AUNT RUBY

By Lilith

Part One: Out of Sorts

Frank Rogers neatly arranged the items on the breakfast tray and carried them up the back staircase and down the hall to his Aunt Ruby’s room. He knocked gently on the closed bedroom door and announced, "Maid service!" A voice beyond the door called for him to enter and he swung the door wide, balancing the tray with one hand as he closed it behind him.

Ruby was still in bed, propped up on her outsized bolster pillows with her dark red satin bedclothes drawn up around her. At 65, she was still stunningly beautiful. Her soft, shapely body was clad in a lavender charmeuse nightgown that showed off her large, pale breasts, with a sheer matching lavender bed jacket that concealed her pale pink shoulders. Her long blond hair, fashionably styled in soft, shoulder- length curls, set off her deep-set dark eyes, and neatly framed her high cheekbones and full, well-sculpted mouth. That mouth, glistening with just a trace of carmine lipstick, was pursed in a melancholy frown. Frank arranged the tray on her lap.

"Good morning!" he said cheerfully, smiling at her. "A soft-boiled egg, whole wheat toast with light butter, orange juice and a little pot of tea. Can I get you anything else?"

"No, dear. This will be fine," she said, opening her egg and tearing the toast into it. As she mixed the two, she looked up at him with a vulnerable expression. "Frank, I'm not feeling very well this morning."

His face showed concern. He sat on the corner of her bed and placed his hand gently on her knee. "What's the problem?" he asked.

She sighed. "It's – a woman thing, dear," she said, hesitantly, as if hoping he would hear the hint in her voice.

He smiled. "Would you like me to send for Doctor Claudia?" he asked.

She nodded quickly, smiling back for the first time. "Yes, please do, dear," she said with relief. "Tell her to come see me as quickly as possible. It's probably nothing, but still . . . "

Frank rose and bent over her, kissing her lightly on the forehead. "Don't you worry about a thing, dearest Aunt," he said. "Just finish your breakfast. I'll have her come see you as soon as she can."

Frank walked back downstairs and went to the spacious suite his aunt had set aside for him to use as a work area and study. Before he entered he stopped to glance at himself in the mirror in the hallway. Peering back at him was a neat, good looking man in his mid-20s, with a trim but not muscular body, neat light brown hair in a moderately short cut, dark brown eyes and a straight nose with a slight teardrop shape at the end. He was dressed casually in khaki shorts and a polo shirt and wore nothing on his feet but a pair of leather scuffs.

Entering his workspace, Frank flipped a wall switch and the room was flooded with light. Much of one wall was covered with workbenches and cabinetry. A large walk-in closet took up the other side of the room, and at the rear was a curtain that stretched all the way across closed off an area.

Walking to the closet, Frank pulled his knit shirt over his head and quickly stripped off his shorts, hanging both on a wall-mounted hook. Under the shorts he was wearing a pair of black silk bikini pants pulled up high onto his hips. A careful observer would have noted that his entire body – including his armpits and pubic area – had been rendered completely hairless through regular applications of creme depilatory. His skin was smooth and clear and showed no trace of sunbathing or other regular outdoor activities.

Frank moved to the worktable and flipped open a large album lying on its surface, scanning through the book quickly until he found the page he was looking for. Mounted on it were three Polaroid photos of an attractive woman in her early 60s. She had brown hair that had largely gone gray on the sides, bangs and back. It had been expertly frosted to accentuate the gray. Her face was matronly in an attractive way, with slight folds of loose skin along her cheeks and a soft roll of flesh just under her small pointed chin. Her eyebrows were plucked thin and her blue eyes focused on the camera through "cat-eye" glasses with light colored plastic frames.

Next to the photos was a three-by-five card with a neatly typed script: "Dr. Claudia Morris. Southern Belle of the old school. B. 1935, Atlanta. Slight drawl. Gentle manner. Walks with cane, no limp."

As he closed the book, Frank's mind drifted back to the first time he had met his Aunt Ruby. He had just finished his advanced degree advanced degree studies at the Dramatic Arts Institute and had finished his oral board for Doctor of Fine Arts. As part of the process of moving past the academic period of his life, Frank had printed up announcements and had sent them off to all his relatives. His mother had surprised him by insisting that he send one to an aunt – Ruby – that he had not seen since he was eleven years old.

