Empathy

by Vickie Tern

Prologue

Darla is an absolute darling when she wants to be. I wish I could be half the woman she is but I know I can't, I don't have it in me. Or anywhere near as adorable, though there I do try. She came by her charm easily while growing up, while I've had to learn mine only very recently. But she's a wonderful teacher. She could see my potential all along, I'm a natural, that's what she says. I tell her that natural or not I do love what I am now and I owe it all to her. It feels so cuddly now, being me, and it used to feel so heavy yet so empty.

We're still married and we still share our lives, which is what I'd hoped for from the beginning, and I'm grateful for that, though nowadays she goes her own way as she chooses, independent, a free woman, fully liberated. I've learned to respect that. In fact I like it, though I'm myself more a homebody. I like that too.

Only a few months ago, no way! Then I was the strong partner in our marriage and she was the soft, compliant one, eager to please. I thought she was, anyway. I knew all the answers and made all the decisions, and she seemed to admire me for it. When she made a mistake I'd chastise her gently, then reward her remorse with a kiss. She was all mine then, my very own Darla, my sweet Darla! She lived for me.

She tried to become the world's most perfect housewife, as if it were possible. Every night when I got home from work she'd be waiting in the living room, already changed from her office gear into the most provocative clothes she owned, the thinnest sun dress or the tightest jeans, sometimes lounging around in only the expensive lingerie I loved to buy her even before we could really afford it. She'd be curled up on the couch reading some frivolous romance novel, already in the mood. She'd look up as I came in, and her radiant smile would nearly knock me down as she put her face up to be kissed. She was usually eager to explain the aromas suffusing the house, what subtle herbs and spices steeped in what dish would be tonight's special dinner delectation.

I'd been reared by a father mostly away and a mother who worked, and never felt really sure of myself, but I compensated by never showing it. Act confident and people assume you are. I did, and they did, and that in turn gave me confidence enough to believe I was never wrong. Even so, I never really felt I deserved Darla, though she always begged to differ. Her job—she tells me now—was strengthening my certitude and encouraging me to take good care of her by pampering me. Her cooking was part of it. We never ate the same dish twice, and whatever it was was fabulous, yet she always seemed worried about what I'd think. I'd tell her from the bottom of my heart that every dinner was wonderful because it was created by her very own dainty hands, and then I'd kiss each of them, burying my face in her cool palms, her fingertips curling up to touch my cheeks. As if I were eating out of her hand. She liked that. She still does.

No matter how often she heard me praise her she'd smile and shake her head in disbelief, then finally toss her long blonde hair back behind her ears and like a child throw her arms around my neck and cover my face with kisses, in sheer gratitude that I loved and appreciated her no matter what. That certainly boosted my sense of self-importance! I'd start kissing her back, and as often as not we'd end up nibbling and gobbling each other, all thoughts of dinner set aside. "You're the man of the house," she'd say. "Now be the man I need!" So I'd be that, as best as I could.

Yes, I absolutely adored her! And I still do. Though not the same way.

In those days she'd seem shy whenever we began making love, and that especially helped me feel bold. Her hands would reach toward mine tentatively as I unbuttoned her blouse and reached to unhook her bra, as if despite her desires and the fact that we were married she should be trying to stop me from violating her modesty. Early in our relationship she asked me to lick her down below before we did anything else, in that nursery school voice she always used when she felt embarrassed. So I'd always begun by exposing, then kissing her most tender, private place, her little nubbin, giving it a few gentle licks. She couldn't reciprocate by sucking me off—she'd just didn't seem able to take that thing into her mouth. So I never proposed a sixty-nine,

But my tongue in her cunt was more than enough reward. I'd sit her down and spread her legs and lean my face forward into her crotch, and she'd lean back and let out a little whine, sometimes a sob, whether of anticipation or of reluctant submission I could never be sure. She'd stroke my hair as if an obedient puppy's, and sure enough, I'd begin to lick her. Bliss! Then her pussy would begin to writhe and thrust against my face, sliding up and down my nose and mouth and tongue until I was covered with her juices and there was no stopping either of us.

I should say, there was no stopping Darla. It was strange, but once aroused my Darla became another person. Her legs spread wide and as she warmed up she'd wrap them tight around my neck and nudge her pelvis at my face over and over, and maybe before I burrowed into her I'd glimpse her head lolling back as if she were a princess waiting to be amused. Then once I'd suckled her pussy and maybe her breasts, once her face was flushed and her eyes were closed, her expression tense and her teeth clenched, once her hand had lowered to my swollen, joyous tumescence and begun to tug it toward her sopping slit, she was transformed. Altogether.

She became insatiable, devouring. All modest reserve was forgotten as she tugged and thrust and ground and pushed my hands, and cock deeper into the service of her pleasure, over and over, grunting and shrieking, her hips writhing voluptuously as if demanding my whole body's penetration into her. Wave after wave of orgasmic tension and shuddering would pass through her, then rise higher still as if never high enough. She was a woman possessed, obsessive, demanding to be satisfied utterly all at once. Her pussy became a gaping mouth voraciously attempting to swallow my cock, balls, thumbs, fingers, fist, anything that came near it. All of me if it could.

I'd try to satisfy her. I'd certainly try! She'd scream out, furious for more, no matter how hard or deep I slammed myself into her, or with what, until finally she'd fall back exhausted and sobbing, I couldn't tell whether from all those racking orgasms or from desperate frustration. I have to confess it, I'd feel terribly inadequate every time that happened. Which was nearly always.

Afterward she was always ashamed that she'd lost control. As her breathing slowed and my prick softened inside her and my cum began to leak out she'd return to a more demure demeanor. As if embarrassed by her own frenzy, she'd ask if I'd very much minded that she'd been shouting "More!" and "Deeper!" at me with such ferocity, as if no matter what I hadn't performed fast or strenuously enough to meet her needs. I'd reassure her by kissing her on both eyelids—they were always closed after we'd made love, dedicated to preserving her body's afterglow. She'd open them and stare into mine with a thoughtful gravity I found utterly ravishing. So serious, as if pondering some impossible problem I'd posed her! Her face so childlike at such moments, yet somehow so adult! I'd ask her what she was thinking. She'd only smile sweetly and shake her head. And kiss me gently. After we fucked, her thoughts were her own.

It might be that then we'd go back down to dine on her marvelous cooking and tell each other about the day's activities. She'd prop me up with extravagant praise of everything I did or didn't do, and she'd ask my advice about different pending management decisions, and she'd nod appreciatively when I'd tell her what I thought. After dinner I'd settle in and read tax advisories or cases I'd bring home—I was always a little behind and trying to catch up—and she'd return to her Harlequin, or her Danielle Steele, whichever, or we'd watch a family sitcom together if the lead couple seemed cute and happy. Then once snug in bed we'd make love yet again, and she'd take charge again despite herself, until we were both spent. Or maybe we'd just cuddle.

We were the happiest couple I knew. Married for six years and settled into standard household routines in our upscale suburb, no children planned for a few more years, utterly devoted to each other. Darla had been an only child, raised by a doting father who never remarried after her mother died in an accident but instead devoted himself to her every desire, and now he too was gone. Darla's friend Karen sometimes told her that he wasn't so much gone as replaced by me, and Darla would smile sweetly and reply "Well, in some ways," whatever that meant. We had no family, either of us, only each other. My nearest relative was a half-sister who lived a thousand miles away. We'd rarely visit.

Our friends always called Darla my "child bride" even though we're about the same age, and she'd never discourage that impression. Other husbands envied me her apparent single-minded devotion to my happiness. Whatever my opinions, in anyone else's presence they were hers too. Wives especially, and some of the women where she worked, would chide her for seeming too submissive and deferential in my presence, as if she were a shadow of me with no apparent substance of her own. A doormat, even. "He's OK, but he's not your equal in lots of ways," I overheard her friend Becky tell her once, "In lots of ways he doesn't deserve you. Yet you make yourself small whenever you're near him." I didn't hear what Darla answered, but Becky then said, "Well, that makes some sense. But it does give him the odd notion that he's in charge."

Well, I was! Karen once took me aside and told me that if I really loved her I would let her go, liberate her, give her up, insist that she fly with her own wings and become her own complete person. That I'd insist she speak her own mind, do things her way, not defer to me as she does. And I'd at least help with the housework—did I know she turned down major job opportunities because she felt she had to cater to me? "Given what she does and what you do," Karen said, "You should be the housewife!"

I replied that loving is caring and marriage is commitment and partnership, that Darla was no way suppressed, she was free to do whatever she chose, and that what she chose was to live with me and maintain our home and please me. That we both liked it that way. Karen thought what I'd described was sexist patriarchal conditioning—she used words like that—not free choice, and that if I wouldn't help Darla she would. I told her she was welcome to try—Darla did have her own mind and made her own decisions.

I certainly didn't tell her that I couldn't bear to part from Darla. I needed her support and love as much as she seemed to need mine. I never told that even to Darla, it seemed somehow unmanly, shameful. I preferred to think of myself as her sturdy oak and Darla as my clinging vine.

Darla did in fact have her own life and career. Twice she'd been promoted for her innovations and her managerial efficiency at the HMO where both she and Karen were both high-powered Health Systems Administrators. At work she was a thoroughgoing professional, exacting in knowledge of procedures, easy to work with but scrupulously demanding, lavish with praise but intolerant of error, quick to foresee problems and recommend effective action. Strong, able, and decisive. I was as proud of her career as I was of my own. I'd tell her I had no idea how she managed to keep everything going at the office and yet also at home. Sometimes, she confessed to me, she didn't either.

Because at home she was always my docile kitten, all purring and pink satin ribbons, and I was the center of her world. No matter how uncertain of myself I might be elsewhere, at home with her I was a King ruling over one gorgeous, adoring subject. Sort of like her father, maybe. Until a few months ago.

First Week—Friday

One evening a few months ago I came home early from our weekly TGIF office bash, eager as always to get close to Darla after a full day of dealing with tensions at work. This time I was a little annoyed. I'd asked my secretary Michelle to interrupt her tete a tete with a handsome new Law Associate to pull files I wanted to review for two complicated pending cases. She'd glanced at me and said "This weekend? Not a chance. Don't even think of it. Don't worry, they'll be here Monday." Then she returned to her young man as if I weren't there.

Her insolence startled me and I was still irked by it, still puzzled what to do about it, when I arrived home and found that for once the living room was empty. No Darla. No delicious aromas from the kitchen. Worry pushed all other thoughts out of my head. My Darla wasn't upstairs either. I called out her name! Silence. I glanced out an upstairs window.

There she was, thank God! But she was wandering randomly it seemed along the floral walk in our back garden, leaning over now and then to pick flowers for our dinner table I supposed, then absent-mindedly breaking their stems or snapping off their heads, one after another. Plainly, disturbed by her thoughts! This troubled me. My Darla should never feel disturbed by her thoughts!

I came down and stepped out through a slider and just stood there watching this ritual for a minute or so. "Bad day at the office?" I asked her suddenly. She looked up, her mind still altogether elsewhere, for a moment at a loss who had spoken to her! Then she just looked at me uneasily, her head angled. She'd burnt dinner? No problem, we'd go out or order in, whatever! Whatever it was, I held out my arms to invite her into them and comfort her. I liked imagining I was a safe harbor to preserve her from all of life's tempests.

She came slowly toward me as if she shouldn't. Darla is about my size, but she could disappear altogether into my arms when I hugged her. She wanted me to think I was her whole world, she once explained to me when I'd surrounded her with my embrace. "You mean I'm not?" I asked her, half-joking. She just smiled. It was hard not to think of her as a child—she encouraged it so I'd feel more grown up. She told me so once.

But this time she didn't come running into my arms for the big hug that would make everything all right again. She just stood there clutching a few zinnias by their thin stems, staring at me as if I were a stranger. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. Obviously she was reluctant to say something I might not like.

"Let's go into the living room, sweetie," I said in my kindest, most coaxing manner. "And then you'll tell me all about it."

"No, Nicholas," she said. I was dumbfounded. So formal! She always called me "Nickie," or "honey" or "snuggle bear," cute diminutives like that—she once said that even calling me "darling" sometimes made her feel too grown up, too much claiming to be my equal. But now she was distancing herself! Why?

She saw bewilderment in my face, and added, "I don't want to shake your world, Nick, but now finally it's unavoidable. I need to stand my ground right here. Because if we go into the living room I just might start playing the little girl again, because I always do, because that's where you're sweet to me and that's how I want it and you expect it. Then afterward it wouldn't seem right for me to stand firm and say things that could hurt you. So I've got to say them right here."

"All right," I said. I already felt hurt. Was I the problem, somehow? I was worried. "Here's where we'll talk. But can I fetch us some wine first? And can we sit while you tell me what mean thing is bothering you."

"You sit, Nick. I'll stand when I say this. But I'd love some wine, thank you." She then produced a wry grin. "When you hear what I've got to say you'll probably want something stronger, so why not get yourself one right now?"

"Wine is fine, honey," I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster. "I want what you want!"

