Super Wishes and Leotard Dreams, Prologue

The alarm clock hadn’t gone off yet, but the weight shifting on my chest did. Raccoon, our tabby with the ridiculous name, stretched one paw onto my collarbone, her claws pricking like tiny needles. I blinked awake to the dim glow of the alarm clock, my wife Benna (51 years old) still breathing evenly beside me. And then I felt it—the insistent, stupidly persistent erection tenting the sheets.

“As usual,” I muttered, rubbing my face. Superwoman had been hovering in my dreams—those damned red boots, the way her cape billowed behind her like liquid fire. Benna stirred but didn’t wake, her arm curled under the pillow. I eased onto my side, willing the stiffness in my Emma Frost Bikini briefs to subside before the alarm shattered our quiet. Raccoon kneaded my shoulder, purring like a malfunctioning engine.

The bathroom tile was cold under my feet as I pissed into the toilet, the sound louder than it should’ve been in the quiet house. I shook off, flushed, and reached for the Omeprazole on the sink—heartburn already gnawing at my throat like a persistent ghost. Then I caught my own reflection in the mirror.

The face staring back at me wasn’t the chiseled jawline of Superwoman—just Jensen Jenkins, strategy professor, husband, father, Virginia Beach taxpayer. The crow’s feet around my hazel eyes had deepened over winter, and the grey at my temples was creeping further into the mess of my morning hair. I ran a hand through it, grimacing at the way it stuck up in three different directions. It was the day after President’s Day and I had to go back to work. My reflection smirked back, mocking the flush still lingering on my cheeks from that damn dream.

The coffee maker hissed its last drops into the carafe just as the newspaper headline caught my eye—another goddamn ICE facility in the area. I barely had time to pour myself a cup before the shuffle of slippers on hardwood announced Benna’s arrival. She stood in the doorway, backlit by master bedroom artificial light, her silhouette soft and familiar. The hem of her old Virginia sweatshirt—the one she bought before she met me in ‘09—brushed her thighs, and her long, sandy-blonde hair was all over the place.

Moments later, Benna leaned against the kitchen island, nursing her own mug of coffee like it was the only thing holding her upright. She had that look—the one where her eyebrows did this infinitesimal lift, like she was cataloging every detail about me without saying a word. The Virginia sweatshirt hung off one shoulder, revealing the strap of an old sleep tank underneath.

She gave me her customary morning greeting. The kiss tasted like coffee and sleep, warm and familiar, Benna’s lips chapped from winter air. She lingered a second too long, fingers curling into the fabric of my dress shirt before pulling away—a silent question hanging between us. I buttoned the cuffs quickly, my pulse still hammering from the dream’s aftershocks. The spandex fantasies would have to wait; today was lecture notes and department meetings.

Before I left for work, I helped Benna wake up Asher (12 years old) for school. Asher’s room smelled faintly of graphite and sweat—the peculiar musk of a pre-teen boy who’d fallen asleep mid-doodle. His sketchbook lay splayed open on the floor, a half-finished comic panel of a baseball player mid-swing, the bat morphing into a lightning bolt. Typical Asher. I nudged his shoulder gently. “Rise and shine, bud.”

Asher groaned, his thin limbs unfolding like a crumpled origami crane beneath the blue comforter. His sandy-blonde hair stuck up in jagged tufts—half of it matted flat where he’d slept on it. His blue eyes blinked open, unfocused, pupils dilating against the LED string lights in his dimly lit room.

Asher groaned again, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Do I *have* to?” His voice cracked halfway through, still clinging to sleep. I reached over and ruffled his hair—the way he hated but secretly loved—and felt the sharp ridge of his shoulder blade beneath his blue sweatshirt. “Yeah, you do. But listen—today, try to learn one great thing. And if you can, make one great friend.”

A little bit later. The garage door groaned open, letting in a slice of frigid February air that cut through my leather coat like it was tissue paper. I hesitated on the threshold, one hand on the doorframe, watching Benna shuffle back toward the kitchen where Crystal’s ’s high-pitched morning chatter had just erupted. The scent of toaster waffles and syrup already clung to the air. For a second, I almost turned back—not for anything important, just to steal another kiss, to press my nose into the space behind Benna’s ear where her shampoo always lingered. But then the garage sensor beeped its impatient warning, and I stepped out into the cold.

