This kind of story shouldn't be read by anyone who shouldn't read this kind of story. No exceptions!

Perfect                    by: Vickie Tern

 

i.

I was in love with her, there's no other explanation. I still am, I think. That's how come I agreed to all this! I'm not sure I would again, knowing what I know now. But maybe. Probably. I think so.

I know so. Who am I kidding? Especially when I look at the alternatives, the other paths I might have taken, or the places on this path where I might have drawn a line and called a halt. But then I'd have regretted all sorts of lost opportunities, one after the other. And this is so much lovelier! So perfect!

How did I get here? I'd squandered my adolescence with computers instead beating out other guys in sports and bedding down girls like other guys. Well, there was this one girl, but after a while she got tired of me and took up with a big beefy guy, an ox, which I definitely am not. Anyhow, I'd just gotten my MBA and my first real job, and summer was ending, and I was new to the city. No friends yet, and no girlfriends, still looking. Work was challenging during the three weeks it took me to learn it and then it got boring. And the people at the office mostly'd been there a while, and they did their own things. Office talk was mainly sports or sly insulting of each other, and neither of these things were ever my things. So I was pretty much alone.

To keep busy and maintain an edge I took a short course at the local community college, Inter-Personnel Management, how to talk to employees, set them at ease so they'll tell you their problems, so you can decide whether the real problem is their situation or them, so you can fix one or the other. Faking friendship for fun and profit. The Japanese do it all the time, the boss goes drinking with the "team" and they all pretend to be drunk and squeal on each other, and the boss listens.

I sat in the front row, and the few times I didn't come up with the right solution for some casework problem, something tactful that would do the job, this marvelous babe in the back row came up with them. I remember the first time I turned to look at her. A stunner! One of those gorgeous girls with cool gray eyes and a doll's face, the kind that almost makes you wish you were a little girl so you could play with her. After a few days I got the impression she was checking me out in her own way, that she'd decided she'd set the class straight only when she saw I couldn't. Set me straight too, that way, demonstrate how she could match me step for step when she chose, even step a little ahead of me.

I liked the competition. And that's how it happened that we already knew we liked each other, respected each other too, when we finally met. It was by accident in a nearby coffee shop after class one evening. I was draining a latte and gloomily contemplating my boring work at the office.

"Hi, I'm Gayle," she said, standing over me. "Spelled with a Y. It's time we got to know each other. You?"

"Allie," I replied, suddenly cheered by her presence and attention. "Spelled without a Y. 'Alan,' really, but if I tell anyone that then I have to spell it out for them. Care to set for a spell?" God! The dumb up-country quip was out before I could bite my tongue!

She didn't seem to notice. Maybe she was used to guys turning stupid in her presence. And I've got to confess it, as she lowered that pear-shaped rear onto the little wire chair at my little formica coffee table, never taking her eyes off me, I could scarcely breathe. Then, all the while we talked about the class, and the professor, and whether women solve problems different from men, stuff like that, and all the while she held her little espresso cup to her perfect red lips and sipped, she watched me.

I was hopelessly smitten. And after a few more after-class sessions I could sense real interest, maybe even affection on her part too. A meeting of hearts as well as minds, maybe. Mine with hers, anyway. I wanted to follow up with a meeting of bodies the worst way. Sometimes she'd come dressed direct from her office in a business suit, her large breasts subdued into a bulge under her gray pinstripe jacket, all very proper. But sometimes she'd show up in a leotard fresh from some kind of dance exercise, supple, her skin rosy and glowing, each breast waving in my face like a plump flag. I was dying to bury my face between them. But I was shy about pushing the relationship.

She appreciated that, I think, so we built our friendship slowly, and she took all the initiatives. Eventually we made a date to go jogging in the park, four miles first thing Saturday. She turned up slender and lithe and longlegged in teeny running shorts, the lower curves of her cute tush exposed, wearing a cutoff satin slipover, no bra, those breasts now bulging with nipples that poked through the satin like pencil stubs. I'd done track in college but I'd gotten out of shape, a little, so I ran the whole distance behind her with my mouth open, watching her legs churn, following that bobbing round rear end. Her whole body beckoned as she ran on, and I tried but I couldn't close on her. She stayed ahead all the way until toward the end, when for some reason she dropped behind me, then finally pulled alongside. We finished together in a dead heat, me utterly winded. She'd barely broken a sweat.

"Nice ass," she commented while my face was still buried in a towel and I was bent way over trying to hide the fact that I was struggling for breath.

"It sure is! God, Gayle, I couldn't take my eyes off it!" I gasped. When I lifted my face off the towel I saw her staring amused at me. She'd meant my ass! I would have flushed an even deeper red if it were possible.

"I'm glad you think so," she said. "A girl should feel proud of her assets. How about you show me yours more often? Three times a week from now on? First thing before breakfast? It's easy for me, I live right over there." She pointed at an apartment building fronting on the park.

"Deal!" I said, still breathless, from her compliment if from nothing else. A girl's assets? Hers? Mine? A vague thought evaporated before I could grasp it.

I learned later that immediately afterward she'd gone home and broken up with a guy she was seeing at the time, quite clear in her mind that I was to become his designated replacement. Her friend Gretchen told me much later that the guy she'd been "turning" just before me was "unpersuasive, so it wouldn't have worked out anyhow." Which made no sense. But I didn't want to know what she meant, so I never asked.

We ran together a few times the following week, and each time she showed up in cutoff short shorts and a satin elasticized top that wrapped snug around her thin waist and slim chest and held her extended breasts and long nipples way out from her chest. An incredible girl! By Friday I'd recovered enough of my old track meet shape to pace her whenever she tried to pull ahead, but only just. So when we finished we were both soaked. As I blotted myself I couldn't help but stare at that figure of hers with its protrusions. There they were, those curvacious boobs, her shirt so wet she might just as well have been naked. Though she was still breathing easily!

"You're lucky girls weigh less than guys," I said stupidly, thinking that maybe I had to use more muscle to push myself the same distance she'd practically flown over.

"Usually girls weigh less," she said, unbinding her hair to shake it loose, blot it, then re-tie it. "But not where you're looking. Jealous? You'd like a pair like these?"

In my hands and mouth at that moment? You bet! But I was too embarrassed to say anything. Jealous of what? What had she said? Again an insubstantial thought faded out of sight. Then she continued, "Of course I weigh less. So should you! Maybe you don't eat right? Let's have dinner tonight and talk about it."

I nodded,

"My place?" she pointed.

I nodded.

"Want a cup of coffee right now?" she asked.

I nodded.

We went there. It was a neatly furnished two bedroom apartment on the ground floor, lots of space, the other bedroom her workplace, an office of some kind. Soft stuffed chairs, stuffed animals sitting in them, an overstuffed sofa in the huge living room, and a dinette set in the kitchen. Two mugs were already set out on the table.

Here I was on familar ground, formica and coffee and chatting while seated. We talked about my job, how quickly what had seemed exciting had become dull.

"Work doesn't have to be dull," she said. "I have an idea."

"What?" I asked.

"In due time!" she said, glancing at her watch. "Time to shower and get to work. You OK now?"

"Yes, couldn't be better!" I meant it.

"Good!" she said. "Let yourself out then. Seven tonight. Bring a suitable wine, it'll be sea food."

And she disappeared. I heard her turn on the shower, and imagined her stepping under it, naked, water splashing off those protruding ripe globes, spraying her jutting nipples and then in rivulets running through her tuft and then trickling below her thighs and down her legs. Fluids trickling down her legs! I wanted to lick up every drop!

My dad had fancied himself a wine expert, and I'd picked up some of it. A Brut Champagne wouldn't impress her, I sensed -- too obviously always correct. So I brought over a chilled Graves from a good Chateau, a better choice I figured than a bone-dry Chablis, something with body in case she was planning something spicy. She nodded brightly at me when she saw it -- it was just right for the scallops in garlic butter she'd prepared.

"Weren't we talking about losing weight?" I asked when I saw the fat scallops glistening in their rich yellow butter sauce. I was finally feeling at ease with her.

"The secret is portion control," she said. "Look at me. Do I look fat?"

"No way, Gayle!"

"You can look like me in no time." She mused to herself a moment. "As thin as I am, even in the waist, and still eat well. You have a slender figure. I bet you'd end up real cute. A charmer! No problem. Want to?"

"Maybe," I replied. I wasn't much into cooking, and I ate a lot of high-carb junk food.

"I'll arrange it," she said. "Just put yourself into my hands."

I couldn't refuse that offer! And then the most marvelous thing happened! The bottle of wine was empty and we were dawdling over dessert, an incredibly rich low-fat mousse, and I was feeling no pain. And this incredible girl suddenly asked me to move in with her. Just like that. In a calm, low voice. "Would you like to live here? With me? I can shape you up easily, I'm sure! I've been looking for someone like you for a long time." She was staring straight into my eyes as she always did, as if she saw something there even I didn't know about. She was serious!

"Yes!" I said emphatically, as mindless as ever in her presence. "When?"

"Wait!" she said. "There's one condition. You have to agree to it first. It's absolutely essential. Don't say 'yes' just yet."

I just stared at her. What condition could possibly affect how I felt about an offer like that?

"I'll regret it if you say 'No,'" she continued. "A lot! But I'll understand why, and I'll still respect you, no hard feelings. In some ways maybe I'll respect you even more than if you tell me 'Yes' and agree to it. But if you aren't willing to do this, we'll have to go our separate ways! Even jog separately. I don't want to get deeper into a relationship that's going nowhere."

Her perfect doll face was staring solemnly at me, those gray eyes shadowed to look even larger, wide-eyed, those delicate red cupid's bow lips pursed speculatively. I knew from our coffee talk that she'd deliberately cultivated that blank little-girl expression, knowing that it hid her thoughts and masked her intelligence. "Give nothing away," she'd told me was her personal management mandate. "Keep 'em wondering. Then surprise them with a gift, something just perfect for them, and they'll love you for it. Even if it's something they didn't know they wanted. Or more than they bargained for."

Her face registered nothing, and her body held utterly still. She was serious, intent. She meant every word. Agree or end it.

I looked back at her dazed, elated, absolutely entranced. Just looked. Her full blonde hair was curved over her forehead and then gathered at the nape of her neck, tied back with a huge velvet bow that matched her velvet jacket. There was a simple silver chain around her neck. And no blouse anywhere I could see. She could have been naked under those velvet lapels.

I was simply blown away. Again, breathless! The curves of her breasts parted in a deep, shadowed cleft. I wanted to unbutton that jacket the worst way! Face the bare truth of her!

"I agree already," I said. "What condition?" There were no problems. How could I not agree? This girl was glorious, a prize beyond anything I'd ever dared desire. Anything!

"I have parents," she said.

"So?" I replied. "Who doesn't?"

Again, dumb! Me, for one, and she knew it. Mine were a memory. They'd died in a car accident a few years earlier. Knowing I'd be alone in the world if something happened to them, no brothers or sisters or aunts or even distant relatives to gather round me, they'd put considerable money in trust for me to use to complete my education and then reserve for emergencies. The trust produced substantial income, I didn't absolutely have to work. But I wanted to. I like feeling useful, and I like doing things I know I do well. Computers and personnel management are two of them. We'd joked before about how I was an orphan, a waif. Little Orphan Annie, she called me sometimes.

"No, you don't understand, Allie. My father's a minister in a small town, very staid, very proper, very visible, a leader in the community. Very old school. And my mother's a pillar of social respectability and reponsibility in that town, even more proper than he is. You know the kind of thing, she's on every social and charity committee. The two of them impeccably respectable!"

"So?" I asked. If she wanted to keep me out of sight when they visited the apartment, that was OK.

"They're apt to call me here at odd times. Maybe some time when you're in and I'm out."

"So?" I asked again.

"They'd never understand why a man's voice was answering the phone. Never! They'd be here as fast as the speed limit allowed, upset, outraged, terrified, devastated, and they'd never quit trying to drag me back home with them, trying to redeem me from this city, this cesspool of vice."

"So?" I said earnestly. Here was an opportunity to play the man. To counsel her! "You're an adult. Tell them it's time they became the parents of an adult who lives her own life."

She smiled so sweetly at me that my heart melted straight into my shoes! I was trying! And that smile built in intensity, sustained, irradiated me until I glowed! She was so utterly utterly beautiful!

"God, Gayle! You are so utterly ...!" I burst out before I realized I was off topic and shut myself up.

