Sugar & Spice
Keywords: Sugar, &, Spice,
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"This is my most difficult story to date; difficult to write, difficult to read. The sex is intense; the violence, more so. Most men will not have the patience to sit through it; it takes too long to get to "the good parts". Most women will not have the stomach for it; in places, it hits too close to home. I don't know whom that might leave as an audience, but I felt it was a story worth telling. While this may be a work of fiction, its analogs – and the social dynamic that shapes and propels them – happen in this country every day.
God help us all."
**********
Like any nine-year-old, Sharon Brennan wanted a best friend, someone she could play with, confide in, and entrust with her deepest, darkest secrets. There were other girls at school, of course, and the assertive, engaging young girl made friends easily. But she never had the opportunity to spend time with them outside the classroom. The other girls all lived in Aurora; Sharon, along with her mother and brother had moved to a lavishly-appointed home outside the city limits, owned by her mother's friend and co-worker. That alone would not have been fatal, but Sharon had to take care of her younger brother every afternoon until her mother returned from work. That meant she usually had to hurry home on the bus – with her brother in tow – after school. Even if she wanted to stick around to be with her friends, what would she do with him? It just wasn't fair!
It wasn't that Sean was loathsome or hateful to her; far from it. He was only a year younger and really kinda cute. Sean had been a "preemie" who, physically, had not caught up with other boys his age. He was small, with a slender build and delicate, symmetric features. He had also inherited their mother's thick, satiny copper-colored hair and emerald eyes. Sharon envied him more than a little. Unlike Sharon, Sean was painfully shy and insecure, unable to make friends easily. He adored his big sister and would do anything she asked.
Sharon took advantage of that. By default, Sean became her playmate and companion – on her terms, of course. She chose how they would occupy their time together while awaiting their mother's return. When they played together, it was usually with her Barbie Doll. She had him help her dress and undress Barbie in different outfits according to the different scenes she had imagined. Sean seemed not to mind such girlish pursuits in the slightest. If it made Sharon happy, he was happy. To Sharon, it was almost like having the girlfriend she wanted. Still, he was a boy – unless....
Inspiration hit the mischievous girl. One day, upon returning home from school, Sharon told Sean they were going to play "Dress Up" in a new way. She took her brother's hand and led him to the bathroom. She filled the bathtub with warm water, to which she added some lilac-scented bubble bath. Stripping the school clothes from the expectant boy, she helped him into the tub and washed him head to toe, allowing him to soak a while. She helped him out of the tub, patted him dry, then applied lotion to his hands, arms, feet, legs, and torso. When she had finished this task, Sean's entire body was smooth, fragrant, soft to the touch.
Leading him next to their shared bedroom, she dressed him in a pair of her panties, dress, pantyhose, and shoes. After dressing him up, she sat him next to her at their mother's vanity table. She polished his fingernails with her mother's deep red nail polish, then his lips with the matching shade of lipstick. Sharon had tried it on herself and didn't like the way it looked, but her mother had described it as her favorite shade. She had remarked that it flattered her auburn hair and made her feel sexy. The young girl had to admit; it did flatter her mother – and looked just as good on her red-headed brother! She played with his longish tresses, brushing them this way and that until they looked just so, fixed it in place with hairspray, pinned a bow to one side to make him look even more feminine. A final spritz of her mother's favorite perfume, and voilá! She and her 'girlfriend' were ready to play.
They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with Sharon's Barbie doll. Sean was a little unsure of himself at first, but took readily to his sister's direction. By the end of the afternoon, Sharon had coaxed Sean into becoming the giggly, confident, and outgoing 'best friend' of her dreams! Sean, in turn, felt closer to the sister he adored than ever before.
Their mother returned home to observe, unnoticed, her two children engaged in their rapturous new mode of play. In a matter of moments, she ran through the gamut of emotions from shock to horror to bewilderment to curiosity to wonder. She presented herself to the playmates, assuaged their fear that she perceived this new game as "something naughty", and joined in their play. Before long, she allayed her own fears as well. She determined neither child was being hurt, physically or emotionally. This was something they both enjoyed, and in which she could perceive no harm being done to anyone. In addition, her little boy, as a little girl, possessed a sense of self-confidence, poise, and joie de vivre he had never displayed as a male. Searching her own emotions, Nora Brennan couldn't help but feel a twinge of bittersweet rapture. She knew Society would see this as wrong, an aberration. Her heart told her otherwise. For the first time in a long time, something seemed to be working out for the better....
