Andy stood there a bit stiffly while the saleslady went off to find some clothes for her. Susan put a hand on his wife's shoulder. "You okay?"
She huffed. "It's...I dunno, I know she didn't mean anything by it, but...it feels like the whole damn universe wants me to...model, or strip, or do something else that...that calls attention to...this."
Her husband nodded. "It's...just one of those things, I guess. A lot of women have to deal with this to some degree...being judged visually by people who don't really know them. It's not fair, but it's not something you can really change, so you just kind of learn to deal with it..."
The rabbit-woman sighed. "I guess, but...it's not like I want people to never, ever look at me, I just don't think I want to do any modelling, but they keep asking..."
Sue shrugged. "They're not doing it to spite you, honey. They just see some potential and want to know if you'd be interested in employing it; they don't have any way to know you're not without asking."
"I know, I know," Andy said. "It's just...annoying, is all."
"I guess the repetition would be annoying," Susan mused. "Give that time, they'll find enough bunny-girl models that they won't be so eager to hire them anymore. Does...does the thing itself bother you?"
She thought for a minute. "Y...yeah. I've only been this way for a couple days, Sue, and I'm still getting used to the idea of you seeing me as a...as a woman. For everybody else to be treating me that way..." She cringed slightly.
Her husband nodded. "I can understand that," he said. "But...well, I think that's something you're going to have to get used to, honey; it's not going to go away. And...to be honest, I think it's something you're going to need."
Andy frowned. "What?"
The snake-man took a deep breath. "It's like this," he said. "A big part of being taken seriously in a professional environment is self-assurance, you know that. It's true for men and women alike. But if you go around letting every direct acknowledgement of your new gender get to you, you're going to come across as insecure, and thus not really worth acknowledging. You didn't get mad with the saleslady, but it was pretty obvious that you were thrown off by it. I think you're going to need to be better at keeping your cool."
She wasn't sure she understood. "So...I should...what? Just 'be self-assured?' How would I even do that?"
Susan shrugged. "Well...let's say that you're at the interview tomorrow and there's some guy out on the floor checking you out, maybe even making a pass at you. Obviously you're not going to be comfortable with that, but if you go visibly losing your cool, it's going to reflect badly on you. And there's more than one way for that to happen. If you get mad, if you lay into him, they're going to think you're foul-tempered and have a chip on your shoulder. If you clam up and shun all interaction, you're some kind of antisocial hermit, and so on..."
"So what do I do, then?" Andy asked, feeling a bit exasperated. "Just let him?" All she wanted was to be left alone about the issue...
"No, of course not!" Sue said. "But you can communicate your disinterest without sending the message that he's a bad person for being interested, or that you think he's beneath you, or anything like that. For our example, say, you can acknowledge the acknowledgement; he's noticing that you're an attractive woman, you give him a look that lets him know you've noticed he's noticing, but that that's as far as the issue goes, something like that. It might take longer for him to get the message, but it's better than jumping right into extremes over it."
"But I don't want him noticing me!" the rabbit-woman huffed. "I just want to be left alone!"
"But that's the problem," Sue said. "If you just object altogether to anybody acknowledging your womanhood, they're going to see you as unreasonable. You need to give the impression that you're comfortable with yourself, and you just have certain boundaries to your interaction with others. You...I think you need to be comfortable with yourself, really. The rest will follow from there."
Andy sighed. "I...I can't just decide to be comfortable with this all of a sudden, Sue. And...I mean, what's a look that lets someone know I'm un-offended but not interested, anyway?"
Her husband frowned. "I know," he said. "It's...I know this is hard for you, it's just that I think it's something that could really make a difference one way or the other when you're looking for a job. You're right about the look, though, it's...I don't think I could explain. I could demonstrate, maybe, but I don't think it'd be at all intelligible coming from this body. Body language is just so...non-verbal..."
Andy smiled a bit. "Well, yeah."