She saw, heard, and understood anyhow, and she reached over to clasp my hand in both of hers, pleased.

Then with my hand still enclosed in hers she went on. "Allie, I know your parents are both gone, and I'm sorry for it, and maybe that explains why you don't know it doesn't work that way. My folks are too old to learn anything. Too committed to their small town proprieties. Too old-fashioned in their thinking about boys and girls and marriage. I'm an adult now, yes, grown up, so they expect me to be married soon. They'd approve of you, I know they would, if you and I were ever to get that far in our feelings for each other. Though understand, I make no promises or demands -- this is strictly an arrangement for living and loving, for getting to know and enjoy each other's company. No more than that." She paused. "For now," she added.

"I understand that," I said solemnly on cue. "Nothing assumed or implied by me either."

"No way would they ever approve of us or anyone living together before marriage. Their own daughter? Can you imagine the hassles? The crying, the lamentations? I know my father, he'd feel honor-bound to preach to the whole town about his family's depravity. He'd deliver some anguished sermon about a prodigal daughter or a Jezebel or something, and then he'd fall to his knees and resign his ministry. The disgrace would crush him. And my mother? Don't even ask!"

"I see," I said gently, being mature about all this even while my heart was still beating wildly. I took my hand out from under hers and grasped both of hers instead. "How can I help?" I asked. "What can I do?"

"Just one thing," she replied. "It shouldn't be too hard. It's simple, but it's absolutely essential. You have to be willing. Can you sound like me whenever you answer the phone?"

"Just like you? No, Gayle! Your voice is the original magic flute! It shames songbirds into silence!" A little flowery, but I'd prepared those remarks way in advance and here was an opening for them.

"Oh, Allie, you are a love! I know I'm not making a mistake! But really, I'm not joking, either! No, I mean can you make yourself sound like a girl when you answer the phone? Not like yourself."

"I don't know," I said. But I did know. When I'm nervous my voice gets tense and rises a full octave. Sometimes in college when I had to ask a question in class but was afraid to sound like a fool, I'd chirp out the words and the professor would have to look closely to see if the voice had came from me or from the girl sitting next to me. "I guess so. I could try."

"Let me hear!"

"I guess so!" I said again in falsetto, like Minnie Mouse.

"Same idea, but lower," she said.

"Like this?" I asked.

"Better!" she said. "But with more tonal range? More highs and lows? More delight, more enthusiasm? There are reasons why girls squeal sometimes, you know." I looked up. She was looking straight into my face and her eyes never wavered once. "And why girls moan!" she added, in case I doubted my own ears. She still didn't look away.

Oh God! This marvelous woman was telling me that if I could just get past this one entrance exam I'd be set! We'd head straight for her bedroom and she'd squeal and moan all night!

"Of course, Gayle!" I squealed in a high, tense, melodious crescendo, extending the vowels of her name by rising to a squeak and then sinking deep on the last sound. Then I almost sang in a rich, lilting, reassuring contralto, "Anything you want, Gayle! Anything!"

She grinned. "That's perfect. Perfect! To whom have I the honor of speaking?"

"Allie," I replied mellifluously. "This is Allie, Gayle's roommate! Her dearest girlfriend! May I take a message?"

"Yes, dearest girlfriend," she said in an urgent voice almost as low as my former masculine voice, but steady and tense. "Take me into the bedroom and get rid of those clothes! I want you! Now!"

It was fabulous. Beyond any wild fantasy. Our clothes flew off. She opened her legs and arms and heart and mouth and gave me access to all of her, any part, everywhere, eagerly, wherever, insisted on it in fact! Smooth and warm and soft and slick and wet! I was still sucking, licking, kissing, stroking, plunging into her and embracing her with my lips, tongue, cock, and fingers as the first morning light revealed what a shambles we'd made of her bed. Finally we simply grinned at each other, then fell asleep still tangled together. When we woke again and were still drowsily, snugly hugging, she asked me sweetly if I'd mind speaking only in my new "Allie" voice from then on. So it would be instinctive, habitual. "I need to feel secure that it's always there. That it's as natural to you as breathing. No forgetfulness or slip ups ever."

"Always? No matter where?" I asked, pitching my tones high and sweet, like some girl delighted to be given a new party dress.

"Everywhere, lover. Always! I love it! That voice is you! It needs to be you from now on! It's so beautiful! So seductive."

This took a little thought. I hesitated. She wriggled her hips as if she were remembering the sound of my voice in the silence, as if it were a penis moving deep inside her. "Promise? For me?"

I stopped thinking. For more nights like this last one, anything! "Yeah, sure," I said in that delicious girly crescendo. "As long as you're seduced, I'm seduced! I promise!"

"Not 'Yeah, sure', Allie. That's too manly. Too butch. Say 'Why, I'd love to, Gayle. I really would! I'm so glad you think my voice is attractive!"

I did. Whatever!

It was a strain at first, until I added a hint of southern belle breathiness to it. All day she kept giving me other little hints to enhance the effect, mainly about what to say. Never to tell people what I want, but instead to ask if I might have it. To be sure people know how dear, how darling they are whenever they offer me anything, and how precious whatever it is they're offering! Stuff like that. All day we practiced when we weren't in each other's arms finding new ways to appreciate each other. She was the dearest, most darling, precious girl imaginable! And she thought I was absolutely adorable!

By the next day, when I moved my things into her place, my femme voice had become the way I spoke routinely to everyone. I simply stopped thinking about it. The building superintendent looked at me oddly as he helped me carry down the few books and bags and boxes I'd accumulated, and he stepped back when I smiled and told him he was a dear man, refusing both the tip I offered and the handshake. I realized why afterward, and had to grin. He thought I was making a pass at him. No matter, I'd never see him again anyhow.

 

ii.

A phone test came almost at once. One of Gayle's girlfriends called and I happened to answer. A simple, sweet "Hello?" produced immediately, "Oh yes, you must be Allie, of course. I'm Gretchen. Is Gayle there, please?" Surprisingly, Gretchen wasn't in the least surprised to hear my voice, and she knew my name. I wondered what else she knew. When I asked Gayle, she told me "Why, everything, lover! Gretchen's my closest girlfriend, next to you, and I hope you'll soon be hers!"

Though Gayle's words didn't quite chime, my heart rose. I'd never had a girl for a friend.

Some guys called too, and I merely took their messages and passed them on. One tried to come on to me, and I hesitated whether to lead him on in order to embarrass him or just cut him off. In the end either way seemed complicated, so I was properly polite, no more. It was a little unsettling though, hearing that man's ingratiating voice inviting me to tease him back. In fact I did, a little. I figured that much would be expected of Gayle's roommate. A little daring, a little jesting playfulness. I felt strange yet self-assured. It was like playing a hooked fish.

Then one day came the anticipated call. Gayle was out shopping, and it happens I was in a cheery mood when I answered. Baking low-fat cookies as a matter of fact, to surprise Gayle with when she got back. "Hellooooo?" I said, making the word into five luscious syllables chanted across a full tonal scale.

An older woman's voice declared immediately, "Why, how lovely! You must be Allie! I'm Gayle's mother, you know, Gayle has told us so much about you! How nice to hear your voice! And how good of you to keep her company, look out for her, help her with her computers and everything, she tells us. You must be such a lovely girl! And all alone in this world -- Gayle told us that you've lost both your parents, you poor dear." She paused.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," I said, even more afraid of what might be coming next. "But that was some time ago." I remembered that I was speaking to a minister's wife. It was corny, but it couldn't hurt to say it. "I'm sure they're in a far better place now."

"I'm sure," she said, pleased. "And I'm sure they're still looking after you where you are, keeping both you and Gayle from temptation. Gayle's father and I pray as I'm sure they do for your safe passage through all those iniquitous things we hear about in that city you're in. Are any of them troubling Gayle, do you think?"

She was asking me to squeal on Gayle, just as Gayle had anticipated. "No, ma'am," I replied. "No iniquities. Your daughter is just fine! She's an angel! I love her already." I did, too. "We take good care of each other." We did, too, sometimes all night long.

"Yes," her mother said, a little disappointed that I wasn't dishing dirt but gratified that maybe there wasn't any. "Well, you be sure to keep well. Tell her I called. I'd like for you to think of us as your family now, Allie, and for you and Gayle to think of yourselves as sisters, not just friends. Sisters watch out for each other, don't they?"

"Yes, I imagine they do," I replied. "Thank you, that's sweet of you." She hadn't quit. Instead, she'd promoted me to family spy. Well, I couldn't find fault with the impulse behind her tactics. Gayle was right. Parents worry.

"Goodbye now then," she said. "I'll see you both this Thanksgiving, in just a few months. We're all looking forward to the big event. Everyone's coming! All of our family! It'll be wonderful to meet you then finally."

Thanksgiving? Meet her family? How could I go to a Thanksgiving family celebration with Gayle ever, as Allie? Allie's supposed to be a girl! One look and they'd know what we were up to, and I'd have to move out! It was all over! "Yes," I said. "Wonderful!"

"Tell Gayle Chris sends his love! He's looking forward to it the same way she is!"

"I'll tell her that." My mind registered that her father's name was Chris, and that they considered a family Thanksgiving a big event. I supposed it was. But mainly I was overwhelmed by the terrible realization that we'd be lovers for only a few months more!

A moment later common sense returned, and I realized that no such exposure was necessary. I'd invent some relative with a prior claim on my presence for Thanksgiving and send regrets to Gayle's family. That was all I needed to do. No problem. Maybe I could even come as a different Allie, the guy Gayle knew from her night school class.

"Her father sends his love too!" her mother said.

"I'll be sure to tell her, " I said automatically, not yet recovered from the crazy scare that Gayle and I might have to split. Her father sends love twice? Who was Chris? She didn't have a brother, I knew, and until a minute or so ago no sister. We had a lot to talk about.

"Allie dear, I'm so pleased you're now part of our family. Welcome! We'll talk more before Thanksgiving. B'bye!"

She hung up. "B'bye," I said to myself, staring at the phone for a moment before clicking it off and setting it down.

I told Gayle everything when she got home. She was amused but unconcerned. "Don't worry about anything, you sweet darling!," she said. "I can handle it! So now you're my sister? We're in an incestuous lesbian relationship? If only they knew!"

She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed close to me, and kissed me so very sweetly. "You can be my girlfriend any day of the week, all week, baby," she said intensely. "I'd like that!"

"I like whatever you'd like," I said, not really paying attention. "I love what we are. But who's Chris? And Thanksgiving's a 'big event' at your house?"

"Big for Mom, I guess," Gayle replied. "She's an arranger! But don't worry about it, honey! Parents always make problems. They aren't our problems. Mine once, but not any more. I've got it all worked out! Are these scrumptious cookies really low cal? You are such a dear!"

That night, since we were incestuous lesbians, she proposed that we try making lesbian love just for fun. "You can be my girlfriend for real tonight," she said. "And I'll be yours." So she sucked my 'clit' and I licked her pussy, and we fondled and kissed and tongued each other's breasts, that was all. But over and over, and then again. Each time either of us woke up, that's what we did to get back to sleep. In the morning we each declared that the night had been altogether satisfactory, serene but passionate. We did it now and then afterward too, often in fact. I couldn't have been happier.

It was odd, though. Clearly it pleased and amused her to think of me as her girlfriend. It was so much less problematic than having a boyfriend with her parents looking over her shoulder.

Probably it helped ease some of the guilt she felt that we were living together, knowing her parents could never approve of it. Of course! There'd been all those little allusions to me as a possible girl, even the first day we'd jogged together! I remembered them now, references to my wanting a bust like hers maybe, or about showing off my ass. All part of a little game she liked to play. Now she did it routinely, and I realized I'd been taking it for granted. She'd compliment me on my grace when I jogged with her, and she'd warn me to watch my figure when we were dining together ("a girl's excess calories go straight to her hips, honey"). And as girls do, we'd touch and hug often, and press our cheeks together when we met and parted.

Whatever, I thought to myself. What she needs to imagine about me doesn't change me. I felt complimented.

At work though everyone was looking at me peculiarly, from the moment I first arrived and said "Good morning, everyone" in my new voice, just as Gayle had requested as a gesture of my devotion to her. It was sometimes embarrassing, talking that way in the office. But I'd remember her ripe breasts cupped in both her hands and offered to my mouth, amd my lips closing on those long nipples, and then I'd have no problem with it at all. Or I'd remember that sweet smile on her face when she came down from an especially deeply satisfying orgasm. So even though I knew what the whole staff was thinking when they heard me lilting and lisping breathily, I didn't care.

