I'm a Failed Mudflap Girl

I'm a failed boob pill-taker. It's a saga of ambition, vanity and a zone where the Food and Drug Administration will not tread.

I started taking "herbal" breast-enhancement pills out of public-mindedness and a spirit of journalistic inquiry. Would they enhance my sadly flat pecs and give me a Dolly Parton physique? The public deserved to know! But the longer I stared at the golden pill bottle, with its coy ingredients list and its vague promises, the more I lost my journalistic objectivity. In its place came desire.

The pill bottle displayed a silhouette of a slender girl in profile, sitting with her knees raised. She was the same mysterious beauty who always appears on the mudflaps of trucks, and I found her alluring and sensual. I dreamed of looking like that, of becoming voluptuous enough to have my naked body slap against a truck wheel day in, day out. Would my profile one day provide jerkoff material at truck-stops in the wee hours?

I took the pills eagerly, twice a day as the bottle recommended. I examined myself for the slightest signs of buxomness at every opportunity. On the bus, people would see me trying to grab a handful of my tit, or peeking down my own blouse. I became obsessed with tracking my own development, although not to the point that I ever managed to track down a tape measure. I felt sure, subjectively, that "things" were developing. I even felt a slight tingling in both of my love mounds.

Then came the shame. I've come out as a trannie to my accountant, my friend from kindergarten and my coworkers in the Bible Belt. But the gold pill bottle with its lurid label embarrassed. Bad enough I was toting it around with me, but when I had to pull out the bottle and pop my pills, I dearly wished I were taking drugs that had some cachet. I longed for heroin chic or cocaine glamour, instead of mammary-booster trashiness.

I tried decanting the pills into another bottle, but still had the same embarrassing questions when I tried to take them with food in front of others. I went on trips, to the South and to the UK, and stayed with pals, and forgot to bring the pills. I just didn't want to telegraph my stripper-rack ambitions to the world.

I wavered and only took the pills some of the time. Then I rallied, and steeled myself?I would have the body I desired!

Late-night infomercials taunted me. Soap opera extras proclaimed pills or creams had transformed their bosoms and lives in one go. If you couldn't achieve dramatic results with our not-quite-pharmaceutical methods, you must be some kind of sexless un-American pinko queer, they implied.

I had to show those shills what I was made of. After all, I had more at stake than they did. It's bad enough having a diving-board torso if you're a genetic girl, but a full-time male-to-female trannie can't get away with it at all. Boobs are the security badges that open all the doors to the inner sanctum of womanhood.

And my failure to display the goods is everybody's business. Total strangers ask me all the time if I'm on hormones, or if I plan to start on them soon. I've gotten used to it. I rarely have random people come up to me and ask, "So, have you used any suppositories lately?" Or "Tell me all about your eczema." Or "Have you tried Zoloft yet?" But for some reason this one aspect of my body chemistry is open to public inquiry.

Having a chest as flat as Vin Diesel's delivery means I'm a failure as an MTF. Never mind there are all sorts of valid health reasons for avoiding a big dose of chemical X to turn me into a real Powerpuff Girl. Hormones signify so much that a friend of mine, whose doctor told her she couldn't keep taking them without risking fatal blood clots, seriously considered going to Mexico to buy them without a prescription. And the state of California won't change the "M" on my driver's license to an "F" unless I can prove I'm on hormones.

But okay, I admit it: I also wanted to be an object of desire. I wanted flesh I could cup. I wanted to be able to peel away my bra and reveal more than an existential void. I wanted cleavage that didn't involve my toes.

I was so desperate, I had once followed the advice of my friend Shelley to pull on my nipples until they stretched. ("You'll get nipples like a leather man's after too many titclamps," she explained. "You know the nipple is half of the breast.") I dutifully nipple-tugged in the middle of writing articles about diabetic foot care.

So did I achieve results? It seemed that way. I got more definition up there. My partner swears my goosebumps are more pronounced. Now, when I wear a tight girly t-shirt, I have a definite protrusions there. I feel more self-conscious about appearing topless. But it's all subjective as to what's a breast and what's loose skin.

A friend of mine demanded more measurements. Why did I not use calipers to grab tit flesh and quantify any changes? Were my nipples more sensitive than before? Could we apply the ice cube test? "You're not enough of a mad scientist," he complained. That's what friends are for.

But then I realized I had been feeling really stupid and sluggish ever since I started on those pills. It was as if someone had sucked out my brain and replaced it with haggis. I went through a month and a half of not being able to get words on paper and feeling as though clever remarks were just beyond my grasp.

At last, I looked at the shiny golden pill bottle from which I'd been guzzling capsules. I still had no clue what was in these things, I realized. Could they be sucking out my brain cells and turning them into boob cells? Could there be a brain-siphoning chemical in here?

I faced a terrible choice: sexiness or sentience. What was a girl to do?

I tossed the pills. A week or so later, the mist started to lift and my neurons fired again. I was still no Oscar Wilde?I would need a very different set of pills for that?but I was able to string words together.

It was a porno nightmare: a regimen of pills that left you chesty and stupid. It was like every sexist joke about top-heavy bimbos come to life. And yet, once I had escaped with both my wits and some slight tits, I couldn't help wondering if I could have gotten a little more endowment out of the deal if I'd just stuck it out a bit longer.