And as I turned to go inside to open the bottle I'd set chilling that morning, I heard her say out loud to the flowers and the shrubs and the air, "Well, we'll see!"

When I came out again I handed her a glass and sat down. Darla just looked at me for a moment, as if I were someone at work she'd been told to downsize. Regretfully. Then suddenly she gathered herself up and became much more brisk, more decisive. She set her wine down untouched.

"Last year," she began, "Karen took a course at the Women's Center downtown that changed her life. Roger's life too. Their marriage was unsatisfactory and they were near a divorce then, you know? You hadn't known? Well, they were. But now they're very different, practically inseparable. Roger even quit his job, he works with us at the HMO now. Not really with us, for us, he's entry level as a filing clerk. That keeps his mind clear for the other things she wants him to be thinking about. He sees a lot of Karen in the course of the day—she gives him his orders, he reports back to her, and so forth, and that's saved their marriage. You didn't know?"

I shook my head. I didn't. Roger had been an arrogant, tough-minded MBA on his firm's fast track. And now content to be a filing clerk? Karen's doing, obviously. But how was a mystery!

She paused, and took a breath.

Then continued. "Well, Becky signed up for the same course this year. She hopes for a similar result with Jason." She paused again. Then added crisply, "I've signed up too. I should have consulted you first so you'd feel more involved right off, maybe, because it's a serious commitment for both of us. But I finally decided it wasn't necessary, it's what I want to do, so I know you'll want me to do it, and that you'll be glad to help me." Her voice ended on an upward inflection, as if she were not quite sure, but then she added firmly, "You will help me, honey, because I want you to. We both know it." And her gray eyes looked at me steadily.

"Of course, dear," I said. I took a sip of wine and realized that for the first time I didn't feel we were cordially chatting, me eliciting information from Darla so I could make decisions for her. Instead I felt like a client being informed he's been plea-bargained into serving time, like it or not. If Karen was behind this, I was suspicious. "And what kind of course is this that you think will change your life the way it changed Karen's?"

Somehow my patronizing tone nettled her. She ignored the words and addressed instead the way they sounded. Not my wife but the HMO's efficient executive administrator replied sharply. "I don't just 'think' it, Nicholas, I've no doubt whatever that it will change our lives. OUR lives. It's called 'Assertion and Empathy Training.' It starts tonight, and I'll be going in to the Center for a training session every Friday night from now on, for a few months anyhow, maybe less, maybe longer, depending on results. We set our own goals. Sometimes it takes only a month. We may be lucky."

I suddenly felt relieved. If Darla wanted to spend her Friday evenings doing Assertive Empathy Training, or Primal Screaming, or Aroma Therapy, or whatever this year's women's fad, that was fine. Sure. "That's just fine, Darla!" I said, hoping my enthusiasm didn't sound too forced. "I do hope the course does everything you wish. I'll miss being with you all those Friday evenings of course. But I'm sure we can make it up over the weekend. Just how am I involved?"

Darla suddenly sat down at the patio table and picked up her wine glass. Her eyes were still leveled at me and she ignored my question. Instead, she asked in an even tone of voice, "Then you approve? You'll cooperate?"

"Why of course I will!" I said egregiously. Then too late, the lawyer in me woke up. "Cooperate how?" I asked.

Now Darla turned evasive, even a little girlish. "I'm so relieved! You've just made me so happy!" she burst out. "I'll take you at your word, sweetheart! Good!" She took a tentative sip, still staring at me. "I've been so worried that you might not agree. I really don't want to leave you."

Leave me? I suddenly felt frightened. What was this?

She didn't seem to notice. She sipped her wine again and looked into the glass approvingly, then her eyes turned to focus again on mine. Emphatically but impersonally, as if she were behind her desk and orienting a new member of her staff. "Here's how you're involved, honey. First, the course runs weekly with no breaks, that's how it gets results. So our winter holiday down south may need to be postponed—and if we do go, it'll be quite different from our usual winter holiday." She shifted her hips in the chair and glanced down again with a slight smile, then back up at me. "Certainly for you. Very much so."

"That's no hardship, Darla," I said, beginning to worry about just how intrusive this was going to be. "Not if this thing means that much to you."

"It does," Darla said, then without missing a beat, "Secondly, each Friday night there's a training and discussion session at the Women's Center for the facilitators, that's us, all the wives and girlfriends who are doing the course. Saturdays and Sundays we apply what we've learned, that's our homework I guess you'd call it. Some things we keep going during the week. So it isn't just Friday evenings. We're busy with it all weekend. Or more."

This was beginning to look like a lost Fall and Winter. My wife loaded with homework every weekend? I wondered what I'd be doing while she was busy. There weren't that many games on the tube. I supposed I'd read, or visit with the guys. Becky's husband Jason would also be at loose ends, and I hadn't seen Roger for nearly a year. Catch up more casework maybe?

"Darla," I asked a little plaintively. "Won't we be doing anything together while this course is filling up all your free time?"

Now Darla just looked at me. Then suddenly she stood again, and I realized that she hadn't changed into something more comfortable when she'd arrived home—she was still dressed in her power outfit, a business suit, jacket and skirt and blouse, with a flowing scarf at the neck that somehow asserted her femininity without implying weakness. "Nick, you don't understand yet, do you? By "we" I don't mean just me and the other women in the course. I mean me and you. You're the person I'll be training, you'll be the one developing empathy. We'll be together practically every moment every weekend, and it's advisable during the week too. Except for Friday evenings when I'm at the Women's Center. And except when you're doing your exercises. There're a lot of them, mostly writing, and some lab work in a manner of speaking, some field exercises I guess you'd call them. Real life tests. I give you projects and assignments and leave you alone to do them, and you write them up, and then I judge what you've done and we discuss them. Maybe you do them again. Now and then you do something on your own."

I was bewildered. I just stared up at her.

She looked back down at me, and a faint smile turned up the corners of her mouth. "Think about it, sweetie. I learn how to be more assertive with you. I haven't been, not at all, you'll have to grant that. You learn to be much more sensitive and understanding about how I think and feel, you learn to share in whatever I'm thinking and feeling, that's what empathy is. Sympathy is what you feel for a person while keeping your distance, but empathy is what you feel as if you are that person, that's what the course stresses. You'll write out how you feel about some things, and then how you imagine I feel about them, about all sorts of things. I read what you've written and correct your misimpressions. Then I give you more assignments. This course is designed to raise our consciousness of each other, mainly yours of me. It will change our relationship. We'll both be very different when it's over, I'm sure. I think better. I hope so. Some relationships don't survive it, of course. We'll see about us!"

Even more frightening! "What's wrong with our relationship now?" I asked in a small voice, wishing this whole conversation were somewhere else between two other people.

"That's the first lesson, Nick. Tonight's. I could tell you, but it's better if you find out for yourself. I'm off soon for my first session, and tomorrow morning you'll begin yours, and then we'll both know. That's how the course works."

This was not my sweet Darla. Things somehow had already begun to change.

She glanced at her watch, then looked at me gratefully, more like my old Darla. "I'm so glad you've agreed to do this, Nick. I really am. It shows there's still hope for us."

Again I was silent, just staring at her. Hope? What was she talking about? Were things that bad? I'd thought they were perfect! She reached over and picked up her wine glass again, now quite relaxed, and sipped again at her wine. "Are you sure you don't want something stronger to drink?," she asked me. "A stiff one will do you good!" She smiled to herself as she heard the innuendo in what she'd said. Until this moment she'd have blushed. But now she only added, "Though if this works out you'll have plenty. Oh, while you're in the house, phone for a pizza, or we'll have nothing to eat before I have to go."

Then she actually dismissed me with her eyes! As if I were some errant staff member just called to account in her office! She turned away and headed down the path to gather flowers again. But this time all concentration, her mind composed, now not in the slightest distracted. When the pizza arrived we ate it mostly in silence. I asked her about problems at work, and she declined to describe any. So I told her about Michelle's insubordination, and she commented only, "I don't wonder."

Near midnight she came home from her first session looking self-assured, confident, at ease with herself. Her body seemed somehow less soft, strengthened in some odd way, even wiry. Without a word she handed me a single sheet with my first writing assignment typed on it. It said I was to write for three hours describing as sensitively as I could some one extremely intimate experience we'd shared, a sexual experience, first from my point of view, then from what I imagined was her point of view.

Not too bad. Darla had mentioned there'd be writing, and I had no problem with that. That's what lawyers mostly do. I'm always arguing something or other for someone or other. I'm used to adopting other people's points of view and anticipating their arguments. In the morning I'd write, and in the afternoon we'd discuss whatever I wrote, and she'd reveal to me maybe for the first time how she'd really felt during that intimate experience, whatever I thought she was feeling. No harm in that. She paused and looked at me, waiting for a response.

She was so charming, this newly assertive Darla, that I couldn't really object. Remembering some one intimate moment with Darla would be fun, a little like writing pornography for her eyes only. So I kissed her on the tip of her nose and told her I'd be happy to do it, first thing tomorrow, though I didn't see how it would take up the whole weekend. She didn't respond. So I took her hand and started to lead her upstairs to bed.

She immediately withdrew her hand from mine but then accompanied me up the stairs anyhow. "This is one of the things we discussed tonight," she said. "From now on, if we go to bed together, it's only because I want it. You don't lead me. On Fridays there'll be no sex, because that would take the edge off your Saturday morning assignments. I want you to feel wanting on Saturdays, hard up, especially anxious to please me. That way you'll concentrate better on your assignments. Sundays too. There may be sex of some sort on some weekends as a reward, or as part of the learning experience. And that's what we'll call it, 'sex,' because that's what it is. You can love someone but have sex with someone else, they're different. Love is how we feel about each other, maybe, and sex is what we do with each other. Or don't do, except maybe certain limited kinds I'll allow you. Maybe."

Bummer! For maybe months? Was that why last year Karen's husband Roger pulled out of our monthly poker game, and we hadn't seen him since? Quit his job too, all in order dance attendance on Karen? He was that hard up?

"We should have Karen and Roger over," I said. "And find out how they dealt with these assignments and things."

"Don't worry Nick, we will, but not soon! After you've shaped up." Her tone was peculiar, partly agreeable and reassuring, yet also partly resolute, as if she were telling me there'd better be no argument about it. I glanced at her, but her face looked composed enough.

We undressed for bed, and as I changed into my pajamas she slipped off her skirt, blouse, and jacket and hung them away. I'd seen her do this hundreds of times, thousands, but this time there was something different in the way it affected me! In how she carried her body? A certain poised ease, an unconcern with what I thought of her? I simply couldn't look away. As she reached into her closet, her slip twisted into tight folds across her figure, and her ripe breasts thrust above her waist and the melons of her tush curved down below. She was still wearing the stiletto heels she always wore with that business suit, no doubt for height and authority. Her instep still arched arrogantly, like a ballerina's. I held my breath and just watched.

She bent far forward and crossed her arms and pinched the hem of her slip with each hand, then lifted it high over her head. Then she paused for a moment as if daydreaming. I looked on in awe. Just stunning, my wife, my sweet goddess! There she was now, almost naked, her creamy white breasts spilling their abundance out of her delicate lilac-lace bra, her matching lilac lace panties and satin garter-belt clasping and caressing her sweet ass, those globes I'd grasped so often when plunging myself into her. And below were her long legs, tubes of sheer, shining black nylon tipped finally by those high, thin heels.

"Wow!" I said without thinking. I don't think I'd ever seen her looking so provocative!

She glanced over and saw me staring worshipfully at her, my pajama pants now poked far out by an enormous boner, and she looked quite pleased. "That's how I want you, honey," was all she said. She sounded smug as she reached down to detach her garters and unroll those black nylon encasements from her legs. "And that's how it'll be until you earn the right to ease yourself." She grinned at me now. "Oh, yes, I forgot to mention, you're not to touch yourself without my permission. No masturbating from now on, not for the rest of the course. A horny erection is a girl's best ally when a man needs to change his ways. Our discussion leader told us to think of a cock as a kind of dog leash a man leaves hanging down there for us to use. 'If it's hard,' she said, 'a single jerk on it brings him to heel, ready to sit up and beg.'" She grinned. "Abstinence will be good for you, sweetheart. You'll appreciate me more."

"I appreciate you plenty now, Darla," I said devoutly.

Still strangely spellbound by her new self-assurance, I was entranced as she reached behind her, elbows like small wings on either side of her torso, bent forward, and unhooked her bra, and then I watched fascinated as her heavy breasts swung free, their nipples engorged. My lips involuntarily pursed and my cock began to throb. I wanted her so desperately at that moment! My lawyer's mind reached for arguments. "When I can't make love to you, Darla honey, aren't you unfairly deprived? We're equal partners in bed, aren't we?"