Gayle called me at the office each day that first week, just to remind me how she was looking forward to the evening, to being together, just the two of us, or just to tell me how she'd bought an exquisite satin nightgown "just for you" as she said. I knew she was really calling to make sure I was using my feminine voice whenever I answered the phone. And she never failed to appreciate it. "Lovely Allie," she'd say, "You sound so wonderfully girly, my sweet sexy-voiced darling! From the way you sound, no one would dream you weren't a girl!"

No, I suppose not. A few customers who knew my old voice thought maybe I'd developed a cold or something. Maybe I overdid the gushing -- one asked me point blank what the hell was wrong with me. He didn't pursue it when I told him things couldn't be better. But I noticed that everyone at work began to avoid me. I'd never been one of the "in" crowd at the office, but now I sensed outright hostility. I began to overhear nasty cracks. I did my work and turned in my reports, but by the end of the week I realized that I was coming back to my new home with Gayle as if to a sanctuary.

That first weekend Gayle held a housewarming party for me. She invited all her friends to meet me and hear my new voice, so there'd be no deception when they called and I answered. Besides, they all wanted to meet her new "precious" boyfriend. They all thought I sounded just wonderful, unmistakably feminine, and they admired me for it. It had to be true love, they said, for me to be willing to do this thing for Gayle.

"Not every guy would go swish for a girl," one of the girls at the party told me. "You're really something else!"

"Oh, Allie has a long way to go yet," Gayle told her. "This is just going girly a little. He hasn't begun to swish! But you're right, as a guy he really is something else! I'm proud of him."

I finally met Gayle's closest friend Gretchen, who turned out to be a stunner in her own way, tall, domineering, sultry, and dark-haired, head of the Art Department of a major advertising agency with lots of talented people working under her. "I wish I had someone like you to live with," she told me. "Then my boyfriend would never know I've got another boyfriend at home, someone I keep as a spare."

She smiled at Gayle, who smiled enigmatically back. Now what did that mean? Well, they go back a ways, I thought to myself. Gretchen was once caught two-timing someone, I'll bet.

An earnest girl's voice behind me disagreed. I turned to see. "Oh, Gretchen, Allie's fine on the phone, I'm sure. But the moment your real boyfriend saw him I'm sure he'd know there was something wrong! I mean, Allie looks like a boy! You know?"

This from a short, earnest blonde girl named Evelyn who had come to the party with an old home-town boy friend who had just moved to the city to join her. They were engaged, Evelyn had announced on arrival, showing everyone the ring he'd just given her. Gayle thought the announcement and the ring were both tacky.

"Oh, I don't know," the boy friend said tartly. He sounded pissed. Maybe a little jealous that I was getting all the attention? Maybe resenting it, thinking that by changing my voice's gender just to get laid I'd let the male side down? He sounded disgusted. "Allie here looks like he'd be pretty safe with women. He looks a lot like he sounds. Maybe he's already one of the girls?" That last he said emphatically eyeball to eyeball with me, a direct, man-to-man challenge.

More gay-bashing crap, like what I was starting to overhear at work! Well, I'd had it! I squared my shoulders and glared back at him. Then hesitated, wondering whether to punch him out right now or to call him into the corridor first.

Gretchen stepped between us before a decision could lock us into a mean-spirited brawl.

"You're right! Allie does look as good as he sounds!" she said. "A few touches here and there and I bet he'd look exactly the way he sounds! So what? Should he be ashamed to look like a girl, someone like me and Gayle and Evelyn, like half the human population? Does he have to look like an asshole Lord of the Universe like you? He isn't ashamed at all, and I think that's to his credit! I admire him for it! He's not a chauvist pig like lots of men! And anyhow, what Allie sounds like or looks like is Allie's business and Gayle's, not yours. Isn't it?"

Evelyn's fiance glanced at Gretchen while she stared wide-eyed at him, and that broke our eye-combat duel. I looked at Evelyn, who looked apologetically back at me and then annoyedly at her fiance. She quickly led him off toward a snack table in another room. I flashed her a rueful grin, signalling no offense taken.

"Do you think so, Gretchen?" I heard Gayle's voice ask behind me. Gayle had witnessed the whole incident! I was glad of that! She'd seen how manly I was, how quick to defend my honor. But she'd also heard testimony from Gretchen about how admirable I am, how free of male chauvinist superiority. Score two points for me.

"Think what, Gayle?" Gretchen turned attention toward her. I stepped back so they could talk face to face and I could listen.

"That Allie here could look the way he sounds with only a few touches here and there if need be," she said. "Because that could solve a problem I've got at work."

The warmth of Gayle's smile stifled any embarrassed objections I might have to all this talk of me being touched here and there, made to look more girlish. For the moment I was a bona fide hero to her, a rare man, altogether unashamed to be thought a girl. I smiled back non-commitally.

"Because fair employment practices and all that to one side, we have a job opening that needs a woman. We advertise that it's an 'equal opportunity' position, but it's definitely an 'affirmative action' position. What do you think, Gret? Could Allie qualify if he had to? If the front office ever checked up on us?"

Gretchen not only supervised mobs of photographers and artists and beautiful models for her agency, she'd taken beauty salon courses to help design the chic hairdos they wore. She was often called on to advise about make-up before they were photographed for picture spreads. She knew.

Gretchen glanced at me again. "You mean make Allie really look like a girl, not just sound like one? So if some vice-president came through expecting to see an office full of women, Allie'd be wearing his blush and lipstick and the usual protective coloring, like all the others? Sure, I see no problem. His features are regular, and his nose and chin are small for a man, rather cute in fact. He has plenty of his own hair, so he wouldn't need a wig. Pin it up like so, and a few dabs here and there, and I bet that in ten minutes I could hide Allie in plain sight among any group of women. He'd never be noticed. But Gayle, he has a great voice already! Why wait? Why not fix him up right now and be done with it? He'd be passably pretty with the right hairdo and the right morning make-up routines, I'm sure. His figure isn't too bad even now, compared with some women I've seen. We could do things with it. No problem!"

"Allie? Do you think you'd be willing?" Gayle was looking directly at me. Not smiling. She was actually serious! She was making some sort of administrative decision."

I was suddenly frightened, but also annoyed. At work I was being hassled for giving away a big piece of my manhood, and now these two women wanted the rest of it. "I just don't know, I'd have to think about it!" I said evasively but firmly. Speaking in my now-habituated girl voice, I realized I sounded as if I'd just been swept off my feet by a proposal of marriage.

Gayle was satisfied. "I'm just thinking about it too, honey, right now. There's no hurry. I'm not sure yet about a few things. So I'll just take that answer as not a 'No!' and we'll just see."

A week later things at my office suddenly got much more serious. My boss called me in and glared at me silently for a full minute, then asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I explained to him why I was talking like a woman, about Gayle's parents and so on.

He was unimpressed. "You're telling me you're pussywhipped, that's your excuse? You've gone queer just so you can shack up with a piece of ass? Well, people are complaining. The women in the office think you're mocking them, and the men are all mocking you! It's bad for the business. I can't let you near the phones to talk to customers, they're all asking me what flouncy new product line we're selling these days. Maybe you better take the rest of the week off and think about whether this job means more to you than some asshole promise you made to some dumb broad! I don't want to lose you, but if you can't shape up you're gone!" And he turned abruptly away.

I felt flayed! It was infuriating, and for a moment I considered whether to quit right there or to wait and continue to torment everyone by talking in my lovely feminine voice, to force him to fire me. Just for the way I was talking? Outrageous!

When I told Gayle, she immediately advised me to quit and accept the job she'd had in mind.

"Gayle, you said the job required a woman."

"Well, maybe not necessarily! Maybe just a woman's voice and the right attitudes."

And she explained. Gayle oversaw Corporate Acquisitions for her firm, really a holding company with lots of smaller firms. There was a Phone-Marketing startup they'd acquired last year, with a three person office supervising several hundred part-time "associates" who worked from their homes all over the city, networked as if they were all together in cubicles. The firm needed someone with exactly my background to be the third person. Someone to modify the main record and book-keeping systems and set up sales analyses, and then to walk new associates through the different computer procedures. And along with the other two supervisors, advise the home associates whenever they had problems with their customers, telling them how to keep their sales pitches tactful and informal. That sort of thing. Personal advice too. Exactly what we'd learned in that Inter-Personnel course where we'd met.

I could begin by working at home myself if I felt uneasy about it, she said. But it would be better if I worked alongside the two other adminstrative supervisors from the outset. To get their input before I changed systems around, and also to learn from their example how best to deal with the associates.

"You'd be perfect, honey!" Gayle told me. "You have exactly the right background, and you have exactly the right voice, too! It's not at all like the job you've got now, where it's boring and they don't appreciate your gifts."

"Why might I feel uneasy?" I asked. "And what do you mean, the right voice?"

"Because this time you'd really need to act like a real girl, not just in the way you talk but the way you think and feel too. The associates are all women. To understand their problems with their customers you'd need to make all sorts of girl talk with them all day long, and really enjoy it, the way women do. You'd hear a lot about all sorts of things women only tell other women. And you might feel uneasy about that, abandoning your male reflexes and personality altogether all day long, really being one of girls on the phone while the other two supervisors listen in. They'd have to listen at first, to help you sound more authentic. In effect they'd be teaching you how to be a woman in everything but appearance. You know, I think you'd enjoy it!"

"I see," I said. "Why are the associates all women?"

Gayle grinned. "They have to be. It's a specialty marketing firm strictly for women's products. Pantyhose, sanitary napkins, lingerie, make-up, fashion magazines, you know. Things only women use. The associates' customers are all women. Women don't buy things like that from men."

She smiled to herself, then said, "I think with your empathy you'll do just fine! It's a stretch maybe, but you can imagine how a girl feels when she's wearing her new hot-'n-sexy panty-and-bra set for the first time, can't you, and then advise our associates how she'll feel, how to advise their customers. You'd be better than most women at it, I'll bet. Because it would all be new to you, a fresh challenge! And you come at it with no set ideas of your own!"

"Let me understand. The associates are all women who advise other women, their customers, who call them to find out what to buy or how to use something they've already bought, how to use it in some imaginative new way? It isn't just that they take orders by phone?"

"Exactly!" Gayle replied. "The associates provide a kind of a fashion and feelings help line, with flair. They pitch their sales while they're being helpful. They're big sisters and wise aunts and best friends. They're Ann Landers to the lovelorn and they're Eloise and Martha Stewart to the housekeepers. They do all the work with customers, and you work with them. Apart from maintaining the accounting systems, you'll be a kind of clearing house for whatever they need to know. And a morale booster. You'll design their in-house reporting and ordering protocols and so on, of course, but mainly you'll keep them motivated, and share any good advice you get from other associates about what works especially well. Things like that!"

I still didn't see why I had to be a facsimile woman when talking with the associates. "I can see why you need women at the base level, working with the customers," I said. "But why do all three supervisors have to be women?"

"Because of the kinds of associates we've got!" Gayle sighed. "Well, strictly speaking, not all of them. For some a male supervisor isn't an issue. They're the women who do our work but also take care of elderly parents, or babies, or want to be home when their kids get home from school. Or want to schedule their own time. Or want to work bare-faced in blue jeans -- a girl can save hours out of her life for herself each week if she doesn't have to set her hair and make up her face for downtown office work. Not to mention the time and money women spend shopping for 'career girl' outfits suitable for business. Lots of those associates are college grads, smart and under-employed. They're not our problem."

Gayle smiled, then added, "We direct-deposit a lot of their earnings into bank accounts with names different from the names they use at home. So they're likely to tell you all sorts of things about their lives they don't want their husbands to know! Some of it gets pretty racy!"

"All right," I said. "Then it's the other associates who're the problems?"

"Correct. The others come in two kinds. One kind is entry-level, recent high school graduates. They're young and they advise other girls their age what to buy and they do very well at it. Telling another young girl when a tampon's preferable to a napkin, for example, and which kinds of tampons. Even what their new boyfriend might appreciate by way of a birthday blow job! You can advise them how to do that part right, can't you, Allie?"

I said nothing.

