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300 Rains

by Heather O'Malley

Geoff was an Anthropologist studying a newly discovered tribe in the Amazon. After getting a bit more involved in the tribe, he joined in on a sacred ritual. That is where things began to go very wrong a spiral out of his control. Now the tribe is gone and he is left with making sense of this until the tribe returns in 300 rains.

Eleven

October 19

Geoff could tell that things had already changed massively in his body, far more than he had ever wanted. First of all his breasts were a full A cup now and that was distressing. He had visible breasts that pushed out his shirt and he needed to wear a bra, to keep them from jiggling as he walked. The sensation was strange and not that pleasant. He had thought he could do without a bra until the first time he had gone down a flight of stairs with his breast growth getting… fuller. That was not an experience he wanted to repeat, ever as his breasts had bounced really hard and hurt his pectorals. Since then he had the lovely experience of going shopping for bras with Fae, which had been all sorts of awkward. How do you tell your wife you need bras, let alone go into a shop and browse in a section that you had avoided?

That whole misadventure had been two days ago and he was still embarrassed about the event. He had felt like a bit of an interloper and a pervert to be standing there with his wife discussing which bras he wanted in hushed tones. Thankfully, she had already taken his measurements back at home and they had just gone and looked for something plain and functional, as it would no doubt no longer fit in a month or so, if not sooner thanks to the damn curse he was under. It was disturbing.

Now he was finding that his underwear was not fitting him right any more. His boxer briefs were loose at the top but tight lower down, like his waist was pulling in slightly or his hips were expanding or possible a bit of both. The way they sat now was uncomfortable, mostly because the feeling was distracting. It felt like they were going to fall off and he kept feeling as if he needed to pull them up, which was not very dignified to say the least. It was making him crazy, but he really did not want to have to buy any more women’s clothes until he absolutely had to. This was not something he wanted to simply accept.

He stared at his naked body with some irritation. His breasts were small, perky, with a darkening areola and looked very much out of place on his body, particularly as he still had a good amount of chest hair that the tips of his breasts were rising out of like a mountain peak stretching out above the forest. It bothered him and part of him wanted to shave just to get rid of all his chest hair in order to stop the visual dissonance, but another part saw doing that as giving in to the inevitable womanhood he was facing. That was something he could not do. His clothes made him feel pretty conflicted and that was really bothering him. His clothes had never mattered before so why were they such an issue now? Why did he matter how they looked on him, how they managed to hide his altered body?

He was sure it was just a symptom of just how screwed up his life had gotten thanks to the Mother’s Children and he was really upset over a great deal of this crap. He really felt like pounding his head into the wall over this whole god bedamned situation but he was sure that it would not do any good nor make him feel any better over the mess. He sighed heavily and tried to rub the tension out of his forehead.

Looking again into the mirror, Geoff met his gray blue eyes and sighed, trying to keep his frustration from spilling over into tears yet again. With his right hand, he reached up and touched his brown hair. It was getting long for him and he just had not done anything about it’s length since he had been so preoccupied with the tribe and his crazy life.  Now he looked at it with ambivalence. Should he or should he not cut it? On one hand, given what was happening to him, maybe having his hair longer would help him to sort of blend with the changes but then again with everything, he might just want to get a buzz cut and call it a day. Why were too many of these things so complicated, it was just his hair. It was not as if it really was a major decision or anything.

He shook his head, turned away from his sideshow image, and got dressed. Getting his bra on was a bit tricky as he reached back to get the hooks on. Fae had shown him another method that should have been easier, but with all his body hair, it was not very comfortable and yanked on his hair, pulling some out occasionally. The hooks connected, Geoff took a deep breath and held it as he adjusted his breasts in their cups, making sure that they were sitting correctly in them, since it was uncomfortable otherwise. Once he had finished, he let his breath out. He felt a bit dirty each time he did that, as if he was some sort of sexual deviant or something. It did not make any sort of rational sense but when did that have to do with anything?

