Cruisin'

Chapter 2

By Nick B
(C) 2007

The one where Kimmy takes a dive…

Nice one for the work Kris.

---

The shock was a bit much. Had I been an actual girl, I would have been glad to have been sitting down or I would have fainted. As it was, I wasn’t too far from that anyway.

“We’d better get going if we’re going to be ready in time.” said Margaret and herded the other three ladies who were babbling about dances, men and a bunch of things I didn’t want to think about, towards the door. “See you there Donna.”

I could see my reflection in the mirror and it made me feel strange. It wasn’t that I didn’t look good, I did, but I didn’t want to be a girl. I had enough trouble getting people to believe I was a boy most of the time and this just set that back by a few millennia, at the very least.

The young man who first set foot on this tub not two days previously, was gone and the reflected image was one of a young lady with one of those short feathered hairdo’s with blonde highlights just on the tips — the sort of thing Kim Vo from the Extreme Makeover team would do; short but by no means masculine.

She wore a black skirt that ended just above the knee with a deep red blouse in a kind of satiny material. Black shoes with a modest, yet still deadly, heel finished the ensemble. The makeup was definitely evening style; dark around the eyes with a red lipstick that more or less matched the nail polish and the blouse. Of course, under the blouse was a bra filled with these squishy blobs that bounced and jigged sort of authentically and I think, made the look complete.

The overall effect was a total transformation.

So I didn’t have the hips and curves that one would normally associate with the fairer sex, but it didn’t detract one iota from the femininity that exuded from the person that stared back at me.

It was I’m sad to say, frightening.

It didn’t look wrong really and I know there are a lot of TG and TV men out there who would have killed to have had a body and face like mine, but suddenly for me this was like walking into a waking nightmare, the light switches didn't work and I couldn't find my blanket.

“I told you you’d look good.” said Donna, coming and sitting beside me.

“I know, but I don’t know if I can go through with this, I mean, it’s... it’s…”

“A shock? You’ll get over it, honey. We don’t even have to change your name; you’re perfectly fine as you are.”

“Fine? That’s easy for you to say, you’ve probably never been anything other than a girl. For me this is…” I couldn’t finish my sentence because the reflection kept catching my eye and although it was me talking — I could hear that perfectly well, it wasn’t me at the same time. I could see the girl in the mirror talking and for the life of me I couldn’t see that young man I was trying so hard to be. Not only that, but to add insult to injury, the voice seemed to fit, sound more appropriate from ‘her’ than from me.

“I’m sorry.” I said and got up. I grabbed my little bag and stumbled in the shoes to the door yanking it open. The door flew back and I went through, leaving the five women slack-jawed and motionless, staring at the empty space that used to be me.

I didn’t stop running — well running and stumbling until I was pulling on the handle to my own cabin. The low rumble of the engines that shook the very walls was almost a Godsend as I slammed the door behind me and flopped back, leaning against it, breathing hard.

The oval mirror above my wash-hand basin caught most of me and I stared at myself, finding it very difficult to believe what I was seeing. My hair was definitely not masculine and even without the application of makeup I would have been hard-pressed to get away with calling myself a guy, even in men’s clothes. The plucked and shaped eyebrows gave a very definite arch and the pouting expression the lipstick gave took the last traces of ‘me’ away.

God what had just happened? It was making me wonder just who it was that was going to end up enjoying this trip.

I sat on the bed, the noise of the engines and the constant throbbing through the bed made thinking near impossible. I was in something close to a state of panic and I went back to the mirror. I looked and looked to try and see Kim Heasman, but it was not to be. I felt like Sam Beckett, looking in the mirror after one of his Quantum Leaps from one person’s body to another, not quite knowing what to think or now, believe.

The knock on the door brought me back into the present.

I pulled myself together, shrugged off as much of the fear and panic I was feeling as I could and pulled the door open just enough to see who was there.

“Hi.” I said.

