Just Think it Through

by Vickie Tern

 

Who knew? lt all looks so inevitable now. How couldn't I have seen how it would play out? But all I saw then was a marvelous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live out my dream with no cost, no obligation. To be all the woman I could be at least once in my life. Of course I leaped at it.

Emily emphasized that it was my decision. "Just think it through, Cary," she told me. "It's altogether your choice. It does look to me like the opportunity of a lifetime. You do it and then you're done with it, but at least you'll have done it! I'd rather you didn't want to at all. I'd rather you were the kind of man who'd never ever even felt tempted, you know that. But given this ... thing you've got, I can't discourage you. So go ahead. For a week or two, maybe three, maybe even a month or more. For however long it takes. Then I fervently hope you'll see what it's really like and get tired of it, and this deep need you've got will disappear, and you'll settle in to be what I've always wished you were. And that'll be that, no harm done. You'll have gotten it out of your system once and for all. I really do hope so."

She really did. But she left it up to me. Completely.

Problem was, I didn't expect ever to get it out my system. Oh, maybe one day I'd find myself so humiliated that I couldn't ever again risk it. Maybe there'd be a public exposure so staggering that I could never again pass a dress shop or lingerie store without wincing, never again envy all those beautiful woman I wanted to be, not without feeling self-betrayed. But short of that, I assumed that to the end of my days I'd feel what I always felt whenever I crossdressed—serenity, exaltation, wholeness. A thrill that's both erotic and deeply satisfying. Joy.

And why not? To see there in my own mirror an attractive woman elegantly groomed just for me, one who understands my most trivial needs and most shameful weaknesses, who admires me because I'd love to be everything she is? Who feels flattered by it? Who sees to it that before the day ends I'll be rewarded for my devotion to her by her own hand?

I've been that mirrored dream woman ever since that magical afternoon in my early teens when I was clearing out beach resort lockers for the season and found a girl's bathing suit someone had left behind and tried it on and ... oh God! Look! I had tits! And curved hips! And the cutest round ass! I looked just like all the girls I'd ever adored from a distance but was always too shy to approach. My thin arms didn't look scrawny any more—they were a girl's arms!

I remember how I grasped my new breasts gently and lifted them up, and they moved ever so slightly. How when my fingers felt for my protruding little nipples, my whole body sweetly transformed itself into a heavenly harp. How blissful that sensation! How as I stroked down my rounded hips to my gorgeous thighs, how I knew that this, this was what I was inside, what I wanted to be, how I wanted to look. Though I knew that this girl had to remain my secret self. I was also a boy, after all. Only a boy, at least on the outside.

Yet a year later I'd accumulated a small stash of clothes and cosmetics so the girl in me could sometimes be herself on the outside too, even though mostly she had to pretend she was me. They were carefully hidden away, and I wore them around the house only when my parents were sure to be elsewhere.

In college, where privacy was harder to come by, the same thing. I'd now and then brush my hair forward into bangs and put on a bra and panties under unisex girls'jeans and a wide-necked t-shirt and prowl the quad after dark, just to grant the girl in me her due, as now and then she insisted. She always showed her appreciation afterward by giving me a hand job. I'd sit in the library supposedly studying but in fact scoping other girls like me—as I liked to think of them—girls as gorgeous as I always was in my imagination when I took the trouble to make myself up properly. Once or twice girls might notice that my lips were just a bit too pink or my eyes a trace of shadow too dark, that I was wearing a bra or maybe a t-shirt not quite cut like a boy's t-shirt, and they'd come over to satisfy their curiosity why, to examine more closely whether I was actually a boy or a girl. But I was afraid of exposure, so I'd always cut them off with brief replies.

Because whatever else I was, I was supposed to be a man, even when risking ridicule as a sissy. I longed to be in one of the lovely circles of laughing and chatting girls I saw everywhere. The girl in me wanted to socialize with her own kind. One time I actually dressed up all the way, curled my hair and put on make-up, sneaked out at midnight, and drove twenty miles away to a bar, Then bought myself a drink in a husky contralto voice, and looked for some women to chat with. But a man actually tried to pick me up, and that wasn't what I wanted! I got so scared I fled, and I never tried that again! Because I didn't want to attract men. I wanted to attract women. To be one among them.

Now suddenly here she was, Emily, my own wife, inviting me to live as a woman full time, such that no one could ever imagine I'd ever been anything else. But—and here she was deadly serious—when the masquerade grew tiresome, that would have to be that. The girl part of me would have to leave town, and we'd neither of us ever see her again. I'd become the man she preferred to have as her husband and no one else ever. I had to agree to that in advance. Otherwise, I'd have to abandon the girl in me and become that man now. Or else end our marriage—then, of course, I'd be free to do whatever I liked.

How could I say no?

************

My transvestitism had been a secret I kept from Emily until the night I proposed marriage to her. Then I told her all, I had to.

I was so scared! I loved her, and I knew she loved me—we were affectionate and understanding and caring, and our friends all thought we were a match made in heaven. But she had to know about my one kink.

I remember how we sat on a couch in my little two-room apartment while I told her as casually as I could that I'd been crossdressing ever since my early teens, that I was a little ashamed of it but it was a powerful compulsion and gloriously satisfying and that I'd want to do it even after we were married. That I was telling her this because I wanted to marry her for better or for worse for life and I wanted no secrets between us.

I started out trying to sound matter-of-fact about it all, but as I plowed on my cool collapsed. She sat silent, listening. Dread grew as I spoke, as I became increasingly fearful that I was driving away from me the most wonderful girl I could ever hope to know, this rare prize, all my future happiness. But I couldn't help it! I couldn't keep secrets from her!

As I spoke, she remained impassive. She listened. Just listened. I couldn't read her face. So I made it all sound worse than I had to. I began to babble.

I told her everything. About my secret closet and bureau. My make-up kit and my hair curlers. My wig collection, not touched for years because I'd grown my own hair long enough to hold an occasional style and set. How now and then on Fridays I went to a salon where a hairdresser named Prissy shaped my hair, perhaps knowing it was a woman's style she was maintaining on a man's head. How could she not know? How I'd always tip Prissy generously to assure the same care she gave her other women customers. I'd think 'other' women customers because she sometimes seemed not to know I was a man, and would gossip to me about which of us were cheating on who's husbands as if I'd tut-tut or be amused, or turn pensive, like her other customers. Or she'd offer to streak or highlight and perm my hair—"honey, it'll give it much more life and manageability, and look really cute!" she'd say. Or she'd urge me to get a proper manicure, to decorate my fingertips with one of the fashionable new colors. "You have such lovely hands, you should show them off!" she'd say.

Always, always reluctantly, I'd turn her down. But all weekend I'd be delighted by the feminine hairdo she'd given me, whenever I glanced at myself in the mirror, until Monday morning when at last I'd shampoo it flat and returned to my drab men's look.

In short, I explained that I loved looking and feeling feminine whenever I could without anyone knowing. That I always had. That I'd often tried to ignore or suppress the desire, but it always came back. Overwhelmingly, blissfully. Now it could well deprive me of the love of my life, so now I hated it even though I loved it! Because I wanted to marry her. I wanted to become one with her.

Then, having completed this hopeless, desperately earnest proposal of marriage, I stopped talking.

What did I expect? Emily was baffled. She heard me out in silence, then spoke. "What's wrong with just being a man?" she asked me simply. She appreciated my openness, she sympathized when she saw how ashamed I was yet how determined I was to tell all. But a man who feels compelled to dress up and pretend to be a woman? Incomprehensible! What in the world for? Why?

I had no answers. There were no answers. "Nothing's wrong with being a man!" I told her. "Nothing! I like being a man. That's what I am. But it isn't enough. It's so ... ordinary. I love much more the way I feel when I'm a woman. It's ... it feels like a delicious violation of something and yet also a rare privilege! It feels so wonderful! As if I'd become one with myself."

She established quickly that no, I wasn't gay, I felt nothing for other men, I wanted no part of any, not to live with nor to cherish, have, or hold, not at all. No way. I desired women, and above all others I desired her, Emily. Because women have what I most love and know I lack—softness, grace, poise, beauty, delicacy, kindness, gentleness. I loved all those things in women, and especially in her.

"Those things—assuming I had all those things in me—wouldn't they be enough? Why would you need to feel them in you too?"

"Because I love them. I want to feel they're mine, that I possess them and they possess me." It was as good an answer as any.

She gave that careful thought. "I see," was all she said. "The way being a woman possesses me, in a way." Slowly she turned her head to look directly into my eyes. "All right, Cary," she said. "Show me."

"What?!"

"Your grace, delicacy, and beauty. Show me."

"Now?"

She picked up a magazine. "I'll be here," she said, leaning back on the couch. "Don't take too long. A fast version will do."

Oh, my God! With my heart pounding I rushed into the bathroom and checked my face—no need to shave. So I quickly put on foundation and mascara, lots of mascara, and a light eye shadow with my fingertips, and a pale rose lipstick, nothing too assertive, a stroke of eyebrow pencil on already-overplucked brows, then into the bedroom and tore my clothes off and slipped into a bra and panties, no time for stockings so a long denim skirt to the ankles and black flats, breast forms and a wide-necked white stretch tunic. And quickly brushed my hair back, then back-brushed it up and gave myself bangs, then fluffed and patted it lightly into a crown, blessing Prissy silently for giving me such an easy-care hairdo. No jewelry—well, all right, gold pinch hoop earrings and a single thin gold chain around my neck to lend delicacy, as requested.

One last look, and twenty minutes after I'd scampered out I walked carefully back into the room where Emily sat reading and gently lowered myself into the chair opposite her, knees together, ankles crossed, hands folded in my lap. And sat there wide-eyed, as still as if paralyzed. When Emily looked up—she was deliberately continuing to read her magazine article—she'd be the first person on the planet, after me, to see me as I loved to see myself but had never dared show myself to anyone.

She did finally look up, casually, as if for only a moment, as if she expected to glance and then return to the article she was reading. "Cary?" she said, in a small wondering voice. Then stronger, "That's remarkable!" Then, "I'd wondered if you'd be freaky, hard to look at, but you're really rather pretty, do you know that? You do have a good face for this sort of thing. You even carry yourself differently."

"Thank you, Emily," I said in my well-practiced flute voice. That was as much as I dared say. I sat there, light-headed, my pulse racing, afraid I might faint, and just continued to look at her with my eyes wide open, trying to project honest innocence. Terrified.

"Thank you for sharing this part of you with me, Cary," she then said. "It can't have been easy for you. None of this. As for marrying you, now I need to think about it. I can't say I cherish marrying a part-time woman, but I love you and I don't want to be unfair to either of us. I need time. Wait. I'll tell you when I'm ready."

So it wasn't an outright 'No!' That was all I could hope for. It was enough. I thanked her again, and as she rose and looked for her purse, I tried to say something else, but the words only caught in my throat, and I gurgled. She understood. Just before leaving she leaned over and gave me a slight, sisterly peck on the cheek. "Bye now, sweetheart," she said. So I was still that much, anyhow!

Staring at the closed door after she'd left, I realized that the strain had exhausted me. I crept into bed in my bra and panties and was asleep before I could turn off the light.

The next day I called her, then brought over to her place all sorts of respectable professional literature on the subject, lists of websites and so on, enough to ease all further fear that I was queer or wanted a sex change, or was otherwise a deviant or pervert, a poor marital risk best abandoned while she could still cut her losses and run. Over the next weeks we saw each other as before, and she read it all, and was mollified but not really persuaded. Nothing was said, but I could tell she'd decided that it might not be wrong for a man to want to do this, but somehow it wasn't right either.

Understand, I'm a very nice person. Everyone knows it, that's how I was raised. And smart and witty, and sensitive to other people, and hard working at what I do, all the things girls like to see in men once they get over feeling attracted to the dangerous, exciting ones and begin thinking about those who'd make good husbands. Except that I'm not a hunk—I'm only mid-sized. But Emily knew what she wanted in a man, and she knew it was someone like me. That alone kept her from rejecting me outright.

She consulted certain girlfriends, I learned later. She must have found it difficult. Emily was raised to cherish propriety, respectability, reputation, the good opinion that responsible people bestow on each other. She disliked and scrupulously avoided all eccentricity in dress, appearance, or behavior, and was much admired because both straight and square. Yet here she was with my oddity staring her in her face, so of course she asked for advice. What others thought would weigh with her. Whatever her feelings about me, she'd need to retain their respect. After all, to marry a self-confessed transvestite? Knowingly?

Well, I'd made my case and could only hope. For three weeks we saw each other as before, went to movies and friends' apartments, and concerts, and ate out, and chatted, and never once mentioned either my peculiar marriage proposal or her lack of a response to it.

Then during the fourth week, when we were in a quiet little bistro having a drink before ordering dinner, she herself raised the subject. She'd made up her mind, she told me, and as always she spoke with exact assurance. She told me that if I hadn't been so painstakingly honest with her she'd have broken off our relationship immediately despite her strong feeling for me. But I'd convinced her I meant to live with her with no reservation or deception, and that was a very great gift. She appreciated the enormous risk I'd taken, revealing myself in the name of honesty. It had only deepened her admiration and love for me. So, yes, she would marry me. If ....