The current plan that he was working with had him seeing Robert again today and maybe Geoff could talk about this with him, about how all this stuff was making him so conflicted that he had no idea what was going on half the time. That might be a good thing, but first he had to go to school and administer a test to the undergrad class. That sort of thing irritated him and he was so glad that he had a Teaching Assistant who would be going over all the tests, making sure that part was okay, while he took his time and went over the essays. It was a nice division of labor and it would help prepare Maggie for her academic career. These tests were an undeniable fact of life, especially in the undergrad years and there really was no way you could get around them. It was not like in the Grad classes where you could tell who had done the work and who had not based off what people said in conversation and how well they were able to put their thoughts on paper. Of course, some people talked better than they wrote but that was not necessarily a crime but something at least he kept an eye out for, in order to help them past that block.

It was a nice drive to the school and he was enjoying the changing leaves. Fall was quite possibly his favorite time of the year and he always had tried to ensure that he was home for fall, even if he had to hurry home from a trip down to Brazil and leave some of his work undone. It was a time when he was able to have apple cider and watch the leaves do their yearly transformation from green to gold to red to brown. The air felt different and he liked that. The beauty of a fall day was one of the few things that were able to take his mind off this whole transformation thing of his own. The beauty of nature let him smile without feeling bad.

He managed to park easily enough, as there were a few staff spots left near the building and he was glad for the cooler weather, as he could wear his suit jacket and no one would be able to tell that he had burgeoning breasts. What the hell could he say if someone asked him directly what was going on? He had done some reading on the whole hormone and breast growth thing that girls and transsexuals went through and thankfully, the things he had read said that the initial growth was the fastest. Then the breasts should take their time to fill out. That was comforting, supposing that his hormones would do what they had been doing and not change things on him again. If his breasts grew too much too fast he had no idea what he could do then or what he would do with them. As it was, he was afraid that he was going to have to do something about this gender thing and soon, something permanent, something he could not just dance out of easily. However, Geoff had no idea what to do. This entire situation had him at a loss as he was being faced with questions he had never even considered anymore. Should he just give in and start to crossdress? Other than his breasts, there really was not anything feminine about him yet, but it was something he was aware of and was sure needed that it needed to be dealt with before too long. However, he did not want to. He did not want to become a woman, even though it was clear that his body was not playing along. He was changing despite all his protests.

The walk to his office was done under autopilot as his thoughts rolled round and round the idea of him turning into a woman and what that transformation implied. He would look ridiculous all dressed in drag and everything. It would make him look the fool and like a clown. Then there was the fact that he was sure that he would loose Fae and Heidi, despite all the things he was doing to make sure he spent more time with her, to make her feel better about this whole crazy situation. He would be laughed out of the academic community, his theories mocked, and he would have nothing to fall back on. He would end up homeless and family-less all because of this damn sex change thing, that he was forced to endure thanks to one screwed up moment. It was so overwhelming that he could feel tears begin to well up and begin to overflow. Thankfully, there was no one else there in the corridor and he was able to get to his office without anyone seeing the tears rolling down his face, leaving slightly red salty trails. If anyone had seen, Geoff clearly would have been at a loss as to what he would say anyway, so it was just as well. Dealing with his colleagues on this matter was really not that appealing and was something he clearly wanted to avoid.

Once inside and with the door closed, Geoff was able to compose himself, wiping his eyes free of tears. Of all the things that these hormones have done to him, the crying was the worst in his opinion. To feel so weak and helpless that your emotions overcame you was completely against everything he had been brought up knowing and made him feel like things were crazy and out of control. He had learned to be tough. Boys did not cry or show too much emotion. He had learned that lesson well, and these hormones were breaking that down day by day, leaving him the occasional blubbering mess. Commercials made him cry sometimes, especially long distance phone call commercials, and that made it difficult to keep Heidi from noticing that something odd was going on with him. He was not all that sure how well that plan was working out. Most films the were watching lately had at the minimum one moment that caught him as well and he found himself crying along with Fae more than once. It was disturbing and he really had no idea what to do about it. What was the most frustrating part about all of this was that there really was nothing he could do about it but learn to ride it out.