It was the ships officer I had spoken to the day before and he looked at me ‘in that way’ - as if he knew what I was doing there in Kim Heasman’s cabin, craning his neck as if to try and catch a glimpse of ‘him’ around the door.

“Is Mr. Heasman there?” he asked, looking me up and down suggestively.

“I’m afraid he’s indisposed at the moment.” I replied. There was no way I was telling him he was looking at him!

“Well, could you give him a message please?” he asked.

“Sure, fire away.”

“His luggage still hasn’t been located. I suggest he comes to see me about it.” he said, giving me details about where to find him etcetera.

“I’ll let him know you called.” I said inwardly vomiting at the salacious way he looked at me.

The door clicked shut and I breathed out explosively. “Jeez, that was weird!” I exclaimed, but I had got away with it. The man who had already spoken to me not twenty-four hours before didn’t recognise me or even give any outward signs that he thought I was anything other than a visitor to Kim’s cabin.

Well at least the ‘he’ Kim was getting a positive reputation!

Meanwhile, I had pulled off a bit of a coup as far as passing was concerned. I don’t know why I was worried, I mean visually, I didn’t have a face like a slapped arse and as I was currently dressed, who would ever suspect?

I sat back on the bed, the reflection of my face visible in the mirror and I couldn’t help being just slightly curious. I mean, I had always had a masculine self image, but that didn’t stop people from making the mistake of thinking that because I was slightly under the average height and build for a bloke, I was actually female. Well there was probably more to it than that, but...

There was another knock on the door.

I couldn’t believe it. I knew no-one on this ship save those women and here I was getting more visitors than I did at home where I knew loads of people.

I opened the door and wasn’t entirely surprised to see Donna standing there.

“Oh, hi Donna.” I said and held the door open for her to enter.

“That was a pretty wild dash back there.”

“Yeah well that was a pretty wild shock too.”

“So what made you come back here?”

“I don’t know. Safety?”

“But you left all your stuff in my cabin.”

I shrugged and looked a little sheepish, but the fact was that not all my stuff was in her cabin, some of it was still hanging from the shower. It was still wet, but it was there. Anyway, I didn’t see that the stuff that was outside my cabin door was mine. Not really.

We argued about it for ages and whatever justification for me not to accept the kindnesses of the passengers, she found ways to contradict. Not all of them I thought were valid either, but as the ‘discussion’ went on, I felt myself losing out to her reasoning until in the end, I felt I had no choice but to accept my current situation and go with the flow.

Alright, call me weak, but after however long it was that we argued — sorry, DISCUSSED the point, the engines were thrumming, her voice was grating and although I know it’s bad, but I gave in. “What the heck?” I thought, I’ve passed once, I can do it again. How hard can it be?

We stepped out of my cabin and I left my shorts and shirt on the shower, but grabbed my little bag and we set off down the corridor. I could have sworn I saw someone dart into an adjoining corridor, but I figured it was just someone going from ‘A’ to ‘B’. I took no notice anyway, feeling that at a time like this, it was bound to be paranoia.

My mind was well and truly on the matter in hand anyway and all the way to Donna’s cabin I was wondering why she was taking so much trouble over me. I hardly knew her after all and she knew me no better, so what was this fascination with getting me into girl’s clothes and makeup?

The boat was busy, there was entertainment and all sorts going off all over the ship what with the restaurants, the ballroom, the night club and other sundry things, but no-one gave me a second look. It helped to bolster my confidence, though I still felt that I stood out like a sore thumb.

Back at Donna’s cabin, I thought everything was going to calm down, but it didn’t. The first thing I faced was the blame that thanks to me we were likely to be late and that she had to go and get ready.

She didn’t need to do what she did, did she and what did she mean by ‘we’?

---

“Are you ready?” she asked when she came back out of her bedroom, some half an hour later.

“Ready?” I asked. “Ready for what?”

“The dinner/dance silly.” she said.

“You can’t be serious.” I said, the full meaning of the situation suddenly crashing down on me.

