A Starr is Born Pt2
Reworked by Wendy C
A story by Mistress X

It was a couple days later and I was out of the hospital but still on my medication. I was frankly too scared not to take it, as bad as I felt taking the anti-depressants I was already on. I simply didn't want to think about what I'd be like without them.

They had told me the gynospores worked fast…… and boy they weren't kidding. It had been less than a week and I was already a different person. I was standing in an office building lobby wearing sweats and a sleeveless hoodie, looking nothing like I ever had.

Beforehand I had been a specimen of masculinity, built, cut with a triangular torso that looked ripped, even by average pro-wrestler standards. Now I looked like a pretty defined body-builder tomboy and I was fading fast. I could almost see the mass streaming off of me and I really wanted to get back in the gym and mitigate the loss as much as I could, but instead was standing here waiting for a meeting.

Nigel came up behind me and patted me on the back. "Hey Casey," he said. "How’s it hang…ing……?" I glared at him, eyes like saucers, pinprick pupils, brow furrowed. "Oh man, I'm SO, so sorry. I simply wasn't thinking just for a moment" he pleaded.

Well at least “IT” was still hanging for the time being, just not as low as it once had. "Let's just get this over with," I said in my new weird, high-pitched, almost prepubescent voice, which I'd been cringing over since before I’d left the hospital. We were here now to talk about my contract with the NDW lawyers they'd sent up to Cleveland, so now we were heading into the office they had rented. "Just make sure you ask them, first thing."

"I'm telling you Casey, they're not going go for it," he said. "They've already said it's off the table. Ironically I'm pretty sure they're trying to avoid a wrongful termination suit."

"I'll give my consent under oath. I'll have it recorded," I insisted.

"Nope," he returned. "We already talked about that. They know you're on anti-depressants. It could be argued that you weren't in the correct state of mind. Besides, it's not just YOU they're worried about. If word got out they'd terminated the contract of a……of a transgender wrestler, they'd leave the office that day and find their cars on fire. Doesn't matter what you'd say, there's people who'd still want their blood."

"Excuse me," interrupted a dark haired, professionally dressed young woman with frameless glasses and a tablet. "Mr. Cullen? They're ready for you now."

"Showtime Boss," said Nigel as he strode through the doors. I kissed my shoulder for luck and followed.

Inside was a pretty El Cheapo office room typical as a daily rental and in the middle of it was a long table. At the opposite end of it already seated, were five suits I didn't recognize, a skinny hipster guy with a poorly kept beard and thick glasses who I recognized as one of the show writers, another hefty well-built guy wearing one of the NDW trainer's polos, as well as a computer monitor which displayed Mike sitting in another arena office. Obviously Mike couldn't be there in person because the booker has to go on with the show and they were in Detroit by now.

Mr. Blake, Mr. Cullen," said a bun wearing lady in a black suit, who had just risen in the middle of the seated group. "On behalf of Next Dimension Wrestling we'd like to express our condolences for the terrible crime you've been the victim of and we hope the following necessary proceedings can go as smoothly and easily as possible. Please," she motioned to the chairs in front of us "be seated."

Nigel pulled out a chair and was about to sit down when I elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "Ow! ...oh, right," he moaned. "Um," he stood upright and faced the group. "My client would like to begin by repeating his desire to be released from his current employment contract with Next Dimension Wrestling."

The same lady, now sitting, tented her fingers and spoke. "I am...afraid we're not currently authorized to do that, although we have been given discrepancy to offer very favorable new terms."

"Huh, fine," I groaned. "Let's talk. But I'm not promising anything."

We sat down. "First of all," Nigel began. "My client demands a 25% minimum yearly salary increase with continued options for merchandising, bonuses, and percentages of gate sales. That’s non-negotiable."

The suits huddled and whispered with each other, having a very public secret conversation.

"We're amenable to that," finally answered the lady.

"In addition," Nigel continued. "My client wants a guaranteed title reign of no less than one month within the first two years, barring injury, as well as an advertised match in at least one pay-per-view event each fiscal quarter, or numerical equivalent. Again of course barring injury to him err herself."