"Oh, I've got no problems like yours, honey," she said, glancing again at that outcropping on my groin. It lurched as she spoke. "And in fact, we aren't equal. I'm sure you've noticed how I always take charge when we're ... having sex? That's my real nature. It's subdued most of the time, so you won't feel threatened. But now it needs to become dominant." Now she was altogether nude, and I could only stare! She was so luscious! "I've felt apologetic about it I suppose because I was raised to believe that women should submit to men's desires. Well, from now on I'll have sex when I want it, only then, and how I want it, and there'll be no apologies. I will be satisfied." She paused. "I'll have it. We'll have it when you deserve it. I do hope you will."

She reached high up over her head again, and as her breasts rose up I caught my breath again. A dainty nightgown fluttered down over her beautiful head and shoulders, its pink lacy edges cascading over her breasts to pause just past her neatly trimmed blonde bush. Her labia were really swollen. I guess she was really getting off on this power trip of hers.

"With that prick of yours poking out the way it is, honey," she said in a kindly voice, "you'd better sleep on your back tonight. I don't want you humping the mattress until you've turned in several acceptable assignments."

I tried again. "Darla, we both suffer if I don't turn in acceptable assignments, don't we?" I said. "This isn't fair, to you I mean, is it?"

I was so overwrought from watching that naked ass tossing itself under the hem of her nightie that my prick nearly went ballistic. A wet spot started where I throbbed against my pajamas.

"Oh, I can take care of myself," she replied. "I learned tonight. It's our opening exercise each Friday, a kind of pledge of allegiance to ourselves. We get pointers on how to improve our techniques. I just use my pussy muscles. Watch, no hands and no man!"

She stood still, facing me, areolas dark shadows behind those enormous jutting nipples. I'd never realized her breasts were so huge on that body! They held her nightie at least six inches away from her body as it descended in free fall from those outcropped nipple tips down to her crotch level. I sat down on the bed. Maybe my stiff pole would recede into my lap if I sat? It didn't. Maybe it would be less noticeable? It wasn't.

Then Darla closed her eyes and began to sway her hips gently, barely rotating her pelvis into a restrained bump-and-grind. The movement was too inconspicuous to be bawdy but too obvious to be casual or any way genteel. A satisfied smile gradually spread across her face as she concentrated on her feelings. A seductive sensation seemed to be rising out of her loins. Her face grew intent, then pained. Her undulations intensified. Then suddenly she cried out "Ahhh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Ohhhhhhhhhhh!" and she seemed to catch her breath, and then sag, just slightly, as if spent. Then as she recovered her breath and opened her eyes again, she saw me watching her closely, my face concerned.

"No, honey," she said, still breathing rapidly, "It isn't as good as with you inside me." She stopped for a second, then added, "No, I shouldn't say that any more—it gives you a false sense of entitlement. What I mean is, it isn't as good as when a man's stiff prick is inside me. Like that one you've got. Or bigger." She smiled at how that sounded, and straightened her shoulders, then smiled again when she saw the consternation on my face. But she continued as if there were nothing wrong, "Or a really long, thick dildo, something solid I can clamp down on." Then she added, "No, not as good, but it'll do!"

I was still shocked, but she paid no attention. Her thoughts began drifting. "I'd always wondered about Beth," she mused, "a girl I knew in high school, not too bright, I'd always wondered what she was doing in Math class, wriggling slightly and moaning. This, I guess. It's wonderful, really! No hands, and barely detectable. I can do it for myself any time, even during staff meetings!"

She looked directly at me. "But you're not to do anything for your self, nothing at all! You need to be eager to please me any time for the next few months. That pretty penis of yours is off limits to your hands unless I say otherwise! And to the mattress. And to any doors or walls or cushions or knotholes or stray dogs in heat that may take your fancy when you get really hard up! Understood?"

I looked down at that stiff rod in my lap, still fully erect. So near and yet so far. Would I want to cheat when she wasn't watching me? Could she tell, somehow? I nodded.

"They told us that the men in our lives will cheat and can't be trusted. So they gave us each one of these things to use on them. Bring that thing over here, would you please?"

I did eagerly, and stood expectant in front of her. She slipped something that looked like an thick elastic sock over my hard on, and tightened a plastic clip at its base.

"There! That's part of a chastity device. They want us to install one now and leave it on until the course is done. But I'll use only this liner part, and leave it on you only for tonight, and I'll cut it off you tomorrow morning. Just so you'll know I can, that I'm serious. I want voluntary compliance, self-discipline, conformity from within, nothing compelled. If I don't get it we'll both regret it, Nick, because that moment, we're finished as a couple. This tells you that you don't play with yourself, and you don't cum, unless I say so. Am I clear?"

"Yes," I said hastily. Clear enough! Then to take my mind off my imprisoned boner I asked Darla, "What's that plug for, on this device?"

"It's an electric connection for a controller, to shock your penis if it should get an erection. I don't want that for you. I like the idea that you're hard up."

I had nothing to say to that. After I moment I asked her dryly, "What else did they teach you tonight, besides how to have sex without me and how to deprive me of sex without you? I thought this was 'Assertive Empathy Training.'"

"Oh, it is! It teaches us to assert ourselves against oppressive patriarchies! That's you. How to empower ourselves. How husbands are the main obstacles to our own self-realization. That's why this course is mostly how to re-train you to understand and accept the new me. That's where the empathy comes in. It applies to all the men in our lives. I even told everyone about my father."

"What about your father? Isn't he beyond re-training now?"

A glance told me she didn't appreciate my irony. "After Mom died he really spoiled me. I was the one girl left in his life, and I learned quickly that I could get anything I wanted from him by continuing to play the little girl. So I did. The way I've done with you. It's a kind of blackmail."

"Blackmail? You mean you'd threaten a tantrum if you didn't get what you wanted?"

"No, I mean he'd blackmail me that way. Emotionally. The way you do. By making me feel guilty if I declare what I want directly. By threatening to withhold affection if I stop playing your dear little girl, if I should move toward assuming my own proper prerogatives."

We'd never used words like "threatening" or "prerogatives" with each other! And I'd never done that! I'd never threatened anything! My Darla had fallen into the toils of Women's Libbers! Maybe even man-hating lesbians? I realized I'd better watch my step, or I really might lose her altogether, the way she was talking. That thought was terrifying! I loved her! She was my darling, my life! There'd be no disagreements!

So all I responded was, "So you yielded to your father's blackmail? He always seemed mild and undemanding enough to me."

"Oh, yes. That's how he became after I learned how to deal with him directly. The way I'll be dealing with you. By asserting myself firmly, I pretty much got him willing to agree to anything, and I really tested him!" She smiled to herself, reminiscing. "He needed me way more than I needed him. He got to be dependent on me. I learned how to use that need to my own advantage."

She smiled at me and tossed her head, almost disdainfully, it seemed. "We talked about it tonight. Men feel fulfilled when they're submissive to women. They deny it, and they bury it under all those macho attitudes and postures, but it's there. Being a "gentleman" and serving women, helping them with their coats and opening doors and being of service to them, that's what they love. Their mothers inculcate it, and they're hard-wired by evolution to be that way, to protect and serve all the girls and women in their lives. I finally learned to do with my Dad what my Mom once did. Instead of wheedling and coaxing him, I ordered him to do things. And I humiliated him when he didn't, the way Mom did when she was alive. He was used to it. He ended up grateful, much happier, when I let him wait on me hand and foot."

She suddenly stopped and looked closely at me, to see if she'd said too much. I'd heard, but I wasn't listening that carefully—my cock was still throbbing inside its thick package.

"Let's go to bed," she said finally. "Just lie on your back. You can put one hand on my hip if you need to feel consoled, but just this one night."

I lay next to her. At first she turned away from me and wriggled her hip into the mattress to get comfortable, then her breathing grew deep and regular. I stared at the ceiling and at the mound my encased prick pushed up under the blanket, wishing this whole thing were over so we could get back to the way things were. I put my hand gently on Darla's hip and realized that it was tensing, rotating ever so slightly again, and that her breathing was getting more ragged. Then she sighed "Ahhhhh! Aaaahhhhhhhh!" a few times and stretched herself luxuriously, cat-like. Then she fell asleep.

My cock throbbed as I too fell asleep.

First Week—Saturday

In the morning when I woke up I was still rigid. As I often did every Saturday when I got up first, I fixed Darla's breakfast and brought it to her in bed. She opened her eyes and saw the tray straight away and then my cock underneath jutting toward her like a hot dog in a bun, and she looked amused. I set the tray down, and she reached into a bedside drawer, took up a pair of manicure scissors, snipped off the plastic band, removed the chastity sock and tossed it to one side, and then said, "I think you'll remember now." As if I could forget!

After breakfast I settled into my study and turned on the computer and decided that the intimate moment I would write about was the first time we'd made real love together—had sex together, she'd want me to say now—just about when we'd decided not to date anyone else and to start going steady. That was the first time we'd let desire sweep us past all the preliminaries, all the kissing and necking and fingering and making out, the first time we'd wrapped ourselves around each other naked and screwed each other silly. I remembered that it was as wonderful for her as it was for me, the culmination of months of waiting, our first complete act of love and trust, the moment when our most urgent desires were finally realized. It had yielded for her the same glowing certainty I felt afterward, that we were marvelously compatible physically as well as all the other ways, that we were soulmates, meant for each other. I'd never felt as close to anyone before then. My first moment inside her was so sweet, I could still feel it! She was so tight I could scarcely move once I'd inserted myself. I'd lain on top of her and pushed and thrust myself into her and filled my mouth with her astonishing breasts. Then ....

I typed steadily for three hours while elsewhere in the house Darla was doing her Saturday morning stretch-Yoga and chatting cheerfully on the phone. Then I printed out.

After lunch Darla asked me to clear away the dishes while she carried the pages into the living room and read them carefully, saying nothing until she'd finished the last page. Then she set them down and called me in, motioned for me to come toward her, to sit on the floor opposite her easy chair—usually my easy chair, the seat of household authority, she'd taken it over. That was odd, but I did it. This was her game, after all. I later found that was where she wanted me whenever I was waiting for her to come home from her Friday sessions and whenever we needed to talk, especially when I hadn't done well.

"What you remember may be what you actually felt," she began. "But it's clear you had no idea what I was feeling. And you still have no idea."

"No?" I looked at her. Here she was, perched in the chair where we'd made glorious love together as recently as three days ago. Darla looked so cute, and her face was so solemn! But I tried to listen to her. Then as my heart fell I couldn't help but listen.

She laid it out in a quiet voice, gaining confidence as she spoke. My essay was altogether lacking in empathy or understanding. I was mistaken about how she felt about sex back then. She'd done it with me only because I'd repeatedly insisted, because I'd always turned bitter every time she refused to give me that last full measure of devotion. She wasn't a prude—she'd once lived briefly with an earlier boyfriend—but she'd known almost immediately that with me it was a different kind of relationship, serious. She'd really wanted to wait until we were married and belonged to each other. It was old-fashioned of her, but she didn't want it to seem like one more casual fling, that was how she felt. She'd yielded to me against her will, to some extent again and again ever since then. She always felt somehow that though she belonged to me, I belonged to my desires, not to her. That may be why even in the deepest throes of sex she always felt unsatisfied. That could be one reason why she always cried out for more no matter how strenuously I was cramming myself at her. That's why now she needed to change our relationship.

Then she told me that when I'd first pushed myself into her she wasn't ready, not quite in the mood, and I'd hurt her. That when she'd bitten her lower lip that night it wasn't passion, as I'd assumed in my smug pride, it was to keep from crying out in pain. She'd asked me to lick her pussy every time we had sex since then not because she craved oral sex, not then, but to be sure I'd never enter her again when she wasn't already wet.

Moreover, there was something pressing, urgent about the way I made love, as if I was trying to prove something that I doubted deep down. She'd wondered about it—maybe I was proving to myself that I wasn't gay? Maybe there was that side of me too, and in all honesty I should acknowledge it? She'd noticed that any time gay sex came up as a topic, or she'd tell me about a gay couple we both knew, I seemed to block off in my mind any thought of what their sex might be like. Was I afraid to consider such ideas? She enjoyed sex with a man, so my inability to imagine it probably closed me off utterly from understanding how and why she enjoyed it.

Or was it that in my heart I simply doubted that I was man enough for her? She'd decided yes, because it explained my overeager lovemaking, and she'd since devoted much effort to supporting my sense of sufficiency. Yes, she knew about how my parents hadn't been there to build self-confidence in me when young, but it was well past time I grew up! If I wasn't man enough for her, that was not something to deny but something to acknowledge and deal with.

She'd thought of calling off our engagement a few times before we were married, because I was so insensitive to her physical needs. She'd hint at them, difficult as it was for her to speak of such intimate matters, but I'd never really listen. She'd married me as planned because she didn't want to disappoint her girlfriends, those who cared for her and knew how she felt, especially her would-be bridesmaids. "He's just clueless, like most guys, " one had told her. "Play the sweet goody goody, the way he expects, probably needs." That's what she'd done, as with her father while growing up, and now she felt trapped in the role. "You can always change him afterward, the way you changed your father," another had advised. And that's what she was now doing. Finally.