“Of course. It’ll be fun and I’ll bet you’re going to be the belle of the ball.”

“Oh, ding-dong.” I said resignedly. She looked back at me with a dangerously arched eyebrow.

“You’re not getting cold feet are you?”

“Cold feet? My feet are the least of my problems. Right now, it would be easier to find the warm bits. You might have said something, let me get used to the idea.”

“I thought I had. Sorry.” she said with that giddiness I knew was false.

“Yeah, well anyway. I don’t know that I can do that.”

“Of course you can. Look, you walked all the way here through all those people and not one took a blind bit of notice of you and what about that crew member that you spoke to earlier?”

She was right of course, but that didn’t mean I wanted to go. I made some lame excuse of not fitting, not feeling as if I was going to pass. Well that just made her angry.

“Look at you. Come on - look!” I turned once again to the mirror and as before, the face of an attractive young woman was staring back at me; that haunted expression deepening as ‘she’ realised that this was permanent — well possibly permanent for the remainder of the cruise.

“Can you honestly see anything wrong with what you’re looking at?” asked Donna, her voice adopting a tone that had with it, more than a hint of steel.

This assertiveness from Donna took me by surprise. She was evidently growing tired of my indecisiveness, but after all, I wasn’t used to this new guise or what it meant, either to me or anyone else.

---

I was as nervous as hell. I had been given little time to get used to the idea of being this new girl, but I was now being dragged into what I saw as the lion’s den.

Apparently, it was an informal affair and that I suppose was the one thing in its favour.

I was escorted in by the five ladies and kept very quiet. I thought that the less attention I drew, the more likely it would be that I would get out of this alive and with my sanity intact, though the way things were already going that was looking less and less likely.

There was a fair mix of old and young there, which pretty much described our own table and as the evening progressed so did the consumption of wine — my glass never seemed to empty. It must have had a good effect because I felt less self conscious of my appearance, although despite getting decidedly mellow, it never really wholly went away.

My self-consciousness was brought right up front when a guy who was obviously a lot younger than me came and asked me to dance, much to the amusement of the ladies — or those left who weren’t already dancing. I didn’t have the heart to refuse and the remaining ladies would have made me very uncomfortable if I had.

I allowed the youngster — Edward, to dance with me for one number and had the Devil’s own job keeping his hands off my arse. I kept pulling them up to my waist and then as if by magic, they’d be back to cupping and squeezing my cheeks before I knew it. I was happy to bow out gracefully at the end of that number and went to sit back down.

Truthfully, it wasn’t that bad. I suppose that I was beginning to get into character. ‘Kimmy’, as Donna so eloquently put it, was a girl and ‘Kim’ was a boy who seemed to have got left behind on the docks. So it was with an odd kind of detachment that I danced with Edward, although I fervently hoped I wouldn’t need to again.

No such luck. I was dancing pretty much all night and the men ranged from an older bloke of about fifty or more who I think, was trying to piss his wife off and was doing a really good job, to guys not much older than me.

“So how did you find it?” asked Margaret as the band disappeared off.

“Okay, I suppose. I don’t like dancing at the best of times and dancing with men just isn’t my cup of tea, but it’s definitely better than spending the night waiting for my shorts to dry in that noisy cabin.”

“You should hear the noise in that. I can’t believe they put him in there.” said Donna.

We walked back towards Donna’s cabin, the ladies saying good night and peeling off as they reached turn-offs for their own cabins and I continued with Donna, chatting about nothing really, it was just a nice way to round off the evening.

Outside her cabin, I said my goodbyes and was just about to head back down into the vast cavern of the ships interior when Donna asked where I thought I was going.

“Back to my cabin.” I said.

“Don’t be so silly. You can’t go back there.”

“But it’s my cabin, where would you suggest I went? I’m certainly not going back to that lounge; I don’t think I slept at all in there.”

“Of course not. You’re staying here with me.”