At this point my eyes teared up, and a sob lurched out even as I tried to stifle the others. I started to cover my face, but she reached out to grasp my hands between hers and keep talking, so my tears streamed down freely. Tears of joy. She'd marry me, but only if I'd agree to certain conditions for the containment of this ... habit. To all of the conditions.

I must have looked eagerly, pathetically grateful, and I listened attentively, raptly, as she delivered her obviously carefully prepared speech.

First, I could continue to crossdress, but always with discretion, deep in the closet. I could never appear dressed as a woman in anyone's presence other than hers. Never be seen to be a transvestite by anyone other than her, and never anywhere other than at home. She could look at me easily enough because when done up, frankly, I looked like a rather lovely girl. But for anyone else to see me as other than a man was unbearable. It would make us both subjects of gossip and ridicule. And that could threaten her career—she was a financial officer at a major branch of a large corporation. It didn't matter to me, she understood that—I was a free lance writer and my work was judged as itself and nothing else. But her effectiveness depended on maintaining perfect propriety in appearance as well as actuality.

That condition was easy enough. I hardly ever left the house in girl mode, and then only ambiguously dressed and made up, for the thrill of perhaps ... but no, since college I'd never deliberately gone out dressed as a girl. Well, once on my way home from Prissy's salon my hat had blown off and exposed my new ragamuffin-cut, blow-dried hair, and a man had retrieved it with a polite "Here you are, ma'am." I was delighted, but had never let on. If anything I was as cautious, as fearful of exposure as Emily. I often wore bras and panties under my men's clothing, as when in college, but I always made certain they never showed.

"What about Prissy?" I asked. "What about my hairdresser?"

Emily smiled. "I suppose not even your hairdresser can know for certain. You'll never confirm or deny anything to her."

I never had. That didn't seem a problem.

Then there was a second condition. Only on weekends. Whether one day or two made no difference, but for five days a week, when she came home from the office she wanted to see only her husband. Only her husband. On weekends I could look however I chose, wear anything, if we weren't planning to go out or have friends over. If my appearance troubled her she'd simply find things to do elsewhere—shop, visit, do whatever would take her out of the house. But she didn't expect to feel troubled by my appearance. "I suppose it'll be like living with a girlfriend, or a sister," she said, and I exulted to hear it. Though she did hope we'd have an active enough social life to limit my self-indulgence even on weekends.

That was pretty much my own accustomed schedule. I was a weekend crossdresser, when I could be, always regretting when I couldn't be, which was often enough. When I couldn't dress up, panties served, and a bra under nearly everything but a T-shirt. Sometimes I'd add a slip. And colorless if glossy lipstick. Sometimes only an undetectable brown mascara, not the inky black I knew made my eyes look gorgeous, fabulous. I'd wear only just enough to reassure the girl in me that she wasn't being neglected.

So I just nodded again. That condition was also acceptable.

Third, Emily said, never expect her to participate in this ... thing. In any way. She wanted to believe she was married to a man, and she'd persist in believing it despite the evidence of her own eyes. She refused to be involved in my fantasy womanhood, not even to acknowledge that I was dressed, much less how. This would be the last time she'd ever speak of my ... habit, or seem to notice it, no matter how flamboyantly girly I might look or how swish feminine my behavior. No matter how bizarre my appearance, she simply would not see it. Our lives would proceed at all times as if I weren't a crossdresser. I was never to mention it to her, nor would she to me.

That was harder. I'd hoped to share all aspects of this second most important thing in my life with the girl who was the first most important thing. I'd hoped to ask her advice about all sorts of feminine things and offer her mine, to chat cheerily as women do, girl to girl. To be her sister or girlfriend, as she'd herself suggested, as well as her husband. But she said it explicitly, "Even on weekends, I won't act as if I were your girlfriend, and you won't be mine. I'll treat you the same as on any other day."

Again I nodded, more solemnly than before.

"Oh, I'd better say this now, because I won't want to once this is all signed and sealed. You do make a remarkably attractive girl when you're dolled up, the kind I'd enjoy being with if I didn't know you were actually my husband. I have queer friends and effeminate work associates, and we get on fine—I enjoy being with them because it's so relaxed, there's almost no sexual tension between us. Well, your face is lovely, but I suppose I should tell you now, there's one discordant note—your waistline is a little thick, so your hips look straight. You'll need to do something about it."

I was baffled. Was this a mixed signal?

She lifted her chin proudly, as if to say 'Keep in mind that I'm the real thing and you're not!,' but then explained. "We're about the same height. I watch my waist carefully, I have a thing about being overweight, and I'm afraid that on weekends despite myself I'll be watching yours too. I just will. So your waist will need to look ... appropriate. Whenever we're being two women together your waist will need to be even thinner than mine, I suspect, to give your hips a proper feminine curve. So I'd like you to diet. Whatever your dress size, drop down one more."

She smiled. "I'd prefer of course that you were a man who lives on steak and french fries, not on cottage cheese. I'd happily keep our fridge filled with porterhouses and filets. Just try me! But whatever you do, you will need to look your best. That's why I'm allowing you your hairdresser. I won't live with a slob or a freak."

"All right," I replied. "I want to keep your respect by whatever means necessary."

Then a fourth thing. "Well, see if you can respect this next condition. It may not be easy for you." She stared directly at me. "Cary, don't ever expect me to have sex with you when you're dressed like a woman. That part of you stays out of our bed. I don't say I'm unable—I was bi-curious in college and I had some very nice experiences, never mind what kind. I've been intimate with other women and enjoyed it. But with a man I want only what men can do. You are my true love, and I've realized during the past few weeks that I love you very deeply and don't want to lose you. But when I hold you in my arms I never want to be reminded that you're sometimes effeminate. I don't want you to remind me of the women I've had sex with, when I felt soft mouths tasting of lipstick, or when those mouths went down on me and wafted me high up. How a woman's dainty hands can feel when they're touching you everywhere, and ....well, never mind! I want to think of you only as a man, as my man, only my man, my only man, my strength. Not some addled variant sissy, a girly man. I want to keep those two worlds of feeling utterly separate in my mind."

This was harder still. She'd told me a little about her experimental liaisons with a few girlfriends during her college years, and I'd secretly hoped she'd want to renew them with me. "I can be both things to you, Emily," I said. "I'm a man, so I can be a man for you. But I can also be a woman for you whenever you prefer that kind of loving." I was thinking that this really would be the best of all possible worlds for me. I was trembling.

She saw, and let me down gently. "But that would breach our understanding that I never acknowledge you as a woman, wouldn't it? It would also put my marriage vows at risk. I want to remain faithful to the man I'm marrying, if I can. Can I also pledge fidelity to a woman I'm also marrying? Can I acknowledge that a woman has the same access to my body as my own husband, and then declare that I'm still being true to my husband? I don't think so. If one woman, you, why not others too?"

This made a sort of sense. She wasn't finished, though. "Then there's this. To the extent that I think of you as a woman, not a man, am I still married to a man? If you're only a part-time man, would it be a betrayal of you if I also slept with another man, also part-time? Do you really want to be the woman I sleep with when I have no husband?"

I couldn't argue those points. "No, I don't," I said, swallowing. I'd thought through none of these implications. Emily'd obviously considered all of them.

"And lastly, I need an escape clause. I reserve the right to ask more of you if it ever seems necessary, or less, so I'll never ever myself feel trapped by these conditions. I understand that for you crossdressing, looking like a woman, is a kind of compulsion, an urge you can cope with but not suppress. Well, if on some very rare occasion—maybe never—I should ask you to do something—or not do something—connected with your feminine ... expression, I'll need to know you'll do it. I need that assurance in advance.

This, I recognized immediately from the femdom websites I frequented, was something like a "safe word." Fair enough. Moreover, I liked the idea, I realized with a spasm of erotic pleasure. In effect, it put Emily in charge of my crossdressing. Whether I did it or how I did it would hereafter always be subject to her implicit approval or veto.

Well, it was anyhow. It had been all along. She had to separate my womanliness from my manliness in her own mind, for both our sakes, yet at the same time she had to allow it an outlet. All this was reasonable, I was thinking, better overall than I could have hoped for, far better than I'd feared. Again my eyes teared up.

"You can accept these conditions, honey? You can help me to accept you as you are by accepting them?"

I told her Yes! Yes! Yes to everything! Everything! Unabashed, I wept. She stroked my hands and consoled me. I was now her betrothed, her dearly beloved, and she now saw how desperate my fear had been that I might lose her, how strong my love was for her yet how powerful my need, how agonized I'd been that I was unable to give up either. "It's all right now, dear," she said. "It's all right. Shall we order dinner now, or would you rather take me home?"

We went straight home. It was wonderful!

And so was our marriage. For five years we more or less kept to our agreement. On weekdays we were companions, friends, lovers, sharing what someone called 'the endless conversation' of a good marriage. We joked, we consulted, we shared, we cared, we were of one mind. Yet even so, I'd look forward to the weekend when I could look and feel ... lovely, my other self. It seemed so thrilling, so wicked, so dangerous, yet so delightful, such a marvelous transgession of sacred secret territories reserved for each sex, an indulgence that absorbed and always rewarded the time and effort I gave it. When my mirror told me I looked beautiful, as it always did after I'd spent hours making myself beautiful, I couldn't have been happier. And I have to confess it, sometimes I did let that woman in the mirror seduce me into a hand job. I wasn't always faithful to Emily. Not exactly.

It also occurred to me that except for my promises to Emily I could have been dressed almost all the time. Emily went to work each morning in her downtown skyscraper, and I could have settled to work in my study in a comfy leisure outfit, a fetching slack suit, or even dressed to the hilt in heels and a flirty skirt. I was a professional daydreamer with a lucrative career—a writer of pop novels, a plotter of comic book lines of action, a film and TV script doctor, an ingenious conceiver of fictions and modifier of other people's, an editor of ghost-written autobiographies. I did whatever writing needed doing or improving, and gradually I'd gotten known among a small circle of similarly talented people and those who hire them. When a story written for commercial purposes finds itself derailed, who ya gonna call? Me. I could get it back on track, and usually did.

My fantasy experience with women's ways made me especially valuable when I was writing for women's magazines, or re-creating some other writer's women characters, or adding a twist to a soap opera script. I became known for it. Few editors or producers ever met with me, so few knew whether I was a man or a woman.

But for Emily's sake my clothes looked masculine during the week even when my mind was roaming through feminine territory, as it often did. They looked masculine even if they were bought off women's racks in women's clothing stores, more unisex than masculine. Or more unisex than feminine. Emily never seemed to notice, so I did stretch the rule sometimes, and wear girls' jeans or "man-tailored" shirts that buttoned the wrong way. I'd sometimes shop for women's clothes during the week, and who can blame me if I'd try them on as soon as I got home?

On weekdays our sex lives flourished—we were wonderfully passionate. Emily's inclinations were vanilla, as you'd expect of a woman properly reared to respectability, but within those proprieties as she saw them she was intense and uninhibited, She loved everything about fucking, though anything else we did was only occasional, I suspect mainly to please me. Her preference was for pricks and pussies joined in holy matrimony, for cocks and cunts. But she'd sometimes allow me to worship her body as it deserved, preening like a cat awakenening from sleep when I licked her in secret places, especially between her legs, especially where her slit was pink, moist, and as her juices began to flow, delicious. Now and then she'd attempt oral sex on me, but never more than a lick and a promise, and not often. But many times each week we'd embrace and make love passionately, devotedly, plunging deep into and wrapping tight around each other, wondrously close, throbbing our climaxes together. We'd become one flesh, and feel like each other. Often. Or so I'd imagine.

Never on weekends. On weekends I'd make myself gorgeous and then if I could I'd remain that way until Sunday night. Saturday morning was an especially glorious girl time spent soaking in a perfumed bubble bath, eliminating any sparse body hairs, then throwing on a a negligee with my hair pinned up. Then back to the bedroom, and slowly, luxuriously, I'd apply my make-up and then dress for the day. Maybe I'd wear no more than a sporty blouse and jumper or a flouncy print dress, with a swipe of lipstick and a brush of mascara. Sometimes I'd wear casual makeup, sometimes flirtatious, sometimes smoulderingly seductive. Sometimes I'd brush out a soft hairstyle—courtesy of Prissy—implying a soft, yielding, inner vulnerability. Or darling curls. Then in the evening maybe I'd change to an off the shoulder long gown and darker, more sophisticated makeup.

All this just to sit around and read, or browse the computer, or watch TV—never sports programs on weekends of course, only cooking programs, or women's gossip shows and melodramas. Sometimes I'd dress to work on a project as if I actually were my own feminine counterpart—I named her 'Carrie'—even though Cary always signed the completed work when he mailed it off. Sometimes I'd dress like a maid in order to help with the housework, though our schedules had me doing much of the housework routinely anyhow. If you look it, live it, was my motto, and vice versa. A feminine appearance was my cue to feel and behave as feminine as I could imagine myself. I loved it. I got to be very good at it. I felt privileged merely to stand wearing heels and feel my ankles flex, or merely to sit and smooth my skirt under me and feel my nylon undies slide under my skirt against the chair cushions.