Presently the saleslady returned with a set of clothing. "I think I've found something that'll suit your needs," she said. She laid out the garments; navy-blue slacks, a white dress shirt, a lighter blue sweater. Andy looked it over, then took it into the changing room.
She stripped to her underwear and gazed into the mirror, still coming to grips with the idea that this was her. Her petite frame, her pleasant figure, her breasts, whose small absolute size meant they were perky even while their relative size on her was healthily average...Sue had certainly seemed to like that. Was this really such a perfect body to some people? But then, she was thinking of idealized forms while it sounded like the saleslady was talking more about an average...
She dressed in the new attire, carefully tucking her shirt in, then her sweater (though she wasn't sure if that was how she was supposed to do it) and stepped out.
The saleslady smiled. "That fits you nicely. How do you feel?"
"Uh, c...comfortable?" Andy said. She looked in a nearby mirror; he was right, they did fit her pretty well. Having a looser sweater on top of the dress shirt softened the angles created by her bust without diminishing them, and the slacks clung just close enough to her legs to show she had them without being skin-tight or anything. She...she was...
"You're beautiful, Andy," Sue smiled. She felt strange hearing that; it wasn't something that meant so much to a man, and even as a woman her mindset wasn't changed enough for it to register in the way she thought it would for normal women, but...once again there was just something about his voice...she sighed happily.
"Is there anything you think should be different?" the saleslady asked. "I'm not 100% happy with the blues, myself..."
"No, I think that's perfect," the naga-man said. "Andy, any thoughts?"
"Um, I guess this'll work," she said. "I'll just change back..."
"Why don't you leave that on?" the saleslady said. "You can just pay for these here and remove the tags; it didn't look like your old clothes fit too well anyway."
"Uh, okay," the rabbit-woman said, stepping over to the nearby register.
"Thanks for your help," Susan said, as the saleslady was clipping the tags off. She smiled. "No problem, we've gotten more than a few switched couples before."
After they had paid for Andy's clothes they went over to the less dressy area of the womens' clothing section to stock up on casual wear. Andy frowned. "She could tell? Is it that obvious?"
Her husband laughed. "Well, our names are a bit of a giveaway, you know. 'Andy' not so much, but in context with a man going by 'Sue' it's not too difficult to figure out. But yeah, it is kind of obvious even without that."
She frowned. "How do you mean?"
"Well," he said, "you move exactly like a man in a woman's body trying to avoid attention. You're all slouchy and drawn-in and shuffling."
She groaned. "Not this again...are you sure you're not trying to...?"
He frowned. "I'm trying to help you, honey. ...maybe I take a little guilty pleasure in it, but I'm serious, really. If you don't come off like you're confident in yourself, other people aren't going to have much confidence in you."
"But...I don't," she said. "Am I supposed to just fake it?"
He kissed her on the cheek, and she felt all the prickly defensiveness go out of her, like a balloon deflating. Sue had always been good with the reassuring touches, but now...she smiled in spite of herself. "You shouldn't have to fake it, Andy," he said. "You're a beautiful woman, you have a family that loves you, and you're good at what you do. You don't have anything not to be confident about, aside from this unfamiliarity."
"Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it?" she said. "I don't know anything about being a woman aside from what you've told me. If any of this is supposed to be instinctual..."
"You're right," Sue said. "You're right, I'm kind of coming at this on the assumption you should know, aren't I? Okay, lesson time." He placed one hand on her rear and one on her shoulder.
"Sue, what-!?" she sputtered. He shushed her. "First things first," he said, pushing her shoulders back and her waist forward, "stand up straight, no slouching. Shoulders up. Yes, like that. Chin up, too. You don't have to keep your neck stiff and your head perfectly level, but you don't want to go around staring at the carpet."
She felt a little embarassed, but...he was trying to help her, she believed him. "Okay," he said. "Now, no shuffling. You don't have to march, but at least pick up your feet. Longer, smooth strides. Come on!" He began to slither off, and she reluctantly followed, trying to keep herself from collapsing back into low-profile mode.