"What are you doing!?" I whisper yelled in his ear. "I don't want that kind of exposure!"

"What are you talking about?" he whispered back. "That's going to increase your merchandising and bonuses by a ton. Besides, it’ll justify the pay increase they give you if they can utilize you more."

"They’ve already agreed to the pay increase you moron!" I snapped. "Besides, I'd rather they didn't, I'd rather you just play hard-ball enough that they’ll let me out of my contract."

"Casey," he argued. "You like wrestling. You always wanted bigger matches, the titles and more exposure, so what's the problem?"

"I DON'T WANT TO BE SEEN LIKE THIS!" I shouted completely aloud.

One could have heard a pin drop. There was an awkward silence in the room for a good ten seconds after that. To my dismay the suits didn't display the appalled expression I would have expected, not all of them anyway. The lady in the middle just cracked a subtle, amused smirk.

"We appreciate your concern," she finally broke the silence. "But the fact is we already lost one useful piece of talent in this debacle and you are a gifted ring worker as I’m led to understand. You were a good utility that went, underutilized. We're willing to correct that now."

"But I don't..." I warbled. "I just..." I threw my hands down in frustration.

"If I may?" interjected the writer guy on the side, who had up until this point, been typing at his computer, likely working instead of paying attention. "We've already given out the dirt sheet on this whole thing in the locker rooms, but we haven’t made a public press release yet. If it's your public image you're worried about, all the fans know for now is that you got sick."

"What are you proposing?" Nigel questioned.

"We could just invent a new persona. We do it all the time," he answered.

I hadn't considered that. It wasn't like my name was actually Casey Blaze, we did characters. I knew guys who'd gone through three or four in a career. I knew one guy with a chiropractor shtick who put on a dinosaur mask for a year and a half, and by the time he took it off again, nobody knew who he was, and I was gonna look way more different than before. Wrestling fans were stupid. I could make this work... if I had to.

"You're damn right we are," Mike spoke up from his computer screen. "We're doing that anyway. No way I'm booking “Casey the Tranny Wrestler”. But that might be a problem” pointing at his own computer screen, which didn't translate correctly into physical space, but I instinctively knew what he meant and was pointing at. I looked over to where my hand was scratching my star tattoo. It was sort of a trademark, identifiable.

"Nah," spoke the trainer casually. "There's a thousand ways we can fix that. Sweat resistant makeup, cover up ink, perhaps even having the tattoo removed entirely, hell it may only need something as simple as the right outfit."

"No it's an opportunity," said the writer with a little excitement in his voice. "You were gonna need a new name right? I've always been a name guy but everybody comes in with something already in mind. Star," he said holding his hands up as if he were picturing something. It was an odd thing to do for a sound. "We'll call you Star."

"I don't want to be called fucking Star" I insisted. "It sounds like a stripper."

"No worries," he said. "We'll add an extra R to star. Make it sound like a surname. But you'll need a new first name. Guessing you don't want to go too fem, so something neutral, something that sounds good..." he contemplated. "Got it," He snapped his fingers. "Got it, Sam. Sam Starr. Snappy, great alliteration."

I put my hand on my temples and sighed.

We were sitting in Nigel's car after the meeting. By the time we were done in the meeting I had guaranteed rights to a title, a minimum number of matches, minimum air-time, an action figure, a new t-shirt design every other fiscal quarter, pay-per-view appearances, a 33.33% pay increase, etc. all under the name Sam Starr. Woopty-do.

Under a doctor's recommendation and due to my own still changing appearance, as well as Sam Starr's need to have her own move-set of wrestling holds, I would be going back into training instead of going into the ring right away, but they wouldn't be sending me back to developmental. I'd go back to touring with the show, but I'd just be back-stage practicing. They’d have to rearrange the whole tour bus order to make that happen, but for now I'd be riding in a car and staying in a hotel room until the changes were done. Then I'd be bunking in one of the women's buses with a couple of lady wrestlers named Violet and Cassidy. Cassidy would also be my training partner for a while, along with my new coach. The trainer from the meeting, a guy named Jerry Norman.