The suggestion was totally unexpected, and very much out of character for his quiet and retiring mother. Frank was as close to his housewife mom as he was estranged from his truck-driving father. She had always encouraged his artistic side and interest in the theater, while his father had considered the arts to be for "pansies," and a waste of a real man's time. The mother had counseled him closely about his college plans, and had helped him with applications and research on potential schools. His father had refused to pay for Frank's higher education, saying he should go out and get an honest 40-hour-a-week job after high school, and, although he had his mother's support and blessing in the effort, Frank had been forced to leave home and support himself in order to attend drama school.

His polar relationship with his two parents had only grown more intense a few years later, when, during a weekend visit, Frank announced that he was a bisexual and was currently living with a man – his lover -- who was HIV-positive. Frank and his father fought furiously, and Frank’s dad had not spoken to him since. Frank's mother, on the other hand, loved Frank dearly and was intensely proud of him. She supported the path he had chosen, saying she believed that his life was his own to live, and not his parents.' When Frank's lover had died while he was still attending drama school, Frank's mother came to the memorial service and cried with him over the casket.

She was the only member of his family who maintained contact with him afterward. Ironically, in a way, he had become a non-person to most of his family – just like his Aunt Ruby.

Ruby was an aunt by marriage only. Her first husband had been his Uncle Mike, a hard-working but ignorant bricklayer who died in a tragic car accident in which Ruby, herself was seriously injured. The accident had occurred when Frank was just a child. A year later, Ruby had remarried and moved to New Jersey with her new husband. For some reason, after her re-marriage, nobody in the family ever mentioned her name again, and her Christmas cards and letters went unanswered. Eventually, Frank had lost all contact with her, and had all but forgotten she existed.

That's why he was somewhat surprised when his mother told him to send one of his announcements to his aunt.

"I don't understand, Mom," he said. "I thought she had written off this family long ago."

His mother gave him an appraising look. "Honey, your Aunt Ruby is one of the few women in this family I ever really liked that much," she said. "Ruby didn't write the family off – they wrote her off. Ruby did the one thing the men of the Rogers clan cannot abide: she was widowed, but refused to live the rest of her life in black lace, sniffling and wiping her nose with a handkerchief and mourning her loss. She got married again and had a life – but, maybe more importantly to this prudish family, she had a life that they simply couldn't approve of: she married a man who had become very wealthy by running a big chain of shops that featured dirty books and peep shows. As if it wasn't bad enough that she had married again, the man she fell in love with was a pornographer."

She smiled at the notion. "Actually, it made perfect sense for Ruby to marry a man in the skin book business," she said with a chuckle. "Ruby likes sex. She likes it a lot. She practically wore poor old Mike out during the years they were married, and a woman with an appetite like that isn't going to join a convent because her husband had the bad luck to die before her.

"So, you see, Ruby couldn't very well remain a member of the Rogers family, now could she?" she concluded, looking at him meaningfully. "I mean, this is a family that considers sex to be an unpleasant duty something like cleaning up after the family dog. Nobody makes love because they love each other, or because they actually enjoy it. The make love because they are making babies. And God help you if it brings you pleasure. That's a sure sign you will spend the rest of eternity burning in Hell!"

Frank considered his mother's words. "But will she even remember me? My God, I haven't had contact with her since I was a little kid. I don’t even remember what she looks like."

His mother patted his shoulder. "Well, she knows what you look like, because I have sent her copies of every school picture you ever had taken over the last dozen years," she said. "You see, I kept in touch with Ruby over all these years because – well, because I loved her. She was the first and only real romantic love I have ever had in my life."

She looked into Frank's eyes to see how he was taking this admission. It was clear her confession of a lesbian affair had taken him by surprise, but his expression gave no hint that he was shocked or disturbed by it.

"Ruby was a sexy, tender woman who knew how to make love from the heart," she continued. "We first made love together one night after your father had come home drunk and slapped me around. She took me in and comforted me, and I found myself melting in her arms. We kissed and I knew immediately that she was my real life mate, my only true love, regardless of her sex."