Sunday evening always felt a little elegaic, sad, as I removed my fingernails and creamed off my make-up and unclasped my bra, the enchantment ended, and my life again became ... ordinary. If friends invited us out on Saturdays or Sundays, even if we invited them in, my time en femmne was truncated and I felt cheated. When I had to be out of town over a weekend to consult with a client, I'd consider it a lost weekend, an opportunity for pleasure gone forever, no fee really worth the sacrifice. Increasingly I turned down such invitations.

Emily meanwhile did turn a blind eye to my womanliness. She never seemed to see or hear anything feminine about me. On weekends we talked as we always did, though I used my feminine voice, and except that she avoided physical nearness she seemed to see nothing exceptional in me at all. No matter that my temperament was so much nicer on weekends, not insistent or querulous or disputatious as occasionally during the week when I was a man and irritated by something. On weekends I was always considerate, sweet, helpful, sympathetic, generous. No matter how pretty I made myself—and I did let Prissy set my hair in lovely shapes to look especially nice for my darling—she never seemed to see it. No matter how I was dressed, whether stylish or casual, no matter what my face looked like, Emily never registered that anything about me was out of the ordinary.

She could be taking a dress from her closet and telling me of some incident at work while I happened to be sitting at my make-up table applying foundation cremes and eye shadows, maybe taking my hair out of rollers. But she'd talk to me exactly as if I were hunching myself into sweats and loafers before going downstairs to lounge, drink beer, and burp.

Or I'd be clearing the table with her and something would spill on my skirt—let's say, red wine. Of course everything ceases when wine spills, so the tannins in the stain can be attended before the stain sets. For myself and Emily as for all women, caring for a nicely tailored garment when it's been stained has the highest priority. Whether Emily liked my wearing a skirt or not, and decidedly she did not, she'd want me to do whatever needed doing to save it from permanent damage. She'd respect my impulse, and simply wait until I returned from the kitchen with the stain dealt with, the emergency over.

Yet the whole time she'd try to act as if nothing was wrong, as if there were neither stain nor skirt. She'd just keep chatting and clearing the table. The first time, I deliberately delayed attending to a few drops of wine on a blouse. I intended to sprinkle salt on it, a common housewife's emergency remedy supposedly so the stain will rinse away easily afterward, something all women know and Emily herself did when necessary. She withheld advising me what to do, though I could see her getting edgy as the minutes passed and my hand advanced no closer to the salt shaker. When I was wearing women's clothes, her prime directive was to see nothing at all. That was the deal. But when I finally picked up the salt shaker her relief was palpable.

There were other ways she seemed to acknowledge she knew I was wearing a dress, if I happened to be wearing a dress. I treasured them. I kept to my diet, and though nothing showed during the week when I wore loose men's clothes, on weekends I wore extremely svelte clothes—jackets that nipped way in at the waist, or gowns that slithered past my now-nicely-curved hips on their way to the floor. Or broad, tight belts with jeweled buckles that emphasized my small waist. After a year or two of marriage, seeing me always dressed tastefully and with flair week after week, she began asking me for fashion advice. Which necklace or pullover did I think went with this outfit, or which jacket best matched that skirt, or did I think this blouse was too dress-down or that one too daring. She trusted me to make for her the most crucial of the decisions a woman confronts when dressing, which outfit is most appropriate for which kind of occasion. Whatever my advice, Emily always took it, and then always basked in compliments as other women admired her exquisite taste, her stylish chic.

From this I divined that she could see that I myself dressed with stylish chic. Even early in our marriage, when my closet was small and my options limited. When she used me as a fashion consultant, it was always without acknowledging why, but I knew why. I loved it that she trusted my judgement. I loved it that she might be feeling a little deprived of the girlish chatter we might have been enjoying, about trends and looks and styles and local sales. But she did begin inviting me to go shopping with her, and that made up for some of it. I'd pretend to a man's bored indifference as I waited for her while she tried on different outfits in stores, meanwhile checking out outfits I might want to buy for myself. Then when she emerged from the dressing room, with a simple shake or nod of my head she'd reject or buy whatever she had on. She knew I knew.

I especially treasure the time she had to take direct notice of a dress I was buying. We were shopping a department store super sale together. I'd picked up a pair of men's khakis and a soccer shirt for weekday use, then browsed the store for every imaginable kind of women's wear and collected an armful. By prearrangement we met at the register at a set time, and there we saw that without consulting we'd each selected exactly the same dress from out of the thousands we'd looked at.

That coincidence testified to our compatability of taste, how similar our self-images as women. We were both sensible Talbot's or Lord and Taylor women, inclined toward classic styles, not given to boutique novelties or extravagant fads. We wore clothes, not 'costumes.' But this time Emily felt forced to tell me as we were leaving the store, as if woman to woman, "You won't wear your dress when I'm wearing mine, and I won't wear mine when I see you're wearing yours, all right honey?" I agreed readily enough, and gloated over that small implicit recognition for days.

I was never sure when, but I thought that after a few years Emily grew casual about my appearance and actually began not seeing how I was dressed. Or perhaps her patience began to erode. Because now and then when I was fully dressed and made up even to my toenails, and the front door chimed for a delivery or a friend's visit, she'd call out from the kitchen or her study or the cellar where she was folding laundry, "Would you get it, please, honey? I'm busy!" This when she knew full well I was roaming the house in perhaps a stunning cocktail dress I'd just acquired from an upscale Next-to-New rummage, my hair up, my eyes bright with make-up, chandelier earrings dripping from both ears. Or she'd just seen me in heels, tight slacks, and a striped T-shirt making the most of my breastform boobs.

I'd know she knew because a second later she'd brush past me to answer the door herself. Obviously she'd been in motion the whole time, and her call to me had been by way of imagining to herself for a moment that her husband was not weirdly dressed as if a woman, and could indeed answer the door respectably at any time. Or perhaps it was a way to rebuke me, to remind me that I was imprisoned, that I was holding myself incommunicado in my own house whenever I dressed like that, unfit to be seen. I could hear her unspoken message clearly enough. Why not just quit this nonsense? Live sensibly. Normally. Be respectable. Be a man!

The fact is, she was right, I was a prisoner in my own house. As she arrived at the door to open it to some unexpected caller, I'd already be scurrying to an upper landing to hide, then pausing to hear who it was. Pausing until I could decide whether the caller would soon be gone and I could drift back down as I was, or whether I had to move quietly to my bedroom to scrub my face and change into proper drab male gear, then come down as if interrupted from customary deep thinking or a nap, to be seen without embarrassment.

Not that they mattered to me, those times. Imprisonment in my own house was for me freedom to be all the woman I wished I could be. Nor did Emily really expect me to change my ways because of her passive-aggressive reminders that I inconvenienced her by making myself unable to answer the door. I'd study women's looks, behaviors, and moves during the week and practice them on weekends, and after years of seeing me improve in femininity beyond the merely passable, apparently not noticing, Emily knew my womanliness had achieved a steady state as skilled and persuasive as hers. She always hoped the desire would wane in time, I'm sure, yet in time she lost any real expectation of it. We live in hope for all sorts of things, yet settle for what we've got. Why not?

In all this time I'd not once stepped outside the house wearing make-up or a dress. Well, almost not once. No way imaginable could Emily ever bear the shame of such exposure, both of us being too well known around the neighborhood and among friends and co-workers, and Emily too dependent on peer respect to wish to be known to be married to the likes of me. The decent opinion of mankind was something she could not sacrifice even for me. As long as everyone thought we were unexceptional neighbors and law-abiding citizens and a sound, responsible couple, she left me to enjoy my inexplicable kink in a permissive moral vacuum.

Even so, as every addict knows, there is always a temptation to try just a little more. I did on occasion skirt the outer edges of the letter of our agreement. Now and then, unknown to her, on weekends maybe even accompanied by her, I'd go shopping or to a movie while pretending that I was really a woman disguised as a man. I'd wear a bra and panties and sometimes a tight corset, pantyhose of course, maybe also my favorite Liz Claiborne jeans and Grasshopper sneaks that almost looked unisex. She never seemed to notice how nicely styled they were, how unmasculine their lines. Once, standing alone in a checkout line when I'd bought a few groceries, my hair recently curled and brushed back, I'd dropped a bottle of skin lotion and a woman behind called my attention to it by saying "Miss?" She apologized when I turned around to see what she wanted, though I assured her in my sweetly modulated girl's voice, accompanied by a delighted smile, that there was no problem, none at all. I'm not sure she ever decided which of the sexes I really belonged to.

Once I went altogether over the edge by taking Emily to a movie while wearing a pale pink "natural" lipstick she'd never notice and just a stroke of black mascara on my lashes, having blow-dried my hair so it puffed all around to cover my ears and hide my forehead in a wisp of bangs. The girl in the ticket booth never looked up to see me, and people in the lobby looked at me or through me, so I have no idea which gender they thought me. I never thought to put my look to the test by trying to use the Ladies Room or the Men's Room either. Emily seemed not to notice, or if she did, she chose not to mention it.

Another time, just once, I tried to make love to her on a Saturday night. I'd cooked up a fabulous dinner with aperitifs before, wine during, and cognac after, and we were both feeling a little tipsy. Emily had been delighted by my efforts, highly complimentary, and had honored the occasion by dressing formally in a long gown to match mine, our eyes darkly outlined, black, and our hair piled high. We'd both looked exceptionally beautiful by candle light, I'd thought, and I was feeling especially romantic. When we were finally in bed and the lights were out I'd reached for her purposively, my nightie rubbing against hers for the first time, our legs beginning to entangle.

"If you make love to me tonight it'll have to be as a woman," she'd said to me quietly into the dark. "And then you'll never make love to me any other way. I can't let myself confuse you as my woman lover and yet also my man lover. If you make love to me now you'll live with your face between my legs and your hands on my breasts for as long as we're together. Maybe I'll let you use a dildo on me, but probably I'll need to use other men for real fucking. For all the use I'll ever make of your penis it might just as well shrink up and fall off right now. Is that what you want?"

I pulled back immediately, and never again attempted love on a weekend while dressed. Nor could I ever again doubt that she knew how I was dressed. With me she was determined to be hetero or lesbian, not both, and never to confuse the two.

But whatever she saw, she preferred not to let on. One Sunday I was dressed in tight clamdigger jeans and a pink stretch sweater, my bra and my tiny man-boobs poking out, when she came home from a Women's Club excursion to Toronto to see "Momma Mia." She looked at me and asked what I'd done all day, and I'd told her nothing, just gone to the movies. She'd looked again at me but said nothing, wondering no doubt if those were the clothes I'd worn when I'd gone to the movies. And if so, whether I'd worn a jacket to cover my girly chest. And what about those slacks, cut off to reveal the twist of a girl's slim ankle?

She chose to say nothing. Maybe she guessed but knew there was no point in commenting on my risky behavior, my minor violations, once the risk had passed. Maybe she preferred to believe those weren't the clothes I'd worn when I went out. They needn't have been. Though sometimes they were.

One Saturday I happened to be dressed casually in slacks, low-heeled pumps, a loose but lacy slipover, and as always gorgeous make-up—perfect complexion and blush, black eyes, red lips—when the front door chime sounded unexpectedly. I looked through the door's sidelight and saw no one we knew, only a young man about my age holding a clipboard. Emily was in the basement and I realized she hadn't heard anything. Why not answer this time? So I did.

"Ma'am," the man said when he saw me. "I'm soliciting funds for the special Red Cross Drive you've probably heard about, to help the victims of...."

"Oh, yes," I said in my lilting, flutey voice, my weekend voice except when answering the phone—that caused confusion at the other end. "How lovely that you donate your time to go door to door!"

"If you know of it, then there's no need for me to tell you how important...."

"No, no need at all. Have you an envelope I can use to mail in a contribution? My husband and I don't like to ...well ...it's no reflection on you, but...."

"I understand, ma'am. In fact we're not allowed to collect money directly. But I would appreciate it if you'd mail your contributiom today in this ...."

"Thank you. I'm delighted to help!"

And as I took the envelope from him I grazed my bright red fingernails across his knuckles, all the while gazing approval and admiration into his clear blue eyes. He gazed back with increasing appreciation. I could see the light of an idea take shape in his head and then take control.

"Ma'am," he said. "It occurs to me that we ...."

"Thank you again, kind sir," I said with a faint curtsey. "But I need to get back to my day's work now." And I gently closed the door on him and on the pretty personal invitation he'd obviously intended to deliver. And turned away in delight, triumphant, my heart pounding. I'd been an actual girl in the eyes of someone else, someone who looked, saw, and approved of what he saw, and had actually begun to make a pass! I felt exhilerated, authentic as never before!

"Well!" Emily's voice said behind me. "'My husband and I'? 'How lovely'? 'Kind sir'? Did you manage to slip him your phone number too?" Her voice was tart.

"Emily! You didn't answer, so I .... I saw it was only a charity drive, and I couldn't scurry out of these clothes, so I figured...."

For the first time she looked at me as only women ever look at each other, carefully and critically, head to toe. There was no question this time that she saw me. From my curled hairstyle past my faintly bulging boobs to my tight-in-the-rear slacks to to my low-heeled pumps.

"Why the heavy make-up?" she asked me. "Did you see him down the street and rush to prepare to make a pass at him before he got here? Why those intimate bedroom eyes?"

"Emily, I was wearing all this when ..."