He'd been a minor league wrestler I'd never heard of some fifteen years ago as it turned out. Cassidy was part of the main roster, so I knew her. She was, let's say, bottom heavy, but was still pretty damned agile, liked to do high-spots and a lot of flips. She was a decent worker in her own right, even if she didn't gel with my preferred style.

Nigel slammed his car door closed as he adjusted himself in the driver's seat and then he held out a box of french-fries he had in his hand to me. I grasped a few of them and started chewing on them. Damn my diet, I was hungry. This whole process had my metabolism completely out of whack.

"That went better than I expected," he said. "We got a great deal."

I started crying.

"Aww, geez," he said. "Look, I know you're going through something unimaginably hard right now. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to make a bit of a silver lining. We just got a deal former world champions would kill for. It's what you’ve always wanted isn't it?"

"I wanted me to do it!" I screamed at him, sounding like a pissed-off teenager yelling at her dad. "I, ME, you get that? Not, Sam Starr."

"So what! Don’t you like her persona?"

"It's not about fucking personas" I said, realizing it was about that as I spoke. "Casey Blaze wasn't a persona. Casey Blaze was me. He wasn't some damn character. That swaggering, self-absorbed asshole was all me," I rolled my eyes at my own hilarious, morbid confession, not just to Nigel, but to myself. "That's what I mean, me. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be on top, as myself. I'm not FUCKING ME anymore! Sam Starr is NOT ME! Casey Blaze was me. I'm more nobody than ever."

Chapter Five

I sat on a bench outside the rental car place looking at my phone. I noticed the time and reached into my bag for my medication. I shook out a couple pills and downed them dry before putting the bottle back.

"Casey?" said a voice above me. "It's Jerry, we met at the contract meeting," he reached out his hand. I stood up and shook it with disinterest. Jerry was a bit of an older guy, but he still kept the wrestler bod in some ways. I could clearly see the outline of his pecks through his polo and it irritated me to realize, at the rate I was fading away, he was already bigger than me. Worse still and the thing that really turned my stomach, was that as I shook his hand, I realized how much bigger his was than mine, encompassing it almost. "I guess we're riding together. Come on, the car's over there."

I picked up my bags, he had a roller, and I followed him to the car. It was a basic A to B sedan, into the trunk of which he put his luggage and I threw my bags in the back seat.

He settled in the driver's seat and started the car, triggering a monotonous little ping. "Seatbelt on" he said. I just looked forward with my arms crossed. "Look it's not going to stop pinging till you do."

I sighed and pulled the strap over my shoulder, clicking it in place. "Whose buthneth ith it but mine ifth I go thying through the windthield?"

"Excuse me?" he looked puzzled.

I sighed much harder, frustrated. "My lipth are thwollen okay," I declared defiantly. "They thay I'll geth useth to it in a day or two."

"Yeah I guess they are," he said with a disengaging tone and put the car in drive before pulling away. "Dinner?" he said after a while.

"Whath?"

"It's more than 150 miles to Detroit. Where do you want to eat?" he explained.

"I doth care," I said, frankly pouting.

"Well let's see if we can find a steakhouse. It's good to keep those protein levels up," He pulled out onto the highway and we sat in silence for a long time before he broke the tension again. "Look, uh, I know you're upset. I know what it's like to have a career altering mishap..."

"I donth care about my damned career!" I insisted.

"No that's not what I meant. It's, it's to have everything you are and worked for flipped upside down, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You ring workers, you're all body proud and you had to work to earn it, then to just have it torn out from under you. I get it. It's rough."

"You donth know whath iths like," I grumbled staring out the window.

It was about an hour later when Jerry took an off-ramp and pulled into the parking lot of a roadside eatery. He put it in park and got out of the car. "You coming?" he questioned, poking his head back inside. I jerked the door handle and stepped out, still obstinate, but hungry as hell.

Inside was this weird countrified place where the waitresses wore wicker Stetsons and fiddle music played over the sound system. It was the kind of place that was too good to have peanut shells on the floor, but not so nice as to keep the red and white picnic blanket checkerboard pattern from off the tablecloths. "Whath the hell ith all of thith?" I said.

"Never been to a roadside steakhouse before?" Jerry asked. "I've seen a lot worse than this."

