BOOBLEGUM

One man's obsession leads to a strange combination
of jubilation and anxiety at a local high school, but
luckily, the obsession ends itself in grand fashion.

Booblegum
by Terry Volkirch

Mark Williams was a thirty-something marketing director at a mid-sized pharmaceutical company called Quest Laboratories. His short, overweight frame and shiny, bald head didn't attract many women, but that didn't stop him from fancying them, and it didn't stop him from obsessively pursuing them.

"Mary!" Mark shouted across several cubicles at a normally pleasant young blonde woman who did product research for the marketing department. "Are you sure you won't have dinner with me tonight? I hear the lasagna at Rimbaldi's is out of this world!"

"How many different ways are there to say no?" She rolled her eyes as she turned to leave for the day. She gave the man everything he demanded of her -- except sex.

"Come on, Mary. We'd be great together and you know it."

"Give up, Mr. Williams. Just ... please give up."

The conversation ended roughly the same way several times a month, and both parties grew tired of the stalemate.

Mary's rejection frustrated Mark to no end, but being an obsessed sexist jerk, he refused to take no for an answer. Since she left him no doubt that his only recourse was to find a powerful aphrodisiac -- and secretly use it on her -- that's what he'd try to do.

***

The Internet overflowed with material about seducing and romancing women. Most web sites mentioned that true intimacy is the most powerful female aphrodisiac, but that wouldn't work for Mark. He had neither the patience nor the skill for romance. Besides, like far too many men, he wanted a more certain outcome.

A couple web articles mentioned that some foods and natural supplements such as chocolate and ginseng could help get women in the mood for sex. They weren't very strong though. There were a couple gels that would work well but he couldn't apply them to the appropriate erogenous zones without getting arrested. In short, he had to think outside the box if he was to have any chance of getting Mary Carson into his bed.

The obsessed man eventually stumbled across a pseudo scientific article on a web site with dubious credibility. The headline claimed that a certain gender changing fish offered him what he was after, but that sounded hard to believe so he dug a little deeper.

According to several sources, the fish that was mentioned in the article did in fact change gender. Apparently, the majority of coral reef fish change sex at some point in their life, and that was good enough for him. He found the idea of a fish changing gender to be the incredible part, so once he confirmed that, he easily swallowed the rest.

He went back over the article and read that a certain gland in the fish contained a mix of unidentified hormones, and several unnamed scientists predicted that those unusual hormones could produce any number of strong effects in both men and women. Scanning the list of effects for women, he saw the words, "powerful aphrodisiac", and he stopped to rub his hands together with glee.

***

"This is junk science, Mr. Williams," said a tall, older man wearing a white lab coat and thick glasses. "There's no scientific basis for any of the claims. I checked the few references that were cited in the article and none of them refer to any valid studies."

Of course, Mark Williams couldn't accept the lead scientist's opinion. That's because he wasn't fully listening to anyone or anything except his crotch.

"Don't worry," Mark said. "I'm sure I can get you funding for this. We'll validate the results ourselves. Then the article can cite us as a credible source."

"Whatever you say," the scientist said, not really believing he'd ever see any new funding.

***

The obsessed marketing director's libido overrode all common sense, but it inspired great passion that his superiors listened to and admired. It didn't take long before a meeting was scheduled and heads were turned.

As Mark addressed several middle-aged and sex-starved executives, he stretched a few truths and spread a few lies to snare them in the same web he himself was caught. A new project came to life and the company scientists were swept away by the great river of money that flowed their way.

***

Most of the scientists at Quest Laboratories lived for research. So when a large amount of research money showed up, soon followed by a shipment of some gender changing fish, none of them asked any questions. Not even the lead scientist questioned the project. He just shook his head and distributed the fish for dissection and analysis.

"Nice haul, isn't it, Quincy?" Mark asked, beaming. His demeanor matched that of a proud golden retriever after having retrieved a duck that had been shot out of the sky.

The lead scientist turned and tried to remain aloof and professional. It wasn't easy though. The obsessed director's enthusiasm was contagious.