With a bit of a struggle, Geoff managed to clear his thoughts and buckled down to get to work. Maggie had already copied the tests yesterday, making sure there were enough for all the students so there really was not much that he could do to prep for that class, except check his email and maybe read a few journal articles. He wanted to keep up with the latest work in the field and that required almost reading as much as he had done when he had been a graduate student. It was frustrating and a little daunting and he was just starting to get caught up with all of the backlog of articles that had piled up while he had been in Brazil. There was also the fact that he was one of the readers for Cultural Anthropology magazine, so when articles were being sent around before publication he always had some of those to go over as well. It was an unending repeat of reading and reading, interspersed with some writing and some trips to the jungle. Maybe that was why he was always so pleased to escape to Brazil when the school year ended, just to get away from the endless parade of articles?

The article he was reading on the Yanomani tribe was rather interesting, especially on how they were dealing with being thrust into the modern world and their interrelationship to the logging companies that were cutting down the forest. It was some good work and he made a few notations about areas that he thought needed to be expanded slightly. There was a lot of good work being done in the field and he was so glad that he had managed to find a tribe that no one else had. That one thing right there would help his career for years to come, provided he did not loose everything with the fallout of his transition. There were a few scholars at various Universities who were still riding the wave of their former glory and Geoff certainly did not want to become one of those losers. He wanted to do good work and keep exploring until the end. That way he could feel like he had given something back to the world.

After going through the article, he felt like he had managed to regain some of his lost equilibrium from earlier. That helped a great deal and he was able to breathe a sigh of relief. There was a knock on his door and he answered without looking up from the screen where he was reading the article, “Come in.”

Maggie entered and closed the door as quietly as possible, in order not to disturb him. She took a seat and then looked at him carefully, cocking her head to the side a bit confused. “Uhm… Dr. Greenfeld… have you been crying?”

Geoff started at that, turning away from the screen and stared intently at Maggie. “What? How can you tell?”

“Well, your eyes are still a bit red and puffy.” she explained circumspectly.

“Crap! I was hoping no one would have noticed.” blurted out Geoff in consternation. Yet another fucking issue he had to deal with.

“Well, just so you know, if you go to the bathroom and splash some cold water on your face that will help. Honest. I’ve done that before myself.” offered Maggie.

“Thank you Maggie. This whole thing with my emotions is making me crazy. I am crying all the time over the stupidest things and I have no idea what to do about it.” explained Geoff as he rubbed his temples.

“Have you tried not trying to control them?” responded Maggie a bit timidly.

“Hunh?” was the brilliant response from Geoff.

Maggie smiled slightly and said, “When I was younger and I was getting teased all the time for being smart and… other things, I tried to not let it bother me, so I did my best to not let anything out, holding all my anger and frustration inside. All that it did was build up and come out at other times occasionally even exploding out. So I learned that if I learned to actually feel my emotions and control them that way I could manage to cry less. By letting them go, I actually managed not to cry as often. It worked for me; maybe it can work for you?”

Geoff pondered the information that Maggie had offered him. It seemed counterintuitive but what about this situation was anything but the opposite of how reality was supposed to work. However, just feeling emotions was so foreign to him that he balked a little. Women were all emotional and men were not. He probably did not have the same emotional depth as women so he had less to worry about in the emotional arena, at least that was his thinking. Maybe that would make it work? Were their any possible downsides to trying Maggie’s plan? Well, besides crying more, he really could not think of anything. “Okay… how do I do this?”

“Well, the thing is… you just feel what you are feeling. It also helps if you can identify what you are feeling, like happy, sad, morose, hopeless, upset, grumpy, etc… The more accurately you can define your emotions the better. And then you will start to see that you know what you are feeling and have better control over your tear ducts.” Maggie beamed at him. “It is pretty simple but is weird at first.”

Geoff quirked up a smile at his TA. “I don’t think I have all of those different emotions inside me but I will certainly give this a try. Thank you Maggie.”

“You’re welcome Dr. Greenfeld. Make sure you splash some cold water on your face before class if you don’t want people noticing you have been crying. If you wanted to take care of that I can carry over everything else while you go. The tests aren’t that heavy.”

He nodded at that suggestion and they both stood up and took off for the class, each heading that way by their own routes.