"It worked, too. I saw it all. I thought we had an agreement. You don't show yourself to anyone, and I don't complain about the way you dress at home. But now you've not only let yourself be seen dressed like ... like that, you've enjoyed it! Obviously. Just now as you closed the door you were positively exulting. Gloating. Did you enjoy it?"

She had me. "Yes, I did." There was no point in denying it.

"A lot?"

"Yes."

"You like attracting a man?"

"No. I like feeling like an attractive woman."

"I see."

And she said nothing further, and I was more than eager to let the whole subject pass. I didn't want to imagine what she was thinking.

A few weeks later an event occurred that changed our lives altogether.

As Emily had hoped for months but had not dared believe possible, she was called in by top management and told that national headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had asked for her. They'd been increasingly impressed by her work, her reports, her administrative accomplishments, and now they wanted her to move there. She'd get a big promotion—she'd be Vice President for Financial Affairs for the whole company, with a huge salary increase and other expectations commensurate. Such as a bonus, all moving expenses, the reimbursed cost of whatever house she chose to buy, a country club membership, and entry into the town's highest social echelons. She'd be on a fast track to the very top.

I was delighted for her. As always she thought through the implications carefully, though I knew that eventually she'd say 'yes.' My career offered no obstacle to a move. My talents were well-known, I had more work than I cared to handle, and I could work anywhere. Then too, better a move now, with no kids to uproot from schools and friends, than later when roots in the community had grown deep.

So I was supportive as she considered systematically the different personal problems and career implications, and finally decided to accept the offer as stated. It was simply too great an an honor, too great an opportunity to throw away. She flew off to Albuquerque to spend two weeks consulting with people she'd be working with and buying a house for us to live in, then unexpectedly she decided to stay an additional week. She phoned now and then, sometimes eager to share the events of the day with me, sometimes only cursorily, distracted, just touching base. It was the longest time we'd been apart. We told each other that we missed each other.

I didn't exactly keep to our agreement while she was gone. I curled my hair one weekday evening and put on full light facial makeup, though a man's pants and shirt to hide my panties and bra, nearly hide my bra, and I went to the Mall to buy some women's running shoes and a set of loose yet nicely-styled women's sweats. I hoped they'd seem androgynous enough to Emily for me to wear during the week, though when I got them home I saw there was no way. They were loose but nevertheless they looked cute, sassy, somehow pixieish. Very feminine, overall. I loved them. They weren't for wearing weekdays, but I wore them that week anyhow. The second week I dressed several times as if I were an office girl going to a job downtown, then went to my job in my study. The third week I spent being a girl, changing skirts or dresses every few hours, day after day, altogether entranced by my femininity and delighted by the opportunity to display it.

I took chances. I wore my hair everywhere as Prissy'd arranged it, softly feminine, and I wore eyeshadow to the supermarket even when dressed as a man. One deliciously wicked evening I ordered pizza in, then put on a miniskirt and sultry make-up to receive the delivery boy. I actually saw a bulge grow in his crotch as he stood there and I pretended to fumble in one of Emily's purses for the money I'd placed there earlier. It made my whole evening! Letting myself be glimpsed or seen looking like a woman somehow seemed more honest than hiding inside my own clothes..

Finally Emily returned. She was enthusiastic about the work, especially about the people—she'd been wined and dined the whole time, she'd played tennis with other executives, and at their wives urging she'd danced at the Club with some of the more courtly, older Vice Presidents. With some of the younger ones too, she made clear, thinking perhaps that if I understood there was competition down there I'd abandon my transvestism and be a man. She was the youngest Vice-President they'd ever appointed, and everyone flattered her. She'd gone house-hunting and loved the one she'd selected for the company to purchase for her, loved the neighborhood, and loved the opportunities now opening for rich social lives. For both of us. As she said that last, she looked momentarily thoughtful, but didn't explain why.

Why emerged a few days later.

"Cary," she said the following Sunday evening, when we were seated comfortably in our living room having a pre-dinner drink. "We need to talk."

I was wearing one of my better dresses, a rather decollete black silk with a single strand of pearls and pearl drop clasp earrings. Just two days earlier I'd wondered whether to risk getting a full body wax to save myself all that Saturday morning shaving and had done it, and wondered as well whether pierced ears would violate our agreement and decided reluctantly that they would. Even so, I looked very nice and knew it, fit for cocktails and dinner anywhere. My black hosiery and simple black high-heeled pumps were perfect accompaniments. I felt 'together'—every woman knows what I mean.

She saw she had my attention. "That's an especially lovely dress," she said. "And I've always envied you those earrings whenever you've worn them. You really did miss dressing nicely for me while I was away these past few weeks, didn't you?"

Dumbfounded! What was she saying?! Mentioning my women's clothes? She knew that I always dressed to impress her even though officially she never seemed to notice? Did I hear her correctly? "Yes, I did," was all I could reply. Should I also confess that despite our agreement I'd dressed for myself during the week? And for a pizza delivery boy? No.

"You do know how I feel about this habit of yours."

"I certainly do, Emily," I said. I had heard her. "And I respect your feelings. You know that."

Now I became distinctly uneasy. This was the first time since our marriage that Emily had deliberately mentioned my dress, or my earrings, or 'this habit.' Everything was supposed to be invisible to her. But now? Was she going to forbid me any further dressing when we moved to her new location? Being higher up in the managerial chain, was she feeling more vulnerable to scandal because of my 'habit'? She must be! If she forbade me any further cross-dressing, could I possibly comply? Was she about to tell me that she's going to Albuquerque but I'm not invited?

"I know you do, sweetheart. Do you have a topcoat to go with the outfit you're wearing? We're dining out tonight. I have a proposal to put to you."

Even more astonished! "No, Emily, I don't have any women's outdoor clothes." That much was true.

"Then take my short grey cape from the front hall closet. It'll match your dress well enough. And then let's go."

Dazed, almost altogether dulled down, I did so. And stepped outside for the first time while wearing a dress and full make-up, and scanned the neighborhood. No one was watching. I sat neatly down on the passenger side of the car and swung my legs in together, as women do. No purse, no driver's license.

She drove us to that same little bistro where she'd first accepted my marriage proposal and set the conditions we'd lived by these past five years. That seemed auspicious. But maybe she was seeking closure, an end to the marriage we'd begun five years earlier? I stared straight ahead, knees tight together, speechless. We arrived. For the first time dressed as a woman, I stepped out of the car with my high-heeled pumps clicking on the pavement and my black dress swirling against my legs, and entered the restaurant behind Emily and the headwaiter, walking as gracefully as I could to a table near the one that had first authorized our marriage.

When we were seated and the waiter had taken our orders for drinks, Emily spoke. "Honey, I've been watching your every move. You're perfect. We're here because I wanted to be sure I knew what kind of a lady you are when you're out and about, not just being a lady at home. And now I know the answer. A gracious and lovely lady. You're altogether persuasive, no one would dream that you're not quite what you seem. I know your little heart must be going pitty-pat right now, but you really have nothing to fear. All of your years of studying and imitating how women move and talk and dress have paid off, and all in this one evening. I see that I can proceed with you as I'd hoped."

"Thank you, Emily," I said to her in my flute-voice, wide-eyed because that was my typical feminine facial expression, and also because I was still amazed, bewildered by what was happening.

"Here is where we reached our first agreement, so it seems only appropriate that here is where we should reach another rather differenmt one. Now listen closely. Both of you, the man I married and the woman he becomes on weekends. I've waited until tonight to say it because I want her attention as well as yours, Cary. Or his attention but especially yours, Carrie. You are 'Carrie' when you're being a woman, aren't you? You see, I'm not sure how to say this."

I straightened my legs and sat upright, tense. Here it comes, I thought unhappily. The end of my joy. The end of my beautiful weekends. The end of my marriage? If it came to it could I give this wonderful thing up? I could try. I would try! But I've talked about it on the Net with so many others who've tried and failed repeatedly. I'd fail! It never works. If that was what she was about to ask me to do, give up pretending I'm a woman, I was in despair!

"I've been thinking about all this, and I'm now sure that I've been terribly unfair to you, that I should never have restricted your womanliness, what you once called the girl inside you. Unfair to both of you and to both of us. I know it's been difficult for you. I've seen how you push the edge of our agreement, how you sometimes go out in almost girls' clothes or almost boys' clothes and hope no one will notice. Well, I do notice, even though I've never mentioned it. It's your thing and I haven't wanted to expand discussion of it into our relationship."

"I see," I said as gently as I could.

"Others have noticed too, of course. They tell me what they've seen, and tell me that out of respect for me they've never made it common gossip. You often wear light make-up and androgynous clothing at the supermarket, looking more feminine than masculine. And at Balley's you've been seen buying yourself undergarments, and at Victoria's Secret too. For example, that dress you've got on now. Maggie saw you buy it at Towson's last year and thought it just darling, she admired your taste, and she also thought it was darling of you to want to buy a dress for me. Then she asked me once why she never sees me wearing it. I didn't know what she meant at first, so I had to back and fill, so she wouldn't think you'd bought it for someone else you were seeing on the side. That you were that someone else."

She's softening the blow. Oh, God! Now she means to leave me so as not to be "unfair" to my habit. I've lost her! Panic began to overcome my sense of dread. Terror!

"It's a lovely dress. An Anne Klein, isn't it? I love basic blacks with scoop necks and long sleeves like that one. I almost wish I'd been with you when you bought it, so I could have gotten something similar for myself. I may want to borrow it some time, it would look perfect with my mauve pashmina, don't you think? You wouldn't mind, would you? It does look really stunning on you. I've admired it for months."

What? Now I was numb. "No, I wouldn't mind," I managed to croak. "You're welcome to anything in my wardrobe, honey." Was I trying to bribe her into keeping me as a husband?

"Cary, I can't deprive you any longer. When we move to New Mexico, I think our agreement should end. I don't think you should come with me. I don't think we can move into our new lives there living as we've lived here."

My stomach sank into my shoes! I couldn't breathe! It's over! Oh, God! Emily! I've lost you! No! I'll change! But I knew I couldn't. I couldn't even say it. This was the end!

"I won't hold you back any more this way. I know how much this transvestism of yours means to you."

I was devastated. Just to stay sane I quickly invented and recited the rest of her speech silently to myself. 'And that's why, Cary, that's why I think you'll find you'll be much happier if you look for more suitable marital opportunities elsewhere. We're reducing personnel and so much as I regret it, we have to let you go. I think you'll find in the long run this is all for your own good. Just turn over your files, and collect what we owe you from payroll, and clear your desk, and be out of here by five. It's been a fine relationship in many ways, Cary, advantageous for both of us, and I regret it, but I'm afraid our marriage has to be terminated. You're redundant. Downsized. Fired. Obliterated. I'm finished with you! Goodbye!'

"Cary," Emily was actually saying. "I think it would be a lot neater, a lot cozier, a lot less risky, and a lot more respectable, if we showed up at our new house in Albuquerque, in our new neighborhood, simply as two women. Two women who are beyond question women. Not as a husband and wife who happen to look like two women on weekends, but as two authentic, full-time women. Authentic as far as anyone can tell."

What?!

"I've had to think this thing through. I thought at first that maybe we could go down there as two girlfriends, but since we'll be living together that would raise lesbian issues. So it will be better I think if we're related to each other. If we're sisters-in-law. We'll let Cary be a man who's travelling somewhere else on business when we arrive. You can be his sister Carrie, come to help me move in and keep me company in his absence. That is your usual other name when you're on the computer with your transgendered friends, I remember. Carrie. We can be two women together. When we arrive you'll be a woman full time, and you'll remain a woman, seen and identified as a woman to your heart's content for as long as you like. In Albuquerque you'll be all the woman you can be, 24/7!"

Astounded!

"You can do it," she said mildly, watching me closely as the idea sank in. "I've seen you. I've been checking you out since I got back, even now, en route to this restaurant. In some ways you're more feminine than I am."

Then I saw it! What she actually had in mind! To take advantage of a move to a place where nobody knows us and set us up as a household of two women, and let me live out my dream! Or rather, to let me see if I really want to live as a woman full time by actually living as one. Full time!

My God! From despair to rapture! To terror, then back! I felt like fainting!

She was going on. "Honey, this is the one time in your life when it won't matter. No one will know you. I've been thinking for some time that we can't go on like this. It's so artificial, your dressing like a debutante every weekend while I ignore you utterly, you keeping all of your stylish clothes secret, and all of your delicacy and good taste hidden away indoors unseen."

"I've felt that," I said. "But those were the conditions you set. I agreed to them."

"I'm aware of that of course. Here in this city we both have reputations to maintain, don't we? We're both known as who we are. I wanted to marry you because I love you despite your cross-dressing, and what we've been doing was the best compromise I could think of at the time. But now things are different. We can't go on like this. It's impossible. No way. You see, honey, as the company's financial V.P. I'll be much more visible, much more closely scrutinized. People will be watching both of us, wondering what we're like, gossiping about everything. And anyhow, our weekends will no longer be free—we'll be entertaining at home a lot more, and going out a lot more often too. A country club membership goes with this job, with the expectation that both of us will be actively involved there, entertaining prospects and associates and maintaining our social responsibilities. You won't be able to be sometimes a man, sometimes a girl any more. You'll have to be one or the other."

Where was she going with this?