It didn't sound too good to me. What did this mean? While we were dating I'd noticed that her father most of the time was a wraith in shirtsleeves who watched TV or sat at the dinner table, said little, asked for nothing, and was never consulted. I couldn't connect him with the hearty man in his wedding photo, arm wrapped around a smiling bride, a self-confident former all star athlete. Once, when we'd wanted the sitting room to ourselves, Darla had told him it was his bed-time, and without a word he'd gone upstairs. I'd wondered then if like many daughters, Darla would expect her husband to be like her father. But it didn't seem so, nor did it worry me. I knew I'd never end up like him. Too much pride, I'd never allow it.

Though not when she told me all these things. I felt crushed. Humiliated. Somehow found out. I apologized. I told her I wished I'd known how she really felt. That I was a brute, self-centered and conceited. I told her that I really did love her, with all my heart. That I wanted to make a new beginning.

She said she knew that. She told me that not whether I loved her but how I loved her was the issue. She was willing to begin again. But it would have to be her way this time. It was not going to be easy for me.

Then she then set the first condition for our ongoing relationship, that for now it was only a relationship, not a marriage, not an institution to reinforce my patriarchal domination of her. All bets and assumptions were off. We were living together on her sufferance.

The second was that on weekends she was in sole charge. We were not equal partners, as I'd imagined while I was lording it over her. We weren't partners at all. To stay reminded of this, on weekends I would no longer call her "Darla" nor any of the many pet names I had for her, but "Miss Darla" or "ma'am," which she told me was the only respectful way a man like me should address the woman of the house. She didn't want me feeling too familiar or intimate or casually comfortable in her presence. Especially if I needed correcting or chastising.

"Darla," I objected....

She glared at me. Then said emphatically, "I think we'll extend that requirement. You'll speak properly to me even on weekdays, so you won't ever forget the courtesy you owe me. You can call me 'Darla' or any endearment you choose when there are others present. I may not answer to that name, but you can use it. Otherwise I am 'ma'am' or 'Miss Darla' to you from now on. I am reclaiming my status as a single woman. We are not married. You no longer have claims on me as a husband!"

I was appalled! Was she dissolving six years of happy—I'd thought they were happy—married intimacy, just by adding a single syllable to her name? Apparently so. All I could do was stare!

"Now rewrite this three hours of male crowing. This time from my point of view as I've explained it. I want to see how close you can come to thinking what I think, feeling what I feel. Put yourself in my place and tell the story again." She handed me the sheaf of papers and I took it.

Later that afternoon I gave her a new account in which I imagined myself in Darla's situation, even in her body. How she felt when my own body approached hers and consummated our relationship. Scared and annoyed and also maybe trapped by her need to indulge me. Despite everything turned on by the sex despite how she felt about me, really craving it, I couldn't leave that out. And dissatisfied there too. Darla read the new essay expressionlessly, glanced once at me, and said nothing. I suppose that was something, anyhow.

I was even less happy that night when 'Miss Darla' moved me out of our bedroom into the guest bedroom. I objected, but she simply said, "Did I say I wanted a new beginning, Nicholas, or did you say it? Of course if you want it to end right here...."

I hurriedly assured her I didn't, and she seemed to relent for a moment. She walked with me from our bed to the doorway of our bedroom, ours no longer, and as I stepped out into the hall I couldn't help it, I turned back to look for a moment at that room, that bed we'd shared for six years, mine too until just a few minutes ago. I was near tears.

She saw, and the old Darla almost came to the surface. She placed a hand on my cheek. "Poor baby," she said sympathetically. "I know. We have a long way to go, but it'll be better for us in the end. For both of us. You'll see."

Then she stepped back and said, "Remember to sleep on your back and to keep your hands where they belong." And she closed the door in my face.

First Week—Sunday

The next morning she told me to write down how I'd felt about my first night alone, and how I thought she felt. I wrote that I was lonely and missed her terribly, and that she probably felt luxuriously free of my condescending attitudes toward her and regretful that she had to do it, and I brought it to her. She looked up once while reading and said, "No, pitying, not regretful." Then handing it back she said, "I especially want you to write down any rebellious thoughts you may have during this process. If you don't and I find you've had any, that's the moment you move out of the house, or I do." She then told me to empty my things from the closet and bureau in her bedroom and bring them into my new bedroom. She needed the space and the privacy. She didn't ever want me in there uninvited. I did. What else could I do?

That afternoon Darla changed from jeans into a dress and went out without saying a word to me about where she was going or when she'd be back. This had never happened before, and I was a little concerned. She feels no way accountable to me for her movements any more, I supposed. My mind wandered into worst cases. What if she got into an accident? Or was abducted?

Worse still, what if she'd gone out to meet a man? Someone else? My imagination took hold. What if it was one of those young guys in her office who are always trying their luck with any of the attractive women they run into? What would I do if she were to leave the house some afternoon looking cool and well-dressed, like now, and not return until early the next morning looking flushed and mussed? What could I do? Give up trying to preserve our marriage? Our former marriage? Could I still care for such a sexually liberated Darla? Could I share her? Would I want to? Would I have to leave her if she took up with other men? Or seemed to take up with them? What if it turned out that despite suspicious-looking behavior on her part, what she had actually done was irreproachable? What if it turned out that my fears and reproaches were irrelevant? Were we still married as far as fidelity went? Did I own her?

These questions were so distressing I had to push them aside. Darla returned a few hours later looking flushed and mussed, her arms filled with groceries I'd noticed we needed, commenting on extraordinary crowds and long lines at the supermarket. She seemed casual enough. But why had she changed to a dress to go grocery shopping? Was that amusement I saw in her eyes when she saw the worry in mine? Did she change only in order to worry me?

When the groceries were put away she came into the living room and unexpectedly leaned over and turned off the game I was watching on TV. I looked up at her, wondering if she was angry at me, or vindictive, or playful, or what? She looked back down at me, and then smiled, and slowly, with both hands, she hiked up her skirt. I saw she wasn't wearing panties. There was her beautiful bush, fully exposed. Looking straight down at me the whole time, she backed over to her easy chair and sat down and leaned back and then spread her legs wide apart.

"C'mere baby," she said. "Come put your head in my lap!"

I knelt in front of her and looked for her lap. There was none, only her two thighs spread wide apart. I understood.

So I dove into her, and only seconds later I was licking her delicate pussy lips while her writhing wiped its liquor all over my face. Her arms braced across the back of the couch, her breasts were thrust forward, and her hips twisting obscenely to spread it all over my nose and mouth and chin. After a week of no fucking, she was incredibly juicy. She came almost at once, and immediately started building toward a second climax. She called out "Oh? Ah? Ah! Ahhhhh!"as if they were questions and affirmations in rising crescendo as my tongue flicked her clit, her cries panting closer and closer together. Then came a piercing scream, unforgettable, often her ultimate orgasmic declaration, a long-drawn out cry that was actually a little frightening. Her legs clamped down hard on my head and pulled my face tight into her cunt. I could feel all that slick, wet membrane fluttering, pulsing, squeezing slippery juices into my nose and eyes and mouth, and only as the throbbing waned did her legs relax and allow me to draw a deep breath!

I seized her around the waist and began to haul myself up onto her, ready now at last to sink my neglected and aggrieved, iron-hard cock deep into that soaked pit, one hand fumbling to maneuver it out though my fly—never mind trying to get my pants down. "NO!" she said, still gasping to catch her breath. "No, Nick, stay on your knees! This is for MY pleasure! Your pleasure is in giving me pleasure!"

I was astonished and appalled! "Darla!" I began to plead. "Miss Darla!" I remembered to add quickly.

"That's better!" she said. "Now take your hand away from that thing down there! That's it! I know your poor balls are aching, and I do feel sorry for them, but there will be no relief for them this week!

She pushed me back down with both arms and then continued, her voice kindly, "We'll have just one kind of sex at a time! No more trying for everything and not getting enough of anything! Your face felt very good in there, what you just did. So do it again!"

So I sank back down. She lolled back, this time at her ease, and again I sank to my knees and planted my nose where it could nuzzle her clit, and pushed my tongue into that drenched cavern just below. It took a long time before she resumed rotating and pushing her crotch into my face while I slurped and lapped and sucked and gasped and smooched her. Finally she came again with a loud, languorous, full-bodied sigh, her thighs again wrapped tight around my neck. Then she relaxed again.

This time I felt defeated. My neck and my jaw ached, and I'm sure I looked a little mournful when I looked up at her to see if she was through for now. She had her eyes closed while she again recovered her breath.

When she opened them, she said, "Aw, you poor dear! Don't look so sad, Nick! You have every reason to feel proud. You did well. That was very good! I should rent you out, you're so good at this! Now just sit back while I go clean myself up, Or better, why don't you see if you can fix us something nice for dinner. Oh yes, don't wipe your face. I want to see it looking nice and shiny like that for a while longer, to remind me where it's been. And I want you to enjoy the aroma. To get used to it, so you'll miss it when it isn't there. Your face between my legs should come eventually feel like where you belong. Like home."

I did as she requested. I laid out a light Sunday supper with my face and hair still soaked and sticky, and as we ate she now and then looked across at me with a little girl's delight. She felt playful. "I bet you're wondering why I put on a dress just to go the supermarket, and just when it was that I took off my panties. Aren't you?"

I just looked uneasy, the way I felt, and said nothing.

"Did you think I tasted the same as I always do?"

She was teasing me. I'd wondered. As my tongue had dipped into the slick liquids coating her cunt, and my lips sucked them, I'd brought intense, rapt concentration to that first moment of contact, its viscosity and flavor, seeking familiarity, dreading an encounter with something strange. Dreading the moment when it would already be too late, another man's cum was now already in my mouth, rolling across my tongue, telling me that I was a cuckold for certain and an involuntary cocksucker at one remove. The moment when undeniable evidence was coating my mouth and despite myself I was savoring its flavor and its feel. When my mouth would fill with the sperm another man had left inside my wife when he made her his own, and my choices were reduced to two: swallow or spit. She knew I'd been excruciatingly uncertain as my tongue had reached toward her vulva.

But I'd immediately determined with no doubt whatever that she tasted the same as always. That familiar musky, faintly fishy, flowery Darla taste. There was no difference. She knew that too.

Then why was she teasing me? Because she was telling me she might not always taste the same? That the man she lived with might one day taste ... another man's sperm? She was making it clear, if she wanted to fuck others, she would, and she wouldn't hesitate to have me lick them out of her afterward. It would give her satisfaction to know that's what I was doing, whether I knew it or not.

Had I already have done so some time in the past? Was I absolutely sure I hadn't? I hadn't really paid attention to her flavors—her pussy musk always overwhelmed my ability to discriminate. Now I'd have to become a connoisseur.

"You feel happy whenever I'm happy, whatever the reasons, don't you Nick? You're happy simply because I'm happy. So you want me to be happy, however. Isn't that true? Isn't that's what love is."

I was right. She was preparing me for ... for what? For the day she comes home sexually satisfied by someone else, singing about her new-found happiness? But it was true. That's what love is. "Yes ma'am," I said.

"Well, this has been a very productive first session. I'm pleased, so you can be too. If you want you may wipe that delicious gravy off your face now, but then suck on the napkin. Always remember that my pleasure is precious, and remember to enjoy pleasing me. Then you'll feel privileged when I allow you to go down on me."

She watched me wipe my cheeks and chin and then nibble the napkin, savoring her new found power and my willingness to bow before it. She smiled encouragingly, and I smiled back my gratitude. I guess I did feel less depressed, just looking at her. I did feel pleased that my darling Darla was so pleased with me. My Miss Darla, I mean.

And that was only the first weekend.

Second Week—Monday

Driving to my office early on Monday, I remembered how my secretary Michelle had refused to get me the case files to take home, and I wondered how to reprimand her even though, as it turned out, she'd been right—I'd have had no time to read them. Then when I arrived at the office there they were on my desk, each key entry already tagged and indexed for fast reference—I scarcely needed to review them at all. Then all day Michelle excelled at everything—she was all diligent efficiency and smiles, and seemed to do whatever I asked with a faint indulgent affection. My but she must have made out well over the weekend with that Associate, I was thinking to myself. Good loving does that. Good sex, I mean.

So I let it pass. I had enough to cope with as it was, what with no sex for days and days now, and no prospect of it for who knows how long, and my wife turning loose, persuaded she was no longer my wife. I was painfully horny, and my cock rose and fell whenever any secretary within sight stretched her arms and pushed her chest out and yawned before returning to her typing. But there was nothing I could do about it. Not without breaking my word to Darla, and that I didn't dare! I loved Darla and I cared about our marriage, and I'd go some distance to preserve it through this strange, distracted time of her life. And of mine.

Second Week—Friday

Work all week was incredibly crushed, and Accounting demanded my hourly logs and billings for their monthly summaries. I took the figures home to work on in whatever time I could find. That Friday when Darla came back from her class she told me where she expected to find me thereafter, sitting on the floor by her big easy chair doing nothing but waiting, anticipating her return. Then she assigned me an easy essay on my sometimes coming home late for dinner, how I felt about it and how I imagined she felt.