"But they're young, and soaked in their own brand-new high-test hormones. Some are intimidated by men but most of them are ready to play the female seducer to any male behind a male voice. You know, they flirt instinctively. They can be all business when they talk to another woman, but they're easily distracted into silliness by men. If their supervisor is a woman, or if they think so, it makes for far greater efficiency."

That rang true enough. In college I was a work-study aide on a University Computer help line for a while. I found quickly that lots of girls practice their girl tactics on any guys on the phone who don't know them. It can get pretty harrowing when one of them aims both full-bore barrels at you! And then if one actually does develop a crush on you, or on your voice, she can waste an awful lot of your time. Some of the girls were probably worth the time, but who knew?

I'd often thought about flirting back, but I never did. I'd have been fired, they kept stressing that. On the other hand, one guy I know actually managed to talk a lot of girls into performing phone sex for his fraternity brothers. "They liked doing it, Al," he informed me. "Getting guys off! They'd challenge each other to speed and endurance contests, how fast and how often they can get a guy to cum with a single phone call. For how long they can string him along whenever he tries to hang up. They're unbelievable! I tell you, don't let the bitches of this world get the upper hand ever! Just try to think of them as pussies with tits, with mouths that talk too much and don't suck cock often enough! Then you'll get on fine."

I couldn't do that. I wasn't raised that way, I guess. I respected girls. Maybe that was why I didn't get on too well with them.

"And the other kind of associate?" I asked. "The other kind that can't handle a male supervisor, I mean?"

"The second kind, right! They tend to be women returning to the work force because they've gotten rotten divorce settlements. Some of them are looking for another guy to get in bed with right away, so there's the same problem with them as with the high school girls. Only worse, because they know the score. A sweet guy like you wouldn't last ten minutes with some of them. They'd eat you alive."

"Sounds good," I replied, grinning. "But I'm not that easy."

"Coulda fooled me, Allie," Gayle said, grinning back. "Anyhow, lots of our divorced women can't tolerate a male voice of any kind, no matter how helpful! One of them put it to me this way: 'No male supervisors ever again, Gayle! Not ever! One mother-fucking son of a bitch-bastard telling me what to do day and night was one too many for me and still is, and will be, now, whenever, and forever after, Amen!'"

Gayle paused, then said, "But you've got no problem that way, Allie. Your voice is perfect! Who'd think you weren't a girl, hearing you on the phone? With a little re-orienting you'd fit in perfectly."

We talked some more, and the idea began to sound better and better. Challenging! And I'd get in on all sorts of women's secrets!

So that Friday I called and told my boss I was quitting, that I was giving him my week's notice, that I'd been offered work better suited to my talents.

"I'll bet you've got offers," was all he replied this time. "Resignation accepted, and don't bother coming in at all for your last week, Nancy! I'm happy to pay you to stay away. We're well rid of you! Your girlfriend put you up to this, huh? Give him a kiss for me!" And he hung up.

That shook me! I'd never encountered a real bigot before. But it was done. I was well rid of him.

 

iii.

The next Monday I went to work at Gayle's Phone-Marketing headquarters. It was just as Gayle had said. The other two supervisors, Connie and Meg, were already there when Gayle brought me into the firm's spacious one-room office to introduce me. Connie was an older woman, the office manager, smart and chic, who'd been around the block a few times and was whimsically ironic about it. What she says goes, I was told. Meg was also quick and sophisticated, enthusiastic about each of her new relationships with any man or any woman. They looked me over, and then each gave me a sisterly hug. "Remember, you're strictly a woman when you work with us, Allie!," Connie told me. "Be sure you park your cock and balls outside the door when you come in."

Both were impressed by my voice and my explanation how it got that way.

"We'd wondered how some guy named 'Alan' could possibly do this job, when Gayle first sent us your papers," Connie said. "We should have known. Gayle has that effect on some men." She grinned. Meg nudged her and told her not to tease.

They showed me various personnel forms for my signature. Some had been made out originally to "Alan" or "Allen" or "Allan," and then in all the spaces changed to "Allie." "'Allie' stands for 'Alice' if anyone wants to know, honey," Connie said. "You've just had your first sex change operation. I think it'll be fun having you here, Miss Alice! Let me show you the ropes."

I looked over their systems that first day and made a few suggestions and designed a few changes, then settled in seriously and began to reshape all of them. Within a week I'd made their billing, shipping, receiving, and payroll far more efficient, practically automatic. They appreciated me for that.

Then I began making calls to teach new associates the company's computer and reporting procedures, and tell the old associates about the changes I'd made. They were grateful.

And Gayle was right. They immediately began to think of me as family, or as their new girlfriend. Some unburdened all sorts of intimacies on me while I made sympathetic noises. I tried to be helpful the way women are with each other. I heard all sorts of gossip about boy friends and hairdos and kids and their husbands' infidelities and kinks. I sympathized with them all about their burdens, their anxieties, their private demons.

After a while they began to ask my advice about all sorts of things, and it could get pretty harrowing. One woman had been gang-banged three weekends in a row while her husband watched, that was how he got off. Now she wanted to watch her husband getting gang-banged just before she left him for good -- how could she arrange it? "I want to know cum is dribbling out of his ass the whole month I'm serving him his divorce papers!" she told me. I thought a moment, then suggested she trick him into letting her tie him up. Then she could invite as many men as she wanted to come in and use him for as many days as they wanted. "Maybe he'll want to see some of them again after the divorce," I said. "You never can tell."

Another associate called because she had to exult to someone about a pair of red leather Napa shorts she'd picked up for a song, what it had done for her rear end. And what that rear end had then done to her boyfriend when he saw her in them. "They're great!" she told me. "I can't keep his face out of my ass now," she said. I congratulated her. I thought about it some, and that night asked Gayle to let me burrow my face into her beautiful ass. She did.

Another couldn't resist telling me about her Donna Karen silk charmeuse top, you know, the full-sleeved style that's coming back? She wondered how it would go with her A-line skirt and a bolero? I waved to Meg to pick up, and Meg whispered to me what to say. "A bolero's perfect with full sleeves, honey," I told her as Meg mouthed the words. "It'll give you a commanding look But the A-line would make your outfit much too peasant-ish. Better a long, severe, narrow skirt that puts your torso on a pedestal! You'll be surprised what happens!" She was. The next day, she called back for advice how a husband on his knees could give her head while she was wearing that long, tight skirt. "He dropped to his knees when he saw me," she said. "But the only thing his tongue could get at was my shoes!" She sounded disappointed. I told her on my own to open a side seam to the top of her thigh, for a glamorous slit skirt look. Meg, listening, was impressed. I was learning.

Another wanted to know how to meet her customer quota despite severe monthly menstrual cramps, and with Connie's help I gave her some good practical advice ("Take a long, slow, hot, delicious, perfumed bubble bath, dear -- pamper yourself. No of course a tampon, not a napkin"). I also provided sympathy ("You poor dear, I know just how you feel, mine can be terrible sometimes too, it can go on for days and days").

A few weeks more and I'd learned a lot, and signalled for Connie's or Meg's help only occasionally. I began to have similar girl-to-girl conversations with Gayle -- it all seemed quite natural, and so much fun! She and Gretchen and I began to go out together as a trio, giggling and chatting and laughing and listening to each other's stories while people nearby marveled at the two women with one man who together sounded and behaved like three women.

In fact people who spoke to me in the street or in stores began to address me as "ma'am," maybe because of a lilt I'd developed unawares in my speech, or my gestures, or because of the way I carried myself. Gayle was charmed that I now moved my head and hands gracefully, and held them at intriguing angles when I listened, and that I tended to lift my chin ever so slightly before saying anything. All things girls do on the phone and off, she told me. She was delighted I had such an instinctive feel for my new line of work.

One day Meg overheard me handling an especially difficult problem, a married associate who was turning lesbian and felt so guilty about betraying her husband with her new girlfriend that she couldn't call her customers. "Just relax," I told her. "Let your girlfriend make all the moves. Enjoy them, and both of you meanwhile try to think of ways you can eventually include your husband! If you blindfold him when you're having sex, maybe you can get him accustomed to all kinds of things he won't even know about at first!"

Meg congratulated me. "It sounds like you're all set to be a woman yourself now, Allie," she said. "You're on our side! There'll be no surprises! Have you ever thought about it?"

I pointed out that nearly everything I knew was theoretical, imagined, by the book, books Connie gave me to read by day and Gayle by night. For example, I knew all the routine ways to blend the company's eye-shadows and to match them with lipsticks and blushes. I knew six ways to achieve a new Fall look, and several ways a girl can make a man excited enough to cum maybe without even touching him. But I could think of nothing practical to say one day when a young associate called to ask how she could persuade a young customer who never wears bras that she should own a few anyhow. I hadn't the foggiest.

"You don't know?" Meg asked, grinning. "We should get you a pair of breasts, honey, then you'd know soon enough! It's because even young girls bobble when they're active, jumping around. And sooner or later we sag, sooner if we don't have good support. Shall I ask Gayle to arrange some implants for you, so you'll know at first hand? Either hand or both hands, however you want to hold them?"

I didn't mind being teased that way. I liked it. It meant I was accepted, that the three of us were a team! I told Gayle what Meg had suggested, and she thought it a wonderful idea. She commented that it had crossed her mind that it was unfair that she couldn't enjoy my breasts the way I did hers. "You're mean, Allie!" she said. "Only giving me one thing to suck on when I give you two!"

I wasn't altogether sure she was joking.

The next morning Connie brought in a box full of panties and bras, the different brands marketed by our associates. All sorts of colors and materials, satin and cotton, nylon and spandex, wisps and pushups, front-hook, long line, and sports, and erotically lacy hi-legs, bikinis, and thongs. And some lines manufactured by competitors, I saw.

"They're all yours, babe," she said. "Wear them in good health!"

I lifted an eyebrow at her.

"You know our inventory pretty well, Allie," she continued. "But as you said yesterday, it's all theoretical. Time to get a real feel for these things. Here are assorted undies mostly in your size, but some a little small and some a little large so you can get to know how these feel too. The bra cups are all too large for you right now, of course. But put on a panty and bra set every morning anyhow, here if you're embarrassed to show Gayle, so you know what it's like for a girl to work in harness all day."

I stared at the strange garments uneasily. What did she mean by "right now?" I wondered. "Does Gayle know about this?" I asked.

"I report to Gayle regularly. There's nothing she doesn't know. She knows how pleased I am with your progress so far, how quick you are to improve your strengths and correct your deficiencies when we point them out. I think she's very pleased with you too. In fact I know so!"

I got the hint and nodded agreeably.

"Try this undersized little bra first, and this matching thong. So you'll know from tomorrow's set how a properly-fitting bra should feel, that it doesn't have to bind. Also so you'll appreciate how a regular pair of panties feels, one that covers your cheeks instead of tucking into your crack so you waggle when you walk."

I took the wispy things and dangled them from one hand. "Now?" I asked, a little anxious about all this.

"I don't know why not now," Connie said. "You go, girl!"

I went to the men's room by the bank of elevators and put them on under my suit and shirt. Nothing showed. The bra felt tight from the outset, and by the end of the day the band seemed to be cutting into my flesh! And all that day Connie and Meg grinned when they saw me moving about the office, twisting my hips constantly to ease the pressure of that elastic strap stretched deep between my buttocks, pressed up tight against my anus. "Very sexy moves, sweetie," Meg told me. "Has anyone ever told you you have a cute ass?"

"Matter of fact, yes," I replied. I grinned back at her, but my face felt strained.

I couldnt wait to change out of those flimsy instruments of torture when the day's work ended. But the next day's bra and panties were so comfortable I forgot to remove them and wore them home. I had to anyhow, I realized, all of them, so I could rinse them out by hand immediately after wearing them the way I'd advised so many other women. Gayle said nothing when she saw them drying on a towel rack in our bathroom. Nor when she saw the pretty pair I wore home and rinsed out the following day. But she complimented me a few mornings later when we returned from a jog and showered and then dressed for the day, and we found ourselves in our bedroom together wearing only our bras and panties. My set was maroon with delicate lace edging. Hers was a chaste white, her bra with wide support straps for her heavy breasts. We looked like two women dressing together casually, roommates, it occurred to me.

"Nice," was what she said. "Very pretty! Enjoy them!" Then looking more closely, "Are you developing a figure, honey?"

I looked down at my chest. "I don't think so. Some of my bras do gather up muscle and skin, whatever's there, and then the cups shape them. I guess these do look a little like breasts."

