Chapter 16: The Makeover Begins
The black curtain fell behind them, muting the thunderous bass to a dense, rhythmic throb. Rex’s hand didn’t leave Arthur’s shoulder, steering him down a narrow, dimly lit corridor walled in black-painted brick. The air changed. It was warmer, carrying a cocktail of hairspray, sweat, vanilla-scented deodorant, and the acrid ghost of weed. Laughter echoed from behind a door, sharp and giddy.
Rex shouldered open a heavy door marked with a peeling gold star.
The room was a paradox of glamour and grime. A line of brightly lit mirrors ran along one wall, bulbs flickering slightly, surrounded by chaotic constellations of makeup, wipes, and cheap jewelry. Garments in lurid shades of pink, red, and black were slung over every surface. In the center sat a large, tufted pink chaise lounge, its velvet worn shiny in patches, stained with dark, indeterminate spills.
Three women were in the room. One, a redhead with tired eyes, was dabbing at a run in her fishnet stocking. Another, a tall Black woman with intricate braids, was scrolling on her phone, smoking a vape that emitted a sweet, candied cloud. The third, blonde and strikingly thin, was pouring champagne into a plastic flute. They all looked up as the door opened.
“Ladies,” Rex grumbled, his voice filling the small space. “Meet the new cock bitch. This is Arthur.”
Rex didn’t guide Arthur so much as dispose of him. With a sharp push, Arthur stumbled forward and landed awkwardly on the edge of the stained chaise. The impact sent a jolt through his still-tender body. He sank into the cushion, which exhaled a scent of old perfume and dust.
The women’s eyes were on him, not with the performative hunger of the stage, but with a blunt, analytical curiosity. It was the same look Vivian gave a piece of furniture she was considering reupholstering.
“No shit,” said the blonde, sipping her champagne. She looked up at Vivian. “This your bitch?”
“It is,” Vivian said, gliding into the room and shutting the door. She leaned against it, crossing her arms, a spectator securing her seat. “He needs to be prepped. We want him to make lots of money for us.”
The redhead snorted. “Damn straight. I don't know where Rex finds these sissies, but it does make things easy.” She stood, finished with her stocking, and approached Arthur. Her gaze was clinical. “Stand up bitch.”
Arthur didn’t move. His lungs felt sewn shut.
Vivian sighed, a sound of profound inconvenience. She reached into her small silver clutch and produced the sleek black remote. Her thumb hovered over the screen. “Arthur. Up. Now.”
The memory of its vibration, a feeling that lived now in his marrow, unlocked his joints. He pushed himself up, legs trembling.
“Pants,” the redhead said, her voice all business. “Off.”
Tears of pure shame blurred the garish lights. His fingers, clumsy and cold, fumbled with the button of the dark jeans Vivian had chosen for him. The zipper sounded obscenely loud in the quiet room. He pushed them down over his hips, letting them puddle around his ankles on the dirty carpet. He stood there in the tight black t-shirt, his pale legs and tiny dick exposed.
The blonde with the champagne set her flute down. "Well at least we won't have to hide his dick. It's practically just a clit." she said doubling over in laughter.
The tall woman with the braids finally put her vape down. “Top too,” she said, her voice a deep, melodic contrast to the tension. “Let’s see the whole package.”
With a sob he couldn’t stifle, Arthur pulled the black t-shirt over his head. The air in the room was cool on his skin. He stood, arms limp at his sides, head bowed, more naked in this moment than he had ever been in his life. His small penis, the lifelong source of his private anguish, was now a public exhibit under the flickering dressing room lights.
The redhead stepped closer. “Well, he's dainty enough, we can make him look like a girl. We'll get him shaved hairless and strap some fake titties and a wig on him. We can put him in a short skirt for easy anal access.”