She wouldn’t take no for an answer and I was led — almost dragged bodily actually, into the rich grandeur of her suite, my head playing games with images of ‘spending the night’ with Donna. I needn’t have worried. That wasn’t on her mind at all.

I was shown to a spare cabin that alright, didn’t have windows, but it didn’t throb either and after she showed me the various chemicals and stuff I needed to take the makeup off my face with in the bathroom, she told me she’d wait up and we’d have a nightcap together.

---

I awoke the next morning to rediscover a hairless body, complete with a full-on chubby and that constant feeling of softness as my legs touched and rubbed together, which was further enhanced by the smooth feeling around that certain other part of my body. This of course was made all the more frustrating when I remembered where I was and any eroticism that was floating (or charging full-bore in my case) was dispelled fairly quickly when I realised that I was going to have to get up and do yesterday all over again.

Oh joy.

Donna knocked on my door shortly after realisation dawned.

“Ready for breakfast Kimmy?” she called.

I didn’t like the name Kimmy. It was bad enough that there were two Kim’s in my class at school — one was me and the other was a plain girl who was labelled as a bit of a swot. Now I was actually answering to that feminised version of my name and it grated.

“Be with you in a moment.” I called back, dragging myself out of bed and trying to find something that didn’t look too girly to put on, though trying to find a skirt or panties that “aren’t too girly” is like trying to find a bacon sandwich that isn’t too porky. Fortunately, I remembered that I had shorts and stepped into a pair of those instead.

I wondered whether I could get away without wearing the bra, but upon looking at the shorts I had, not one pair was a male style. Bang went my idea of being just a boy in shorts, no boy on earth would entertain wearing these. Oh well, back to plan ‘A’.

I struggled with the bra, until I sussed that putting it on backwards, doing it up at the front and then spinning it round, was far easier than doing it the other way and despite the heating in the cabins, the ‘chicken fillets’ - blobs of silicone that were my false breasts were still a cold shock when inserted into the cups.

I finished off with the baggiest t-shirt I could find and looked in the mirror. No makeup, shorts and a baggy t-shirt seemed to make me pretty non-descript and moments later I emerged.

“There she is!” said Donna gleefully.

I didn’t like that either. Much as I felt glad that she had come to my rescue, all this girly stuff was hard to get to grips with.

“Here I am.” I replied in a kind of flat tone.

“What’s wrong Kimmy?”

“Nothing! Everything. I don’t know. I just don’t think I’m cut out to be this girl is all.”

“Why? You were brilliant last night. I don’t think there was a man there that didn’t dance with you.”

“Don’t remind me. I don’t think I’m cut out for this because I’m not a girl. I don’t find men attractive and all the time I’m wandering round like this, I feel like I’m being sized up.”

“But that’s half the fun!”

“It maybe fun for you, but not for me. I just feel that I’ll push the wrong or right buttons and it’s curtains for Kimmy. Last night, it was all I could do to stop myself smacking some of those chauvinistic bastards in the teeth.” I shuddered inwardly as Donna had even got me using Kimmy now too.

“Honey; you can always turn them away.”

“I tried that. It didn’t work very well did it?”

“Look, let’s go get some coffee and croissants. I always think better after those, don’t you?”

The idea of coffee and croissants sounded good and I approached the dining room where breakfast was served with some trepidation. After the morning before, I considered it off limits, but then Kim would. Kimmy on the other hand, had never been in there and that was definitely a plus.

True enough, no-one associated the skinny young lady with Donna as the same person who had exited with half a pint of OJ down his front and four maple pancakes on his rear. Breakfast today went without such hitches.

On the way out, I almost bumped into a girl of about my own age. She took my breath away. Our eyes met and I swear that something passed unspoken between us. I exited the breakfast room backwards, unable to take my eyes off the beauty that walked in. She turned and gave me an odd sort of look just before it happened.