"They're darling, Allie. Really! Very becoming! You must be feeling very proud of them!"

She reached out and touched a nipple through the satiny material, and it instantly became a teeny erection. She smiled and glanced at me slyly, then as she slipped into her blouse she commented, "Maybe we really should start thinking about ways to fill you out. I'll bet you do enjoy wearing pretty undies. Most women do. They remind us how feminine we are. How desireable we are."

It hadn't occurred to me before, but all that day whenever I remembered what I had on underneath, I did enjoy the fact that I was wearing them. Gayle was delighted when I confessed it to her that night. A few days later I wore another thong bikini, and the snug band rising tight between my buttocks and separating them actually felt good! As I waggled to lunch, both Meg and Connie lifted their eyebrows and grinned at me. I grinned back, and waggled my rear at them even more exaggeratedly..

Two weeks later I'd worn all of my undies home, even the undersized ones, and they'd replaced all of the regular men's underwear in my drawer. A few days later a box of various styles and colors of teddies and slips and camisoles and chemises and bodystockings and leotards appeared on my desk, in lacy, satiny, and plain cotton fabrics. Without comment I took them home and added them to my morning wardrobe. Soon after, when Connie set up a half-price special lingerie sale, I was able to tell each associate I spoke to what features of each kind they might want to stress to their various customers, which helped a girl feel cute or naughty or proper or seductive. I already knew from the ways they made me feel when I looked in the mirror each morning. Connie and Meg and I alternated going to lunch in couples, one of us always on the phones while the other two went down to the coffee shop off the lobby to nibble a sandwich or a salad and then bring one back. Gayle wanted me even thinner, so we could pace each other on our morning jogs. I was already nearly as lean and swift as she was, though as full as ever in my hips and thighs because of all the jogging. My arms were almost as thin as Gayle's too, because she wanted them that way --she told me that male upper body musculature always somehow seemed threatening to her. So usually a small salad was ample for me. After two weeks of testing out a fast-weight-loss diet-drink product we were adding to our website, I doubt I weighed any more than Gayle.

So mainly I looked forward to lunch for the talk. More girl talk. Both women spent their lunch times with me briefing me on everything every girl should know, and I tried to remember it all. Some stuff was predictable -- Meg loaned me a book of recipes I could claim my mother had passed on to her daughter, and I'd dole out a few when that topic ever came up, along with advice about how to peel garlic cloves, and to remember to toss freshly cooked pasta in a bit of oil.

But there were always surprises. One of them finally tipped the balance.

I was in the office alone when the Connie and Meg came back from lunch to find me talking empty phrases into the phone and turning pages of fashion books almost at random. I motioned desperately for one of them to pick up. The problem was simple, A much-valued customer wanted to color coordinate a retro red evening gown with this year's make-up, but fashion had shifted from the bright reds appropriate to that gown to dark wine colors that weren't. She wanted a shade of lipstick and blush that could match the dress yet appear au courant. Moreover, it had to be kiss-proof even through strenuous lovemaking, because she and her escort were both married, but not to each other. Tell-tale smudging might prove disastrous. Connie mouthed me some suggestions and then threw in some additional helpful hints -- for example, ways a woman can phone her lover at any time without rousing a wife's suspicions. The day was saved, but when I hung up my hands still shook.

Connie then came over and sat down on the edge of my desk to speak to me seriously. "You're comfortable with what you know about lingerie, aren't you Allie?"

"Yes," I replied. "I'm also comfortable wearing them."

"Well, Allie, the time has come. You need to begin wearing make-up too. You need to learn more about matching, all sorts of little practical tricks girls work out for themselves, so you can extrapolate or transpose them and share what you know with your associates."

I waited to see what she had in mind. With make-up, I'd look like a woman, I was thinking. No doubt of it. That's what everyone will think I am. I'll have no choice, I'll have to live like a woman. And I wasn't ready for that. Despite my telephone identity and my professional knowledge of all things feminine, and my underwear, I was still a man.

"You're here eight hours every day, Allie, and there's no one here but us. There's no one here to see you. So here's where you can feel free to practice with the company's products, figure out what works for you and what doesn't. Then you can advise others from a deeper basis of understanding. Because you'll know more about what makes a woman look pretty, or glamorous, or whatever effect she's seeking. Are you with me so far?"

"So far," I said.

"All right then. We understand each other. Starting tomorrow you'll wear make-up every day all day, and learn for yourself the uses and the durability of every line we sell. Experiment with it. Play with it. The way we all did when we were girls!" She hesitated. Then said, "You'll look gorgeous! You'll love it!"

I sat there stiffly. I no longer thought of my new voice as feminine, just as, well, just as my voice. I no longer paid attention to the way policemen or supermarket checkout girls or strangers reacted when they heard me. I now related comfortably with women, and they all sensed it and appreciated it. The common bond I felt with them, our voices, the fact that we were hugged by the same kinds of undies, and shared the same daily concerns, these had brought out a femininity in me I sort of liked. I felt more open and spontaneous and gentle, more free to speak about my feelings with Gayle, or Meg or Connie. And it was true, where make-up was concerned, I'd always felt a little like a fraud when I gave girl-to-girl advice, even when I knew it was good advice. Because for all my sensitivity and understanding, what I knew was only by the book.

For things like that Meg and Connie had to carry more than their share. I couldn't speak from personal experience about lots of the products we were advising women to buy. Not about sanitary napkins and tampons, not about matching dresses or skirts. But make-up was the most frequently discussed of all our products, the most competitive, the most heavily purchased, and the one I knew carried our highest profit margins.

"All right," I finally said. "Let's say I start using make-up. Daytime only, here. What's involved, do you think?"

"Not a lot. We'll need to get your hair styled properly for the shape of your face first, so the shapes and shades of the make-up you need to wear will be obvious whenever you look into a mirror. You already know the basics. When you've adapted them to meet your own needs, everyone else's needs will make much better sense."

"I don't know..." I said, hesitantly. Some make-up didn't remove easily. One of our lines was practically indelible. Any color at all on my face when I was out being a man could raise real doubts about me whenever anyone looked at me. True, I was feeling less and less like a man each week anyhow. And Gayle didn't seem to mind! Far from it, she enjoyed my knowing and caring about her concerns as a woman. I'd even begun advising her mother about this year's fashions during her occasional phone calls -- her entire bridge club had listened fascinated when she reported on my say-so that little hats with veils were returning for formal afternoon wear.

"You don't know? Well, that's a good enough answer. I do know, so that's that!" Connie immediately stood up. It was settled, I saw. "I'll call Gayle and tell her we think you're ready and it's necessary, and I'm sure she'll agree," she said. "You ask her tonight."

I imagined the scene. "Gayle, I love my bras and panties, and I adore my teddies!" -- it was true, I realized, I was beginning to do just that. "But it's time I began wearing make-up. Could I borrow that darling mocha rose lipstick of yours tomorrow?" What would she say? I realized I already knew. She'd call Gretchen to ask her advice about getting me a complete makeover, doing it right. She wouldn't mind at all.

"Daytime only, here, like you say, if you're worried about what people on the street might think, Allie. You can always put your face on after you arrive here, and you can always take it off before you go home. Though I myself don't think anyone will think anything. The sandwich man downstairs already thinks you're a girl, just from your voice. A little lipstick or eyebrow pencil won't change that impression. Maybe it'll eliminate a little dissonance, the mismatch between the way you look now and the way you sound when you speak. To look a little more obviously feminine wouldn't be a big step for you. Your hairdo will carry you over the edge anyhow, chances are."

"I'm still dressed like a man," I said, still hesitating but trying to sound reasonable until I could find a tactful way out of this.

"Dress any way you like. Lots of women wear slacks and shirts and sweaters and jackets and suits to work, same as you. And as you know, we all wear big clunky shoes anyhow these days, just like men's shoes but with just a bit more heel."

"Connie," I started to say.. But she was gone. It was settled.

That very night I told Gayle what Connie had ordered up, from between Gayle's legs. My face between her legs, I mean. Gayle had the sweetest, freshest cunnyhole in the world, and once she'd told me she loved it I couldn't get enough of nuzzling its sweet delicacy each time we made love, always as a preliminary to the main event. I also loved the ripe, fermy smell of her secretions mixed with my sperm when she asked me to go down on her afterward, after my cock had lost its vigor but Gayle hadn't yet had enough. Anything I sipped from Gayle's pussy was nectar, even my own cum!

I told Gayle I wasn't sure it was a good idea, my wearing different kinds of make-up in the office, learning what kinds best enhanced my own ... ahhh ...appearance. My beautiful face. She smiled delighted as I nibbled her clit, and as her orgasm rose she bucked her crotch into my face and smeared it with our combined juices and cried out, "Yes, beautiful, yes, perfect, yes, do it, do it, Allie, sweet, sweet, Allie! Ohhhh DO IT!" Then she breathed deep and was silent, finally, utterly content.

I took that to mean she approved my wearing make-up, crossing the line and no mistake, appearing to the world as a woman. Only afterward did I realize that she hadn't necessarily, that she might have been responding randomly to her orgasm! That my thinking she'd approved maybe meant that deep down I wanted her to approve. Because it was easier than disappointing Connie and Meg. Because what they'd proposed made sense, and Gayle's respect for me depended on my knowing that it made sense. I cherished Gayle's respect above all else. And her appreciation. And her love for me.

So I supposed she didn't mind, and my impression was confirmed when I was leaving for the office the next morning and she said, "Enjoy everything, dear. I can't wait to see!"

En route to work, I realized that her last remark meant I'd have to wear my make-up home. I'd arrive home looking like a woman. And if I did that, I thought, could I explain why not all the time? Why not even on weekends? I did have a lot to learn about the durability of some of our cosmetics, after all, and about looking nice in all sorts of circumstances. Was I ready for this?

When I arrived Meg was already waiting for me. "Hurry, Allie! Your appointment's in ten minutes and it's two blocks away!" And she swept me away.

As we scurried along the sidewalk I asked how she already knew that Gayle didn't mind, and she flashed me a sidelong glance. "Oh, Allie, nothing's accidental in a large organization like this one! Connie cleared this with Gayle long before she raised the issue with you! Of course! It's really obvious and inescapable for someone in your line of work! Yesterday after you agreed, I called Gayle and we discussed exactly what changes in your hairdo and so on would do you the most good! She called Gretchen, and Gretchen made a great suggestion we're going to follow out. The idea is, we'll enhance your feminine appearance without pushing you way over into it. We'll stay near the border, so you can retreat if you feel panicky. But we'll go far enough for you to feel committed -- women are all committed to being women, after all, making the best of how they look. What you learn from that can translate into all kinds of practical advice associates can pass on to their customers."

"Enhance my feminine appearance?" I asked her with a wry smile, trying to project a manly, dignified reserve.

Another sidelong glance from Meg. "Oh, Allie, just listen to you! You're already more feminine than most girls I know. You certainly know more about feminine things! You're a role model for all those women who phone you with their problems! Masculinity is wasted on someone as sweet and sensitive as you! Give it up!"

 

iv.

Even though it was still early morning of a business day, the beauty salon was already filled with women of all sorts and ages, sitting and lying in chairs and getting brushed, combed, curled, rollered, blow-dried, waxed, manicured, clipped, wrapped, massaged, and sprayed. All the work stations were filled with other women at work or else standing and chatting. The female energy filling the air was palpable, overwhelming, intimidating. For a moment I felt genuine fear!

Oddly, no one paid me the slightest attention -- could Connie and Meg be correct that my face and temperament already read "female," and that my voice confirmed any doubts?

We were ushered past crowds of waiting women and I was seated immediately in one of the purple leather lounging chairs enthroned in each work station. Meg spoke to the attendant who was already studying me. "Dana, this is Allie!" she said. "Gayle says go ahead the way we discussed it."

"Fine!" Dana replied. Her name tag also read "Dana," I noted stupidly. I was out of it. The women were in charge. "Complete make-over, once over everything, but lightly. So she'll be reminded she's a girl even when she's fresh from a shower. But discreetly, nothing really shouted out loud!"

Reminded that I'm a girl? 'She'? Shout what? "That's exactly right," Meg replied. "Allie, you'll be most of the morning here. Don't worry, we'll cover for you at the office. Come back when you're done, and we'll all three celebrate the new you with champagne!"

"What do you mean, the new me?" I replied, fear rising in my belly.