Vivian nodded. From the same clutch, she produced not the remote this time, but a smooth, silicone object in a deep, glossy black. It was larger than the one he was used to, sinister in its simplicity. “You’ll need to be pre-stretched for your first client,” she said, her tone conversational, as if discussing the need for a raincoat. “Can’t have you tearing again. Bad for business.”
Arthur whimpered. The sound was pathetic, small.
“On the chaise. On your hands and knees,” the redhead commanded, stepping back.
The order shattered his last shred of dignity. He obeyed, crawling onto the stained pink velvet. The material was rough against his knees. He presented his bare backside to the room, to the women, to his wife. He heard the shuffle of feet, the blonde’s low, whispered “get the good angle,” and the click of the phone camera.
He felt a cold drizzle of liquid on his skin, making him flinch. “Just lube,” the redhead said, her voice close now. “Relax. Or don’t. Makes the vid more fun either way.”
Her touch was not gentle. It was efficient. The pressure was immense, a blunt, stretching invasion that made him cry out, his forehead pressing into the velour. He heard the shallow breathing of the women watching, the crinkle of the silicone bottle.
“There we go,” the redhead muttered, working it in. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut, a prisoner awaiting the executioner’s final blow.
The pressure deepened, then suddenly eased as the bulbous end slipped past the tightest ring of muscle and settled inside him. It felt huge, a foreign planet lodged in his core. Then came a soft, electronic purr as Vivian, watching with detached interest, touched her remote screen.
The device came to life. It wasn’t the frantic buzz of punishment. This was a lower, deeper, insistent thrum that seemed to resonate in his bones, a relentless internal presence. A moan was dragged from his throat, part pain, part shocking, unwanted sensation.
“Good,” Vivian said, approval coating the word like syrup. “Leave it on the low setting. Let him get acquainted.”
The redhead wiped her hand on a towel. “Outfit’s in the trunk by the mirror. The sissy set. Put it on him.”
The blonde put her phone down and went to a large, wheeled trunk. She came back with an armful of fabric: frilly, baby-pink panties made of sheer lace, a matching frilled garter belt, and stockings a shade darker than the panties. “Arms up, sweetheart,” she said, her voice light, almost playful.
They dressed him like a doll. They pulled the stockings up his hairless legs, clipped them to the garter. They peeled his plain white briefs down and replaced them with the humiliating pink lace, pulling them up over the low thrum of the device within him. The pink fabric did nothing to conceal, only accentuated. They fitted him with a fake set of rubber boobs and a bustier top to hide the lines.
“Up,” the redhead said again. “Let’s see.”
He shuffled off the chaise, standing unsteadily in the lace and stockings, the vibrator a constant, humming anchor of degradation. The women circled him.
“Needs makeup,” the tall one said, picking up a tube of lipstick. “Just a little. Something to make him look… used.”
“No,” Arthur whispered, his first word since entering the room.
Vivian’s thumb moved on the remote. The vibration inside him intensified sharply, climbing the scale from a thrum to a demanding roar. His knees buckled. He grabbed the edge of the chaise to stay upright, a strangled gasp escaping him.
“Hold him still,” Vivian instructed.
The redhead grabbed his chin in a firm, unyielding grip. The tall woman leaned in, the waxy, floral scent of the lipstick filling his nostrils. She applied it roughly, not to his lips, but smudging a clumsy blotch of crimson at the corner of his mouth. She then took a thumb, slick with more lipstick, and dragged it roughly across one cheekbone, like a bruise or a violent smear of kiss.
“There,” the tall woman said, stepping back to admire her work. “Perfect. Looks like he’s already been working.”
Rex, who had been a silent monument by the door, pushed off the wall. “Booth Three. Now. Gage is set up with the camera.” He looked at Arthur, his expression utterly bored. “You do what the client says. You don’t speak unless spoken to. You finish the job. You come back here. Understood?”
Arthur, trembling inside the humiliating costume, inside the humiliating vibration, could only manage a microscopic nod.