"It's funny, but the fight that brought us together that first time was over you, baby," she said with a tired smile. "Your father beat me up because I could never have any other children with him after you were born. To him, not being able to have one child after another – just like his brothers -- somehow made him look like less of a man. But I couldn’t help it. Your birth was very difficult for me, and there were complications that left me unable to ever conceive a child again afterward."

She tenderly touched his arm. "I loved you from the moment the doctor held you up so I could see you, but after I got out of the hospital – barren – your father refused to ever touch me sexually again," she said, her bitterness still clearly there after more than a decade of pain. "I was so lonely, so starved for affection. Ruby gave me all the love I wanted all that I could ever need. I've continued to meet with her secretly ever since she moved away. I've always been her secret lover."

Frank didn't know what to say. "I – I'm sorry, mother," he finally stammered. "I knew that Dad was an alcoholic and an ass hole, and that he treated you terribly. I didn't know how bad it really was for you."

She smiled and patted the back of his hand. "No matter," she said. "I always had you – and I always had Ruby. Now I want you to have her, too. Send her one of your announcements, and include a little note with it. Say you would like to come visit her. I think you will love her as much as I do."

Part Two: House Call

Frank snapped back from his reverie. His mother had been more right than she could ever know. From their first meeting, Frank and Ruby had been closer than they had would have they actually been blood relatives. In fact, they had become close in ways that they probably would never have been able to if they had actually been blood kin.

Frank strode to the closet and retrieved something hanging on a clothes-rod inside. Returning to the workroom, he placed the object on the bench. It was a garment constructed like a women's swimsuit, but made of flesh-colored molded latex, with wide shoulder straps, brassiere cups molded in the shape of generous but somewhat flaccid breasts, and padded hips and buttocks. The latex outer covering of the torso was a pale flesh tone into which realistic nipples and a navel and just the suggestion of cellulite dimpling had been molded. The crotch was a band about five inches wide and had a lifelike vagina with soft, fleshy vulvae.

Frank sprinkled a little talcum powder onto his trunk and legs from a plastic shaker on the workbench, then stepped into the leg openings of the female torso. He wriggled it up over his own narrow hips and flat stomach and adjusted the breasts into position by moving its wide, flat shoulder straps. The garment was made with paper-thin edges that almost seemed to disappear against his skin as he settled it into place.

After donning the torso, Frank examined himself in the mirror. His youthful male body had been transformed into that of a mature woman whose attractive figure was just beginning to go to seed. His new hips and rear end were wide and slightly flabby looking and his full breasts sagged slightly above the beginnings of a middle-aged paunch. He moved his hands over the torso, and placed them on his hips in a feminine way, smiling with satisfaction.

Next Frank opened one of the cabinets and removed a bulky object covered with a length of cotton cloth. Setting the object on the table, he whisked off the fabric, revealing what appeared to be the head and shoulders of a bald, middle-aged woman. He reached behind the head and found the tab of a zipper that held the back closed. Pulling it up with a steady tug, he released the head, which turned out to be a carefully molded latex mask held up by a plastic foam wig stand.

Moving to the three-way mirror, Frank held the mask up to his head with both hands at the zipper opening and pulled it smoothly over his head. He tucked his hair back in a couple of spots and used the mask’s own ears as handles to stretch it over his face. When he had fitted the rubber hood over his entire head and shoulders, he tugged the zipper at its rear closed with a metallic hiss.

Like his body had before him, Frank's youthful face disappeared completely into the latex device. The mask covered all of his features but his eyes, which were completely visible through large open spaces that had been left in the rubber face during the molding process. Since Frank had made the mask himself – from a life casting of his own face – it fit perfectly over his own lips and nose, and the paper-thin edges around the eyes were completely flat against his own skin. At a glance, it almost seemed that the mask had melted directly onto Frank's own face, replacing his features with those of an older woman.

The mask was constructed so that its lower parts followed his own body’s contours, with the shoulders draping loosely over his own and the neck fitting snugly on his own skin. The nose had the slight upturn that showed in the photo of Dr. Claudia, and the soft fold of flesh under the chin duplicated that of the doctor. The mask perfectly simulated her prominent cheekbones and matched the determined set of her mouth. It was very nearly a perfect match for the face in the photos.