I didn’t know anything was there, not until my heel made contact with it. I stumbled backwards and caught the small of my back on the railing. I thought that was it, but suddenly my whole world was turning upside-down — literally!

I shrieked — probably the most girly sound I had made since the transformation. I went over the railing and watched sky and clouds pass by before seeing a swimming pool coming towards me at breakneck speed then — SPLASH!

I surfaced to see a large crowd of people clambering to see what had happened, one of whom was Donna. I swam to the edge and hauled my sorry butt out of the water before balling my fists and stomping a soggy foot several times on the decking and shouting “Oooooh!”, before I realised that the people above and around me were laughing at this bedraggled mess that dripped and muttered as she left the scene in great haste.

I was so pleased when the beauty that had passed me wasn’t among them.

---

I was still frowning long after Donna had let me into the cabin. The frown stayed until I had showered, changed into dry clothes and she had stopped laughing.

“Oh come on Kimmy, it was funny. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that before, well not in the morning anyway. A few have gone in later in the day after being in the bar, but not straight after breakfast.”

“It’s NOT funny.” I said and tried to sound authoritative, but failed miserably and wound up laughing just as hard as Donna.

“You really know how to make an exit and after that scream, I don’t think anyone’s in any doubt about your femininity; certainly not after that foot stomping when you got out.”

Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better.

She suggested then that I should go out and enjoy myself. Before I could argue, I was hustled out of the cabin and into the daylight wondering why I couldn’t just stay inside where people couldn’t see me. This was especially true since I was back into a skirt and a t-shirt that accentuated my ‘breasts’ rather than hiding them as the breakfast ensemble had.

I wasn’t supposed to be feminine; I was a guy and could prove it.

Okay, so I wasn’t Vin Diesel, but I still had something between my legs that set me on one specific side of the gender divide. It was like a light bulb going on over my head. I was right, I was male and dressing me up as a female wasn’t going to change that.

Yes, I had heard of the poor guys and girls who realise that what’s on the outside doesn’t match what was on the inside, or had been born with both, but I wasn’t either of those things. I was male and intended to stay that way.

The first thing on my mind was to find out how much it would cost to change me back. Okay, the hair was something I could live with — sort of, but the clothes weren’t me and neither was being this girl they all seemed to think I was.

Looking in the various shops or ‘outfitters’ as they prefer, I was treated to a view of what shopping in Harrods must be like and I realised very quickly indeed that providing myself with an alternative wardrobe would not only be costly, but even to replace to a minimum would leave me virtually penniless for the rest of the trip.

This was like a kick in the soft bits — a challenge to my masculinity. I was sure in my own mind that I wasn’t a woman, but a man. I was masculine and liked all things masculine. The only way I liked feminine was when it was on a female. I liked the way that lingerie looked on someone with curves and all those interesting lumps and bumps.

I wasn’t going to be able to just slope off to the shops, buy myself a new set of duds and amble out as Kim Heasman — man about town. I would have been lucky to have wandered out with a pair of trousers or shorts, a couple of pairs of underwear, two or three t-shirts and no more money.

After realising I wasn’t going to be able to do it my way, I didn’t feel like I had any choice in the matter. I had lost out to an absurd situation that any way I looked at it, had got me solidly by the short and curlies. I was in it up to my ears and the only way out seemed to entail playing along with whatever was going on.

Not what I wanted to hear, especially from me.

I needed to go sit somewhere quiet and think. As much as I disliked being in this guise, I didn’t look bad, I mean I actually looked quite natural, so at least I had that on my side, although that was sure to haunt me after this was all over.

I wandered round for some time and with few areas on a ship like this that can be called quiet it took ages to find anywhere where I could just go sit and be alone. I didn’t want to be on my own, but under the circumstances, I really needed to gather my thoughts and try and figure this out.

Eventually on one of the mid levels, I found an area that was largely unoccupied. I sat down on one of the deck chairs and gazed out over the sea. It wasn’t warm, but it was out of the way and that was reassuring.