Vivian finally stepped away from the door. She walked over to him, reaching out. For a wild, deluded second, he thought she might adjust his t-shirt with a wifely touch, offer some scrap of mercy. Instead, her hand went to the front of the pink lace panties, giving the fabric a sharp, dismissive flick with her fingernail. “Earn your keep, Arthur,” she murmured. Then she turned to the blonde. “Send me the video files as they roll. I want to watch in real time.”
Rex opened the door. The corridor stretched before Arthur, darker than before, leading back to the thumping bass and the sea of faces, to a single booth where a stranger waited. The redhead gave him a small, hard shove between the shoulder blades.
“Go on, honey,” she said, her voice bright and empty. “The customer’s always right.”
Stumbling in his stockings, the internal vibrator a relentless beacon marking him as property, Arthur walked into the pulsing dark. Behind him, the dressing room door clicked shut, sealing off the women’s laughter and the last pretense of the life he once knew.
Behind him, the dressing room door clicked shut, sealing off the women’s laughter and the last pretense of the life he once knew. The corridor seemed to tilt, the bass from the main room a physical pressure against his chest. Gage, the bouncer with the neck tattoos, materialized from a shadowed alcove, a small handheld camera with a blinking red light in his grip.
“This way,” Gage said, his voice devoid of inflection. He didn’t touch Arthur, just turned and walked, assuming compliance.
Arthur followed, the stockings whispering against each other with every unsteady step. The vibrator inside him maintained its low, demeaning pulse, a constant reminder of his prepared state. They passed a fire door, then stopped before a heavy black curtain. Muffled, gruff laughter leaked from behind it.
Gage pulled the curtain aside just enough. “Booth Three. He’s paid for thirty minutes. Clock starts now.” A hand, not Gage’s, shot out from the darkness, gripped Arthur’s arm, and yanked him through.
The booth was a velvet-draped closet, barely large enough for the semicircular seat and a small table holding a bottle of amber liquor and a single glass. The air was choked with cigar smoke and anticipation. The man was big, spilling out of a polo shirt, his face flushed with drink. He looked Arthur up and down, his eyes lingering on the fake breasts, the smeared lipstick, the lace.
“Well, ain’t you a pretty little thing,” the man slurred, his breath hot and sour. He didn’t ask for a name. He simply unbuckled his belt, the leather slithering through the loops. “On your knees. And don’t you dare look at me.”
Arthur knelt on the carpet, which was gritty and damp in patches. The sequence was mechanical, dehumanizing in its efficiency. The man used him with a rough, rhythmic urgency, one hand fisted in the cheap wig they’d placed on his head. Arthur focused on a cigarette burn in the velvet wall, his mind spiraling away to columns of numbers, tax codes, anything solid. The vibrator’s buzzing mixed nauseatingly with the man’s grunts. It was over quickly.
The man zipped up, tossed a crumpled bill onto the seat, and left without another word.
Before Arthur could even attempt to stand, the curtain rustled. It was the redheaded dancer. She peeked in, saw the money, snatched it. “Good boy. Next client’s waiting in Booth Two. Move.”
And so it began.
The night dissolved into a blur of sweat, latex, and shifting, anonymous hands. The dancers—redhead, blonde, tall one with the braids—were his handlers, a rotating shift of cruel shepherds. They led him, pushed him, cleaned him with a squirt of bottle and a rough wipe when necessary. They reapplied the smudged lipstick. They adjusted his wig after a client pulled it. They kept the vibrator humming.
“Booth Four. Older gentleman. Wants you face-down. Don’t make a sound.”
“Booth One. Two guys. They’re sharing the time. Just do what they say.”
“Back to Three. This one’s a talker. Just nod.”
The clients were variations on a theme of hunger. A nervous young man who apologized constantly even as he pushed Arthur against the wall. A pair of businessmen in expensive suits who treated him like a curious, living toy, passing him between them with clinical detachment. A large, silent man whose sheer physical weight forced the air from Arthur’s lungs, whose wedding band left a temporary imprint on Arthur’s hip.