"I'm rather busy," the scientist replied. "We have a lot of work to do before we can even start. Good science takes time."

"Oh! Right." Mark winked and then quickly strode out of the room with his hands in his pants pockets to help hide his growing erection.

***

After analyzing the fish, the scientists found the small gland that oozed with the strange mix of hormones. It was the most likely source of the gender changes in the fish, and quite possibly could cause one or more of the other effects claimed by the article that Mark found so fascinating. Whatever the case, the fish promised to provide many months of research so the scientists were quite happy. The same couldn't be said for a certain high-level director.

Any legitimate science called for numerous protocols and procedures to be followed. Compounds needed to be isolated and identified, and hypotheses needed to be formed and tested. It was all very dull and tedious for Mark. He expected results much sooner than were promised by following the rules.

The impatient marketing director had enough authority and spare time to be dangerous however. In his mind, rules were nothing more than playthings to be bent to his will. If he didn't have the balls to make the risky decisions, someone else would, and that someone else would most likely reap the rewards. He wouldn't allow that to happen so he had to push hard for results. The only problem was, he didn't know exactly how to accomplish his goal. He didn't have the brains to temper his overactive testicles.

Marketing people rarely crossed paths with the science department so he wasn't sure exactly what he could do. He'd help if he could. He'd do anything to speed up the process of developing the aphrodisiac that lurked somewhere in the guts of those stupid fish. The whole situation almost made him want to be a scientist. He was sure everything would move along at a much faster pace if he was leading the team.

Such delusions of grandeur were common in his mind, and they were never limited to marketing. They flowed into every corner of his little world, every part of the pharmaceutical industry. Luckily for most everyone, such delusions had never before had any serious effects. It wasn't until a certain, tiny fish became a focus for the man's sexual obsession that a major problem developed. It would prove to be the 15 minutes of fame that fate reserves for lesser mortals.

Even though Mark had no real plan, he lingered in the labs and hovered over all of the new experiments, and after his nearly constant presence began to annoy everyone, Quincy finally had to confront the man.

"Mr. Williams, is there an unspoken deadline associated with this project?"

"What?" Mark had no idea what the lead scientist was talking about. He'd been daydreaming about Mary as usual.

Quincy sighed and tried again. "Does Project Fish have a schedule and are we behind that schedule?"

That got the marketing director thinking. He didn't know anything about scheduling projects. He just came up with the idea and let his underlings manage everything. But somewhere in his little mind, he sensed an opportunity.

"Oh! Right," Mark blustered. "I'm under a lot of pressure to see some results. Isn't there anything you could do to speed things up? Isn't there some sort of fast track process or something?"

Quincy frowned. The man before him obviously knew little of science and therefore, couldn't appreciate its beauty. The man was just a leech, sucking the creative juices from hardworking scientists.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," the lead scientist said.

"Results, man! I need results or heads will roll I assure you."

The scientist paused in thought a moment. He didn't like pressure. He wasn't a lab rat that needed to perform some trick for his supper. But he did want to keep his job. It paid well and often satisfied his intellectual needs.

"Jameson!" Quincy called. "When can you set up that experiment you talked about this morning?"

A tall, lanky young man turned and started walking towards the two men.

"I thought you didn't want to bother with it," the young man said.

"Forget what I said. I think it's perfect for our current needs."

"Okay then. I'll set it up this afternoon."

"Now," Mark said.

"Excuse me?" Jameson asked.

"You should start now."

The young man turned to look at Quincy, who simply shrugged and told him to do it. Jameson started immediately, and Mark suddenly and quickly left the lab with his hands jammed into his pants pockets.

***

The animal testing had been going on for three days. Several female rats had been fed a steady diet of the fish gland and something interesting did indeed occur by the end of the third day. They scurried around their little cages exhibiting presenting behavior. In other words, they were hot for sex.

When Jameson introduced one male rat to the cage, the females all mobbed the poor little guy, demanding to be mounted.