"Just the two of you?" asked a girl who had cowgirl boots poking out from the bottom of an apron bedecked sundress, holding a stack of menus across her chest.

"Uh, yeah, that'll be all of us" Jerry said.

"Right this way," she responded and led us to a table behind a wood and glass partition in about the middle of the place. Looking at the wallpaper I figured this used to be the smoking section back when that was a thing. Jerry and I sat on opposite sides of the table and she handed us each a menu. No sooner had she wandered off than an identically dressed girl, with slightly longer red hair, as opposed to black, came over.

"Can I take your drink orders?" She asked.

"Uh yeah" said Jerry. "I'll take a medium cola please."

"Bourbon," I said flatly.

"Um... okay," she said. "But I'm going to need to see some ID then."

"Thoda," I acquiesced. "Thmall," As much as I'd been starving lately, I just couldn't put nearly as much food away. Time was I could eat a pound of roast chicken in a sitting before a workout, but already I couldn't stomach a fraction of that.

"Alrigh," she said returning to chipper. "I'll be right back with your drinks and to take your food order."

"Crap, I hope you're not a vegetarian" Jerry said as he flipped through the menu. "This place takes the steakhouse thing seriously."

Fortunately I wasn’t. Of all the changes that were happening to me, my taste-buds were thankfully not among them. Still I wasn't in the mood to work too much for my meal, so I didn't want something I needed to cut up. The small cheeseburger looked like a good choice.

"Hi," said the waitress when she returned and placed two glasses of dark liquid down on the table, "two sodas."

I wrapped my puffy lips around the plastic straw and drank. Quickly some of the soda began dribbling out of the side of my mouth, since I didn't quite know how to use them.

"Ready to order?" she asked.

"Yeah" Jerry answered. "Um, I'll take the small T-bone, medium and a baked potato with it."

"Great" the waitress said taking notes on her tablet. "And what will your daughter be having?"

My eyes tried to escape out of my head as I glared. Jerry looked embarrassed, while the waitress was clearly confused at the sudden awkwardness we were displaying. I seized a napkin holder from the table and gazed into the reflective metallic surface of it. I saw big bright green eyes, short, wavy red hair, a rounded jaw, a little button of a nose, thick, peachy lips and perfect skin. I even looked a little younger.

When did all of this happen? I knew my features were changing but this still felt like it had snuck up on me. I flung the napkin holder across the aisle where it landed in the leather cushion seats around the table across the way. I tore out of my seat and ran through the eatery, hearing the Jerry’s voice profusely apologizing behind me.

When I got outside I discovered it had started to rain. It was cold even through the fabric of my hooded jacket. I got in the car and balled up in the passenger seat with my feet up on the cushion, crossed my arms and sobbed.

It was a good ten minutes later when I heard the driver’s side door open and in came Jerry. He sat down, and put a paper bag with a big yellow 'M' on it on the center consul between us. I looked at it, puzzled, which he noticed.

"I didn't want you sitting here by yourself. So I walked to the McDonald’s across the street instead. I didn't know what you liked so I just got you a plain burger, but I placed some ketchup packets in the bag if you want ketchup."

"You didnth hath to do that" I sniffed, but nosed into the bag anyway.

I pulled out a small package and began to unwrap it and Jerry did likewise. "No I really did. She was totally out of line in there. There's NO WAY I'm old enough to be your father" he smirked, and I glared at him dead eyed.

"Justh give me the kethup."

It was well past dark when we made it into Detroit, and Jerry found a hotel for me to stay at while he headed for the arena. He said he'd pick me up in the morning and left me there with nothing but a bag of limp soggy French fries along with my thoughts.

"Back to training tomorrow" I thought, sitting on the hotel bed later on. My T levels had pretty much bottomed out by that stage, so the doctors said it would now be okay to start exercising again. I wouldn't have the same energy as before, but I probably wouldn't pass out again. I stuck my arm out and looked it over. It was so much thinner than before. It still had some muscle on it, but was nothing compared to how it once was. It looked like something I could have snapped with my thumb when I’d been Casey Blaze, but even my thumb was smaller now too.

