his hand.
A cocky smile flashed across his face as his eyebrows thickened and turned brown as well. Thomas closed his eyes for a second, praying for the vision to pass, but when he opened them, his hazel eyes were no more, replaced by a dazzling baby blue. In shock, he reached for his water bottle and took a deep swig, wincing as he noticed something had changed. The vodka in the bottle burned his throat as he swallowed. He retched and knelt over the toilet, vomiting up the remains of his dinner.
With each heave, his muscles clenched and tightened, losing his remaining baby fat. His biceps strained with force as he clutched the bowl, veins popping as they expanded to a statuesque size. His quads and glutes tightened and strengthened, as if after years of heavy workouts. His legs and torso expanded, increasing his height to the point where he had to adjust his position for fear of hitting his head against the porcelain tank. His heaving stomach tightened into a sexy set of six-pack abs topped with meaty pecs and hard, perfectly pointed nipples.
His body began to tingle once more as tick brown hair grew on the tops of his feet, spreading up his ankles and meaty legs, dusting his abs with a sexy chestnut treasure trail, and finally covering his chest with a profuse blanket of thick hair. A tribal tattoo spiraled around his massive bicep, making its seem even larger.
He reached up to tug at his shirt, but his hand only made contact with sweaty, hairy flesh. His collar had plunged below his shelf-like pecs, the oversize T-shirt fading into a tight turquoise tank top so thin you could count the hairs on his abs. His shorts had likewise tightened, losing their pockets and becoming bright pink Chubbies. On his feet, his sneakers ripped and reformed into a pair of Sperry’s Top-Siders.
With one final heave, unbeknownst to him, Thomas purged the last vestige of his homosexuality and old identity. When he stood up, he was Tommy, crossfaded as fuck and ready to take some lucky girl back to his room at the frat house. He stepped confidently back onto the dance floor, feeling his body move to the pounding beat. He whooped as he approached the DJ.
“This is some sick shit, man!”
“Tommy! Bro, where you been? You’re missing all the action!”
“I drank a little too much from this bad boy,” Tommy said, shaking his water bottle and adjusting his manbun. He grinned, “I had to chuck, but I’m back and ready to rock.”
The DJ smiled. “This is the last song of my set. Why don’t we hit the after hours club once it’s finished? That chick Alicia’ll be there. You can score with her no problem.”
“You know it, man!” Tommy took to the dance floor, swigging his vodka. His body throbbed with the beat and his boner strained against his silk boxers. He came across the drunk girl from his dream and felt fireworks as her ass ground across his groin. As the beat played on, they disappeared into the crowd.