"Oh, that's a lovely voice, Allie," Dana said, sincerely surprised and impressed, but also trying to calm me. I was obviously disturbed. Not that it mattered. If one not-quite-man misbehaved in a salon crowded to capacity with women, who'd notice?

I gave Dana a quick, scant "Thank you, that's sweet of you to say so, Dana!" but otherwise paid her no attention. "What new me?" I repeated to Meg, a little more loudly, tense.

"The you who'll know more about looking beautiful than any of the high school girls you talk to. If you get too worried, just remember that Gayle will love you for this! She's wanted this for you for a long time. Even before you moved in with her, if you must know! And I know even if you don't that deep down under you'll love it too! Ta ta!"

And with a triumphant smile Meg turned away, her hand high in the air, rotating it at the wrist in farewell!

I've got to admit it, they did do everything but didn't overdo anything. My hair was razor trimmed and then permed lightly for body, lightened, and then blow-dried into a fluffy layered style that barely covered my ear lobes. Bangs fell curving over my forehead, so my unusually small face -- for a man -- looked positively diminutive. When I tried brushing them back they fell forward again, trained to stay there. It was conceivably a man's style, but it looked distinctly feminine.

My body was hairless. I'd been taken in back and waxed and stripped painfully, and every inch of me was now bare and smooth, though clothes covered the fact everywhere but on the exposed backs of my hands. Dana handed me a schedule for the further electrolysis of my thin beard, three times weekly. My nails were now longer and manicured pink, almost their natural color but more uniformly, richly luminous and glistening. Anyone looking would know they were a woman's hands, though anyone glancing might not notice.

My eyebrows were -- as one of the operators said -- neatened. Trimmed, thinned, and arched, plucked but not quite as hairless as many women's. No longer a man's, even so. A foundation creme coated my face and smoothed away every blemish and covered what little beard I had, flawlessly, and Dana showed me how to make it resemble natural skin again with just a brushfull of face powder and some wisps of blended blush. I'd gotten both ears pierced on a dare in college -- they found the holes and re-opened them with teeny gold rings that were now glinting in my earlobes.

"See?" said Dana as I examined my mirrored image. "You can still swing either way, hon. Except for your eyes. We went all out there with your company's products. The eyes have it all! They're unambiguous!"

It was true. I checked the mirror. I now looked like either an incredibly effeminate man or a really cute girl, depending on my body English. Except for my eyes. My eyes were now exquisitely made up, deeply feminine, outlined and widened, my lashes extended and thickened into dense fringes and my lids and browbones shadowed with blended shades of eyeshadow, a streak of white just under my eyebrows. The rest of me could be called "cute" as a man or as a woman, maybe. But my eyes changed everything. Those deep, glamorous orbs were unmistakably feminine. They looked as big proportional to my face as a little girl's, downright attractive, innocent yet seductive. Even though I was shocked to see how I looked, I had to admire what Dana had done. I felt a strange, delicious apprehension! I'd entered a new world.

"That's the secret, Allie. Eyes. You tell the girls you talk to to tell the girls they talk to. Play with your eye make-up all you want and the rest will follow. A new sleek, smart you, with a romantic mystery men will always notice whenever you pass by. You'll get all the admiration any girl could crave."

Men? Listening to her, I was appalled. Excited, but terribly fearful. Something important had somehow slipped from my grasp! Something else had replaced it. As I studied my reflection in the mirror, I reached up to tuck a stray hair back into place in my coiffure. I saw myself do it!

"Your lipstick is rose beige, incidentally, perfectly appropriate for most occasions and not necessarily noticeable. But go darker at night, especially for any long-gown evening affairs."

I hadn't noticed, but it was so. In the perfection of my face, my lips were now also perfect. Rosebuds like Gayle's, smooth, even in tone, almost but not quite their natural shade. I was almost still a man. As I stood up, I didn't know what to think. Dana refused payment. "It's on the company tab, taken care of," she said. "Just as you are, honey. Remember your electrolysis appointments, now."

I walked warily back to the office, avoiding all eye contact with everybody but watching for signs that some people recognized how ridiculous I was. A few women smiled at me understandingly, as women do other women in passing, and a man stared in open admiration as I passed him by. I felt a little reassured. I wasn't freakish after all.

Back at the office the girls took one look and screamed joyously, and hugged me, and in their exuberance tried to dance with me. They'd ordered in a pizza, and now they poured champagne into plastic champagne flutes. "To our lovely Allie! To her long and happy life!

I wasn't too happy with that "her." "In the lobby, a man held a door open for me," I said worriedly. "And in the elevator another man tipped his hat." I was still trying to get used to this idea. What had I done? Why had I let them do this to me? Was it that bad?

It didn't feel that bad at all. It already felt the way my voice sounded to me, perfectly natural.

Both Meg and Connie looked at me with amused understanding. "That'll happen a lot from now on, looking the way you look, Allie," Connie said. "You should see your expression! Pretty but dazed, with such a fetching air of vulnerabilty! Men'll get stiff and maybe even cum in their pants when you walk by! Have a glass of this bubbly stuff and sit quite still so we can all get used to looking at you. Here, set this mirror up on your desk, so you can look yourself over any time. I'd say Allie's now quite pretty, wouldn't you, Meg?"

"I'd say so," Meg said. "Dana did some marvelous things with your face, honey! Study them. Those're the secrets your associates will be glad to hear about. Every day try to match them to the colors of different blouses and dresses."

"Wait a minute, ladies," I said as gallantly as I could. I felt very strange. I knew how I looked. I was embarrassed, excited, but also calm. My voice, as I listened to it, had a peculiarly wistful quality. "No one said anything about blouses or dresses. This is all so I can learn the uses of our products at first hand. And that's all it is. It all begins and ends at the office!"

"Honey," Meg said with a pleased glance at Connie. "Not your own blouses and dresses! Not yet, anyhow. That's what you'll tell the associates to tell their customers. Wherever did you get the idea I meant you? Though how you'll make yourself up each morning without reference to whatever the color scheme you're wearing that day escapes me. Your men's clothes are all a drab monochrome, I've noticed! We'll have to speak to Gayle about this."

"Well, one thing I know, I said. "I take my face off here when I go home and I put it on here when I arrive. That's all I agreed to do! There's cold cream in the ladies room for taking it off. I know that from when you brought it out that time I was on the phone with the associate who thought it was greasy, so I could reassure her it wasn't."

"Oh? Connie, should we allow Allie access to the ladies' room?" Meg asked. "Should she know all our little secrets? Can she use the tampon dispenser now when she needs to?"

"I think we'll have to let her," Connie replied gravely. They were now each finishing their second filled flute of champagne, and I must confess it, by now so was I. "We can't ask her to use the men's room any more. Think how anyone with a dick hanging in his pants would have to behave, seeing her there. Could he even pee through it? One look and it'd point straight up at the ceiling!" The two of them giggled.

Then seriously, Meg looked at me. "Allie, you can take your face off before you go home if you feel you must. Until you develop enough pride in the way you look now to be the way you want to look always. But not today! Today Gayle wants to see you at your best. "

That was true. I remembered her last words to me -- "I can't wait to see!"

"Don't worry," Connie consoled me. "There's no way you'll be embarrassed on your way home. No one would dream you were ever a man! Did you have any problems walking back from the salon?"

"No," I said, realizing for the first time that I hadn't. "Two women smiled at me. That never happened when I was a man. When I looked like a man, I mean."

"I heard you the first time, Allie honey," Connie said. "I'll phone Gayle and tell her what to expect." She stood and weaved over to her desk. "There's still a little more champagne in the bottle," she said to Meg. "I think it's Allie's. She's earned it."

"Yes, she has," Meg said. She smiled at me more warmly than any time since I'd known her.

"'He' has," I responded, one last effort. Meg didn't seem to hear.

"Here you are, Allie." She handed it to me, and she lifted her own glass. "Welcome to the other side! You'll love it, trust me!"

Welcome to what? But before I could ask, all three phones started ringing at once and our afternoon's advisory sessions got under way. I told several of the women I spoke to during the next several hours to stress eye make-up for their clients. "It's absolutely transforming," I said with my own face visible in the mirror Connie had given me. It certainly was.

When quitting time came, both of my fellow supervisors were sober again. They watched in silence as I walked into the ladies', their faces impassive. They looked visibly relieved when I walked out again with my face unchanged. They glanced quickly at each other and then a little hesitantly at me. Then they broke into laughter when I grinned broadly at them.

"Just checking to see what my new accommodation provides," I told them with a faint smile. "A lady's entitled to know! Not a single urinal! And why isn't there a condom dispenser alongside the tampons and sanitary napkins? And shouldn't we be keeping a full range of our products on that mirrored counter? How will I put on my face tomorrow? Good night, ladies!"

"Good night, Allie honey," they both chimed. "You look just great! Feel proud! Walk tall!"

So I walked out into the hallway and headed toward the elevators with small steps, my feet stepping close to an invisible centerline, delicately, head high. Now I had to move like a woman! It occurred to me vaguely that I should be carrying a purse. I attracted no more attention on the street or the bus back to the apartment than any other young woman on her way home from work. And as I realized this, I began to feel ... authentic.

When I arrived home, Gayle was already there in the living room, waiting, enthroned in one of her overstuffed chairs. I paused in the middle of the room and struck a model's pose, turned, looked over my shoulder at her, smiled a wide, inviting smile, then turned back and looked haughtily out the window, my shoulders twisted one way, my hips the reverse. All poses I'd seen in women's clothing and cosmetics ads. She looked me up and down expressionlessly, then suddenly giggled.

"You sweet, sweet thing!" she said. "Connie phoned. It's just as she said! I see how Dana did do your hair and everything so close to the line you could still pass as a man, if you were very careful about it. Maybe you could. But I love it that you now feel feminine enough not to bother. I love it that you're so sure of yourself you don't care what others think you are. I love it that my boyfriend is now also my girlfriend. Take those clothes off, you wonderful girl, you! Dinner can wait!

In bed she couldn't get over how smooth my hairless body felt. Her hands never stopped roaming and stroking and petting and fondling me, and her mouth moved everywhere over me, her lips and tongue testing and tasting the new feel of my skin. "I want this," she moaned barely audibly. "Oh I do so want this!" She seemed near fainting when I finally moved my face out of her pussy and up to kiss the hollow of her neck while I inserted myself gently into her. She came almost immediately. And then again lightly but continually as I languidly stroked in and out of her. Her hands cupped my chest and caressed my nipples as if they were full-sized breasts and teats.

I decided right then that if I could put up with what people thought of my voice, I could put up with whatever they thought of the rest of me. This was how I looked and this would be how I looked. While we were resting between rounds, tasting each other's lipsticks in soft little nibbles, I told Gayle just that. "Mmmmmm!" she said. "Perfect! You're such a love! More!" She left me in no doubt what she meant. In the morning she offered me use of her make-up, "just to get to the office, where I understand Connie's assembled what you'll need from now on." Arrived at the office looking thoroughly feminine, I found a large cosmetics case waiting for me on my desk, with "Nite Cremes" and "Fresh-from-Your-Shower" lotion and other things that left no doubt they were for home use. I brought it home and that found Gayle had bought me a new vanity table and mirror. "For before you go to work," she said. "I want you to look beautiful always."

Thus much for my plan to wear make-up only at the office. I nodded, and said nothing. I felt pleased, in fact. If Gayle wanted it for me, I wanted it.

It had been a game so far, an amusing game, but Gayle incorporated my new look into our relationship with the same high good spirits we both brought to making love to each other. In a way I was now a woman to her, but a woman with a wonderful warm dildo attached. And that was how I began to think of myself. We often made "lesbian" love as she still called it, like two women, all night long each of us devoted to the other's crotch, no penetration necessary. But whatever we did, there was nothing solemn about it. It was simply wonderful, fun, joyous, a natural extension of what we felt for each other.

Each day I played with my hair and my make-up before getting dressed. Despite the original plan, each day I left the house already altogether a woman, fully made-up for the day, sometimes rather elegantly. It was easier for me to keep my main array of cosmetics on my vanity in the bedroom alongside Gayle's, and only touchups in the ladies' room at the office. Once over the line, I didn't mind going further, trying now to look definitive. I no longer feared embarrassment, Dana had seen to that. It was still a game, but the same game many women play.