Later that evening she looked into my study to see how the essay was coming on, and saw that my computer screen was filled not with confessions of thoughtlessness and poor judgment but with a spreadsheet of hourly office consultations. I was entering figures as rapidly as I could calculate them, getting work out of the way before getting to the chore she'd set me.

"WHAT'S THAT?!" she said.

I told her.

For a moment she said nothing. She was furious,, and I tried to placate her. "Darla honey," I began.... And realized my mistake.

She raised her arm as if to slap my head off, glaring. Then she caught herself, and simply stood with her palm open and held high behind her head, like a priestess invoking a higher Deity.

"MY BEDROOM, NOW! ON YOUR KNEES NEAR THE DOOR!" she bellowed. And left.

I stood up and followed her, entered after her, and dropped to my knees by the door. Without a word she lay down on the bed on her back and spread her knees and began to finger-fuck herself. Her deep breathing changed from furious to aroused, and she turned away, opened a bedside drawer, and pulled out ... could I believe it? ... the most monstrous dong I have ever seen! Maybe a foot long? Nearly as thick as my wrist! Flesh-colored, with veins along the underside and a huge purple cock head. God! Then another one more reasonable in size, only a little larger than my cock. Dildoes? Of course! But where did my innocent Darla get them, and when? She took out a tube of lubricant, already half-squeezed-out I was dismayed to notice, and she dropped the smaller dildo back into the drawer, then turned and positioned her cunt again, holding the monster in one hand.

"Just watch," she said, her eyes hooded.

Amazed and desperate, I couldn't not. I just knelt there, mouth gaping, staring from Darla to the closed drawer and back, unable to move!

She actually smiled! "I see you're impressed by my friends here. Good. Apparently you don't understand yet that I don't need you, not even for sex. These are bigger and better than you. And unlike you when we first had sex they neither of them ever force themselves on me until I'm ready for them. Of course this one needs to force his way into me even when I'm eager and spread wide open and dripping, but I must say I do love how a really impressive cock stretches you open and yet crams you shut at the same time. The other one, that little one, big if we measure it against your thing, well, he's special too. He vibrates, and that can drive me wild. Some day if you're really good, I'll let you push one of these into me and then allow you to watch it work me over, so you can learn something. Or maybe you'll want to try one out on yourself. Maybe I'll ask you to try one on yourself or else."

I tried to plead with her, "Miss Darla!" But all that came out was an incoherent whine.

So I watched in silence as she lubricated the massive dildo and pressed it against her opening. At first it wouldn't move, and she stretched her legs utterly wife apart. And groaned in frustration. But she persisted, and slowly her labia opened and it opened them wider, and finally she plunged just its huge head into herself and left it there, breathing heavily as if preparing herself for an ordeal. Then she forced more in, and pulled it out, and then began to masturbate. In and out, her groans becoming little high pitched shrieks now and then, faster and faster, until there was a crescendo of gasps, each higher than the previous, then a sudden silence, then that scream!

"AAAAAAaaaYEEEEeeeeeeee!" she called out. I sat there on my knees watching as she came down from that agonized ecstasy, from a place my cock had never been with her. Still breathing hard, she pulled the dildo out of herself with some difficulty, and then glanced over to me. My eyes gave testimony. I had been cuckolded by a dildo.

"See?" she said. "I don't need you. If you need me, you keep your promises. Your weekends are mine. The next time you violate your word to me will be the last time. I'll throw you out of this house for good. We'll let divorce lawyers settle any leftovers from our former relationship."

I was still on my knees. Who was this woman? Did I really want her? Preserve your options until you must decide, goes the old maxim. "Please, Miss Darla," I said, not daring to look up at her face. "I do want whatever you want. Please be patient. Teach me how."

This seemed to interest her. There was a long silence. Then she spoke in a calm voice, "My cunt is a little raw. Soothe it. Lick me clean. No slobber. Neatly."

That seemed easy enough. I came forward on my knees and did what she asked. At first I didn't dare touch her precious labia with any part of me but my tongue, but my nose now and then touched her clitoris, and her breathing turned ragged. That dong had spread her own creamy secretions onto her thighs, and I worked my way slowly across them as well as her slit. Was I cleaning her mess after another man? I dismissed that idea as ridiculous. But wasn't I, in a way? To drown out that notion I began to tongue her clit as if it alone was the source of all the musky aroma arising from her crotch. I dedicated myself to it. I felt transported as I licked and sucked and lipped that little knob. This was what my life was for! My chin pushed into her pussy.

"Ohhhhh!" she breathed quietly. Then "AAAAAHHH!" Suddenly she clamped my head between her thighs and I couldn't move or breathe. As if from a distance I heard "AAAAAAAAHHH!" in a high-pitched outcry. But with my ears covered by the thick meat of her thighs, I couldn't be sure. I needed air, badly, but I couldn't shake free of her. So I tried to hold still, no help. Nose and mouth blocked. No air. I really couldn't breathe! Couldn't move! I thrashed my arms helplessly, and as an inner dark closed over the outer dark I couldn't even sob out a desperate farewell to life. I had no breath left.

Suddenly there was air and light again. She'd released my head and I was lying on the floor gasping frantically, heart pounding, still frightened. She looked back down at me triumphantly!

"Just remember, honey," she said quietly. "Your purpose in life from every Friday evening until every Monday morning is to do what I say, to understand me, to feel what I feel, to take correction, to please me, and incidentally, to try to save your marriage by persuading me that it's worth saving. Now leave me and go to your room. You've used my time for business purposes, so I mean to use your business time for my purposes some time next week. I intend to call you at the office, and when I do you'd better come home without delay. Or not at all ever again. Understood?"

It was. But what I lingered on was, she'd called me 'honey.' She still felt affection for me. I nearly cried.

Second Week—Saturday and Sunday

The rest of that weekend I spent most of my time at the computer writing confessions and dramatizing what I could imagine were her feelings about staying married to me. Gradually I realized that for years, I hadn't had a clue. She'd been serving me hand and foot devotedly as my little angel in order to strengthen me into the man she wanted to live with, someone who, like her father, would answer to her every whim. But I was becoming only a hollow, self-satisfied shell of a man, and she'd become increasingly uncertain she wanted me that way. Or at all. I lacked an inner authority she could respect, resist, or wheedle. But there were other possibilities we could explore—whole realms of companionability. I might have undeveloped talents. This could become a treasure hunt—could I find it in myself to become what she wanted, and if I did, would she still want it? Neither of us knew.

I brought each essay or story to her as I finished the assignment. She sat in her easy chair and read it and commented on it, correcting my misconceptions, sharing her true feelings whenever I seemed to come close to understanding them. Yes, after we were married and had quarreled she'd called a former boyfriend, and had indeed allowed him a little further leeway with her body than she'd intended, to punish me, but she'd remained chaste. Yes, she wished she weighed less, because she liked being admired by men as they passed by, she was titillated by their attention in fact, and yes guys did hit on her in her office despite the fact that they knew she was married, and that boosted her self-confidence—she did sometimes fantasize going out with them. No, she wasn't going to tell me if she ever had—let me sweat. Yes, she did love me, but with as much compassion as love, there was something soft and sweet and serviceable in me she couldn't yet define and I couldn't acknowledge. But when I got officious with her I seemed only to be an investment she wasn't yet quite prepared to divest.

The easy chair gradually became her throne, and I became her subject. By Sunday morning I was accustomed to it, waiting for her judgment on my knees, my body between her spread knees, my face bowed low, listening. When she praised me, my reward was always that she allowed me to dip forward and lick her pussy. Usually once only, but twice during the weekend she let me lick her all the way to orgasm!

Sunday afternoon she dropped a pillow on the floor for me to kneel on, and I chastely nuzzled her bush in gratitude. I think her gesture meant she now thought better of me now, that she meant to encourage me by showing her appreciation. Maybe not, but that was how I felt. She asked me how I felt, and I told her. She replied that she'd done it so I'd feel altogether comfortable kneeling where I was, doing what I was doing, doing her bidding, so I'd feel I'd rather be where I was than anywhere else in the world. And she patted me on the head. "Nice Nickie," she said.

Third Week—Wednesday

The next Wednesday Michelle broke into a meeting to tell me that my wife had an urgent message for me. When I got to the phone, the line was dead. I raced for my car, got home in almost half the time it usually takes, and found Darla sunning herself by the pool. She glanced at her watch, looked at me enigmatically, and turned away. I went back to salvage what I could of the conference I'd fled, but a key participant had already flown back to the coast. That night at dinner Darla told me that she'd taken the afternoon off from work in order to amuse herself, her amusement being to see how quickly I could get home. She asked me if my sudden flight had cost the firm anything.

"Delay reaching a settlement totalling a very large fee, some of it maybe lost, yes," I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, not reproachful. "Also a certain amount of client good will. Also the Senior Partners were not happy with me, and it will show in my annual bonus. I did manage to recover most of their good will by kissing a lot of ass. But I can't do that again, Darla! Don't ask me to, please."

She was silent.

"Please, Miss Darla," I corrected myself.

"Then don't make it necessary. You now know what my weekend time is worth, what it can cost in money and good will if you ever again ignore my instructions." She paused. "You're to prefer me to your work. Or perhaps your work is too important to allow us to continue married?"

I assured her it was not. She stood, turned her back, and told me that since I'd been kissing ass at the office, I should lift her skirt and kiss hers here. I did, and then when she bent well forward and braced herself on her arms, I kissed her slit and buried my nose in her ass. I was brown-nosing her! Twenty minutes later, both of us still breathing heavily, she'd forgiven me.

Our weekday evenings became subdued versions of the weekends. Darla remained sexually unapproachable except occasionally by my face between her legs, but I knew from squeals and grunts in her room that her two dildoes were enjoying her body. The few times I forgot that she was "Miss Darla" and called her "Darla" or "honey" she stiffened, her face an impassive mask until I corrected myself. The final time, she responded by asking me to fetch her that monster dildo from upstairs. I did, and handed it to her while she looked straight up at me and as earlier, told me to kneel and watch as she frigged herself. It was now moving in and out of her much more easily—her pussy had enlarged to fit the dildo comfortably. It was that dildo's pussy, no longer mine. I wasn't even a visitor.

Then she handed the monster to me still shining and dripping, and told me to lick it clean. "The next time you forget," she said, "You'll be the one who's fucked by my friend here, and you'll lick yourself off it afterward!" I got the point. I tried not to think about what I was doing as I tongued her juices off that huge rubber prick, but I couldn't help noticing the network of thick veins running up the underside, and at one point I found I was holding the whole head between my lips and resisting a temptation to suck on it.

Each morning I awoke with the stiffest of conceiveable boners, and now that I couldn't relieve them they had nowhere to go. Darla noticed my chronic bulge and teased me with quick quips as she left the house for work—"Aim high, whatever you do!" she'd say. "Keep it up!" But otherwise she paid no attention.

I wondered what was going on in those classes of hers that had changed my sweet doll into this cool dominatrix who was now changing me into her worshipful sex slave. Darla beamed when I asked her, saying, "I've got you off balance? Good! Then we're both learning. But don't worry. Not every woman divorces her husband when she completes this course. Some husbands shape up quite well."

I determined to be one of them. If I'd been married to a living doll who helped me feel strong and protective even when I unwittingly abused her patriarchywise, that doll no longer existed. But there was a certain excitement in this new relationship. Darla was more pleased with me than ever when I did well, and more aloof when I merely performed her bidding. I tried harder to please her. Mostly during the week our relationship stayed the same, friendly and affectionate, though she was always Miss Darla when we were alone, and I never forgot to stop by our former bedroom each night to ask if she'd like me to lick her cunt.

She'd allow it sometimes. In fact the next night, when her voice was hoarse from shrieking through long sequences of ululating orgasms, I felt so good about how well I'd satisfied her that I seized her hand and kissed it profusely, over and over. She was touched. "That's lovely. But kisses that devoted should be on my ass, not the backs of my hands," she said as she finally withdrew it.

Third Week—Friday

Friday I stayed late clearing away work and stopping in at the TGIF office bash, and when I got home Darla had already gone to her meeting. My dinner was a slice of pizza from last week I found in the freezer, eaten alone. I missed her. I decided I'd try to get home earlier in the future, whenever I could, and prepare dinner for both of us as she'd done in the past. That seemed only fair. Then, sitting on the floor before her empty easy chair, I waited for her return from class.

When she got home she seemed preoccupied, the way an impassive administrator reviews recent decisions to see that nothing has been overlooked. I asked her how it went, and after a moment she looked up at me. "I had to decide how I want you to end up," she said. "So I could work out our training strategies."

"Well, I'm glad you still want me, whichever end of me ends up," I said.

She looked at me without changing her expression—my attempt at a joke was inappropriate. The pizza was still sitting in my stomach, and I began to feel sorry for myself again.

"Oh yes," she replied, suddenly flashing me a brief smile. "Different women want their men to be different in different ways when the course ends. Deciding what I want you to be was the problem. Then how to get you there. I think I've worked it out, though. You may even like it, eventually. It won't be as difficult for you as for some of the other husbands. Some of the wives are really mean. They want to strip their men of everything and change them into something no one wants, then dump them. But you'll be more like Roger, I think. Karen's very pleased with him. Of course nothing that extreme."