Arthur’s body became a separate entity, a thing of reactions and aches. The initial撕裂 from the coffee table was a fading thunder compared to this steady, grinding erosion. He stopped thinking. He merely endured, his consciousness reduced to a pinpoint of light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. The buzzing was his universe.
At one point, in a lull, the blonde dancer guided him back to the dressing room. Vivian was there, sitting in a chair by the mirrors, scrolling through her phone. On its screen, Arthur saw a jerking, close-up video of his own body from minutes before. She glanced up as he entered.
“You’re tensing up in the shoulders,” she remarked, as if critiquing his golf swing. “It makes you look resistant. Relax into it. The customers can tell.” She took a sip from a fresh martini glass someone had brought her. “Now get back out there. You’re on the clock.”
Near closing time, he was hollow. The vibrator’s charge was fading to a weak, intermittent shudder. The lace panties were torn at the side. A client with a rough beard had left a sharp, stinging burn on his flank. The redhead led him to a final booth. “Last one,” she said, her own weariness showing. “Make it count.”
This client was different. Sober. He sat in the booth, watching Arthur shuffle in. He was maybe fifty, with calm, assessing eyes. “Sit,” he said, patting the velvet beside him.
Confused, Arthur sat, his body screaming at the reprieve from being horizontal or kneeling.
The man didn’t touch him. He just looked. “You’re new,” he stated. “I can always tell. The ones who’ve been at it a while, their eyes are gone. Yours are still… present. Hurting.” He poured two fingers of whiskey into the dirty glass, didn’t offer any. “My wife left me six months ago. Took the kids. The house. Everything.”
Arthur said nothing. He stared at the man’s finely tailored sleeve.
“I come here,” the man continued, his voice soft, almost confessional, “not for the girls. For this. To see someone who’s losing more than I did. Makes my loss taste different. Less bitter.” He finally turned, his gaze sweeping over Arthur’s ruined costume, the trembling hands, the vacant stare. “You’ll get there. To the gone place. It’s easier there.”
He stood up, straightened his jacket, and left the booth without having laid a finger on him. It was the most violating encounter of the night.
Gage was at the curtain. “We’re done. Dressing room. Now.”
The main club lights were stabbing on, harsh and unforgiving, exposing the sticky floors and empty glasses. The fantasy was over. In the dressing room, the dancers were already in street clothes, packing bags, their stage personas discarded. Vivian stood by the door, her silver dress still impeccable. A thick envelope was in her hand.
Rex took it from her, counted the cash inside with thick fingers, and peeled off a smaller stack for himself. He handed the remainder back to Vivian. She smiled, a real one, satisfied, and tucked it into her clutch.
The redhead tossed a bundle of fabric at Arthur’s feet. It was his own jeans and t-shirt. “Change. We need to sanitize that trash you’re wearing.”
Moving like an automaton, Arthur peeled the torn lace and stockings from his body. He pulled his own clothes on over the filthy, aching skin. The familiar fabric offered no comfort, only the ghost of a man he could no longer remember being. The blonde dancer walked over and, without ceremony, inserted two fingers, retrieved the now-silent vibrator, and dropped it into a biohazard bag.
The sudden, empty stillness inside him was more terrifying than the vibration had ever been.
Vivian looped her arm through his, her touch now proprietorial. “See? You did wonderfully. A natural.” She led him out, past the cleaning crew, into the cold, pre-dawn air. The city was quiet, washed in gray. She helped him into the passenger seat of her car, as if he were an invalid.
She drove smoothly, humming along to the soft radio. Arthur watched the streetlights blur past, each one a marker in a world that had fundamentally, irrevocably shifted. His body was a map of fresh bruises and dull, profound aches. His mind was the quiet, gone place the sober man had described.
Vivian patted his knee. “Get some rest,” she said, her voice bright. “You’ve got a big week ahead. The cruise deposits are due Thursday.”