"If you'd rather be Cary, a man, when we arrive, fine! I do hope you'll prefer it. I want you to. But I don't expect it—I know you too well. I know you need this femininity thing, it's in your blood. So I'm willing to compromise even further. I'm inviting you to come with me to Albuquerque as a woman. In your own eyes and everyone else's eyes a woman. As Cary's sister Carrie, a woman as feminine as you wish to be, within the bounds of decency of course. That way I won't be at risk of disgrace if anyone sees you. And that way you can live unrepressed by me or even by your own manhood, and eventually see for yourself just how much this really matters to you. Whether you want to go further, go all the way with your womanhood instead of just tasting and sampling."

"I see" was all I dared say. I couldn't repress my excitement. My hands were shaking, and my long red fingernails were trembling. I put them to my smooth-complexioned cheeks as if to grasp my head. I knew I must be looking pathetically grateful yet elated at this moment, so I tried instead to look serious, thoughtful. And I'm sure I failed. I was too overjoyed! At last! To play at being a woman full time! To carry it all outside! To be seen, to find out what kind of a woman others think I am, after all! To meet with other woman and socialize with them as if I were a real woman, to be a girl giggling with other girls at last! As I'd long hoped! It was scary, but also marvelous!

"There's no risk. When you've finally had enough, and I hope it'll be sooner rather than later, Carrie will disappear and Cary can show up the next day and everyone will then live happily ever after. People will remark on the family resemblance between you, and you'll agree about the similarities, and propriety will be served, and respectability preserved, and no one ever the wiser. What I hope and expect is that with this kind of total immersion you'll finally get over this thing. For good. Overdose yourself, as it were. I hope that finally you'll get a belly full and declare that you've had enough, that it isn't worth all the fuss and feathers. That's what I want. That's what I hope for."

Now we were getting into the serious part. She had something more than her hopes in mind. Nothing is ever free.

"How long do you think I'd do this thing?" I asked her. "How long would we live as ...ahhh ...sisters-in-law while the man of the house is somewhere else?"

"He wouldn't be the man of the house, Cary. He'd be my husband, the free-lance writer who is somewhere else on assignment. When he returns I'd continue to be the head of the household, because that's what my position in the company requires. As for your question, the answer is another question. How long can you live as a woman full time? That's entirely up to you. I'd hope two weeks, a month at the outside before the novelty finally wears off and you find it's an altogether pedestrian thing, that you're only being a woman, merely a woman, no magic, just living the simple daily life of half the human race, with no spicy thrills, no lure of the forbidden, no wicked transgressions, no exciting self-transformations. Doing what women do and no more nor less. Every day attending to your clothes and your makeup and your hair and your purse every time you step out of the house. Finding it demanding and boring. A chore. I think you'll find when it's no longer a special privilege but only ... a life, when it loses its kick, when all the fussing is just too much to bother with, I think you'll find it easier to revert to plain old familiar manhood. And that's when I'll get my husband back for good."

"I see," I said. Could she be right? That the daily repetition would grow boring if allowed to grow boring?

"Because, Cary, despite all the time you've spent wearing lipstick and a skirt, you aren't really habituated to femininity. You aren't committed to it for the long haul like the rest of us, for a lifetime. I'd hope that in two or three weeks you'll be eager to wear pants with zippers in front and stand up like a man when you piss. Eager to lose your temper now and then, the way men do, and cheer on some sports team or other, the way men do, and guy other guys about their occasional non-guy behavior, the way guys do. I'd hope that after a few weeks your woman's world will lose all its mystery and glamor, and that then finally we'll both be done with it."

She hadn't yet dropped the other shoe. I waited.

"But you'll decide when that time has come. Three weeks? A month? More? Whenever you've had it, sister Carrie will go back to Kansas or Oz or wherever she lives, and Cary will return from Detroit or the Far East or wherever he's been, and together we'll begin living the rest of our lives. The rest of our lives. Together. Me and the man I married."

I now saw where this was going, and my heart began to sink. A quick proposal was needed, before she could tell me hers! "What if being a girl full time got too onerous for me? Too boring, as you say. Couldn't I be a man then, at least at home? Now and then, say, on weekends? Stand and piss on weekends? Now and then? Like the reverse of what we've got here?"

She was amused. "You mean be a man on weekends the way you've been a woman here? No, Cary, that's my point. It's too risky. Even here, with our relatively low visibility, your now-and-then womanhood has been noticed. People are puzzled. And in this new position I've got it's more than a matter of respectability. You see, honey, I can't ever seem to be party to a fraud, to a deception, found to be in collusion with a deceiver, companion to a man who disguises himself as a woman and may well be a sex pervert. And that's what people would think you. If you were exposed, we'd both be exposed. Bank accounts and credit lines and doors would slam shut in my face."

That was probable. I hated to admit it, but that's what lots of people think transvestites are. At best freaks fit for the Jerry Springer show, but maybe also child molesters.

"So, you don't get to flip-flop on this. Our procedure when we're in Albuquerque has to be this. You move there as your sister, and you enjoy yourself as your sister to your heart's content. Then when the man in you returns and the woman in you leaves, she never comes back. Period. She can be herself somewhere else sometimes if she absolutely must, in Acapulco or Malaga or Bali or Peoria, for a week or so, maybe. If she can't help herself, if she must surface somewhere, she can go to the gender meetings you read about on the Net, 'Southern Comfort' in Atlanta or 'Fantasia Fair' in Provincetown or 'California Dreaming' in California, to those conventions transgendered people like you like to attend. I've researched it. I can understand how you'll still feel compelled to be Carrie the same way I always feel compelled to be Emily. But once you stop being Carrie, never again within hundreds of miles of home! Never where there's the slightest chance that someone who sees the resemblance between Cary and Carrie will ever connect the dots."

"Not ever? Not even in the house? With shades drawn?" I asked in a small voice, trying to negotiate some wiggle room, though I could see her point readily enough. I knew the answer.

"Never! When Cary comes home, Carrie leaves. If she reappears anywhere it'll be elsewhere and always without me, because I can't ever again be seen with her. It would seem too strange to anyone who knows either of us."

That did put a different color on this proposal. I got a lot more solemn.

"That's why I'm making this concession now. I'll live in our new home with the woman you choose to be for whatever reasonable time it takes for you to purge yourself of her. However long. Even a year, though that's tops. Then I'll live with the man you are for the rest of our lives. And that'll be that! The risks of someone adding up what's happening after they've seen both of you are simply too great, Cary. Or Carrie, since that's who you are today, and that's who you are from now on if you agree to this new arrangement. It's all or nothing. The woman inside you gets all for as long as she wants. Let's say for as long as a year, if that's what it takes. Then nothing. That's the only rule. No others apply from now on."

Not good, I tried to tell myself, but not bad either. First things first. I've never dared imagine it, but it was thrilling, the prospect of living full time life as a woman. Then afterward, even though deprived, I'd have my memories.... Maybe they'd be enough?

"No other rules apply," Emily repeated more softly. "For example, since you're a woman today, I won't mind at all if you want to make love to me as a woman tonight. In fact I'd love it. I won't want to deprive either of us of sex while you're being a woman full time and I'm waiting for you to stop playing with yourself and be a man. So any time you wish, I'll always be up for it, I'll always love being pleasured as a woman by a woman. Discreetly of course, so no one in town will imagine that we sisters-in-law are having an affair. But we'll have sex only as women, because that's what you'll be, and nothing else. Then when you're a man again you can make love to me as a man, because then there'll be no chance that the man and the woman will get mixed up in my mind. Or your mind either. When you're a man and only a man again we'll make love as a man and a woman for the rest of our lives. And I'm sure I'll love that even more."

I studied my home-manicured nails and tried to look only at the up side. I could get them professionally done. I could get my hair streaked and permed after all. I could go all out, try all sorts of really girly things. Walk down the street and see what it feels like to turn heads. Flirt, go dancing! Be flattered, cajoled, propositioned, admired. I could seek out opportunities to be coy, teasing, brassy, or bitchy, to find my true feminine nature. At last go to stores as a woman and buy clothes as women do! Use the fitting rooms! Could I possibly say no?

But then when I quit, never again? Except for the odd trip to a transgender convention? Alone?

That wasn't much consolation—the appeal wasn't in being a woman on vacation or with other transpeople, though that could be fun. It was living as a woman with the woman I love and thinking that I was what she was, what all other women were. It was feeling authentic! Well, I could have that until I no longer wanted it. If I ever no longer wanted it. And why should I think I'd ever want it again after I'd abandoned it?

Emily saw me concentrating, trying to see the implications, trying to think things through. She offered help. "When Cary has come back to me, if you find it's impossible for you to remain a man, or that you can't restrict yourself to dressing as a woman only out-of-town, you have two alternatives, Cary. One would be separation and divorce. That's not desireable, but I think it would be unavoidable—you'd have shown too little respect for my needs for me to want to stay married to you."

I nodded, feeling utterly miserable even at the prospect of divorce.

"The other alternative is pills. They have pills for this condition. It's a sex-driven state of mind, I understand. Once you reappear as a full-time man, if you're still afflicted with your need to dress as a woman you can take anti-androgens to dry out the urge along with your testicles and your testosterone and all your other gender-driven desires. That would make it much easier to live as a man. Well, maybe not exactly as a man, more like a eunuch. In which case we'd still live together, though I'd have to take care of my sexual needs with other men as I saw fit."

As if it were possible, I now felt even more miserable.

"But neither divorce nor pills seem to me to be as desireable as total immersion until it no longer matters to you that you're a woman, the thrill is gone, and then because it no longer matters you can yield to your own biology and be the man you are for life. Even if a man only one day at a time, like a confirmed alcoholic. Knowing that if you backslide, you've ended the marriage."

She'd thought this through, that was plain enough.

"So what do you think? Am I being unreasonable? I'm trying my best to accommodate to your needs and yet also my own needs. Do you think I'm being fair?"

I gathered my brains and then spoke. "It sounds to me as if you're offering the following. The woman in me can get a last fling with full female privileges for as long as the girl just wants to have fun, and then she'll disappear and that's that. Or else she disappears right now and the man moves in right now with full male privileges and that's that. Or third, we separate now, or later, but either way the marriage fails. Those are my choices, aren't they?"

"Yes."

Yes. That's what she'd been saying. Those were the inevitable, unavoidable alternatives that this situation provided us. And the choice was mine.

Did I have a choice? I had to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and face tomorrow whenever it came. It would be an incredible trip while it lasted! Exciting, dangerous, scary. I knew a lot about living as a woman, but I had so much more to learn! I will soon be something I've never been, I told myself, something I've always yearned to be. A woman in the eyes of other women. A social and sociable personality, responsible and responsive, living among other women. And other men.

I knew that if other people think you're, say, 'a woman,' and no one doubts it, then after a while you begin to believe they're right, you are somehow really, say, a woman! A fake can believe she's real if she gets habituated to it, because ... well, as the feminists say, gender is 'socially constructed.' She's as real as any other woman. That's how gender conditioning works!

I'd never intended to go that far, except maybe in my imagination. I was a transvestite, maybe a little transgendered and maybe a lot, but not a transsexual. I didn't yearn to live my life as a woman because that's what I was despite my male body. I did love to taste forbidden fruit—it was delicious, some of it. I wanted to feel for myself something of what women feel, what they're privileged to experience.

I think Emily knew that and was depending on the novelty wearing off quickly, so Cary would be purged of Carrie by numbing repetition. She could be right. In a week or two I might well be weary of pulling up my pantyhose and making up my face every time I wanted to leave the house. I doubted it, but in a month? In two months? Since this would be the last time in my life I'd be able to cross-dress at home, would I want to hold out longer still? For how many months could I live as a woman without it growing tedious?

She was allowing me however many it took. Up to a year. A year of living as a woman! This was the first major concession Emily had ever made to this lifelong compulsion of mine, and it was a whopper. I couldn't possibly say 'no.'

"I'm willing." I said suddenly. "I'll be Carrie. My own sister. For now." I swallowed. "And not Cary again at all until he gets back from wherever he's been."

"Then not Carrie again in my presence ever."

I swallowed again. "Not ever again."

She paused, registering the solemnity of my promise. Then, she smiled. "Well then," she said. "Now you're Carrie." She was beaming at me. "We really are girlfriends now, honey! Good. Let's enjoy it while it lasts. You need to really live it through, get it all out of your system. If I can help in any way, you be sure to let me know. Though from what I've seen, you're better at being a woman than I am. Ooooh, I'm so looking forward to our new relationship. For example, I now need a whole wardrobe of Vice-President-style suits. Will you help me look for them? Will Magnin's have a good selection do you think? And if I buy several, do you think the long skirts they're showing this year will still be stylish next year? Oh, I have a wonderful tidbit of gossip to share! You'll never guess what one of the managers' wives told me some of the secretaries are doing. They're actually making dates clean out their pussies after sex with—can you imagine it? -- soda straws!"

The next day was Monday, and at breakfast Emily explained the schedule for our move to Albuquerque. I was even more wide-eyed than usual, amazed at how thoroughly she'd thought things through. I favored a kind of surprised bimbo look, and I'd learned how to use eye make-up to achieve it. Now for the first time I was wearing the look on a Monday morning, and it was apt. I was now my sister, listening to my sister-in-law, who had all the answers!