The steering wheel vibrated faintly under my fingers as Springsteen’s *Dancing in the Dark* crackled through the speakers—somehow both too loud and not loud enough to drown out the memory of Superwoman’s thighs gleaming under the Metropolis sun. My knuckles whitened around the wheel. Christ, I was fifty-one. Shouldn’t these teenage fantasies have faded by now? The Mazda’s heater blasted stale air at my shins while the Lynnhaven lights whipped past in the pre-dawn air.

I was teaching the last of 25 lessons today to one of the staff groups at the Joint Force Staff College. Our subject: the Iraq War in the 2000. The PowerPoint slide flickered to a grainy satellite image of Fallujah, 2004. I cleared my throat, tapping the laser pointer against my palm. “Now, if we examine the urban warfare tactics here—” My voice hitched. The majors in their starched ACUs blurred suddenly, their uniforms melting into skintight spandex, their ACUs replaced by gleaming leotards. Captain Rodriguez—no, *Super* Rodriguez—leaned forward, her golden lasso coiled at her hip. Major Kim’s dark eyes sparkled behind her emerald-green Oakleys, fingertips drumming the desk with enough power to crack concrete.

The flatscreen television whirred softly, casting light across Major Kim’s face as she scribbled notes—except in my head, her pen wasn’t a pen at all, but a glowing jade staff, her ACUs replaced by a skintight emerald bodysuit that shimmered with every shift of her muscled thighs. I blinked hard, forcing myself to focus on the bullet points about counterinsurgency logistics, but the fantasy clung like static. *What if,* I thought, *they’d dropped a battalion of superheroines into Fallujah?* Captain Rodriguez’s golden lasso looping around insurgents like a divine noose, Major Kim’s staff cleaving through concrete barriers like they were papier-mâché. The war would’ve been over by lunch.

“Professor Jenkins?” The voice cut through my fevered mental imagery like a scalpel—sharp, precise, clinically polite. I blinked. Major Kim was standing at the edge of my desk, her regulation-length dark hair pulled into a tight bun, her ACUs crisp and unyielding. No glowing jade staff. No skintight emerald bodysuit. Just a human woman holding out a flash drive with the week’s assignment files. “You asked for these before spring break?” Her eyebrow twitched—the barest hint of amusement—and I realized I’d been staring at her collarbone like it held the secrets of the universe.

The class ended and I went to workout after work at the base gym. My imagination went into overdrive. The treadmill belt whirred underfoot, my sneakers slapping rhythmically against rubber as sweat dripped down my temples. Across the gym, Sergeant Haskins—all 240 pounds of him—grunted through a deadlift, his beefy shoulders straining against his Army PT shirt. Except in my periphery, his shaved head morphed into flowing platinum curls, his ACU pants dissolving into Powergirl’s scandalously high-cut, windowed, white leotard, the red cape fluttering behind him—her—*Christ*—as she hoisted 400 pounds like it was a grocery bag. My shorts tented obscenely. I jabbed the incline button harder than necessary, hoping the burn in my quads would override the one in my groin.

The whole day my fetish went into overdrive at every event. Dr. Patel’s stethoscope pressed against my chest like the cold metal clasp of Wonder Woman’s tiara, her dark eyes scrutinizing me over the rim of her glasses. “Lungs sound clear today,” she murmured—except in my head, her white coat had morphed into a star-spangled leotard, the stethoscope coiled around her wrist like a golden lasso. I coughed, shifting on the paper-covered exam table, hyper-aware of how my thighs stuck to the sanitary sheet. Her fingers—nimble, clinical—pressed into my throat to check my lymph nodes, but all I could picture was her hand wrapped around the hilt of an Amazonian broadsword, her sensible loafers replaced by knee-high red boots. The blood pressure cuff inflated around my bicep like a gauntlet tightening before battle.