The young researcher took pity and soon added one male for each female, but it didn't take long for the males to be exhausted. It took three or four males before a female finally lost interest in sex and started eating instead. They probably needed the nourishment after all the energy they spent with the males.

The experiment was a success.

Jameson went to Quincy with the initial results and Quincy soon had Mark's ear. They held a meeting and all of the men chatted excitedly. It sounded like talk about science and the marketing of a successful product, but they actually had something else on their minds. Their thoughts all turned to their wives and girlfriends, and how those women would look, ready and willing in their beds.

Of course Mark was the first one to voice his desire.

"How soon can you mix up a batch?" he said, rubbing his hands together in eager anticipation.

"Hold on," Quincy said. "We can't turn this loose on the public yet. We'll need years of animal testing before we can submit anything to the Food and Drug Administration."

"Screw the FDA!" Mark shouted, his voice breaking.

Several of the older men blushed at the director's choice of words. Jameson just smiled. He liked Mark's enthusiasm.

"I'll handle this," the young researcher said, taking the director's arm. "Please. Walk this way. I've got something to explain to you."

What Jameson told the director actually ran counter to what his lead said, and it was quite unlawful, but that didn't concern him. Like Mark, the young man was eager to try out the fish gland on a certain frigid young lady he knew.

***

The animal experiments continued, partly to satisfy Quincy, but also because the two lustful men wanted to see how often they could get away with drugging their victims.

The aphrodisiac effects regularly built up after three full days of a steady supply of the fish hormones. It didn't take a large dosage either, just a steady one. The females would be desperate for sex after every three days, and the hormones could be interrupted and resumed such that the period of lust always fell on a weekend when the men could take full advantage of it.

As interesting as the results were so far, the scientist in Jameson still wondered about the long-term effects. He wanted to make sure the rats didn't grow gills or some other more obvious fishy body parts. He briefly fantasized about having a mermaid girlfriend but he didn't believe anything like that would really happen. He just liked to let his imagination run wild.

Mark didn't care about long-term effects. His mind couldn't think very far into the future because a certain insistent organ kept interrupting his thought process. He just kept pestering his partner in crime to figure out a way of administering the drug.

Using the fish gland by itself wouldn't work. It smelled bad and didn't keep well. The young man found a solution though. Using some of the live specimens, he set up a little device to milk the hormones directly from the gland. He soon had a little fish hormone farm running, so all that remained was to determine how to deliver those hormones to the subject.

The devious researcher didn't trust the hormones to mix with alcohol, and he also wanted some type of time-released method since the female rats had been given a steady supply. He wanted to make sure to reproduce the experimental conditions as closely as possible, and that led him to the only workable option.

He first saturated a gum base with the hormones and added a small amount of cherry flavoring. Then he did what scientists always seemed to do in the movies. He tried the gum himself to make sure it was palatable.

The gum passed his taste test so he quickly spit it out and stole a quick glance at a few of his male coworkers.

No, he didn't find any of them attractive. He wasn't female and he barely tasted the gum before spitting it out, but after seeing how strongly those female rats reacted, he had to be sure.

***

Mark shuddered with giddy pleasure when Jameson handed him a small package of what they dubbed "Sexy, Loving, You", or SLY, gum. They thought they were being clever by making it seem like the gum would increase the sex appeal of any women who chewed it. At least that was Mark's marketing plan. He thought it would help to get women to try it, but he was wrong.

Neither Mary nor Jameson's girlfriend would accept any strange new product that came from a pharmaceutical company, especially with the name that was given the gum. They knew better than that.

Out of desperation, Mark thought of a better group of test subjects and immediately contacted his three teenage nephews: Larry, Luke and Dean. He also changed the name of the gum in the hopes of appealing to high school girls. He called it Beauty Gum to imply that it would make girls more attractive. It was true in a way -- true enough for him and at least two of his nephews.

Dean was a decent, sensitive young teen, but Larry and Luke had no qualms about handing out the suspicious gums to their female friends. They made sure to give it to the girls on a Wednesday night and then made plans to get together on Saturday night. The two boys were more than anxious to see the effects, and they promised to report everything to their uncle. Telling all wouldn't be a problem. They were prone to brag about their sexual exploits anyway.