"Oh, that's so lovely, Carrie," Emily had said on first coming down to breakfast and discovering me in my nightgown and housecoat, already setting toast and jam out on the table. "I've always liked that housecoat, the teeny flowers on it are so cheerful. And you are the prettiest thing to look at first thing in the morning—I do appreciate that you put on your face before coming down! I have so many gloomy issues to deal with at the office this week—it'll lift up my heart to begin each day by looking at you just as you are!"

And impulsively, she kissed my cheek. I couldn't help but flush with pleasure. "I'm glad I get to dress weekdays," I said briefly, but with considerable satisfaction

"You don't get not to, Carrie. This weekend you leave for New Mexico to set things up in our new house and see that what needs doing gets done before the moving van arrives two weeks from now, along with me. You'll need to see that the painting's been done, and the roof repairs, everything. Where I haven't, you'll need to choose curtains and wallpaper and so on, do what you can to give the place a woman's touch. You have such a wonderfully sensitive feel for such things." She paused. "I want you to be in charge of everything domestic, so I can concentrate on company business. Until I can get a grip on things."

Again she hesitated, and when she saw I wasn't going to question what kinds of things 'everything' might be—I had no idea, but assumed she'd tell me in good time—she simply added, "Buy or hire whatever's needed, so when I arrive with the van we'll be set. Ready to live there comfortably. Because for some time I'll have very little time of my own."

So that was that! She really meant it! Joy and fright leaped together into my stomach. "I'll live out there for a whole week on my own?"

"Yes. And here for a whole week too, starting now. Full time. Just you, Carrie. Cary is gone now. You'll be pretty much on your own, baby. I have all sorts of last minute arrangements to make at work, and you'll want to accustom yourself to your new life while you're still here in familiar surroundings, make whatever mistakes here so you won't make any there. Out there you'll need to be exactly what you seem to be."

"All right," I said. My mind's eye quickly reviewed my closet. Enough clothes to get by for a few weeks. Maybe I could do with another pair or two of jeans. Designer jeans to shape my thighs and hug and round out my bottom. I'd love them. And ....

"We'll fill in most of the clothes we both need once we're there and can get local advice about the best places to shop. There's this woman I met who lives next door to us, Susan Perrin. She dresses well and has already given me excellent advice about all sorts of things. Ask her—she wants to help us. You do have clothes enough for now I suspect, enough to get by. What you don't own and do need is outerwear. Right now you need rainboots, a dressy raincoat, a utility purse, a good purse, a light topcoat, and maybe a fancy sweater and a heavy sack sweater. All before this weekend. You don't own even one purse, do you? I suggest you get those necessities right away, maybe even this afternoon."

I gulped. Out already on my own? As a woman? Could I pass? I thought so, but....

"Dressed?" I asked Emily in a small voice.

"Well, certainly not naked, Carrie! And if I may make a suggestion, a woman's hair is her most significant gender signifier. Yours is lovely when you've set it, but after a day or so it settles back and loses its waves and curls and then it could well be ... what it is this morning. Also, it's all one shade, and that's just not worn any more by women with hair like yours. So some time today go see your Prissy and ask her for streaking and a perm and whatever else she'd recommend, a cut and set that's so distinctly feminine no man would ever want to be seen dead wearing it. Then I don't think there'll be any risk at all to your wandering all over town. No one will know you. Just be careful when you arrive back here though. We don't want neighbors reporting to the police that a strange woman is trespassing on our lawn."

"All right." I still had butterflies in my stomach, but this was what I'd wanted for so very long, so this was what I'd do. I'd simply tough it out. I gave Emily a forced smile.

She understood my apprehension. "No pain, no gain, Carrie," she said. "In Albuquerque we'll be living in a respectable neighborhood where no one knows either of us. When the moving van shows up and then we show up and people peer out of the window at two women arranging the furniture and weeding the back garden, we'll introduce ourselves as sisters-in-law in the absence of a husband-in-law who's unfortunately delayed getting here, held back by his old job, sent overseas but expected to return before too long, helping his sick old parents move into an assisted living facilty, whatever, any reason at all. We'll say that we miss him. I do, anyhow, already. And then there you'll be, for once in your life openly living your dream. Being a woman in your own and everyone else's eyes, in mine too. Getting your fill of it. Saturating yourself. Drowning in it, possibly! Then when you've had enough we'll be able to live a normal life at last, with you crossdressing maybe in your imagination but nowhere else. That's what I really want."

An incredibly attractive prospect, yet still, scary.

"So, it's settled. Carrie, you've been playing at womanhood, but you really don't know what it's really like, do you. You've scarcely ever been outside this house—before last night I'll bet you've never been out as a woman at all, unequivocally female. Those Bergdorfs and Donna Karans of yours have never seen sunshine or moonlight. Hardly anyone has ever said "ma'am" to you. You've never left a restaurant in tears, unable to go on to the theater as planned because there's a huge laddered run in your stocking and everyone can see, so there's nowhere to go but home."

She paused. "You've never had to deal with all those well-intentioned men out there who are so eager to advise or assist you or carry your packages and see you safely home every time you venture into a public place. If it's night time, eager to see you safely home and tucked into bed, then to tuck themselves in too."

I was surprised. "That happens to you, Emily?"

She nodded, eyebrows raised that I should even query. "Men try. All the time. You don't think I'm good looking enough?"

"But you're married! You wear a ring. Men aren't supposed to...."

"Oh Carrie, don't be naive. You've been faithful to me, I know that, I know you. But lots of men think married women are much more attractive than the unattached kind, perfect for a quick tumble in the hay. Maybe the little lady's a little bored with her life? Fine, sweep her off her feet, go with the flow of her emotions, and then part reluctantly before anyone gets wise, least of all her husband. Wives are perfectly safe for fucking. No complications afterward, because confidentiality is assured, and anyhow no wife will ever want to confess to anyone that she's been fucked and then forgotten."

"Men hit on you?" I couldn't get over the idea.

"What do you think? Do I look like a grandmother? Men hit even on grandmothers, come to think of it. When grandad gets past the reach even of Viagra, grandma may not yet be ready to quit. So who knows?"

I was a little shaken.

"You really don't know yet what being a woman is like, do you? It isn't all rolling stockings up your thighs and clipping them to sexy lace garter belts. It's a daily thing. And the dailiness goes on and on. You deal with it."

"I guess."

"Yes, men have hit on me. Almost every day there's an overture. And I must confess to you, Carrie, girl to girl, though I'd never tell Cary this, several times when your brother has been flouncing around the house all weekend en deshabille or in a flowing ball gown, I've been tempted to remind myself what a real man looks like. How they move, how they move inside you. Flirting with a new man now and then does cross my mind. I've been tempted very severely, and I expect to be tempted even more often when there are only the two of us down there and no man to warn other men off. Girls have no problem being tempted. You know. You were hit on by that Red Cross solicitor, may I remind you, almost the very moment you made your debut as a girl with an absent husband. Maybe if the conditions were just right you'd have gone further with him?"

This was a little disturbing. Because I wouldn't be able to sweep Emily passionately off her feet if I saw she was beginning to stray. How could I fuck her brains out if our sex was limited to the things women do with each other. Use a dildo? That wouldn't be me. That wouldn't be my cock, hot and thrusting and throbbing. How could a dildo compete with a real cock? Mine or someone else's?

Had she ever yielded to temptation? I couldn't ask her that. It would betray my trust in her, which had to be absolute, and it would betray an insecurity in me I'd never felt before.

So I changed the subject slightly. "Until Cary returns, there'll be no ... intimacies between us?" I asked her, just to be sure.

"Not the kind you're thinking of. Girls don't penetrate each other with their own bodies, honey. We could use dildoes, I suppose, though the prospect isn't very exciting. I told you, I'm just not into husbands who are part-time girls. With me it's all or nothing."

I must have looked forlorn, because she hurriedly continued, "But we certainly will have intimacies, I've mentioned that. I hope so, honey. We'll have what really close girlfriends do with each other—cuddling, affectionate and passionate caressing with mouths and hands, maybe even dildoes. It'll be lovely! You'll see!"

Then when she knew she had my full attention, her eyes narrowed and she directed her gaze straight at me to be sure I heard her. "But no live penis need ever apply. Right now I've been three days without one, and when I close my eyes I already feel a hunger for my husband—I want him to fill me deep, deep with his throbbing cock, even right now. But where is my husband? I don't see him when I look at you! The longer we're women with separate lives, honey, the stronger that hunger will grow for a man. Not just for you, for a man. How long can I live with it? How long can I keep myself exclusive for my absent husband until finally he returns? Oh, I see that now you're shocked. Well, you might have thought about that earlier. I did. That's one reason why I hope you'll quit with this nonsense soon!"

"Then while I ... what will you ... What will we...?"

"I'll respect the fact that I'm married for as long as I can, Carrie. Then like most people who live in enforced celibacy with no loved ones near, maybe I won't be able to. I'll see what I can do. Desire is peculiar. It builds, and then for almost no reason it sometimes loses control! That's the chance we both take. Oh, by the way, is Carrie married? Divorced? Widowed? She'll have more of a problem than I will, I should think, once people know that she's single and available. Let's say she was married for only a year some years ago and then her husband ran off. That now she's divorced. That'll keep your social options open, I think. Then you'll see for yourself whether the fact that I'm married and you're not makes a difference."

Clearly there was a lot more to being a woman than I'd anticipated. A lot. She was right. If I wanted a sex life I'd have to do what she was already doing—cope until coping became intolerable. Then I'd have an advantage, because I could always revert to Cary if I had to.

So I let Emily call all the shots now. Later that morning I put on my best breast forms and a tight sweater—Emily had said that hair is the most gender-defining of a woman's attributes, but I knew better. I then did up my hair sort of, made up my face again, borrowed a purple topcoat from Emily, and went out actually looking like a woman. All by myself!

It was easy! Driving to the mall was no problem at all—I merely looked straight ahead and ignored what people might be glimpsing of me. Then at first very tentatively, even furtively, I walked through the main section of the mall and in and out of a few stores. I gathered confidence and lost my self-consciousness as I went on until finally, except for reminding myself to walk like a lady, thighs together, I altogether forgot how I was dressed. How I appeared. I was what I seemed. I shopped for the various items Emily had mentioned and was gratified that no one took me for anything other than I seemed.

When I got to the salon I finally gave Prissy permission to put pale blonde streaks into my hair, to perm it, set it, and then comb it out. Even to do my nails for once. Prissy was delighted, and turned unaccustomedly talkative. "You know, honey, sometimes when you'd sit here I'd wonder whether you really were a woman," she said as she finally turned my chair to show me my new hairdo. It was exquisite! "No way now!"

I had to agree. Prissie had proved Emily's point after all. No man would ever wear that hairdo, so now I was a woman and no one could doubt it. "I mean," Prissy went on, "Sometimes when you came in here you'd even be wearing men's clothes. I'd sort of wonder. But then you'd be so sweet and appreciative of whatever I did for you that I'd have to think again. Men just aren't at all like us, are they?"

I had to agree. "No, we're different," I said ambiguously.

By the end of the week I'd been seen by half the city, it seemed, and apart from many men who gave me second glances no one took notice of my appearance. Emily warned me that we'd be joining the country club set, where micro-minis are not worn past teen age, so I should pack my well-tailored clothes and a few "dumpster chic" combos, then prune and discard the rest. I did. My short skirts and sequinned sweaters, various kinds of experimental slutgear, my old wigs and my cheap make-up, even most of my men's clothes, all went to Goodwill Industries. Their storefront collection point reminded me of my many previous attempts to "purge" my drag and live straight as a man. I couldn't then, and a strange sensation came over me as I recalled that now Emily expected me to, or else. Would I be able to with my marriage at stake?

I told the Auto License Bureau that my old driver's license was lost, though I kept it against the day of Cary's reappearance. They issued me a new one with Carrie's face and hairdo on it. And her name—the clerk didn't seem to notice the difference in spelling.

Emily was meanwhile putting in long hours at her office, closing out various procedures and training replacements. So I was surprised when on Thursday she came back from work early and said, "Grab your purse, honey, we're going to visit Maggie."

I felt clutched in the pit of my stomach. Being a woman with strangers was fun. But with someone who knows me as a man? Emily's closest friend? "Maggie? Why Maggie?"

"Because she wants to say goodbye to you before you leave and we begin this new life we'll be leading."

"Goodbye to me? Which me? The me with a purse? She knows about me?"

"Sweetie, she's known from the beginning. She's given me all sorts of advice about you, and I hope she still will. When you proposed, it was Maggie who told me that guys with feminine sides to them make the best husbands. They're understanding, and they go out of their way to please their wives because they feel a little guilty. And you can borrow their lipsticks if they happen to have a shade you need. But mostly, because they're manageable—help them become better girls, then ask them to do something you want, and they'll do it gratefully. Give them a pair of panties and tell them you'd love to see how they look wearing them and they're yours for life. And she was right. You've been a doll, and you still are. That's why I love you."

"You never gave me a pair of panties, Emily. I'd have been so overjoyed if ...."

"Oh, honey, I'd have done it. You'd have been my best girlfriend long ago if I'd had the good sense to encourage you in this ... thing if yours. But I wanted to be married to a man, not to a girl. Now neither of us has much choice, do we, given the logic of our situation. Given what we are, each of us."