From the same cabinet, Frank pulled a small plastic case. From it he took a pair of colored contact lenses and inserted them into his eyes. The lenses were not optically corrected, and his vision through them was virtually the same as his normal 20-20 eyesight, albeit slightly cloudy from the colored material of the lenses.

Next he used a small sponge from a large theatrical makeup case on the counter to smear creamy makeup foundation around his eyes, matching the color of the latex mask so that it was virtually impossible to tell where the rubber ended and his own skin began. Then he deftly applied eyeliner and mascara, a light coat of powder blue eye shadow, a little pink blusher to his soft latex cheeks and a brown eyebrow pencil.

He stripped a brown wig off a second stand and pulled it over the bald rubber crown of the mask, tugging it down snugly into place and fluffing the hair on the sides and back to give it body and a looser look. Leaning forward to peer in the mirror, he smiled slightly with satisfaction inside the mask. The latex face reflected there – a remarkably exact likeness of the Polaroid photos of Dr. Claudia Morris -- smiled back at him.

"Now that's moah like it, child," he said in a soft Southern lilt that perfectly matched the doctor's. Dabbing a bit more lipstick on his latex- covered lips. "Get a shake on, guhl – y'all have a sick woman to tend to!"

Frank – now transformed into a duplicate of Dr. Claudia – quickly pulled on a pair of beige satin panties and pulled a matching brassiere into place to help support his sagging breasts. He rolled a pair of light- colored panty hose over his legs and tugged the panty top up onto his slight potbelly. A white shell top followed, tucked into a tweed walking skirt that came to just below the knees. Finally he reached into a drawer and withdrew a pair of thin latex gloves that had been molded to look like a woman's hands – complete with painted on liver spots and brightly painted plastic fingernails. He slipped the gloves over his own hands, pulled on a tweed jacket that matched his skirt and stepped into a pair of brown pumps with chunky two inch high heels.

The transformation was complete – and utterly dazzling. With the last item of clothing he donned, Frank allowed his shoulders to bow and inclined his body forward at a slight angle. His posture seemed to age spontaneously, making him look shorter and a little more stooped. He squirted a little "Wind Song" on his neck – it was an old fashioned scent that Dr. Claudia always wore -- then picked up a polished hickory cane leaning against the wall and walked purposefully out of the workroom and back up the stairs to his Aunt's bedroom.  

Ruby was waiting expectantly, a mild look of excitement on her face, and she called for "Claudia" to enter as soon as she heard the "doctor's" footsteps outside her bedroom. Claudia approached her patient with a pleasant smile of greeting, and sat gently next to her on her bed.

"Now what's the problem, chile," Claudia said in her soft soprano drawl. "Frank tells me y'all aren't feelin' well this moanin.' "

Rub licked her lips and drew back her satin sheets, exposing her long, well-formed legs. "It's down here, doctor," she said anxiously, gesturing at the soft patch of hair between her thighs. "It – it just doesn’t feel right."

Claudia nodded, pursing her lips judiciously. She moved slightly closer and touched Ruby lightly on her chest with the tips of her fingers. "How about your breasts, deah?" she said gently. "Have you examined yourself for lumps lately?"

Ruby shook her head, smiling slightly. "No, I haven't doctor," she said. "Would you check them for me?"

Dr. Claudia smiled back and nodded. She gently lifted Ruby's filmy nightgown above her snowy white breasts and began to touch them slowly and tenderly, as if searching for abnormalities. Ruby closed her eyes and rested back on her pillow bolsters, her lips slightly parted with pleasure from the sensuous massaging motion. Her eyelids trembled slightly and she shuddered with deep, physical pleasure.

Claudia continued to gently rub Ruby's breasts for about ten minutes, during which time Ruby grew flushed and began breathing very heavily with passion. Finally the doctor ended the massage, finishing up by touching Ruby tenderly on her cheek with her hand. "Everything seems to be fine," she said. "I will want to examine you again soon, though, deah. A girl can't be too careful about her breasts."

At Claudia's side was a scuffed canvas medical bag and she reached into it and drew out a pair of thin, filmy latex surgical gloves, slipping them over her hands with a rubbery snap. She gently folded back Ruby’s bed jacket to expose her patient's mons veneris, spread her legs slightly with her latex-clad hands, and began to explore the soft fleshy folds between Ruby's legs.