Meg and Connie said nothing the next day when I showed up for work with my face -- and especially my eyes -- unquestionably a woman's. In fact, knowing that I was now navigating the streets looking like a woman, no longer like a man, our luncheon conversations turned toward issues different from the earlier ones. Safety precautions at night, for example. And how to keep men from hitting on you, as they did all the time. And what to do when they did.

"The big question is always, first of all, Allie, do you want him to? You always ask yourself that, even if he's intrusive and annoying, but especially if he looks cute, or handsome, or you hear he's got a lot of money." She paused. "Or you hear he's well-hung." That was Meg speaking. She had considerable experience with cute or handsome or well-hung men, a different one each week it sometimes seemed.

"Not me," I said categorically. "I'm spoken for!"

"Well, sure," Connie replied when the same topic came up the next day. "But your ego isn't. Take that guy over there, you see him, the one sitting by himself, the brown tweed sports jacket and tanned face? The outdoorsman? Holding his fork like a tennis racket and his knife like a golf club? Do you think you could get him interested in you? Would it make you feel more like a real woman if a hunk like him was leaning over you and making his moves?"

I looked him over, for fun, playing Connie's game. I could see what a woman would see in him. I could even feel the force of it, a little. A very little. But intimacy with any man? The idea felt a little repellent. Still, I enjoyed looking attractive now, the same way women did who used our products. It would be nice to feel that's what I was. Attractive, I mean. Well, that I was a woman too, in a way. An attractive woman. It might help me understand better the appeal of our products to women, if I could understood better how women use them to appeal to men. Somehow. It was so deliciously confusing!

"Yes, I think so, Connie," I said with a little wonderment in my voice, still looking at him. "Would I feel more like a real woman if he were interested in me? I think so, Connie! Isn't that remarkable!"

"Isn't it, Allie?" she said, now openly amused by my response. My honesty. "That's why we flirt, honey. It makes us feel good, whether or not we want the poor wretch we're flirting with to grovel at our feet. Mostly, we don't. Well, maybe Meg does, she loves men who grovel. Let's try something though. Just keep looking at him. Sooner or later he'll notice, and when he does, keep looking at him, straight into his eyes, until he turns away or breaks off contact. Don't you look away first, under no circumstances! Then when he looks again, be sure he sees you chatting with me, utterly indifferent to whether he lives or dies. Because that'll clinch it."

"Clinch what?" I asked, though I did what she'd suggested. The man was two tables away and happened to look up. At me. He'd felt something? He saw me, and he stared back blankly for just a moment -- I could see the browser behind his eyes seraching his memory to see if he knew me. It came up blank, and he looked away for a moment. I kept my eyes on him.

He decided something and stood up. As I started speaking nonsense animatedly to Connie, he came over, and actually leaned over me! "Pardon me," he said. "I don't mean to intrude. But do we know each other?"

I thought fast. "I don't think so," I replied. "But I'm sure I'd remember if we did." I smiled up at him.

"Any chance we can get to know each other?" he responded, encouraged. "I'm in town only for today, and I'll be gone tomorrow morning early."

"That would be perfect," I replied -- Gayle's favorite word. I kept my eyes looking into his now despite my incredible temptation to look away as I spoke my next line in this old, old scenario, a real whopper! "Except that my husband's in town too, and I hate to leave him alone with our two kids while I'm out on the town with another man. It might give him ideas of his own."

The man grinned a devastating grin! "I bet it would! A pity! He's a lucky man. But I hope you don't mind my asking."

"Not at all," I replied. "Thank you!"

"No, thank you!" he said, and with a sigh he returned to his table.

Connie was beside herself. Ecstatic! Unable to repress her mirth! "See?" she said. "Now don't you feel better than you did? And he does too, I'll bet!"

"I have to say 'yes,'" I said. "But because of a man? I'm damned if I know why!"

"No, you're 'quite sure' you don't know why, Allie. Only men are 'damned' in this world, the poor dears."

I accepted the correction. "You know something else, Connie," I said as I reached for my purse alongside my chair -- I now carried one, even though I was still wearing men's clothes and pockets -- and we both stood up to leave. "I also feel a little regretful."

Connie's smile broadened. "Because he's such a nice guy, and you had to disappoint him?" she asked.

"That too," I replied.

At that Connie went into such spasms of laughter that we had to run across the lobby to the elevator to preserve minimal decency. Once inside with the doors shut, she almost choked. She couldn't stop! The rest of that afternoon she couldn't look at me without spluttering all over again. It was a while before she could pull herself together long enough to tell a puzzled Meg why all the glee. "Our new girl here actually felt attracted to a man!" she spluttered. "A keeper, too! It's really a pity she had to throw him back!" Then she exploded again! I maintained an aloof dignity through all of it.

 

v.

It was Meg who suggested the next stage in my journey. One day when I was wearing a T-shirt around the house it seemed all too obvious that my figure was too flat for the women I resembled. Gayle brought home some breast forms for me. I didn't especially care for them, because my own nipples had become sensitive, and I liked their feel projected out by my bras. The breast forms compressed them under jiggly plastic. Still, it seemed only proper for me to wear them at the office under my shirt. They justified my wearing my brassieres, after all.

Meg noticed them immediately. I was in full daywear as well as makeup, and I'd clipped a barrette over each ear to hold my new hairdo back from my face. I took off my jacket to work on a new billing procedure, and my bra's lacy cups bulged out prominently under my white dress shirt. Meg looked at me, looked again, and then said, "Well! We aren't even a little bit androgynous today, are we?"

Connie was also intrigued. "This will certainly improve your rapport with our associates," she said. "Do you mean to get pregnant too, so you can advise them on our complete line of nursing bras?"

I just looked at her, and unexpectedly I felt a twinge of guilt. I was indeed a fraud, pretending to a reality that wasn't mine, trying to look like the woman I was not. But my fake breasts were for me and Gayle to think about, nobody else.

I think Meg realized that. "May I make just one suggestion, Allie honey?" she asked.

"Of course," I said sweetly. I did appreciate her tact at that moment!

"There are so many becoming blouses in all the stores, as you know. You advise women about mixing and matching them with skirts all the time. Why do you keep wearing those ugly men's shirts? And I notice you still aren't wearing hosiery. Whether pantyhose or stockings with a garter belt or girdle is none of my business, but I'll bet you have fabulous legs. Why not show them off under a skirt? Allie?"

"What for, Meg? I don't feel any need to show off my legs."

"Need? Why Allie, every girl wants to show off her legs, if she has good legs. They're part of the decor. Why don't you bite the bullet and show up for work in skirts or dresses and be done with it?"

She was teasing.

Finally I spoke. "I don't know. Maybe because I feel, somehow, that going all the way that way, wearing complete outfits of women's clothes, it's ... well, maybe that would be a one-way street. Maybe I wouldn't want ever to go back. It's scary to think about."

"Why should you want to go back?" Connie asked.

I had no answer.

"Have you ever worn any of Gayle's clothes?" Meg suddenly asked me softly.

"Yes, once," I confessed.

"Did it feel nice?"

"Fabulous!" I replied. The fact was, I couldn't take my eyes off myself that one time. I was home and Gayle was working late, and I'd gone into her closet wondering what I'd look like. I'd tried different outfits. It was terribly addictive, I'd concluded. So I'd carefully hung her clothes back where they belonged.

"Then enjoy being pretty, Allie. Be a pretty girl. That's what it's all about. You won't go any further than you want to. Certainly no further than Gayle wants you to go. There's a terrific sale going on now at Talbot's. You know Talbot styles, beautifully cut, tasteful, classics, never flamboyant but not too casual or conservative either. Clothes for girls like you, reserved and poised. Shall we look for a skirt and blouse for you there after work today? Then maybe some shoes? No clunky shoes, you have plenty of those. Something more delicate, a mid-heel pump maybe?"

I tried to say 'no.' Tears came into my eyes. "Meg, I do appreciate your thoughtfulness," I told her. "I really do. But ...." My voice trailed off. My resolve collapsed. They both waited. They knew where I'd end up.

"Yes," I told her. "I'd love to go shopping with you. More than anything." Now tears began to stream down my cheeks. I tried to blot them. "See what you've done? My mascara's running!"

As I stood up to go to the ladies' and repair myself, there was Meg, and before I knew it we were hugging, and I was pressing my wet cheek against hers as she cried too. "Oh Allie," she said. "I've suspected it for so long now. I just knew that there was a wonderful girl in you struggling to get out! Isn't it marvelous that now she's out! I know Gayle will be pleased! She's been waiting for you to come around, to decide you'd rather be a girl, to live as a girl! And you're right, there's no going back from it, because why in the world should you ever want to? The girl in you needs her freedom!"

I just shook my head, tears still flowing. I had no idea why I should ever want to go back either. It felt so much nicer here, being a girl with these other girls! But it felt a little poignant too. Some of my tears were for my lost manhood.

I came back to the apartment a little late for supper, wearing a near ankle-length pencil-pleated skirt, teeny patterns all tan and straw and burnt umber, with a simple sleeveless slipover blouse that displayed my breasts and thin arms without emphasizing them, and a light topper. Gayle was waiting, a little concerned. "I'm sorry I'm late," I explained simply as I hung my new topper in the front closet. "I was shopping. With Meg." There was nothing more I needed to say. She saw.

She looked me over slowly. My pretty new outfit, and the shy pride I took in how becoming it was. She saw that my eye makeup was nearly gone, for the first time in weeks, and she guessed correctly that I'd been blotting my tears repeatedly.

Then she threw herself into my arms, and couldn't keep from kissing my face everywhere she could reach it. "Oh, darling, darling Allie!" she kept saying. "I'm so happy for you. I've waited so long for you to come to this! And you arrived all by yourself!" And as we pressed our cheeks together, I could feel that hers was as wet as mine. Just like Meg's! Why do women cry so easily? We both felt so very happy. That night when we made love, I wore the exquisite satin nightgown Gayle had bought months earlier during the first few days of my new voice -- bought, as she had told me then, "just for you." It fit perfectly, and felt as exquisite as it looked. "Here," she said when she handed it to me. "I really did buy this just for you -- you notice I've never worn it? From now on you wear only pretty things. Right?"

I nodded. "If that's what you want, that's what I want," I said.

"I want," she said, coming toward me.

It was a whole, wonderful new world of feelings and appearances I was exploring now. Thrilling in some ways, not only because it was new but also because it was somehow a little dangerous. "Transgressive" was the word Gayle used when I described my newfound wicked delight in doing and thinking and wearing girl things. She encouraged me to move further into my feelings, to explore more of them. I told her about the tweedy man who'd tried to pick me up the other day, and my twinge of regret that he hadn't. We made love that night more gently, more tenderly, than ever. "My sweetheart feels the way I do," she crooned.

Sexual ambivalence began to enter into our sex play. Gayle told me she wanted to reinforce some of my very complicated gender feelings, the gender identity issues I'd discovered when I'd first talked on the phone as a woman would, then as if I were a woman, then naturally as a woman, then allowing myself to look like one, and now choosing to look like one. "You can be one gender or the other in your own head, Allie," she said. "Or one and the other. But I don't want you to be confused betwen them, a muddled effeminate man or a masculine woman who doesn't know what he is or she is. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes, of course, Gayle," I replied. "When I felt I was a boy, I had to enact being a girl deliberately. As a girl, it's fun to pretend I'm a boy, though that's all I do now, pretend. I may look like either or both, but I feel like one or the other, not both. It's very strange."

"Which do you feel like right now?" Gayle asked.

"A girl," I said. "That's how I woke up this morning. That's how I want to wake up every morning. I love it! I really do! I hope you don't mind. It's so much easier when I'm working with the women on the phone when I can feel I'm one of them. I'm much more effective. And Meg and Connie now accept me completely as one of their own kind. I remember how much fun it was when Connie taught me how to pick up a man. Do you mind?"

"No, I don't mind at all, Allie honey," Gayle said. "I understand it and like it, that you prefer being one of my kind. It's a supreme compliment. But shouldn't we explore this further?"

"How?"

"Leave that to me!"

That night I made myself as beautiful as I could, at Gayle's request, and lay back on the bed in my satin nightgown with my heart beating hard, waiting for Gayle to appear from the bathroom. When she did, we just lay there, wanting each other but for the moment only embracing. We did that now and then.