True enough. "I guess not."

"So enjoy it all while it lasts, honey. Maggie's the one who helped me work out the rules of engagement we maintained during the last five years. She also helped me see implications in this new all or nothing arrangement. That third week I was in Albuquerque, you have no idea how close you came to finding yourself out on the town being a single woman. I phoned her in tears when I accepted the New Mexico promotion, because I was sure it meant our marriage was over. I couldn't possibly let you dress like a girl part time once I became a top executive, but I also knew you'd never be able to suppress it. Maggie suggested we should let you decide, let you go all the way one way and then all the way the other. Leave it up to you when to shift to the other. It was excellent advice. Now she wants to see you and wish us well and say goodbye to you. We both owe her. So fix your face and let's go."

I'd always felt comfortable with Maggie. She was an associate editor for a fashion magazine and always dressed well, and to avoid suspicion I'd always hidden from her the fact that I always read her magazine cover to cover. Yet she always seemed to know that I knew far more than I ever revealed. Because she knew I sometimes write women's fiction under a pseudonym? No, I realized now. Because she's always known that I myself wear women's fashions.

I felt not the least bit self-conscious, calling on her. We greeted each other with light hugs, and pressed our cheeks together affectionately, and complimented each other—I admired the pin she was wearing and she adored my silk scarf. She then brought out drinks and canapes and the three of us sat and chatted casually about nothing in particular, as if she'd seen me en femme all my life. It was relaxed and very pleasant, the three of us being women together. In a way the fulfillment of my lifelong dream.

Why I was actually there emerged only as we were leaving. When I stood up and gathered my purse and turned to say goodbye, she told me, "You're just wonderful, Carrie. I've been watching you closely, and I haven't seen one false move. You're a far more convincing woman than you are a man. You've been studying and imitating women for years, haven't you?"

I wasn't sure that was a compliment, but I took it as intended and smiled gratefully. "Yes, that's right Maggie, I have. All my life, it seems."

"So it does seem. You really think you can abandon it all when the time comes?"

"When I want to, I will. When I can. I assume I can."

Maggie's expression didn't change. "Well, I do wish you the very best. Emily, I don't think you need to worry about exposure—Carrie'll do you proud. She's quite the lady. I thought I'd see a hint of Cary today too, but I guess he isn't coming."

"Cary's always altogether gone when I'm Carrie, Maggie," I told her. "I don't dare think about him, or his habits and manners might reappear, maybe at a bad time, and embarrass both of us. I understand now that I have you to thank for my marriage. Thank you. These have been the happiest five years of my life."

She beamed. "I hope the next five will be even happier, Carrie. Though who you'll be when they end isn't at all clear to me. You'll be different, certainly. You're on a wonderful journey."

"We're calling this a vacation, not a journey, Maggie," Emily said in an odd tone of voice. "Carrie is using this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to kick up her heels before Cary returns. What we've had has been fine, but now we need to move on."

As we left, I wondered what Maggie meant by 'journey.' And wondered even more at the swiftness with Emily had corrected her and called it a 'vacation.' The words meant more than they seemed to mean. Something sounded ominous. "A vacation from what?" I asked Emily.

"Why, you from Cary, and both of us from our marriage," she replied, surprised. "Isn't that what it is?"

I didn't like the sound of that, nor of "move on" either, any more than I liked Maggie calling it a "journey," a word that sounded far too one way. And I certainly didn't like it that Emily felt on vacation from her marriage. But I didn't dare ask anything further.

I bought a few more items for my wardrobe, and packed everything, and shipped off my computer and my current writing projects, and finally the weekend came.

The night before I left, Emily revealed an intensely passionate side I hadn't previously known. We made love for hours, though as Emily insisted between clenched teeth, only as girls make love, by pressing our lips and our bodies together devotedly. Everywhere. She seemed to know position after position and she initiated me into all of them. For hours on end I sucked and licked her pussy juices, sweet and salty and fishy and aromatic, and her mouth's saliva, and even her rosebud. And she licked me everywhere too. It felt odd to be making love to Emily's body, hugging and kissing her everywhere, each leg and arm and breast together and separately, over and over, kissing her wherever my mouth happened to touch her, while meanwhile my pecker towered stiffly or dangled, waggled and rubbed itself, wherever it happened to be, always accidentally and irrelevantly, always altogether ignored. My stray impulses to thrust went nowhere and remained unanswered.

I suckled Emily's breasts, and for the first time she suckled my nipples as if there were heavy breasts behind them like hers, cupping them in her hands and filling her mouth with them. It felt strangely comforting and intensely satisfying as her tongue wrapped around my nipples and her lips pulled at them. Good feeling gathered in each breast and built until I found myself moaning aloud. Is this how a baby's mouth feels when a woman nurses, I wondered? It felt good, deeply satisfying in a strange way. Emily smiled as if she knew something I didn't. About breasts, I'm sure she did. "Just wait," she said, as she changed her mouth from one to the other. She didn't explain what she meant.

Saving the best for last, I licked Emily's clit until she'd wriggled to a delicious orgasm. Then she kissed my "clit" daintily and stroked it until I too finally had mine, while her mouth lavished even more affection on my nipples. It wasn't as good as fucking, but it did have its lovely, lovely moments.

Then Saturday morning she drove me to the airport to see me off. I had to restrain myself and give her only a sisterly goodbye kiss—two women simply do not kiss passionately in public. She told me again to look up this Susan Perrin who lives next door, a doctor of some kind who had already given Emily excellent advice about the neighborhood, and building contractors, and so on. I shouldn't hesitate to ask her for anything. Her last words to me were "Bye, sweetheart. Enjoy the dream!"

She'd be joining me in that dream in another week, but even so it all felt unreal. It was as if I were starting a new life. Somehow, without her.

I arrived in my rental car and drove through the gates and up the winding driveway to the entrance and then just sat for a moment admiring the rather grand house Emily's firm had bought her. Bought us. Then unlocked the huge front door and walked in. As I looked around at the large, empty rooms, all freshly painted in creams and pale pastels but devoid of furniture, I realized I'd have nowhere to sleep until the van arrived next week. Though the house had many rooms, I'd need to take refuge in a motel somewhere. Then the door chimed.

'Well, that much works, anyhow,' I said to myself, as I went to answer it.

A lively young woman about our age stood there. She had long blonde hair and a delighted smile. "Hi!" she said. "I'm Dr. Perrin, Susan Perrin, your next-door neighbor on the left?" She nodded in that direction, querying instead of declaring, as if perhaps I already knew. "I saw your car arrive, so I thought I' stop by to welcome you to our lovely little community. Your ... ah, Emily, she phoned to tell me you'd be here alone for a week to arrange things before the movers arrive. You're Carrie, right?"

"Yes, I'm Carrie. How lovely of you to stop by. You must be the Susan Emily mentioned. She told me I shouldn't hesitate to ask you anything."

"That's right. Anything at all. You know, this really is a lovely house—when it was the Buchman place I scarcely ever saw them, so I'm happy to think of it as Emily's right off. Or are you a co-owner? I ask only because several contractors have asked me where to send their bills."

I didn't really want to chat just then, but I know that women are far more sociable than men are, that they thrive on 'interpersonal' relationships with each other. And now I was a woman. So this was my very first interpersonal relationship. Relax and gossip away, I told myself. You have all week to get things done.

"Oh no," I said. "No, I'm not an owner, this is my wife's ... I mean my brother's wife's house. He's away, so I've volunteered to help Emily get set up and stay with her till he gets back, none of us knows exactly when. You know men and business, that kind of thing."

"I know that kind of thing only too well. That's why I'm not married at all any more. Are you, if I may ask, Carrie? Isn't there a man somewhere who misses you while you look after your ... your brother's wife?"

I was glad Emily had prepared me for that question. "I was married, but I'm not now. He disappeared, and that was that." I hated lying. But it was for Emily's own good.

"Oh, you poor dear. Every woman's nightmare. Mine's gone too, though it was by mutual agreement. And Emily told me she worries that she may never see hers again. It must have been just awful."

"At first, yes. But I can't blame him, in some ways. We just didn't get on. I don't get on with most men, it seems." Better get that in fast and save a lot of dancing past other people's good intentions as they all try to fix me up with one or another loser. An unmarried woman is a challenge to everyone who knows an unmarried man. "Anyhow, that was a few years ago."

"But you do get on with most women?" Susan was now looking directly at me.

Uh oh. She means do I get it on with women. "I have done, yes," I said evasively

"I much prefer women too. Carrie, before you get too involved with things here, why don't you come back to my place. That path to the left, you see the opening through the hedges over there? We'll have tea and I'll tell you what Emily asked me to do, and what I've done, and what's needed, and give you a file of the contracts and receipts she asked me to keep. Lists of things, the schedule for your furniture's arrival, and so on. That way we'll both get all squared away. OK?" She flashed me another extremely bright smile. "In about ten minutes?"

That sounded sensible. I threw her a smile in return. I'd be doing much more smiling, I realized, now that I'm a woman. Men expect it when you're introduced to them. They seem always to need reassurance, and worry if a woman doesn't seem glad to see them. And women welcome it, I reminded myself—that's how our sisterhood bonds.

When I came to her door I saw she'd left it ajar. I knocked tentatively.

"In here, Carrie, first door on your left," came a voice from somewhere inside.

I entered. Her house was expensively furnished, not lavish but tasteful. Modified French Provincial, with rugs laid on polished wood floors. The kinds of furnishings and decor Emily and I favor. No wonder Emily trusted Susan to get things going in our absence.

I opened the first door on my left, and there she was at the far end of a fairly large room, seated behind a huge desk with stacked files on it on one side and a rank of filing cabinets behind her. And cabinets and an examination table. "My office," she said cheerily. "I maintain one here. My place of work away from my place of work downtown. I sometimes even see patients here. Have a seat, Carrie! And do have some of this tea, it's very relaxing."

She poured me a cup. I did.

"Now, we're going to be neighbors and good friends, I hope, and Emily is going to be quite a prominent woman in the circles we all move in, so it's important that we understand each other, I think. Honestly and thoroughly."

"Of course," I said, wondering somewhat at her formality.

"Carrie," she said, gesturing at a stack of folders on her desk. "These are all your medical records, yours and Emily's. Emily asked me to take over whatever medical care issues there are for both of you, so she had them sent to me. Every illness you've gotten and gotten over since childhood is listed here, and all the consultations and tests and test results from before your marriage and since. There isn't much to say about them. You're both remarkably healthy."

My mouth and throat suddenly went bone dry. I sipped tea to moisten them. My hand shook. My medical record? Our marriage? I stared at her, even more wide-eyed than my open-eyed make-up style suggested. She knew all about me! She knew I wasn't my sister!

"Yes, Emily and I got to talking—we're very much alike, you know? About men, as women will. We found that we're both attracted to men of gentle sensibility like you, not just to the cockswinging hunks women usually fall for. To men with strong feminine streaks who are unashamed of them. I told her about my former husband, how he'd played at being a transvestite soon after we got married, at my insistence when I first suspected it and encouraged him to act out. How in the end it turned out he was a transsexual and didn't even know it. How he was in a terrible state of denial, but persistence and finally hypno-therapy brought it all out until at last he felt free to yield to his desires. The dear man. I treated him for his gender dysphoria as best I could, but after his sex reassignment surgery we decided to separate. It was a pity, in a way. I did love him, but when he became a woman not quite the same way. She's married now, perfectly happy as far as I know, living in Phoenix with a bruiser of a husband and two adopted children."

I felt very uneasy about this.

"So naturally, Emily in turn told me all about you and your needs and this ... ahhh ... live and let die regimen you're on. Mostly about how important to her career it is that your impersonation be flawless. If that's what it is, an impersonation and not the actuality, if you don't think you're a woman already who just happens to be occupying a man's body. Do you?"

"I enjoy feeling the way women feel about some things, and doing some of the things women do. It's exciting, and it seems to complete me, somehow. But am I one? No, I might wish I were now and then, but I don't think so.

"I thought not. That can change, you know. Emily was very hesitant to talk about you at first, but I assured her that our doctor-patient confidentiality is inviolable. So she asked me to check out your physical appearance, how well you'll persuade others that you are what you seem to be. I understand someone named Maggie has already approved your behavior, your mannerisms and so on, and given you gold stars."

"Susan," I said. "I've been pretending to be a woman much of my life, and I've been acting as if I were one under all sorts of circumstances for a week now. I don't think there are problems." I took another sip of tea to display confidence, though I was far from feeling it. She was right, it was relaxing. I looked at the cup inquiringly, and noticed that Susan had yet to sip her cup.

"That's right, Carrie. It's calming. Just while we discuss things, not enough to affect your judgement. Because I hate to say this, but I could tell at a glance that you're not a woman, only a man who's made himself up to look like a woman. You do a good job of it, but any woman who deals daily with female physiology and physiognomy can tell you're really a man—I am a gynecologist after all. And believe me, in the social circles you two will occupy women look each over very closely, approvingly or critically. You'd pass superficially, but there are things in your look that just don't add up."

"Oh?" I said it defensively, disbelievingly. I'd seen none. Maggie'd seen none. Nor Prissy! I raised a high, plucked, arched brow, questioning her.