The automatic doors of the Price Chopper slid open with a sigh, releasing a gust of artificially chilled air that carried the scent of disinfectant and overripe bananas. My shopping list—Benna’s neat handwriting listing milk, eggs, and Crystal’s favorite bread—was crumpled in my fist as I grabbed a cart. The wheels wobbled, predictably. Then I saw her.

The wheels of my shopping cart squeaked like a dying hamster as I pushed past the pyramid of canned beans, but my attention was already locked onto her—not a customer, not even real, just the ghost of my own longing projected onto some poor woman in yoga pants reaching for the organic almond milk. Her ponytail swung like a golden lasso, her leggings straining over muscled thighs that could crush a man’s skull. Or lift a truck. Or—Christ—stop a bullet. My grip on the cart tightened.

The gas pump clicked off, but I didn’t pull the nozzle out right away. The numbers on the display blurred as I imagined not the smell of gasoline burning my nostrils. In my head, head, it was the ozone crackle of a teleportation portal, the scent of Genderian steel and starfire. My reflection in the car window flickered: for half a second, it wasn’t Professor Jenkins in a wrinkled dress shirt, but Gender Girl, her powder blue cape whipping in the wind as she landed on the cracked asphalt of this crappy BP station. The fantasy was so vivid I could feel the spandex clinging to my ribs, the weight of power at my command.

The funny thing was I didn’t want to just have sex with my concocted superheroines. I wanted to *be* them. Not just wear their costumes—though Christ knows I’d spent enough nights with the drawer’s hidden latch digging into my palm as I fumbled for Wonder Woman’s corset—but to *inhabit* them. To feel the way their thighs would flex when they launched into flight, the impossible tensile strength of spandex stretched over alien muscle. The way their capes would snap in the wind like battle flags. Most of all, I wanted that moment—the split second where a normal person *became* something else, where the transformation crackled through their veins like lightning. Did it hurt? Did it feel like coming home?

The garage door shuddered closed behind me like a vault sealing, cutting off the last sliver of daylight. Benna’s violin sang from her closed studio door; she was in a lesson. Asher and Crystal’s muffled laughter floated up from the family room, probably some YouTube video blaring through the flatscreen television. Perfect. I dumped my briefcase on the couch, the clasps popping open from the impact, and beelined for my recliner in the bedroom.

The recliner groaned under my weight as I teetered my tablet onto my thighs, its familiar hum drowning out the distant plucking of violin scales from Benna’s studio. My fingers hesitated over the screen—just for a second—before diving into the half-finished Word document titled *ALLURA: CHAPTER 6*. The screen glowed like a portal to another world, one where I wasn’t Professor Jenkins, wasn’t a husband, wasn’t a father—just ALLURA, her holographic bodysuit shimmering under Arrowhead Stadium lights. It was my only respite from my fantasies consuming me, writing transgender superheroine stories.

The cursor blinked mockingly at the end of ALLURA’s final scene—her hand choke-holding a main character’s throat as her cape flared like a solar flare—when the unmistakable ache between my legs pulled me back to reality. I shifted in the recliner, the leather creaking under my thighs. A glance at the clock: 5:47 PM. Benna’s violin lesson would end in thirteen minutes. I snapped the tablet shut with a guilty twitch, the sound echoing like a gavel in the quiet bedroom.

A little later, the oven timer beeped its shrill alarm just as Benna’s violin student shuffled out the front door, their backpack clattering against the doorframe. I coaxed the formerly-frozen pizza out with a pizza slicer—right onto the cardboard tray—and the cheese bubbled violently, one rogue pepperoni sliding off into the abyss of the oven rack. Asher materialized beside me like a wraith, his nose twitching. “Can I have the piece with the least pepperoni?” he asked, already grabbing a plate. The breadsticks came out half-frozen in the middle; I’d forgotten to preheat the damn tray again. Crystal took two. Eventually, the family gathered in the dining room area of the great room to eat and talk about the day. What followed was a perfect display of a typical middle-class discussion by a nuclear family in a thoroughly suburban setting.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts,” we murmured in unison, the words worn smooth from years of repetition. Crystal (10 years old) bowed, her small hands were clasped so tight her knuckles whitened, her honey-blonde hair falling in a curtain over her face as she bent forward with theatrical piety. A single spaghetti strap of her acrobatics uniform had slipped off her shoulder, revealing a fading tan line from last summer’s endless pool days.