***

While Mark and Jameson waited for the human trials to begin, the experiments with the rats continued, and Jameson noticed something that would be bound to improve their chances of success with women. After a little over a month, the female rats had a significant increase in the size of their mammary glands. If humans had the same reaction to the fish hormones, it would make it much easier to get women to chew the gum.

The young man kept a close eye on the rats and saw nothing but healthy tissue develop. There were no tumors or any sign of cancer. The fish hormones seemed too good to be true.

Mark passed along the new information to his nephews and word spread like wildfire in the high school where his nephews went to school. The two nephews hadn't yet found someone to accept the gum, but once they told a few girls that it could make their boobs bigger, many girls fought each other to get their hands on it, and chaos ensued. Larry and Luke had never been so popular, and so happy.

In the interest of fairness and lust, the boys decided to hold a contest to see which two lucky girls got the gum. For the contest, each contestant would have to explain why she should get the gum in 25 words or less, and all of them were encouraged to include audio visual aids. The boys wouldn't really pay much attention to what the girls said unless it related to sexual favors, but they hoped for at least a little flashing to occur as part of the visual presentations.

Fourteen girls participated in the contest, held after hours in a park near the school. The weather was warm enough that the girls didn't have to wear a lot of clothes. That worked out well for the boys.

The first six girls droned on about self-esteem and being thankful for a way to increase bust size without surgery. The boys just called out, "Next!" after each of them.

With the seventh girl, things heated up.

"I'm a little flat-chested," began a beautiful blonde girl named Sherry. "But I give great head, and I'd look much better with bigger boobs. I'd be very grateful for the gum."

She used 24 words and licked her lips suggestively when she'd finished her little speech. The boys were hooked, though they fought over who would 'get' her. Larry only won because he was the older one and was a little stronger than Luke.

The boys calmed down during the next few girls, who'd reverted to the self-esteem type of speech. But they perked up again in more ways than one when Candy stepped up.

"Hi boys!" she said, leaning forward to show off perfect B cup breasts peeking out of a demi bra under a very low cut top.

"Yeah," she continued. "I have nice tits, don't I? But wouldn't they look better if they were bigger and wrapped around your dick?"

She paused then and counted on her fingers.

"Is that less than 25 words?" she asked. She sucked her right index finger into her mouth and slowly pulled it out before continuing. "I think it is."

She smiled innocently and waited for the inevitable result.

"Yeah!" Luke shouted, thinking he'd be the lucky one to get Candy.

Larry grumbled and agreed to let Luke have her, but only because he thought Sherry had a cuter face and was less likely to have an STD.

"That'll be all, girls," Larry said after giving the remaining three girls a quick look.

***

The first experiment with girls seemed to be a success, though it was hard to tell if the gum was actually responsible for the girls' behavior. The two girls most likely would've put out no matter what. The gum was only needed to get the girls' attention and give them a reason to see the boys. The rest of their time together took its natural course.

As promised and expected, the two girls selected to receive the gum did grow significantly larger breasts over a span of six weeks, both topping out with a full C cup. The long term effects of the gum couldn't be disputed, and the girls kept seeing the boys without asking for any more gum. That left many of the other female students at the high school begging to be the next guinea pigs.

***

Mark and Jameson didn't waste any time. Although they couldn't get their original targets to accept the gum under any condition, they found suitable replacements.

Mark found a sexy, young blonde who worked at a coffee shop. Once he promised her bigger breasts, she eagerly fell into his lap in more ways than one, and once again, it wasn't clear whether the gum worked as an aphrodisiac.

Only the young scientist had any success testing the original purpose of the gum. He found a nice but shy young black-haired beauty named Debbie who wouldn't accept any more than a kiss for the first several dates. But during the second week of dating, he introduced the gum on a Wednesday night and by 8 o'clock the following Saturday evening, the tables had turned. Debbie wouldn't take no for an answer and she pulled Jameson into her bed.

