"The Gear-Shifters" and The Eros of "Turbo Teen"

Some readers may wonder why on earth I wrote “The Gear-Shifters,” the story of a female character who transformed into a hot rod, when werewolf tales are much more popular.  The answer comes from an unusual source - a 1980s cartoon called “Turbo Teen.”

“Turbo Teen” aired on ABC’s Saturday morning lineup from 1984 to 1985.  It was the story of Brett, a typical teenager who, after crashing his sports car into a secret lab, is zapped by a ray gun.  The blast gives Brett the power to turn into his car whenever his body gets hot.  With the help of his friends, Brett fights crime as a car.

Now, there are many strange things about this concept, chief among them how turning into a car can be construed as a “superpower.”  What’s even weirder is how fascinated the show is with Brett’s transformations.  Most involve slapstick sketches where the world around Brett seems to be constantly taking advantage of his temperature sensitivity.

And, every time Brett transforms, I have to admit - it arouses me.

This sequence is my favorite.  Brett gets on all fours and breathes deeply, his face stern with concentration.  He wants to change and he will.  His body gets hot, flushed with sexual arousal under the tingling waves radiating around him.  Then, his whole body stretches out like an hardening cock, a groan of steel emphasizing his body’s duress.  His feet inflate and twist into wheels as his ass bulges out with his pants over them to form the rear of the car.  When one hand, then the other also grow into wheels, the force of the change then twists up his torso from below, expanding it as the convertible top hollows itself into his back.

His shoulders broaden and smooth out into fenders over his hand-wheels, chest repositioned over the front axle between his wheel-hands.  When the force reaches his neck and face, Brett’s stern grin melts into a goofy, orgasmic smile as it turns a blushing red, eyes pulled into narrow headlights and mouth clamped into the rest of the front valence. His human nose and ears disappear as the face flattens to match the aerodynamic shape, signaling the end of his change.  Even without nudity, his clothes merely blending into the car color, it is still a very visceral transformation which makes me feel hot at the same time.

But, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe it isn’t just the sequence itself that arouses me, but also what Brett’s transformation means.  To me, there is something undeniably sexy about “becoming one” with something, even if that thing happens to be an inanimate object.  Japanese manga artist Kazasa Sumita sums this up perfectly:

“I am struck by the Eros in the names and histories of whiskeys.  Or I become captivated by the taste and presentation of a meal.  They are melded together.  The melding and the inability to meld completely.  These things are sensual.”

This “melding” to which Sumita refers is an ultimate level of intimacy that we, as sexual creatures, try to attain, but can never fully realize.  When we make love to each other, to ourselves, or to things, we are trying to fuse with that other person or thing, trying to lose our separate identities and become something together.  Though we cannot literally merge our bodies together no matter how hard we thrust, we must be satisfied with reproduction, with creating a new life that will one day be separate from us both.

But in “Turbo Teen,” Brett’s accident has allowed him to achieve this impossible intimacy, an intimacy that only a shapeshifter can truly experience.  Brett has completely melded with his car, changing Brett into something that is neither man nor machine but somewhere in between.  Between these two planes of existence, Brett’s transformations and reversions allow us to see, if just for one moment, what it is like to be both oneself and another at the same time, what it is like for two to live as one inseparable being.  Only then do we see how much of the car is in Brett and how much of Brett is in the car.  In this respect, the two fill each other completely and it is no longer possible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

When I imagine the genesis of this union, that one moment when these two were brought together, I imagine it as a passionate meld.  When the two drove into the ray, I imagine Brett feeling hot as he’s growing larger inside the car, his clothes ripping off his body as he bunches up within the car’s confines like a developing fetus.  Then, when the car’s molecules give way, I imagine Brett slipping face-first through the dashboard’s molecules, eyes merging with headlights, hands reaching out to merge with tires, mouth merging with the valence, brain with the engine, heart with the transmission.

His feet and lower body uncoil behind him, his body laying flat as his legs pass effortlessly through the rear of the car, feet merging with the rear tires, ass with the back of the car, the flesh on his back with the interior and his skeleton with the frame.  His cock is rock-hard, so it merges with the exhaust piping and is turned back behind him, forever stimulated.  Even after he reverts, Brett will still feel the iron in his bones, the imitation leather in his skin, and the car will feel him as well, trying to make their one body hot again.

When I write erotica, I want to make this melding feel real for my readers - whether they're being turned into a giant penis, an anthropomorphic dog, or a hot rod.  Because it's the melding itself, not so much what you are becoming, that makes it a sexual experience.