"Not too bad for a start," her husband grinned when they came to a stop. "I don't know if you can consciously adopt an attitude, but...if you can think 'I'm a smart, sexy woman,' if you can feel confident...I can show you posture, but it takes a cooperative subconscious to really get the body language, I think."
Andy didn't particularily want to. She didn't want to just try to...to be someone and something she wasn't! If she just felt like a woman...where would that leave her? She didn't want to forget or pretend that she'd never been a man! But then...she was a woman, now, wasn't she? She couldn't just pretend that wasn't true. And she knew Sue wasn't trying to make her forget or stop being what she was, hell, he had outright told her not to reinvent herself. So that couldn't be what he was getting at. He just...just wanted her to...be comfortable, be confident, to actually feel valued as...as this.
She'd try, for him. She tried to think what he'd told her, I'm a...I'm a s-s... She sputtered, breaking into a fit of laughter. It was just too absurd, to be trying to put on a mindset like it was a hat...
Sue laughed with her. "It's okay," he chuckled. "This is why I dropped out of drama club, I used to do the exact same thing every time I'd try to get into character. I'm no actor, I guess."
"Th-that makes t-two of us," she laughed. "I'm sorry, it's just..."
"It's okay," he said. "But keep up the posture, if you can, you need practice with that. We'll finish shopping and get some lunch." He grinned slyly. "Maybe we can find another way to make you feel good about yourself later."
The dancer eyed Keith, then the coin, then Keith, for a long moment. "Okay, mister, we can go upstairs for a bit," she said. "Don't get the idea this is a regular thing, though."
Keith snorted. "I don't care what you ain't," he muttered, handing over the piece. "I just know what I want you to do." He followed her up to the top floor of the building, into a spare bedroom. He was eager to get started, even if he didn't actually feel like it...truth be told, none of this had done all that much for him. He'd told himself that he was enjoying the show, because he knew he enjoyed these things, but he wasn't feeling all that much...must've been the whiskey, seemed like it was awfully strong for the price. Still, even if he wasn't much feeling the need, he wanted to prove to himself...that he was still a man.
As such, he pulled off his pants the moment they got the door shut, and his shirt after. He looked up at his entertainment for the evening...who was frozen in the middle of undressing, her top open with her breasts hanging out, her face twisted up in revulsion. "What?" he snapped.
She twitched, plainly angry. "Look, sister," she said, "I don't know what they get up to where you come from, but if you think you can trick me into...into...for that? Woulda been bad enough if you'd told me! Keep your damn money, pervert!" She flung the coin down on the floor and stormed out into the hall, hurriedly trying to pull her top back together.
"Get back here, woman!" Keith snapped, moving to follow her, but a side glance at the mirror across the room stopped him dead in his tracks. He turned slowly, as if in a dream, to face the mirror.
He had changed still further, his whole skin mottled with patches of the old and the new. His hair now hung down to the base of his head, jet black where it had been dirty blond before. His body was awkwardly shaped, still reminiscent of the burly man, but in the process of becoming something smaller and lighter. Most obviously, though...two small breasts hung off of his chest, and...and...
"He" was no longer accurate. The parts between Keith's legs couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything but a woman's. She stared in disbelief, trembling. This couldn't be real! Trying to contain her panic, she pried the lips open, as if the old parts might be hiding somewhere inside. She winced at the feel of her still-rough fingers on the delicate skin and yanked her hand away. No, no! No, this couldn't be...
But it was. This was no longer something she could deny or rationalize away. She...she was turning into a woman. And now...what now?
She had her choices, if she stopped and thought about it. She could keep running, keep trying to make her way over the state line. Or she could even probably stay in the area; she was well ahead of any pursuers, by the time they caught up she'd probably be...be...well, unrecognizable. She'd have to lay low for a while, but she still had some money, she could scrape by. Then once things had died down, she could go back to the Indian camp and demand that they undo whatever they did to her...or she could do that right now, and just try to stay hidden as Keith. After all, what if they'd moved on by the time the heat was off?
She just really hoped they could change her back...