The next morning after the first truly successful and conclusive testing of the gum, Jameson woke up to an embarrassed and upset young woman. The effects of the aphrodisiac wore off and Debbie remembered everything. He only calmed her down after many soothing words and a lot of cuddling, and that led to more sex. The young man briefly noted that once broken in, a woman didn't necessarily need more gum, unless of course she wanted bigger breasts.

***

The desperate sex and breast development continued for another couple weeks before another significant effect of the fish hormones was accidentally discovered. The experiment with the rats continued and males eventually got into the supply of the fish glands.

The gland had a different effect on males. Apparently, it greatly increased their sexual potency, and it worked immediately. It no longer took several male rats to satisfy one fully sex-charged female. It only took one.

The latest results were formally written up and caused quite a stir among the scientists, especially the older ones. Jameson became quite a popular young man among his peers, but he became a hero in the mind of his partner in crime.

Being a little older himself, Mark depended heavily on the gum, and his obsession with sex only got worse. He used it as often as he could, and he ended up with multiple partners. No individual woman could keep up with him.

Jameson didn't need the gum, and Larry and Luke were in their sexual prime so they certainly didn't need it. That didn't stop any of them from trying it though. They tried it once and kept using it once they saw how well it worked. Of course they all ended up with multiple partners too.

***

Mark and Jameson kept the gum their little secret since they could get into serious trouble if they didn't go through proper channels with the FDA, but that didn't stop Larry and Luke. After another two weeks went by, a burgeoning black market for the special gum developed at the high school. Girls and boys spent all of their money on it.

Girls ended up nicknaming the new wonder product, Booblegum. The boys didn't exactly have their own name for it, but when they wanted some of the gum, they'd ask for a stick of sex, or just a stick. Everyone soon knew what they meant.

Every user was on his or her way to becoming a legend. The boys dreamed of becoming sex gods and the girls yearned to be big busted goddesses. At least in terms of sex and sex appeal, everyone was getting exactly what they wanted -- at least so far, and for a price.

***

The beginning of the end came when Jameson felt a little off on Monday morning. He shrugged if off as overindulgence and dragged himself in to work, and he vowed to take the next couple of nights off for some much needed rest. His horny girlfriends would just have to rely on their sex toys, or possibly each other.

That last thought got a lecherous grin out of him. Ever since he started chewing that gum, he found it extremely difficult to concentrate on anything other than sex, and he couldn't be happier.

He checked on his experiment as usual, though he no longer spent a lot of time with it. He'd been so busy in the bedroom that he got a little lazy when it came to work. The rats had pretty much been left on their own for well over a week. The automated feeding and watering tubes worked well enough so the rats wouldn't suffer from hunger or thirst any time soon. The only chore concerned the fish glands.

The oversexed young researcher made sure that the rats were well-supplied with the glands since he was still interested in any additional long-term effects. So far, the hormones in those glands had made his life very pleasurable indeed, but the sensually greedy man hoped there might be yet more to be gained.

Once the male rats got access to the fish glands, the males and females were all kept together, and all of them had equal access to the glands. That part was a bit of sloppy science but it was as designed. Jameson wanted to check on fertility. He noticed that several of the females were pregnant as expected and wrote a few notes, but that was all he got done. He suddenly felt queasy and barely made it to the restroom before throwing up in a stall. If he'd just paid a little more attention and had a little more time before he got sick, he might have noticed a curious result.

There were no longer any male rats in the cage.

It wouldn't have mattered if the two men and most of the boys had stopped chewing the gum that day. They'd already chewed it long enough to gain firsthand experience of one of the more drastic changes created by the fish hormones. The men and boys all slowly, over a period of several weeks, changed gender. They threw up, sweated, and otherwise eliminated excess waste at an accelerated rate until their bodies shed enough mass to match the smaller average size of their new gender. They all became females, just as the male rats had done, and just as the male coral reef fish did in the wild. If the scientists had studied the live fish, they would've discovered the same result much sooner and with a lot less trouble.