"The rain in Thpain fallth mainly on the plain," I said out loud now that nobody else was here to listen. I was determined to get my speech back in line, though I did still cringe at myself just from the pitch of it. "The rain in Thpain falls mainly on the plain. The rain in Thpain falls mainly on the plain. Thpain, Thpain, Sss-pain. S-pain, Spain," I slowed down. "The rain in... SPAIN falls mainly on the plain. FINALLY," I declared and I licked my lips. They felt distractingly funny still, almost like a chipped tooth you can't help but run your tongue over. They felt dry. Even my tongue felt dry. The one sip of soda I had gotten at the steakhouse was all I'd drunken the entire day. I pulled my wallet out from my back pocket and retrieved a few bills, hid the wallet back in my bag, then headed outside.

Outside my room, I wandered the halls looking for a drink vending machine that these cheap hotels usually had a few of somewhere. It took a couple of minutes walking around and turning corners, but I eventually found a couple side by side and I bought as many cans as the bills I’d brought along would afford me. In truth I'd overdone it, because I was now struggling to keep all of them under my arm without any slipping out. I sat there juggling cans for a good minute before I heard a voice behind me.

"You need any help?" it said. I turned to find some frat looking dude-bro eyeing me over. He wasn't so big but he “was” big. Big in a way that probably five days ago I'd still have thought nothing of him, except that maybe he looked like an ass-wipe. But now he was bigger than me, noticeably bigger than me and he was a stranger approaching me in a strange hallway in a strange city.

"Um, no," I answered almost timidly and I stood up and walked around him in a wide arc, leaving a couple of cans rolling across the floor behind me.

"You dropped a couple" he called down the hall.

"Keep them" I shouted back without turning or slowing my pace.

"You here with friends?" he called, but I ignored him and headed straight for my room.

I fumbled my way into the room and slammed the door behind me, then hurried straight past the first bed and over to the second, where I dumped the sealed cans and climbed up onto it and then up against the headboard. I wasn't conscious of it at the time, but I've thought it over since that time. About when I was a kid, a small kid and I travelled with my parents. They'd always make me sleep in the bed furthest from the door. It was safer they always told me.

It was the weirdest sensation just then, a sort of sick feeling in my throat. I wasn't used to it. I looked over and saw the TV remote on the stand and picked it up. I flipped through, found the local channels and eventually came to a show from one of the local Indie wrestling operations. Amateurs, they were trying to get into the big-time like I’d done once upon a time, not so long ago really. These guys had the same problem most Indie set ups I'd seen had, the same problem James Phoenix’s we had. James Phoenix. I almost spat at the thought. I'd kill him if I ever saw him again. They were spot-monkeys! They liked big flashy moves and they had to get them in. They had no concept of ring psychology, or how to tell a story during a match. Hell, most of them couldn't even chain grapple unless it involved eleven back-flips and ended in a head scissor takedown.

Eventually I calmed down enough to gain the presence of mind to actually go lock the hotel room door and then I returned to my spot back up on the bed. I curled my feet up against my chest and soon calmed down more. I popped the top on the first soda can and downed it, albeit much more slowly then I used to. I continued watching the show and drank another soda, then another, then another.

I woke up to nature's call, not having remembered falling asleep. It was more like nature's bullhorn, because I had to piss like a terrified race horse. I rolled out of bed flipping the TV off as I went and made my way to the bathroom. In the privy I kicked the toilet seat up and unzipped my pants, then reached for the little nub I had once so proudly called my dick. Aimed as best as I still could and let loose.

"SON OF A BITCH" I yelled as piss began soaking all over my hand and down the front and crotch of my pants. "What the hell?"

It took me a moment to put it all together, even after having seen it visually. Vaguely I recalled being warned about it, but at the time I'd been too emotional to process it fully. In a man, the urethra was channelled through the glans at the head of the penis, but in a woman the glans is at the clitoris, and never the two shall meet.

My urethra was currently making a break for it, which threw off the plumbing somewhat. It appeared my days of standing to pee were at a very final end. I slammed my fists against the sink and slumped down onto the now piss filthy hotel bathroom floor, too crushed to care about any future.