I tried to feel grateful, but a certain wariness persisted. "Do I get to know soon what I'll be?"

"Not until you get there," she said abruptly. "That's how it works. More what I want, you can be sure of that. Here's your first assignment for this weekend. Think about it tonight and get to it tomorrow first thing. Good night!" She handed me a sheet of paper, turned, went into her room, and closed the door.

It looked simple enough. She wanted me to tell her how I'd felt when "Darla" became "Miss Darla," and how I imagined she felt when she insisted on it.

I heard voices upstairs as I thought through the assignment and took notes, or anyhow a voice. Darla on the phone. When I passed her bedroom a few hours later, I heard squealing. I was about to knock to ask if she was all right when the squealing became her voice in an audible plaintive plea, "Oh, yes, again! Deeper!, Oh, yes! Please!" Was she in there with someone? Impossible! Was it another intimation of infidelity intended to mess my mind? In her passionate throes, she'd never begged me to satisfy her, she'd always ordered it and then apologized afterward. Was she now pleading with some fantasy man while bringing herself off with her pussy muscles, performing that pledge of her allegiance to female independence she'd demonstrated to me? Or was she fucking those dildoes?

Who could she be with now in her imagination? The new me she wants to bring into existence, a new husband more concerned with her satisfaction than his own, one more understanding and sensitive to her needs? Mr. Right? Maybe. I went to bed with that cheering thought, determined to try to be such a man.

Third Week—Saturday

The next morning I wrote steadily, unburdening my heart. This time there were no disasters when she read my essay. Where I wrote that I was afraid of her, she was now unpredictable, she half-closed her eyes and smiled. Where I wrote that I feared for our marriage, she corrected me. "You fear for our 'relationship,' remember? Our marriage depends on you becoming what I want, now that I know what I want and how to get it." Where I wrote that I was resentful, she commented, "That's honest. But you're also finding it satisfying, aren't you, when submit to my requests? My instructions, I mean?"

I had to agree. I told her I felt grateful when she gave me tasks that might help preserve our relationship, pleased that she trusted my willingness to do them, and if she told me I'd done them well I felt ... well, happy.

I also wrote that her newly assertive personality had made her seem more desirable, exotic, and exciting, and that was how I now found her. I decided to flatter her, appeal to her feminine vanity, so I pulled out the stops. I wrote that as 'Miss Darla' I now found her mysterious, inexplicable, mercurial, beyond understanding. Woman is always an ineffable mystery to Man, I added. I laid it on fairly thick, more of same, thinking she'd be pleased.

She read it all that without comment. Overall, some parts of the essay were far from satisfactory, she told me finally, but none were outright unsatisfactory and some were commendable. I took that as a compliment. "But your end section is problematic," she said. Then sat still a moment.

Suddenly she stood up, straightened her frame, pulled her shoulders back, lifted those marvelous full breasts, and gave her hips a quick flirty twist. Still on my knees in front of her, I looked straight up. She was a tower. I could see her face, almost hidden between her jutting boobs, as she looked back down at me. I felt awe.

"Yes" she said, looking down at me. "You do deserve a reward in kind. See me in my bedroom in ten minutes." She turned and without another word disappeared in that direction.

I sat there worried, but also confident. She really was enjoying this new assertiveness of hers, and it was gratifying that she was getting to feel as hard up as I was! I wanted her to be happy, and I was confident I could make her happy. So I was feeling pretty good when I followed her into her bedroom. Maybe the time had come to resume climbing all over each other?

She hadn't changed her dress, though she'd obviously taken off her panties and her stockings—if she'd been wearing any stockings. She was lying on her back on a pile of pillows she'd heaped on the edge of the bed, her groin exalted, her butt high up, her legs spread so far apart that her pink vulva was wide open to view, as if it were the center of her world, or mine. It was weeping in anticipation. I hoped that was why.

I brightened immediately and headed toward her, at last undoing my belt and my pants and my zipper as I came forward. After my long abstinence I was horny as a goat in heat. As I approached the bed I wondered whether to take a chance and push my turgid meat into her with no preliminaries, despite what I'd learned about the last time I'd done that.

"STOP!"

I was bewildered. This was not the tone of a woman about to get laid, but more like a traffic cop! I stopped.

"Nicholas, on your knees, NOW!"

I fell to my knees next to the bed. Now her pussy was not a foot from my nose, spread wide open, just above the closed bud of her anus. I could see its swollen, parted outer lips and her delicate pink inner lips, even the hood half-concealing, half-revealing her clit. I was desperate to plunge into it, but I didn't dare move.

"WHAT did you learn only LAST WEEK?"

My sweetie was being bold, firm. I had to be patient with her. "To respect your feelings, not my own. To do what you wish. To be gentle always," I replied, my eyes devouring her cunt. I'd never seen it so clearly this close up! It was wet, glistening! I'd never before looked at it this close! My eyes had always been closed or unfocussed when I lunged my face into it, and my cock had never paused to take in the view before it too plunged blindly into the honeyed darkness.

"Yes, good!" she said. Then in a more conciliatory way, "Now kiss my ass!"

"What?!"

"You heard! You see it? Kiss it!"

Strictly speaking, her buttocks were buried in the soft mountain of pillows. But her asshole? Below her gaping, flesh-fringed slit, well above the pillows, was the wrinkled brown oval. She'd never been into perversions like this before, that I knew of. She'd never asked me to do anything with her anus—it was her pussy that craved sex. In her massive orgiastic throes I'd managed to get a finger pressed onto it now and then, but there'd been no greater intimacy.

She wanted it now though. A butt-nuzzle, a rimming, I'd read about them but had never done one. All right, I considered, on weekends she's the boss. So without another word I bent forward and puckered my lips and gave her berry a little peck, then leaned back. It was OK I guess. No flavor, no smell.

"That's not a kiss, Nickie! I want to feel you! I want to know exactly how you feel about my asshole! French kiss it! Get your tongue way inside and lick the inside! Make it the center of your world! Worship my shithole as if our future relationship depended on it! Because it surely does! Don't stop till I say so!"

'Shithole'? She'd never used language like that! She was trying to make it hard for me, using foul language to make it seem foul, but I could take anything she could dish out! So I lunged forward with my tongue fully extended, and tried with all my might to push my way in. I licked and I thrust and I pried around the edges, but her ass was sealed tight shut. Then after ten minutes it seemed, maybe more, when my face was slathered in my own saliva, my nose managed to pry into that wrinkled hole just a bit. She was loosening! I pushed in deeper and as accidentally once before, this time deliberately, I buried my whole nose in her anus, then wiped it up toward her cunt and filled the opening with my tongue before it could close down.

Her anal muscles now gripped my tongue and I thrust in deeper, more fervently. I had a clear passage now and didn't dare pull back, so I tongue fucked maybe the last half-inch of her ass, in-out, in-out, at least a dozen times before pausing for breath. Something smelled like shit! Of course it did, my tongue! But I didn't care! I plunged in again! I wanted to worship her bottom any way I could! Whatever she wanted!

"Very good," she suddenly said. "Now that I can feel. That's what I call respect! Now you may give my cunt a timid little peck like the one you gave my asshole before you got serious, then hand me my larger dildo over there. Then you can get back to your computer and rewrite that last part of your essay about how I'm exotic and mysterious. Now that you know the taste of real shit, don't feed me yours! Write out how you really feel and how you really think I feel. Imagine yourself inside my skin. Write in the first person, as if you were me. I'll come by in a half-hour or so to see how you're doing. That's all!"

I was dismissed! But before I could stand and pull my pants back up over my raging hard-on—it had held stiff the whole time I was abasing my face inside her ass—she added gently, even sympathetically, her eyes on my cock, "I think you understand now, Nickie. Just go do what you're told!"

'Nickie'!' Well! I turned and left, closing the door behind me quietly, respectfully, and with my mind whirling I went back to the computer. There I read where I'd called Miss Darla a woman of mystery. That was bullshit all right. My dearest, darling Darla? My sweet little wife? Where was she now? I didn't know this woman who was now no doubt stuffing a monster dildo into her pristine pussy while I sat here wondering! I was afraid of that thing! How could I ever again fuck her once she's stretched out all the way by that thing? How could she ever respect my dingus enough to want me to fuck her?

I still tasted her shit on my tongue, but strangely, I wasn't disgusted! Perverse as it seemed, I suddenly felt honored! It was awesome that I'd been allowed to kiss one of her most private places, privileged to enter one of them with my nose and my tongue! However dwarfed my cock felt compared with those two dildoes, at least I was a warm body, alive, and could serve her that way! Those fake cocks couldn't do for her what I'd just done! What I'd do again with all my heart and soul, if she asked me. Even ....

I then got a grip on myself. What was I thinking? Was I really jealous of... dildoes? It was terribly confusing! Where was my pretty little wife? A stranger in her body now shared that body with a huge rubber prick, not with me. It was demeaning, but it was also exciting! I was less than a dildo. She was 'Miss Darla,' who regretted what we'd been together. But after the way I'd patronized her for so many years, I deserved to eat her shit.

I typed all this furiously, and I exhausted all I could say about these new feelings. Then suddenly I stopped, and without quite realizing it I started to cry.

"Good! Now that's an honest response"

I turned toward her voice! She had been standing just behind me, reading over my shoulder as I typed in the text. Her face was flushed and her lips were parted and her eyes gleamed, and she stood loose jointed, barefoot, her pelvis still thrust forward as if to receive my nose's homage. Her lipstick was smudged. Smudged? By her dildo? Who knows? Darla stood there at her ease, reading my revised essay, obviously a woman who has just been thoroughly well-fucked! I wiped the tears off my cheeks and just stared.

"Just write one more page about why my big man is crying. Who are those tears for? Then come in and see me in the kitchen. We'll talk some more. So far this is excellent. You're coming along faster than I'd hoped."

She turned and left the study. I wrote out one more page. I said that the tears were for my pretty little wife, who had disappeared into this new, sexually assertive woman, and they were also for me, because I didn't understand my strange new stirring of feelings for this woman who was inhabiting my wife's body, and I was afraid because I didn't yet know how far I'd be willing to abase myself to earn her approval. Would I destroy myself utterly if she were to ask me?

And the tears were now also for our marriage, because it was obvious even to me that it was over. We were neither of us the people we'd been. I typed that last statement a second time and then stared at it. Our marriage was over.

I wondered if we'd ever re-marry. I hoped so,

I brought the page in to her. She was sitting in the kitchen over a cup of coffee, looked up, accepted it, and without a word began reading it. I stood there—somehow I felt I shouldn't sit down. She read that last paragraph carefully, then glanced up at me. "Very good, Nick! You're more sensitive than I'd expected. I think our relationship might well end in a remarriage. It all depends on you, though. I have things to do all afternoon, so you can take the rest of the day off."

I was dismissed. I took the paper back from her and left the room feeling vaguely pleased but at the same time annoyed that I felt pleased. I'd been dismissed again!

I decided to call up my old poker buddy Jason, Becky's husband, to see if he was free maybe for racquetball, maybe a late lunch, mainly to check out if his life had gone as peculiar as mine, what he thought of this new regime the girls were into, whether he'd found some way to deal with it short of surrender. Because I now saw no alternatives.

When he got on the phone his voice sounded high and strained. "Becky wants me to sound more like her when I'm on the phone," he said. "She says men intimidate women with their deep booming voices. I always thought I was polite enough, but I suppose not. I must sound so silly, I'm sorry. Darla hasn't put the screws to you for that yet?"

"No, not for that. You don't sound silly to me, incidentally, Jason. Just a little stressed."

"Oh, I don't really mean to sound silly, just more like a woman. She also wants me to apologize for myself more often, the way women do. So I won't sound as confident as I once did. So I'll seem unsure of myself, less assertive, no way threatening. More like pleading. I really am so ashamed that I have to talk this way these days, Nick. Can you ever forgive me?"

Despite all those imposed affectations I learned that Jason was giving up athletic club activities for the time being, never mind why, and also that he was skipping lunches because Becky wanted him to lose weight. Things to do, he couldn't come over. Nothing for it. I told him I'd give him a call next week. "That would be so nice of you," he said.

Too bad. I went in and turned on the tube.

I was watching the playoffs when near dinner time Darla came down from her study, then left the house without a word to me, carrying her good purse and wearing a simple black cocktail dress with crystal beads and earrings, her hair neatly arranged and her face made up nicely, presentable for any occasion. Though I was immediately anxious, I saw she wasn't done up in the dramatic high style she fancied when we were going out drinking and dancing and she wanted to flirt, make strangers eyeball her face and body under my proud eye. My heart sank even so. I tried to console myself that she meant to appear respectable, not sluttish, that she was not heading out to pick up some live dildo eager to service her for the rest of the evening. But what if she was? What if she had a date?

I felt very peculiar. Helpless.