Crystal stabbed a breadstick into her marinara sauce like it was a sword plunging into the heart of Mordor. “Mrs. Pritchard made us do the stupid multiplication timed test again,” she announced, flinging her honey-blonde hair with a dramatic flip. Her blue eyes—so much like Benna’s but with an extra spark of mischief—darted between us as she leaned forward, her acrobatics leotard riding up to reveal a fresh scrape on her knee. “But guess what? I finished first and then drew a picture of a dragon eating all the math problems. I wasn’t challenged again.”

The rest of the meal dissolved into the usual comfortable static—Asher debating whether ketchup counted as a vegetable (it didn’t), Benna recounting how her advanced violin student had butchered Für Elise (again), Crystal dramatically reenacting her math class dragon drawing to scattered applause. I scraped the last of the congealed cheese off my plate, my mind already drifting toward the garage, the drive, the way Crystal’s acrobatics studio smelled like chalk dust and childhood sweat.

After Crystal’s acrobatics lesson, we came home and it was bedtime for the kids. Crystal’s stockinged feet padded down the hallway with the same precision as her acrobatics routines—first the left foot lightly touching the hardwood, then the right, perfectly controlled, like she was walking on a balance beam even in sleepiness. Crystal’s breath hitched when I lifted her—ten years old and still light enough to carry, her limbs folding into me like a drowsy origami crane. Her honey-blonde hair smelled of strawberry shampoo, the scent of her childhood clinging stubbornly even as her legs dangled longer than last year. She tucked her face into the hollow of my throat, her eyelashes fluttering against my skin like moth wings. “Put me in my bed. I’m tired” she mumbled, already half-lost to sleep.

Her bed was a nest of stuffed animals and half-folded blankets, the sheets still holding the warmth of the afternoon sun. I knelt beside Crystal’s bed like a penitent at an altar, her small fingers still clutching mine as she mumbled through the Lord’s Prayer. Her breath hitched on “deliver us from evil,” and I wondered if she imagined the same shadows I did—the ones that lurked beyond the nightlight’s glow, the ones Superwoman would’ve vaporized with a single heat-vision glance.

The lullaby slipped out half-remembered, something my own mother used to hum—a folk tune about willow trees and wandering winds. My voice cracked on the third verse, but Crystal didn’t notice, her breathing already slowing into the rhythm of near-sleep. I pressed my lips to her forehead, lingering just long enough to feel the warmth of her skin, the faint pulse at her temple. Her fingers uncurled from mine like petals releasing a stem.

The hallway was a silent no-man’s-land between our children’s rooms, the carpet whispering underfoot like it was holding its breath. I stepped out of Crystal’s doorway just as Benna emerged from Asher’s room, her silhouette softened by the amber glow of his nightlight. For a moment, we stood there in the dim corridor like two actors waiting for their cue—her fingers still hovering near the doorknob, mine clutching empty air where Crystal’s hand had been seconds before. The scent of Asher’s graphite pencils lingered on Benna’s sweatshirt; she’d probably been admiring his latest sketch before tucking him in.

The couch groaned under my weight as I sank into it, the fabric sighing like an old lover who’d heard all my excuses before. Benna curled into her corner of the couch, the blue glow of the TV flickering across her face—illuminating the fine lines around her eyes, the way her lips pressed together when she was too tired to pretend she wasn’t disappointed. The opening credits of *The Crown* played, but all I could see was the way her Virginia sweatshirt bunched at the waist, how the fabric clung to thighs that had birthed two children, carried groceries, paced hospital corridors—but hadn’t worn spandex in decades. We were too tired to have sex after a long day. At least that’s what we told ourselves. The truth be told that we were just too old and unless Benna was 30 years younger and a superhero, I wasn’t turned on anymore.