Nora was a still-stunningly-beautiful redhead with a 'past'. She had left that life behind over a decade before; gone back to school, earned a nursing degree, gotten a good job at the clinic in Aurora, gotten married and had the two children that had become her life. Her past had caught up with her just before the birth of her second child. The moment had been ugly. Nora's husband walked out on her, claiming she had deceived him and that he wouldn't remain with a 'woman like that'. If she had deceived him, it was a sin of omission; she hadn't told him everything about herself for fear of losing him. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.... Whatever her sins, Nora Brennan was suddenly alone with one child already, another on the way, and an ex-husband who wanted nothing to do with her, much less provide financial support. She coped as best she could. When she was finally backed into a financial corner and faced with losing her home, she and her children had moved in with her best friend who, in turn, began pulling some strings to help her obtain child support. Even so, the stress had caused her to give birth six weeks early. She had almost lost the baby altogether – almost.
Nora had believed her second child was going to be another girl. She had even picked out a name she adored for Sharon's new sibling. Nora had not been disappointed when Sean was born. She loved her son just as much as she loved his sister. She was especially taken with his uncanny resemblance to herself. Yet her instincts told her something was not right, not the way it had been intended to be. As the years passed, she grieved for his obvious lack of self-confidence and inability to make friends - other than his sister. She would observe him wistfully, and wonder what might have been. She was also keenly aware of the burden she had, necessarily, placed on her daughter. Nora felt guilty about cutting Sharon off from other friends by having to take care of her brother. Seeing them together this way, happier than they had ever been before, she knew she had found an answer to both problems, if only until Sean was old enough to take care of himself. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was a way for Sean to find himself at last, to enable him to open up freely to others. No, that probably wasn't a practical notion. Still, Nora Brennan was elated with even this much.
From that moment on, Nora nurtured their game of "Dress Up" in any way she could. She had convinced Sharon that just dressing Sean up would not be enough; it would only confuse him further, possibly making the painfully shy, retiring boy even more so. While dressed, he should be a she as completely as possible – with a feminine identity and personality. The name Nora had originally chosen for her unborn second child – the one she had altered to reflect his unexpected gender - came back to her now. She suggested it to Sharon, who was just as thrilled as her mother.
Together, they sat down with the newly-feminized Sean. They suggested, since he was having such a good time playing "Dress Up", wouldn't it be fun to pretend to be a girl like his big sister? He could be 'Shauna' and wear all kinds of pretty clothes, just like Barbie. This would be their little secret; they wouldn't tell anyone outside of "family". Mama and Sharon would just adore that; wouldn't she? The child's reply had been as enthusiastic as it had been predictable.
Mother and daughter patiently, lovingly, trained 'Shauna' to dress, walk, speak, act, and think like a girl, until it became second nature to her. The older sibling especially took to the task. No plastic doll could ever hope to compete with her walking, talking, interactive 'Barbie'. Gradually, "Dress Up" became any time Shauna was not in school. The 'game' became pretending to be 'Sean' and fooling all their teachers and friends at school into believing she was a he. Nora allowed Shauna's hair to grow out and took her with Sharon and herself to have it trimmed and styled, reinforcing the child's perception of herself as a girl. Nora delighted in taking her two daughters out with her. This all made sense; it was as it should have been in the beginning. In a lifetime of bad choices and unintended consequences, this one thing was very, very right.
Nora was not alone in that perception. Evelyn Rossi, a magnificent blonde beauty, was entranced with the development of her new "goddaughter". Since before Sean/Shauna's birth, she had been an integral part of the Brennan "family". It had been Evelyn who had taken the struggling, expectant mother in when all other avenues had been closed to her.
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Keywords: Sugar, &, Spice,