I’d been there for about an hour when a voice said “Hello.” I looked up and saw the girl from the breakfast room.

I was a bit flustered to begin with because I saw something in her that had I been plain Kim, I would have liked to have seen develop. Right now, I didn’t know who I was, what I was or why I was even there. I was just biding my time until either it was time to go home or Donna grew weary of this play-acting and I could get back to some semblance of normality — whichever happened sooner.

“Hi. You were at breakfast this morning weren’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah. Have you any idea what all that ruckus was about just after you left?”

I most certainly did, but whether I should tell her was something I wasn’t sure of. Oh well, in for a penny as they say.

“I fell in the pool.” I said and could feel that crimson tide running up my cheeks.

“What?”

“I fell in the pool.” I said again, blushing even more. “Straight over the railings and ‘splosh!’”

“No!” she said with ever widening eyes. “Not the one two decks down?”

“The very same.”

“That must be about twenty feet or more.” she said. “Are you alright?”

“That’s a matter of opinion.” I said. “But physically I’m okay. No broken bones, just a severely bruised ego.”

“Well that’s alright then.”

“Depends which way you look at it.” I said philosophically. “I’m not so sure, but then I’m not so sure of anything right now.”

“May I sit down, I’ve been all over this ship over the last few hours and my feet are killing me.”

“Be my guest. I may not be the best company though.”

“You seem alright to me.” she said giving me a smile that if certain things hadn’t been firmly tucked into my panties, may well have given ‘rise’ to other things and those were what right now I was trying hard to ignore.

“Thanks.” I said.

She introduced herself to me as Lucy and I introduced myself as Kim. I didn’t even think about how I looked, but thankfully it didn’t matter. Just as well my name wasn’t Herbert or something.

We chatted about all sorts of things for what must have been ages. We watched the sun travel across the sky and start to set on the horizon before she made her excuses to leave.

“It’s been really nice talking to you.” she said. “I’m here with older relatives and I know it’s really good of them to have me along, but they’re a little difficult to get on with when it comes to understanding people of my age.”

“I know. They can’t understand the music for a start.” I joked. “In my day, you could understand the words.” I said, making a fair impersonation of an old voice and for the first time since I started this cruise, I was laughing and feeling comfortable.

“Oh well… best get back.” she said and off she went.

I watched Lucy walk away along the deck, wondering whether I should have offered to walk to wherever it was that she was going, but I just let her go. I reasoned that if I had walked her back — the gentlemanly thing to do, she may have thought I was making a play for her, and that would probably have led to all sorts of odd and unanswerable questions, so I didn’t - did that mean I wasn’t interested?

Jesus. This being a girl thing doesn’t half get complicated sometimes.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her though. The reasons were obvious. She was pretty — boy was she pretty and she was my age — I guessed. We were on the same wavelength or appeared to be, with many of the same hopes, fears and aspirations. There were obvious differences — like the fact that she was a girl, while I was just being dressed up to look like one, but it was nice to have someone to talk to who wasn’t trying to force me into being someone I really didn’t want to be.

---

“So what you been up to?” asked Donna when I returned.

“Nothing; I just sat and chatted with one of the passengers.”

I must have seemed upbeat and I was, but it wasn’t because I was happy as I was. It was all down to having met someone who seemed to put me at ease. I didn’t think Lucy thought of me as anything, just someone to chat to. I hoped it would go further though. Anyway, Donna didn’t press and I wasn’t going to volunteer anything.

“You’d better get changed. I’ve booked us a table at Antoine’s later.”

“What’s Antoine’s?” I asked, though really it wasn’t hard to work out that it was going to be one of the restaurants on board.

“A very nice place to eat, now come on, chop-chop and put something good on.”

“Something good?” I thought. I had hoped that asking about the restaurant would prompt Donna to divulge a little more about the plan for the evening, but no. It was going to be another one of those things I have to walk into blind and hope that it’s not going to involve dancing - again.

---

To be continued…