"Just to cite some of the more obvious. First, your hair is starting to recede at the brow and thin at the crown of your head, standard incipient male pattern baldness, no woman's hair ever does that. Second, your face and jaw are small, quite feminine in a way and rather becoming, but they're also angular, not at all softened by adipose tissue at the cheeks and jawline, as every woman's is. So your jawline looks square, faintly ...well, manly. Third, your skin is a man's skin, a bit coarse. That's especially noticeable on your forearms, and you do know that women's styles are almost always designed to leave forearms exposed for display of our slim wrists and bracelets."

I'd noticed none of this.

"Fourth, it's obvious that you shave—you're not naturally hairless or fine-haired anywhere. Fifth, your beard hairs are close-shaved and nearly invisible, I congratulate you for that, but they nevertheless hold your pores open. So you're wearing pancake make-up to cover them up. But my dear, women with your sophisticated style sense know that this year we're all using light, luminous foundations, not heavy pancakes. So your complexion doesn't quite match your style—which is, incidentally, utterly charming, I must congratulate you there. Sixth, consider your breasts. Never mind that your breast forms are too large for all the other evidence of severe estrogen deficiency—that's easily fixed. But consider this. The first time you wear a strapless evening gown to a club dance, and there are no other kinds being shown these days, you'll have nothing on your chest to hold it up. And the first time you try to wear a low-necked blouse or sweater, to display a little cleavage, and these days we all do that, you'll be in trouble because you have none. So I don't doubt that after you show yourself at your first social gathering with Emily you'll cause talk. And 'What kind of woman is Emily living with?' is a question Emily doesn't want to hear asked or answered."

I must have looked crushed by this litany, because almost without pause Susan continued, "Don't fret, though, honey. There's a very easy solution. I told Emily how I helped my former husband pass flawlessly, and she asked me to offer you the same help if you could benefit from it. If you're willing to accept it."

"And that is?"

"That I start you full scale on female hormones, as if you were a transsexual woman and not just a visitor to our fair sex, not just a confirmed transvestite. Begin the full, approved Benjamin regimen. Jump-start you at the outset, so you'll begin to be undetectably passable within two weeks. Then maintain the dose for as long as necessary, you yourself to determine when it's no longer necessary. As I understand it, you and your wife have some kind of agreement about that."

Then she stopped speaking and just looked at me. She expected me to say something now. I thought I should. Agree with her? But my brain needed time to process all this. Hormones! In itself the idea was exciting! To become a woman in my bloodstream and body as well as my clothes and appearance! Yet at the same time it was scary. I can't change my body the way I can change my clothes and behavior. Hormonal changes last.

But once my body became more feminine, would I want to change it? I began my questions slowly. "Is it ... permanent? The effects of these hormones you'd give me?"

"Well, I certainly hope so, for the sake of every woman on earth! Oh, I see what you mean. It depends how long you maintain treatment. Your body accommodates. In a mature woman like you, after an initial suffusion and the first stages of adjustment, after your body stops trying to maintain the old ways and accepts the new, reasonable estrogen levels will keep your skin clear, your breasts growing and then plump, and your eyes sparkling whenever you survey whatever men are out there. Or whatever ... partners, I suppose I should say. If you should stop the dosage your facial features will lose some of their softness, not a lot. Your areola and nipples will remain enlarged even when no longer engorged, and their heightened erogenous sensitivity will persist too, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that. What breast tissue you've grown will also remain yours unchanged, though it can be removed. Let's see, what else? Any tendencies toward baldness will resume. If you continue treatment, eventually your penis will lose its tumescence, its ability to grow erect and stay that way long enough for a woman to make use of it."

"Is that effect ... ahhhh ... irreversible?"

"It depends. Maybe. But I can't see why that should bother you. If you continue your hormone treatment long enough for that disfunction to become permanent, obviously it'll be because you want to, because you want to become a woman. And an erect penis is no use whatever to a woman, you surely know that. Unless it's her partner's. If you do resume your manhood before your body becomes ... ahhh ... fully reconciled to its femininity, the problem usually takes care of itself. If after a time you still can't please women with your penis, no problem, you can probably find men willing to please you with theirs."

"Ummmm, what time period are we talking about? And how long does it take to grow ... breasts."

"As for how long before you're impotent, that varies widely. It depends in part on your desires and fantasies, what you find exciting in your partner, things like that. A point of no return approaches after perhaps six months, but for some new women, never. As for breasts, that depends on your mother—how large hers were. And it depends on the dosage. With what I'd give you, since this is something of a crash program, you'll notice nice things happening to your figure within two weeks, and you'll have a quite passable figure within a few months I should think. After that, as I mentioned, a sustaining dose will serve."

She leaned forward as if about to share a confidence. "When my husband consented to his transvestism, I gave him breasts as a surprise gift. I thought though that for him to wake up one morning and discover implants on his chest would be too traumatic. So I encouraged a slow growth timed for his birthday, and allowed three months. I made him quit his gym and I arranged for his breasts to grow almost undetectably—when he did notice his chest swelling up I attributed it to lack of exercise. So the tissue accumulated. Then the morning of his birthday I gave him a special pushup bra to try on. He thought it was a joke when I handed it to him, but I teased him, and he put it on, and voila, there they were! The tits and cleavage that bra exposed to his eyes gave him quite a morning."

"Was he bothered?"

"Astonished would be more accurate. Then furious. He wasn't much of a transvestite then, not really. He'd wear whatever I handed him, to please me, but without conviction. He raged and bellowed, and I had to give him an injection to calm him down. Then while he was half out of it I put my hands on his newly sensitized nipples and caressed them, and talked soothing words to him, and then kept it up while I sat on his cock and fucked him—almost, not quite to climax. Half that day and all that night I repeated the treatment, another injection, then more fucking without orgasm while working over his nipples. The same the next day. Finally he saw I wasn't going to quit until he accepted himself as a man with tits, and understood that tits can provide a girl with all sorts of pleasure. Eventually he understood how I wanted him for a girlfriend, not just a husband, and he agreed to keep them. And eventually he agreed to display them, as women do, by wearing women's clothes all the time. That's when I arranged for them to grow bigger."

Unaccountably, this story was giving me a strange tingling sensation. And an erection! I could scarcely breathe. Susan noticed, I could tell, but she kept talking.

"So only a month after his birthday he was wearing a bra full time for decency's sake, and a blouse to account for the bra, and so on, and eventually he had to wear make-up to complete the picture. You know how a man can be persuaded to take up womanhood one delicious step at a time—you've persuaded yourself step by step I'm sure."

"I was persuaded all at once," I commented. "As far as it goes. Not that it matters."

"Oh, you're still not there yet, Carrie. Just wait. You will be. Anyhow, his male friends abandoned him of course, so he quit with them and took up with my circle of women friends, and then things went much faster. He stopped measuring himself against guys and took his cues from girls instead. From his new peers, as we all do. He became interested in what interests us, you know? When you spend time with women, being a woman, that happens."

She looked at me significantly, making sure I knew. I certainly did. That was what I wanted!

"Well, when his penis quit on him he worried some more, and it took extra persuasion to convince him he was a transsexual, not just a transvestite, that it was about time for him to quit fighting it and accept surgery and become a complete woman. I mean, it took months of sessions with a hypnotherapist. Then when finally he stopped denying it and consented we had to hurry the operation along before he could change his mind."

She paused. My erection had gone down. I didn't want to hear any more, but she expected a response of some kind. So I said, "So now you're no longer married."

"Yes, that's right. It was sort of sad. When he came back from the hospital he was finally the live-in girlfriend I've always wanted, with his own vagina and everything. But it turned out that as a girl he was rather boring. We had almost nothing in common, not even a liking for the same kinds of men. So we separated. Eventually he met this rancher who married him and carried him off to Arizona."

She was silent. I wondered if Emily would ever find me boring. Had she ever? I didn't think so.

"Anyhow, that's why I'm not married now. And as you gather, I prefer women to men, so it's unlikely I ever will be again. I'm sure I don't know what men see in themselves." She paused. "Well, we both have things to do. What'll it be, Carrie? Female hormones, so your secret remains secret? Or take your chances and let Emily take hers?"

Despite what she'd said about her husband, or maybe because of it, I did feel tempted! Like a moth attracted to a flame. Fearful yet desiring. "Bottom line, you really think Emily's reputation is at risk if I don't take these hormones?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Emily asked me to look at you and form an opinion. That's my opinion."

"And you recommend that I ...."

"I recommend nothing. You and Emily have your own arrangements. There's a problem, and there's a solution to that problem. It's up to you now. Think it through." And she lapsed back into silence. She glanced at her teacup, still untouched through all that talking.

I sipped my own tea some more, hoping to think it through calmly. I felt serene, yet also excited. Why not? Heck, I'd never have another opportunity like this to see what it would be like. A soft skin? A rounded face and body? Boobs? Who wouldn't want them? And when I returned to being a man for life, I'll still have them as consolation for everything I was giving up. Moreover, boobs can supply an argument for my wearing bras even after I return to full manhood, if they grow big enough. I'd love to have big breasts, I realized! And Emily was at risk if I didn't!

"All right," I said.

"All right, no more talk about hormones? All right, you want me to start the treatment?"

"All right, I want to be a credit to Emily. To look more like a woman. To start the treatment."

Susan looked at me for a moment without changing her expression. Then said, "Very well. Let's get you signing some papers. Consent forms, certifications, there are all sorts of legal things. Then we can get under way." She pulled a file of papers out of a folder, obviously prepared in advance. They all had my name on them, spelled 'Cary' on some and 'Carrie' on others. "Sign here," she said, pointing. "And here. Here too. And here."

I did. Perhaps a dozen times, marveling at the red tape circumscribing the simplest medical procedures.

"Fine," she said, stowing the forms away carefully. "All for the good. I'll have my secretary file these in the appropriate places. Carrie, I can't see how you'll possibly regret this. With your bone structure and slim build you'll look stunning in no time at all! Now if you don't mind, would you strip to the waist, please? Just for a moment, I'll need access to your chest area."

As I did so, I asked why. "No pills, no shots in the butt?"

"No, not until you're on sustaining doses," she replied. "I want to tuck a subdermal hormonal implant just under each arm. Then as they dissolve, your circulatory system will see to it that your breasts are the very first beneficiaries."

Five minutes later it was done. With scarcely a prick I could feel. "There you are, honey. Real womanhood, not just the semblance. A three month supply. You have a thin chest, like a girl's, so expect to see see the first results in only a few days, the beginnings of swelling around the nipples and so on. Expect a little discomfort too—nausea, maybe even cramps. Like morning sickness and a period combined. But then it'll be like a pregancy, and you'll probably feel better than ever. Lush and ripe! Most women do when they're as overcharged with estrogen as you'll be."

"Three months? Emily was hoping I'd quit pretending to be a woman after three weeks."

"Oh, you can quit pretending you're a woman any time. Though when these implants have done their work you may have to pretend you're a man. Consider the advantages. For the rest of your life, no matter how you're dressed, gentlemen will hold doors open for you. I suspect you won't mind that. And Emily may well appreciate that this is a sacrifice you're making to advance her career."

No, I can't say I minded. It would make abandoning the wearing of women's clothing a lot easier if my body still resembled a woman's. The prospect was intriguing! To have smoother skin always! And a softer face, and a really curvy figure! Yum! Was I violating my agreement with Emily by changing my body this way? Well, for her sake I didn't have much choice, did I?

"Well, now that you're set, shall we see what's been happening to Emily's house?" Susan asked. "She tells me you're living with her for now, and she's put you in charge of the final renovations."

"Emily's house?" I asked her with a momentary pang. "I'm living with her 'for now'?" It took me a moment to realize that Susan had resumed talking to me as Emily's sister-in-law 'Carrie'

"Yes," Susan said, understanding my concern immediately. "Emily's. You're her guest for the time being, as I understand it. You'll leave when her husband returns."

Of course. Emily's house. Our previous house had been ours jointly, but this one was deeded to the company's Vice President for Financial Affairs. I was indeed only a visitor, a guest Emily had invited to live with her. Not a husband with rights of domicile.

I was in fact what the world thought I was. Someone staying with Emily until Cary returned. But even Cary would then be living with Emily conditionally. Were Carrie and Cary both now subject to Emily's good will?

Was our marriage?

Yes, even our marriage. My world suddenly got a lot more tentative. Maybe it always had been , but I'd never thought of it that way.

"I have here the schedules for the contractors Emily hired. I stayed on their tails, and the work's virtually done. The painter left the paint chips Emily selected—you're to check that the colors he used came close enough. The new heating and air-conditioning are installed, you might make sure they do what's expected of them. Oh yes! I'd invite you to stay here till your furniture and things arrive, but I've got out of town guests coming. So you're Emily's houseguest tonight even though she isn't here to greet you. There's a bedroom off the second floor that was formerly a maid's room, with a bed still in it. Emily asked me to leave sheets and a blanket there for you to use, if you'd rather stay there than in a motel. I'd advise it, so you can be on hand as the different workmen come and go, to supervise their work and their cleanups and so on. The maid's room has an adjoining bathroom with new fixtures they'll install this afternoon, though the bidet won't be delivered and installed until tomorrow. The plumber told me to tell you."

"Why a bidet?"

(continued)

  

  

  

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