Benna’s sigh was a quiet punctuation in the dark living room, the kind that carried fifteen years of folded laundry and mortgage payments and bedtime stories. Her fingers traced the rim of her wineglass—half-empty, or half-full, depending on how you counted the years. The TV flickered soundlessly, casting shadows that made her look younger for a heartbeat—or maybe that was just my imagination filling in the gaps where her laugh lines used to be sharper, her eyes brighter with unsquandered spontaneity. I think Benna would agree with me. Our lives felt stale, like we were stuck in a rut. Don’t get me wrong: We had a safe, healthy life. But I think we wanted more excitement in our lives.

The stairs creaked under our weight like an old ship groaning against its moorings. Benna went first, her hand trailing the banister with the same absentminded care she’d used to smooth Asher’s blankets twenty minutes prior. I followed close enough to catch the faded scent of her shampoo—something with coconut, though the label probably promised Tahitian waterfalls or some such nonsense. Her Virginia sweatshirt rode up just enough to reveal a sliver of skin at the small of her back, pale where the Virgina sun never touched. I had the sudden, absurd urge to press my lips there—not sexually, just *to know it still existed*.

But alas I didn’t. Instead, I followed Benna up the stairs like a ghost trailing its own funeral procession, my socked feet muffling any protest my body might’ve wanted to make. I did my bedtime routine. The, the kiss goodnight was mechanical—dry lips brushing her cheekbone, the faintest press of stubble against her temple—a ritual so ingrained it had lost all meaning except as a waymarker in the slow erosion of our marriage. Benna murmured something about turning off the coffee maker, already rolling onto her side, her back a fortress against me. The mattress sighed under my weight, the same way it had for fifteen years of unspoken desires and half-finished conversations. The pillowcase was cool against my cheek, but my skin burned where the elastic of my fetish desires, the Wonder Woman satin bikini briefs dug into my hips—hidden under my sweat shorts, my secret armor against the dark.

I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined Superwoman, OF BEING *her*: the impossible taper of her waist, the weight of her breasts against the tight fabric, the way her thighs would gleam under city lights as she landed from flight. My breath hitched. The fantasy was so vivid I could almost feel the cape flaring behind me, the belt wrapped around my hip like a second heartbeat.

Sleep dragged me under like a riptide. The darkness wasn’t just absence of light—it had weight, texture, pressing against my skin like wet velvet. My dream wasn’t a landscape but an *absence* of one, a void so complete I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. Then the female voice came. Not from any direction, but from everywhere at once, vibrating through my bones like a church bell tolling underwater: “Enough with the super wishes and the leotard dreams! ALL THE TIME! I’m tired of hearing you yearning to be something that is out of your control!”

The voice ricocheted through my skull like a bullet—not just words, but a *presence*, coiled in the marrow of my bones. I tried to scream, but my jaw was wired shut. Tried to run, but my limbs were leaden, fused to some invisible plane. The darkness pulsed, contracting around me like a living thing, and then the female voice asked if I got my wish, would that shut me up. The darkness contracted like a lung exhaling, and suddenly I could move—not my limbs, but my head, nodding violently as if my neck had been wound with rubber bands. The voice sighed, a sound like tectonic plates shifting. “Fine,” it said, and the word seared through my synapses like lightning. “Make your wish.”

The sensation hit like a spinal tap without anesthesia—cold fingers of pure thought plunging into my cerebellum, rifling through memories like a librarian gone feral. Birthdays, lecture notes, the exact shade of Benna’s nipples in moonlight (pale pink, like conch shells), Asher’s first stitches (left knee, bicycle crash, seven stitches), Crystal’s ballet recital where she pirouetted into the curtains—all of it yanked forward in a dizzying data dump. Then deeper: the Chester drawer’s trove of spandex, the way the fabric hissed against my thighs at 2:17 AM, the shameful slickness pooling under the star-spangled crotch lining. Nothing was off limits. This force combed through my mind sifting out all of the ingredients of my desires.

The phrases didn’t echo—they *unfolded* inside my skull like origami dipped in liquid nitrogen, crystalline and sharp. “Wish granted. Seven transformation days. During that time, the world won’t notice your changes or your alter egos even after your transformation. Let see if the power gets to your head,” the voice repeated. As the voice faded in a cackle, I could hear her say, “I hope this goes better than the He or She affair.”

I woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.