***

Larry and Luke didn't take their new gender very well. They fought it the whole way, little good that it did them.

Larry hadn't been a very masculine specimen before the change, and during it, she lost a lot of muscle mass and turned out to make a very attractive young lady. Being a little younger and more slender, Luke turned out even better. Even without makeup and sexy clothes, the two new girls turned the heads of more than a few boys, as long as the boys didn't know who they used to be.

Larry changed her name to Laura and Luke became Lucy, but that didn't help them hide who they used to be when they went to school. The boys that knew them at their high school could still recognize them, and they didn't appreciate the effects of the gum that they'd been peddling. The only thing that saved the two girls was that they themselves were victims.

The couple dozen other new girls at the school would've made more trouble for Laura and Lucy if they weren't all having trouble adjusting to their new gender. They got too caught up in new clothes and feminine hygiene to worry about getting revenge.

Jameson fared well physically and mentally, and she even kept her job. She made a very convincing woman and decided to make the best of it. According to her philosophy, the universe had a way of evening out imbalances, and that gum was a definite imbalance. It swung things too far in favor of males so it had to be too good to last. That's probably why the male fish ended up changing gender. It was a way to restore balance.

The young researcher never liked her first name, even though it was androgynous, but she decided to keep it and even embrace it along with her womanhood. She liked the fact that she wouldn't have to go through the hassle of changing her name. Jameson was gone, and in his place, Tracy was born.

Tracy managed to develop some good friendships with her former girlfriends. They helped her adjust and learn to be all woman, and it didn't take long. After only a few months, she looked down at her small breasts and even contemplated trying some of the gum. She still had a large supply and had to do something with it. She'd wait to see how large her breasts got on their own, but she still wanted to try out the gum.

Mark took her new gender fairly well. She was really too sick to protest much during the change, and afterwards, she couldn't believe her eyes.

The gum couldn't work miracles. Mark still had a short, stocky body and big bones, and her face only looked a little more feminine. She had too strong of a chin and jaw to pass easily as a woman. The only major differences were hair, reproductive organs, softer skin and a higher pitched voice. She didn't start out with breasts but they'd develop naturally on their own after her ovaries started supplying her body with large amounts of estrogen. She'd be menstruating and developing breasts like a teenage girl over the next couple years. It'd be a rough and confusing time for her.

Something good did come from the gender change at least. She no longer had an outrageous sex drive. That went away with her testicles and the large amounts of testosterone that they produced. She could always increase her libido, and her breast size, with the gum, but she wouldn't be ready for something like that any time soon, if at all. Her supply of gum was gone, and she wouldn't be able to get any more for the foreseeable future.

The gum wasn't likely to be sold in the next decade or two because once things settled down, the lawsuits began. The parents of the new girls sued Mark -- who looked manly enough to be able to hide her change in gender and stubbornly kept her male name -- and Quest Laboratories. Mark got her 15 minutes of fame as a villain in one of the biggest drug scandal stories to ever make news.

The company had fired Mark but still couldn't manage to distance itself enough to satisfy the irate parents. Everything had been developed in the lab so they had to take some of the responsibility, and even with the out of court settlements, the company lost far more than it could easily afford.

The gum looked like it could eventually be profitable, but FDA testing would take too long and projected profits wouldn't be able to compensate for the lawsuits. Booblegum died a certain death, with women and the transgender community rightly blaming men for the loss.

Only one bright spot shone through the ugly Booblegum fiasco. Dean, the youngest of Mark's nephews and by far the nicest, had received a large supply of the gum, even though he didn't want to use or sell it. Lucky for him though, he kept the gum, and after seeing what happened to his brothers, he locked himself away in his bedroom and spent many happy hours doing homework and chewing the gum ... but that's another story.

*** The End ***

 © 2009 by Terry Volkirch. This work may not be replicated in whole or in part by any means electronic or otherwise without the express consent of the Author (copyright holder). All Rights Reserved. This is a work of Fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents past, present or future is purely coincidental.