But a few minutes after she left, Karen called and told me to tell Darla not to bother dressing, it would just be a casual dinner with a few Women's Center people, even jeans would be fine. So I stopped worrying about where she was, even though I didn't hear her get back home until nearly one a.m. Women love to talk, I knew.

Third Week—Sunday

Sunday morning we met in the kitchen. Though she'd gotten to bed late, she looked fully rested. On the other hand I'd slept badly, unsure of myself as well as her, still certain that my world was coming apart. And I still had that boner I couldn't touch without permission. It wouldn't quit.

"First a question or two," she said. "If you were me, at this point in our relationship, if I were to go looking for sex with another man for the evening, would my main purpose be to pleasure myself without you knowing, or without caring whether you knew, or would it be to humiliate you by telling you directly that that's what I've just done?"

I thought about it. This was an agonizingly uncomfortable subject, and the answer could be either or both. "For your own pleasure primarily, though you don't need other men for that."

"Why not just ask you to oblige?"

"Because you don't want me to have the satisfaction—you want me off balance and needy. Also because I've been an inadequate lover, you've made that clear."

"Not inadequate but misguided as a lover. That's not necessarily forever. And love isn't sex. But tell me, why not to humiliate you by telling you?"

"It isn't necessary. You don't need to demolish my pride in my manliness that way. I'm doing that very well by myself. And I already know I don't possess you."

Darla nodded, satisfied. "Good. You are a marvel, Nick. I begin to see why I once wanted to marry you. You may be worth keeping! We'll see."

"Thank you, Miss Darla," I said. I'd learned nothing. Unfaithful to me for her own pleasure or for my humiliating? For both or either or neither.

"You're ready for a whole new use of your imagination, Nick. To discover and get in touch not just with my feelings but with your own equivalents. Or any girl's. I want you to relive a few incidents from my girlhood as if they were yours, as if the'd been your girlhood, and make them yours. Step by step I want you to invent an equivalent past for yourself until you've arrived where I am now. That's a long term project, but we'll skip you as a very little girl—I scarcely remember me back then. This morning I want you to describe how you felt when you were a young adolescent girl dressing up for her first date with a boy."

"Honey, ahhhhh Miss Darla, I'm not an adolescent girl, and I never had a sister," I said. "I can't guess how an adolescent girl feels when she's dressing for a date!"

"When you dated an adolescent girl, you never imagined what she was going through while waiting for you to pick her up at her house?"

"No. I was always busy wondering what she'd think of me, coping with my own nervousness."

Darla frowned and looked away. "Maybe Karen's right," she muttered to herself, distinctly enough for me to make out the words. "It's time, learn by doing, total immersion. Well, not total. But how to get past this and move on?"

She suddenly stood up and said, "Into your room, now, and get stark naked! Quick!"

I knew by this time not to question such an order. Five minutes later I was sitting naked on my bed waiting for her. She came in with her arms loaded with items from her closet."

"These will help I think," she said. "Not another word, Nick, save them all for your essay. I mean to go easy on you this time. You are now a bare naked teenage girl. You've worn grown-up clothes—Junior style of course, the tight, revealing kind girls all wear -- for a couple of years now. So that much you're accustomed to. Just slip into this bra and these panties, they'll fit you well enough, and then one by one try on each of these outfits, dresses and skirt and blouse combinations, whatever you think your date will like. Some are too small to fit you, but you can hold them against you and try them on in your imagination. Choose one that's just right for a girl like you to wear on a date with a boy who's actually asked her to a movie and an ice cream afterward because he wants to be with her. Remember how each one looked and felt, and why you decided on the one you actually wore. Because it was the prettiest? The sexiest? Because it would tell him something you wanted him to know about how you felt about him? How do you feel about him? Then still wearing it, go to your study and write down everything before you forget."

She turned and left. I stared at the pile of clothes on my bed. She wants me to dress like this fanciful girl? At first I felt annoyed. Also humiliated! But a certain rueful common sense intervened. Her intent wasn't to humiliate me, but sensitize and transform me, and I'd already told her I knew that. Besides, how could anything like this humiliate a man who's already pushed his nose and tongue into his wife's asshole and felt privileged to taste her shit? Also, what were my options? Cooperate or divorce.

The panties were hers, I recognized them, very fancy pink lace, I'd once seen them waggling on her cute rear end as she came from her shower once when we were getting ready to go out. That was during our former life, I thought sadly as I found the waist elastic and pulled them up. This is now.

They felt slippery, a little tight, but they stretched enough to enclose my rear, and were firm enough to pull my half-swollen prick closer to my belly. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the pretty lace on the legs and a young girl's narrow hips. My waistline could do with a bit of shrinking, though—I'd have only cottage cheese or yogurt at my desk for lunch from now on, like Michelle, I decided. And my body hair didn't look right.

I'd decided my body had to look more girlish? Was I getting as weird as these assignments? Well, no, while enacting an assignment I had to look appropriate, that's all it meant.

I hadn't seen the bra before. It was new, a lacy underwire that matched the underpants, a 38 D. No way Darla's, she was a 34 C, I'd found that out once when snooping in her drawer so I could buy her some really daring, low-scoop lingerie for her birthday. She'd been amused and flattered and had asked me if they were for her benefit or mine. Now she'd returned the favor and bought me this bra. Anticipating that I'd need one to do this assignment? For my benefit or hers?

I figured out how to fit it around me and clip the hooks closed, and felt silly until I discovered that when all of my available pectoral muscles and body fat and skin were pulled into each huge cup, the underwire grasped and shaped them into credible breasts and held them out from my chest with only a little excess fabric. I was a D cup, in a way! How could Darla have guessed my size? Was this a standard Women's Center assignment? All over the city, this very evening, were other men fitting bras to themselves and checking out their figures in the mirror? That was an oddly consoling thought. I checked mine out and didn't think I looked at all silly. I had breasts. It was exciting! Not quite big enough to fill the whole bra, of course, and that was too bad, but I could feel proud that they were noticeable. And then I realized, that's how an adolescent girl must feel.

One by one I inspected the dresses Darla'd left on my bed. Most were too small for anything other than holding them up in front of me and looking into my mirror, the way I'd seen Darla do countless times while out shopping with her, twisting her hips and torso here and there, trying to gauge the overall effect. I tried to imagine how a young girl would react to each, and gradually I got into a plausible way of thinking. One was too slinky, I wasn't slim enough to look attractive in it, and anyhow I certainly didn't intend to vamp the poor boy who'd asked me out, not on a first date! Another was too short, the hemline barely below my ass cheeks—too difficult to sit in, too immodest, and it would certainly give any boy too easy access. Another was all ruffles and puffs and lace, too girly-girly, I wanted him to respect my personality and my mind. Puffed sleeves were too babyish—I was way beyond that. One cotton dress, a pale plaid with wide straps, a sun-dress, actually did fit me, it might do with a sweater or shawl, I thought. But while I was adjusting it on my shoulders and straightening the waist I saw it had a teeny stain of some kind on the bodice. Off it came. Girls whose clothes aren't impeccable are thought to be sluts and treated accordingly.

In the end I decided on a pleated blouse with fluttery short sleeves just off the shoulder, with a wide, round neckline that came down almost to my bra, clingy going around my curves and candy red. That's the kind of girl I am, I decided, feminine and not afraid to flaunt it, though I do also need a thin gold chain around my neck to suggest delicacy, fragility. To temper the blouse's bold statement I chose a long black skirt that fell nearly to my ankles—it'd modest but shows off my figure, I was thinking, and a long skirt is a lot more grown up than that miniskirt.

And I saw that despite my slightly thick waistline I didn't have a bad figure at all! Not at all, I realized as I swirled the skirt around my ankles. I loved it, this outfit! Darla left me a pair of backless sandals to wear with whatever I chose, so I put them on. I'd have preferred heels. I felt nice.

Still wearing my newly-assembled outfit, I scurried back down to my study to start writing while these different fanciful impressions were still fresh. I tried to describe how everything had looked and felt, and what I'd anticipated the boy would think. I knew that men register the overall impressions girls make but have no sense whatever how, item by item, that impression is created, while women notice every detail and compliment each other on their special successes, and now I knew why. I stayed with that kind of woman's perspective. What the girl thought. What I thought, since I was the one dressed for this date. What the boy thought when he saw her I could only guess. My little breasts poked out coyly, draped in bright red pleats. He'd feel attracted enough I supposed.

By the time I'd finished writing I'd gotten so accustomed to the look and feel of my bra and panties I was no longer aware I was wearing them. It was just as well, I got a few more ideas to write about from that very fact. How a girl doesn't know that her underclothes are pretty, she takes it for granted without thinking about them at all. Yet even so, how she wants to know they're sexy and seductive when she's on a date. That she's attractive from her skin on out, even when she knows her date's eyes will never see them. How it was soooooooo very racy to think that he just might be offered a glimpse. Erotically stimulating! I didn't mention that my steady-state partial erection was no longer half-cocked but had gone hard as a railroad spike.

All in all, I wrote a pretty good essay I thought, easily matching the literary level of Darla's Harlequin novels. And that gave me an idea. I then wrote out a narrative of the whole date from the girl's point of view, from the moment the boy called for her at her house to the moment much later when she closed the door behind her and leaned back on it, still sorting our her thoughts. When I finished, I brought it in to Darla.

And for the first time, Darla was really impressed! Especially by a section presenting the complexities of a young girl's feelings at the moment the boy calls for her and sees her for the first time—exalted, terrified, unsure, hopeful, delighted, and as they leave her parents' house, excited and self-confident.

"That's right!" Darla said enthusiastically. "That's just how I felt, too! Charlie, the boy's name was. And I chose a long skirt too, to seem more grown up, just the way you did, and I remember I wished I had a form-fitting blouse just like yours—my breasts were just noticeable in those years, just taking shape. I was so proud of them! You too even now? I see you didn't want to take your bra off after it had served its purpose."

I came fully aware that I was still wearing my date outfit, blouse, skirt, and everything underneath! And I still felt ashamed that I hadn't shaved my body hair as I'd intended. But not at all ashamed that on my chest, my breasts were bulging unmistakably.

"I forgot to change," I said, my face growing warm. "I guess I didn't want to take the time to go back up and change."

"I understand, honey," Darla said in a quiet voice. "No need for excuses. As I've just been saying, I was a young girl once too. You selected well, you look very pretty." Her expression turned inward for a moment. Was she thinking, or just remembering?

Then suddenly another assignment.

"Honey, I love where this is going. You're doing so well that I want you to try another essay or story this afternoon. Stay dressed as you are, it's rather sweet, and it does seem to inspire you. In fact it transforms you. So this time take the whole afternoon, and we'll discuss what you write tonight after dinner. Your subject, while you're in the mood, is this. You're now a year or two older and this time you're dressing for a first date with a new boy. At this very moment you find you're starting your period. You haven't had many, they're all terribly new. Tell me about it, and then describe how your date went. You're a young girl who's now entered womanhood, as your period reminds you—tell me about that too. I'll bet they're different from this morning's feelings. I've set out your lunch. Eat whatever you want of it, but remember, a girl's got to watch her figure!"

"I know, I mean to," I said, without realizing what I'd revealed. Darla smiled, but said nothing.

I tried to become that girl, remembering how my waistline looked in my bra and panties and picking at my lunch and swallowing only a few mouthfuls, trying to find shy satisfaction in my burgeoning womanhood, about to go on a date with what I decided was a callow young man, but still, a young man good looking enough to be much whispered about by my friends, and old enough to borrow his father's car. As I wrote I felt more self-assured than timid this time, especially when I described how grown up I'd felt when I picked up my purse to visit the ladies' in the little Italian restaurant where we ate, because I had to change my sanitary napkins—Kotex, I remembered the name from Darla's—and also freshen my lipstick. He was still a boy, I'd decided, but I was a woman. So I wouldn't date him again. I worried a little about staining my skirt if I should bleed a little too much, but I took comfort that its color was black. Over dessert I considered how dating this popular boy had advanced my value in my friends' eyes, and I wished we could think up more important ways to measure a girl's prestige or accomplishments. I looked him over. He had a cute nose, and sort of wry eyes. He was nice. He talked about sports a lot, and I pretended to be interested as we all do with boys who talk about sports. Mainly, I felt nice that this good-looking boy liked me. In fact very nice.

I did, too!

When he brought me back home after a movie and we were just sitting in his car, talking about people we knew, he didn't seem to know how to say goodnight. So I'd kissed him, just a peck on the cheek, and I'd said a breathy 'Good night, Barry, thank you, I had a lovely time," hopped out, ducked inside, and told myself, "There! I did it all the right way."

Then unexpectedly, I'd regretted that I hadn't kissed him properly—I wasn't sure how, exactly, what was proper, but I knew it involved crushing our lips together and pushing our tongues into different places inside each other's mouths. I also regretted that he hadn't attempted to kiss me. What was wrong with him? Did he think something was wrong with me?