Ruby leaned back against her pillow bolsters and sighed, licking her full lips sensually as Claudia gently massaged the tissue of her vagina with one gloved hand, the other resting lightly on her thigh and stroking it slightly.

"Now where does it feel uncomfortable, deah?" Claudia asked as she probed Ruby's moist vagina with two of her fingers. Touching the tip of Ruby’s clitoris, Claudia pressed gently but firmly in a circular motion. "Is this the spot?"

Ruby shuddered slightly with pleasure and gasped, "Yes – yes, doctor. That's it, exactly."

Claudia moved her hand a little faster, concentrating the motion. She continued the gentle massage for several minutes and Ruby climaxed suddenly, gasping, a slight film of perspiration on her forehead. The spasms lasted for more than a minute, and Ruby finally sagged back onto the pillows with a groan of pleasure.

Claudia peeled the latex gloves off her hands and dropped them into the bag. "I think I know what the problem is, honey," she said, smiling, as Ruby, exhausted, fished a filter-tipped cigarette out of a marble box on her side table, lit it with a large silver lighter and slumped back onto her bolsters. "Yoah problem is, you haven't been gettin' sufficient stimulation down there. Yoah goin' to be needin' some therapy."

"What do you want me to do, doctor?" Ruby asked, a slight smile playing around her lips. She took a deep drag from the cigarette and exhaled a thin stream of smoke from her nose and lips.

Claudia patted her thigh. "I'm goin' to send Nurse Banning to you to clean and dilate you down theah," she said firmly. "Nurse Banning knows exactly what to do. Her treatment should help quite a bit. Then a little bit later, I am goin' to arrange for you to be visited by a physical therapist, Yumiko Suzuki. She will help you with some exercises that should relieve all the rest of that discomfort y'all been feelin.'"

"Well, I have to be goin,' honey," Claudia said, leaning down and giving Ruby a little peck on the cheek. "Have yoah nephew give me a call later to tell me how y'all are feelin.'"

Ruby put her hand behind Doctor Claudia's head and pulled her back down. She kissed her passionately, then released her with a gentle caress to the cheek. The doctor's lipstick had left a small smudge on Ruby’s mouth, which was now arched, in a happy smile. "Thank you so much, doctor," she said in a husky voice. "I'll have Frank call. I'm sure I will be fine."  

Doctor Claudia climbed back down the stairs and entered Frank’s workroom. She placed her medical bag on the bench and stepped to the mirror, where she examined herself with her hands on her ample, tweed- covered hips, smiling at the memory of the "house call" she had just enjoyed. Then she unbuttoned her blouse and stripped out of her clothes, hanging each piece up carefully as she removed it.

Standing completely naked before the mirror, "Claudia" stripped the wig off her bald rubber pate, slipped it onto a foam plastic stand, then unzipped the back of her head and removed the latex mask with the slippery rustle of wet rubber. Underneath "Claudia's" face, Frank's own skin was shiny with sweat from the heat of the mask. He peered into the mirror with a grin, noticing how he still had Claudia's eye make up and light blue eyes, even though the rest of the doctor's feminine features had come off with the false face.

Frank wriggled his way out of the latex torso, swabbed out the inside with a damp sponge, then dried and talcum-powdered it and hung it back in the closet. He used a little mineral oil to clean the eye makeup and mascara from his face and removed the contacts, washed them with disinfectant and put them back in their plastic case. Finally, he toweled off his body and fluffed up his damp hair with a blow dryer, then slipped his shorts and polo shirt back on and stepped into his leather scuffs.

When he entered his Aunt's bedroom, she was lying back on her pillows with a sweet smile.

"Well, what did the doctor say," Frank asked nonchalantly as he gathered Ruby's breakfast things and placed them on a tray.

"She's going to send the nurse by to see me, and a physical therapist a little later this afternoon," Ruby said with a knowing smile. She looked at her nephew with a look of deep affection and added, "Thank you so much for having her come and see me, Frank. You are so good to me."

He bent over her bed and kissed her gently on the forehead. "Of course, darling," he said with a grin. "You know I would do just about anything for you. After all, you are my dear Aunt. It pleases me to be of service to you."

[To Be Continued]