I took most of the afternoon to fill in the details, especially to describe how my distinct feelings of superiority conflicted with my maidenly uncertainty. When I brought this essay to Darla, I was pleased to find she'd prepared a dinner for us much like the old ones she'd always made for us. Was this my reward for a hard working, creative day? Would there be other rewards later tonight? We dined in silence, then over dessert Darla began reading while I sat across from her watching.

She finished, then said, "This is so splendid, Nick. Just wonderful. I'm impressed. It's exactly as if you were that girl, self-conscious about her period and unable to sort out her feelings. Do you mind if I ask you why you did some of the things you did?"

"Not at all, Miss Darla," I replied modestly.

"You use a sanitary pad, not a tampon, when you have a period? Why?"

It was a delightful game. So I explained I was still a virgin, and I didn't want to damage my hymen. Her eyes narrowed but the corners of her mouth smiled.

"It was really because you don't know how tampons work, wasn't it Nick," she said, looking at me steadily. "Your mother never showed you when your first period came."

I couldn't lie. "No, she didn't," I replied. "I mean, yes." It was true, I didn't know how.

She stood up. "Stay where you are," she said, and left. A minute later she was back.

"Here's a tampon," she said. "Insert it!"

"What?" I was astonished.

"Use this KY jelly. You'll probably want to use it this first time, but afterward you won't need it. You've seen me use KY."

"Where?" I was bewildered. "I don't have a vagina!"

She just looked at me, and I understood her meaning well enough. I looked it over. A plastic tube with a wad of compact cotton inside, a string dangling out of one end, and another tube inside the first to serve as a plunger. I dropped my pants, squatted, squeezed a dab of jelly where I hoped it would do some good, placed the end of the tube inside my cheeks, and started trying to plunge. After a moment I found the place, and a full, dry turd seemed to enter my bowels and lodge there. I withdrew the tube with the plunger inside and stood up. I checked. A little string dangled from me.

"Now now you're no longer quite the virgin you once were," she said, faintly amused. "Use this too," she added. She handed me a Kotex sanitary napkin she'd had with her the whole time. "You're too young to know how much protection you may need, and the first few days can be treacherous. Black skirt or not you can't take chances."

I peeled back a strip of paper and placed the sticky side against the inside of my panties, pulled them up, and straightened my skirt. The pad felt bulky between my legs.

"Feels a little different, doesn't it? You didn't know about these things, did you. But I'm going to help you. Starting now and all through next week you'll wear a tampon or a sanitary napkin day and night, even to work. This week you're having your period. Buy your own on Monday, though feel free to borrow mine whenever you must. Get used to it, get to know what every woman knows for a week out of every month of her life between puberty and menopause. You are now one with us, one with nature, changing and flowing the same way the moon pulls the ocean's tides, renewing yourself every 28 days. When you're bleeding you'll find it easier to continue to wear panties like the ones you have on now. So go out and buy a few more, they'll hold your bottom and your sanitary napkins more snug and secure, as your boxer shorts will not. See if you prefer napkins with wings—they offer greater security if you're wearing panties. And plan to change pads and tampons two or three times each day and again at night, preferably more often during the first few days, like any other woman."

"At the office? How?"

"You can't tuck a few tampons in your purse? You don't feel it's proper to borrow a few from Michelle? Carry them in your briefcase then. You now know what it's like to be a young girl having a period and facing possible embarrassment. But you also need to be a girl who feels proud to be a woman whose body confirms the fact, who takes that pride for granted and performs this monthly ritual with a sense of special privilege. Men, after all, know nothing about any of these things."

"All right," I said. I didn't know what else to say. The tampon in my butt still felt like a turd I should try to expel, but I had to think of it as ladylike or I'd lose concentration. It's a tampon in my cunt, I told myself. My cunt is having its monthly visit from Aunt Flo. My asshole has been drafted, it's now a cunt in uniform.

"Make sure the panties you buy for yourself are fancy, really frou frou, sexy," she added with an amused grin. "You'll enjoy them more, you know that already. You're always aroused by the sight of me in my fancy undies, we both know that. See if it works for you too."

Then she returned to my essay. "You 'freshened' your lipstick in the ladies' room, you say? Why?"

"It needed it."

"How do girls know? How do they do that? How would you know?" She stared at me silently.

"All right," I said. I got her point. "May I borrow one of your lipsticks, Miss Darla?"

I waited until she returned with a lipstick called "Revlon's Ripe Cherries" and a small hand mirror, and then I applied it as best I could. As I'd seen Darla do it, sort of. How did it feel? A little sticky, waxy maybe. Not 'fresh,' but coated. Words from lipstick ads came to mind. Sultry? Kissable? But it did look fresh in a way, like fresh paint. My lips were now a uniform red, their curves clearly marked out against my skin. "Kissable" came to mind again.

"I was only asking," Darla commented after watching my performance in silence. "I'm delighted though that you want to see how it actually feels for a woman to wear lipstick and feel a need to 'refresh' it now and then. Lipstick is signifying, more than anything else it's what discriminates women from girls and women from men. Now that you're being a woman, leave it on, so when the coated feeling isn't quite the same you'll know you need to freshen it."

"All right," I said. This was going further than I'd intended.

"But just a little hint, honey, woman to woman? Next time begin with your upper lip and work from the center on out to each corner of your mouth, following the curve. Then just the edge of the lower lip, and then press your lips together to spread the color. After a few days you'll find you're doing it in a few quick, sure swipes. Sometimes a girl wants to get it over with fast, because putting on make-up is an intimate behind-the-scenes thing men find sexy if you allow them to watch. Remember that for when you do want a man to find you sexy, we sometimes do, you know. Evening wear calls for lip liner, but that isn't an issue for you yet."

What was she really telling me?

Not quite what I feared, but bad enough. "Honey, now that you've begun using lipstick, I want you to keep using it every weekend. And most occasions calling for lipstick also call for a foundation to even out your complexion. No blemishes allowed, we're under tremendous pressure, girls' faces need to seem perfect. And at least mascara, maybe a pencil eyeliner too."

"I see," I said.

"It'll do you no harm to wear a properly made-up face every weekend from now on while you're feeling your way into the ways I feel, imagining yourself a woman like me. On Monday when you buy your napkins and tampons buy yourself enough cosmetics so you won't need to borrow mine. Though you're always welcome."

This sounded odd. Excessive, if understanding her was all that was at stake. "Miss Darla," I said, stressing her title, "Wear make-up? What next? Blouses and skirts like these, also all weekend?" I paused and let my sarcasm show. "Should I dress like a girl from now on? Buy my own dresses as well as tampons and make-up?"

"Of course!" She was looking me straight in the eye, accepting my challenge and yielding not one inch. "What a good idea! Yes, buy yourself a few outfits. But first try on a few more of mine. You'll need to know what kind of look to work toward, what kind of a girl you really are, how you want to look in different moods and on different occasions. What clothes are you."

I stared. Was she joking? I couldn't tell, but my defiance evaporated.

"You look shocked. Don't be. This week we'll just concentrate on your period and your make-up. Next week clothes. Drug store cosmetics will do for now—the designer shades and cremes cost far more, and only women who are quite sure of themselves or quite wealthy use them. When you buy it, ask a salesgirl for help if you can't decide which shades go best with which other shades and with your own skin tones. I'm sure they'll all be delighted to advise you."

She waited for me to stop staring at her, which I did when I was finally convinced she wasn't joking. Then she grinned and leaned forward. "And sweetie, this you need to know. Once a girl begins using make-up there's no turning back. So get accustomed to checking your appearance in every mirror you pass from now on. 'If her make-up's messed, the girl's undressed.' We do not appear undressed in public. Get into the habit even at the office, even when you aren't wearing make-up. If there are no mirrors there, I'll lend you a compact you can use."

"This is all so ... so I'll know what it's like?" I asked, trying to confirm that this was her intention. I wondered if I'd look like a clown.

"What men think deprecatingly is 'female narcissism,' yes. It isn't narcissism, Women are held to very high standards in their appearance and are under intense pressure to maintain those standards, and the sanctions visited on a woman who isn't impeccable are severe—you sensed that yourself when you decided not to wear your sun dress until you'd cleaned off that spot. It takes enormous self-discipline to look neat, it's part of our lives, though we manage its rigors so easily no man ever really guesses. I wear make-up almost without thinking about it, so you will too. Yes. Your masculine ego will benefit from emulating a feminine ego and maintainiung feminine disciplines. Better, you'll find you've acquired common understandings and anxieties all women instinctively share."

"I see." I did, too.

"In the end, make-up is the badge of our pride that we're women. So you'll feel that too."

"I see," I said. But I must have looked uncomfortable, because I surely felt it. "But I'm not a woman," I said finally.

Her answer was ready. "Then you'll look like one and act like one until you feel you are. Until wearing make-up becomes part of what you are, your self-image. Until you feel naked without it. So it becomes nothing at all for you, one more routine. Each evening this week when you change your pads or tampons, put on or refresh your make-up too. Then by next Friday you'll know what any woman knows when she changes her tampon or fixes her face routinely without much thinking about it, and then just drops her cosmetics back in her purse and clicks it shut. It'll become instinctive. It's rather special, that sense of self-assurance. Just lovely. You'll like it."

"You're saying, every day next week when I get home I should put on make-up?"

"Unless you want to put it on in the morning and wear it to the office along with your menstrual protection. Do you think that's a good idea?"

That was a threat—next she might insist on that too. I understood. I should feel as proud as any woman that I'm wearing "Ripe Cherries" or some other color on my lips. Also, it would please her.

"I'll like seeing my pretty man make himself pretty so he can feel like a pretty woman," she added.

And that was that. What could I say? I said nothing. My date as a girl who was menstruating was turning into steady evening and weekend female impersonations.

Darla then resumed with my story. "So, Nickie, why did Barry only get a peck on the cheek when as you say you wanted more?"

I tried to remember why only one kiss on the cheek. "I'm shy, I guess," I said a little plaintively. And then added truthfully, "What I thought was, Barry is the first boy I have ever kissed. It was only afterward that it occurred to me I could have gone a little further with him. When it was safe to think it, because really I no longer could." But in my imagination I did want it, I couldn't deny that, certainly not to myself. I did think it and write it down. What was wrong with me? Nothing, I decided. I was just being a girl.

"Aunts kiss nephews on the cheek. But you're a girl having a first date with a new guy. You do want to know more about him, he's your available doorway into the great mystery, what guys and girls do with each other, and he's the one who's interested in you at the moment. So he's the one. Shouldn't you want to encourage him? Of course. So what should you have done?"

"Oh, c'mon, Miss Darla. I'm certainly not going to give him privileges with me. On a first date?"

"No, sweetie. But you do want him to ask you out again, because he's just inexperienced enough so you can practice on him safely. So what do you do?"

"Kiss him on the mouth."

"If you say so, honey. So do it now in your imagination. What do his lips feel like. Tell me."

I think a moment. "He's a little startled, so I reach up and take hold of his head with both hands and pull him down to me. His hair feels a little stiff from the hair gel he used. Then his mouth is soft on my lips as I lift my face to his, and I'm holding his head so he can't lift it away. He purses his lips, and I open my mouth to cover them with mine, then I lightly lick them when we're lined up. His lips feel a little like...."

"Like what, honey?"

I tried desperately to say something else, because I couldn't say what I was thinking.

She saw it in my face. "Say it anyhow," she said.

"His lips feel a little like what a girl once told me the head of a boy's cock feels like. Soft and warm. A little rubbery."

Now Darla was impressed. "VERY good, honey! You're imagining how the head of a cock feels in your mouth? Really, Nick? That's lovely! Do you think you also want to give your date a blow job?"

"No!" The thought was disgusting!

"You do know you'll have to, sooner or later. Maybe you'll even want to. Have any of your older girlfriends given guys blowjobs yet and told you about it? Think about this very carefully, honey. Remember who you are!"

I'm a girl accustomed to periods who uses tampons, I tell myself. I use make-up every day, or anyhow I soon will. I tried to remember what girls did about the cocksucking imperative issue when I was on the cock side of the issue. I was always trying to get girls' mouths wrapped around my cock.

"Well," I said brightly. "Two of my girlfriends told me they suck off their boyfriends every time, one of them because she loves him and feels very good when he feel good, and the other because it gives her a feeling of superiority and control when she can reduce a huge hulk of a boy to moaning jelly just by holding that part of him in her mouth." Girls actually had told me those things at different times.

"So blow jobs can be different things? You need to know, because you may well be giving one to a boy too before long? Right?"

"I suppose so," I said evasively, trying not to contradict her.

"You suppose so? You know so! Especially a young girl as pretty as you, boys on all sides trying to get into your pants. You won't have much choice! For a young girl living in Hormone City it's your cunt or your mouth, or if not your cunt or mouth your ass. Cocks fit and feel good in all three, and every boy knows it. Lots of girls try all three on for size."

I couldn't respomd.

"Nick," she said. "Look me straight in the eye when you answer this next question. Have you ever wondered what an actual cock feels like in your mouth? Apart from the rubbery feel when your lips kiss the tip?"

 

(continued)

  

  

  

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