The vaguaries of my erotic desires baffled me, and I mentioned it. "It's mysterious, yet there's no mystery to it at all," she told me seriously. "You desire the feminine. Me. You desire to hold me, possess me, enter me and make me a part of you." She smiled at that. "To share my every feeling, to become one with me. Isn't that true?"

I nodded.

"It's no accident. You desire the feminine in me, and you want to make that femininity a part of you. Passionately, as completely as possible. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," I said. It was true.

"You want to internalize my femininity? Possess it for yourself?

"Yes, Gayle, I do!"

"That's how you feel when you enter me?"

I nodded.

"The exact same way I feel when I want you to enter me? When I want to give myself up to you?"

"Yes. Yes, if that's how you feel."

"That's how I feel, Allie. And I want you to feel it too. To give yourself up to me, to feel how I feel when you enter me. Are you willing?"

"Yes, I am." I wasn't sure where this was leading, but I was with her all the way. It was a breathless exchange -- we were both excited by something ineffable we were revealing to each other.

"You do know there's only one way, Allie. Don't you?"

Was she talking riddles? Suddenly I saw where we were headed, but I was caught up in a momentum I couldn't stop. Nor did I want to. I wanted to give myself to my beloved woman. To feel her possess me as I took her deep inside me.

"Yes, I know," I said, a little awed at what I had just agreed to.

"I want that too," she told me, pulling me toward her finally and feeling for my lower parts. "First you do me. Then I'll do you"

My cock was hard as a rock. It slipped into her silkily, with no friction and barely any pressure, she was already so soaked. It was like dipping a spoon into a jar of honey. "I do want this for you," she whispered, as her hips began to move against mine. "I want you to know that what makes me what I am is being felt deep inside you too!" It was the sweetest lovemaking! We slowly rose together and surged, then subsided. And as we recovered our breaths she said simply, "Now you. Just lie still, love!"

She slipped out of bed to use the bathroom, as she usually did when we'd made love, though usually after I'd licked my juices back out of her and brought her off yet again. When she reappeared she showed up in the dimness with a strange silhouette, and I realized with a thrill of horror and anticipation that she was now wearing a strap-on dildo. A long one. Double-ended, she explained later, so we could both be pleasured by it at the same time, each of us penetrated by the same cock, as she put it, each of us sharing in the pleasures of penetration by that cock.

"Now you'll know, Allie darling. How wonderful it feels. So soft yet so stiff. I've made it slick with my own juices, sweetheart, and yours too, so you too can feel how it is to have a man's cum inside you. It will hurt you at first, sweetheart, because manhood never yields easily. But soon you'll relax into the pleasure of it, and feel what I feel. And that feeling will never leave you, ever again! You'll keep it deep inside you always as my gift to you, Allie. I'm giving you a gift of femininity,. Tonight you become a woman. And you'll always know that's what you've become.

And she bent over me as I lay on my back, and touched my legs under my knees so I'd know to raise them onto her shoulders. Then she crept forward slowly, and my legs went higher and further back, my rear hole turning higher toward her, exposed, vulnerable, until I felt a soft knob pressing on my anus. She pushed. Then pushed again. She was gentle, but it hurt me anyhow, a lot. She hugged me and crooned to me as she pressed herself against me, and then she was inside, just! The knob had entered me!

"Ahhhhhhh!" I said, relieved yet lamenting.

"Shhhhh, baby," she whispered to me. Her breasts were both hanging over my face. She offered one to my open mouth and my lips seized it greedily. As she pressed further and further into my rectum I sucked on her teat, concentrated on it hungrily, tearfully, seeking consolation, seeking to fill a hunger in my belly I could feel filled further down by that long penis of hers. A fulfillment slowly spreading through my body. My mouth stuffed full of smooth, soft breast, my ass filling full of stiff cock.

There was a strange burning sensation below from the spreading and stretching of my tight anus as she pushed deeper into me, kissing away my tears. "This is how girls lose their virginity," she told me. "This is how girls become women. I know it hurts, baby. But there's no other way. I'm sharing with you my most desireable gift, my femininity. I'm making it yours!" On and on her cock moved into me. Finally it was lodged all the way inside. I was complete!

Then she just lay still on top of me, my thighs propped up high on her shoulders, letting me get accustomed to how it felt, my lower parts filled to bursting, letting my sphincter slowly relax. I suckled her steadily, my mouth full of breast and my tongue pressed flat against her nipple, tensing and relaxing. I tried to lift my rear to change the angle of her penetration, and as she slid a little further inside me I realized I could grip her cock with my anal muscles. I did, like clenching and releasing a fist, and she felt it. She smiled. The original burning sensation was now gone, leaving instead a feeling of repletion. There was special pleasure in knowing that we both felt this way at this moment. Fulfilled.

Then slowly my lovely lovely Gayle began to rock back and forth, and I felt a warmth, a glow, a delicious yearning previously centered in my prick now spreading all through my belly. Her rocking grew more extreme, more impassioned, until she was plunging all the way in and out of me and I was loose and eager and ready and glowing, thrusting back with all my heart and soul and strength, joyous desire spreading all through me and rising like lava toward white-hot eruption. At last, I can't tell how long after, the throes of my orgasm seized me. It filled every part of my body, even my toes and my fingertips, with a gratified craving so intense I thought for a moment that I'd fainted! A moment later Gayle came too, and collapsed onto me. And then we fell asleep, her dildo cock still buried deep inside my new pussy, her breast still heavy in my mouth, still hugging each other. I opened my eyes for a moment and saw she was smiling, as satisfied as I was.

"My sweet girl," she whispered.

"Yes," I replied.

And we slept through the night like that. When she withdrew from me in the early morning, I felt empty.

After that I began to crave that dildo the same way Gayle craved my cock. After supper I'd move my hips suggestively just an inch or so, ever so expectantly, and I'd look intently into her face, and she'd understand my meaning at once! And smile. And I'd feel desirous and wanted, as I'd never felt as a man! We enlarged our regular lovemaking. Now we were women together. She used my dildo nightly for as long as I could get it up, sometimes only once or twice. Then when I'd gone soft for the night I used hers, and our lovemaking went on far into the night.

Some nights we practiced "lesbianism" in a new way. We curled into each other head to crotch, and she sucked on my penis all night whenever she woke up, and I sucked on hers. I loved falling asleep and waking up again with that soft, firm cock in my mouth. It was so comforting. I felt so secure, protected, nursing on it like a baby.

 

vi.

I was a woman. I wanted to dress and look pretty for my darling, always. I began to favor our "Everstay" line of cosmetics, the most permanent of them, the foundation that pefected my face with a tan glow practically a paint, the lipsticks and eyeliners all dyes. When I next went back to the beautician's for electrolysis I asked Dana to put a slight curl in my hairdo, just something to soften the effect and make my face prettier. "Of course, Allie," she said, and did it. "It does seem you've fallen altogether off the deep end. No going back ever, this time?"

"Whatever for?" I asked her, smiling. I was so happy!

Connie and Dana could see the difference in me immediately, of course. They heard me praise our Everstay line to the associates whenever it seemed appropriate. "The foundation never rubs off on sheets, or pillows, or cheeks, or hairy chests," I told them, "and not on breasts either. And the lipstick stays where it belongs. No telltale red markings on wine glasses or table napkins or collars or penises."

Nor on dildos. I told Gayle I wanted to suck her cock the way she sometimes sucked mine, just to know what it was like. It pleased her to look down and see me on my knees in front of her as she sat on the edge of the bed or on one of our soft chairs, or as she stood with a hand on her hip while I pleasured the soft rubber jutting from her with my mouth. The part of it wedged in her pussy knew. And her heart knew. Maybe because of that, I loved it.

My most ultimate commitment rose up from a seemingly inconsequential, even racy interchange. Meg came in one day wearing the lowest decolletage and the deepest cleft I've seen in a business office. Her blouse was so transparent it hid nothing of her bra. And her bra was "Seductress," one of our newer models, imported, uplifting each breast to a sweet curve but so flimsy that the colors and even the shapes of her nipples showed through, slightly pointy, haloed by a dark lace star.

"Got a date, Meg?" I asked her. "A breast man?" She'd told us how some of her guys were especially turned on by breasts, or legs, or shoulders, or necks, or well-turned asses, or shaved pussies. Once she knew, she'd know how to drive them to a frenzy through the earlier part of an evening. It paid off aferward.

"You know it!" she replied. "You were once a breast man, weren't you? How come you're not a breast woman now, enjoying yourself that way? You should try it, Allie."

"I lack two essential qualifications," I said.

Meg turned more serious. "Hasn't Gayle put you on hormones yet? Doesn't she want her sweet baby girl to grow up to have pretty knockers? Breasts that don't come off?"

"We've never discussed it, Meg." I felt strange suddenly in the pit of my stomach.

"Really? You should, love. You're enjoying your clothes and your new ways of feeling I'm sure, but you sure are missing out on the physical fun."

That evening I told Gayle about Meg's outfit and our conversation.

She thought a moment, then spoke gently, carefully. "Would you like to be on hormones, baby? We could arrange it. I want you to have whatever might strengthen your pride in your womanliness."

"Would you want me to start hormones?" I asked. This was terribly dangerous ground. Decorating my body was one thing, but changing it from the inside out, altering its shape -- that took careful thought. For Gayle I would do it. But for myself?

"Do you want to know what I think? And why?"

"Yes, of course."

Her next answer startled me. I'd traced our relationship back to its beginnings, and seen the pattern clearly enough. The little hints after class or after jogging that my feminine potential might exceed my masculine and might be preferable, her pleasure when she heard me attempt a femme voice, her approval of everything I'd done to qualify as a supervisor of women's sales, how I'd thrown everything into learning what women need, finally even myself. I'd begun to suspect she wouldn't be satisfied until I'd changed my sex altogether. That what she wanted from me wasn't a heterosexual relationship but a purely lesbian relationship.

But Gayle was now as wide-eyed as I'd ever seen her. And solemn. Staring straight at me. "My answer is 'no,' Allie. I don't want to see you on hormones."

I must have looked surprised.

She continued, "I know, they'd help you feel a little nicer about yourself, maybe help you feel even more tender about some things, sweeter, and they'd change your body for the better, soften your face maybe, give you slightly wider hips, and of course real boobs." She thrust out her chest. "Maybe even bigger than mine. And I know you love mine!"

We both smiled, then grinned at each other. We'd shared so much!

"But you don't need those things, sweetheart. Most of them. Your body's proportions are much like a woman's already, I noticed that about you almost as soon as we started talking after class, and they're even moreso with the jogging we've been doing, and the dieting. Your disposition couldn't be sweeter. And we both know you already have a pretty face, and you know how to enhance it to best advantage. You were lucky the way your male hormones came in -- they show in only one way, really, and that's hidden except when we're in bed. I love it, that you're living with me as a girl now. I wanted that. I want to live with you this way for a long, long time. But if you were to go on hormones, I doubt we'd last six months!"

I was shocked! "But why?"

"Because we'd neither of us want you to merely nibble hormones. We'd both want you to seize your womanliness with both hands, if that was what you wanted. And if you wanted hormones that's what we'd do. Heavy duty shots, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone suppression drugs. In six months your breasts would be budding, and you'd be shaping into a beautifully curved figure."

That didn't seem too bad, I was thinking. A little more than I wanted, but maybe it was like diving into a cold lake. Not at all something to look forward to, then shocking, but finally exhilerating!

"But at what cost, Allie? No more erections. No more lovemaking with that dear, dear dildo, not for me and not for you. Eventually, castration and reshaping of a useless penis into a vagina. If I wanted to live with a woman, I'd live with one. Gretchen's suggested it now and then. She's tried boy friends, and she likes them well enough, but for her a cock is no big deal. She can't at all see what I see in yours."

She paused. I was amazed to see that there were tears in her eyes. "That's why I don't want you on hormones all out, Allie! I love the way we are! I have plans for us the way we are! That's why we're the way we are right now!"

You can't imagine how I felt to hear her say that. She loves me! She has plans!

She continued then, after a pause, "Of course, if you like you can always touch up some of your better features, become a little more of what you are. Not with massive hormone replacement, but say only birth control pills. No more than I take. Just enough estrogen to enlarge your nipples and your milk ducts some, to round you out just a little, for me. Smoothe your complexion." She smiled. "Maybe enhance your girly feelings just a bit. But not to change you altogether!"

I have never been so moved. I choked when I tried to speak. I didn't know why she'd been encouraging me to take on more and more feminine characteristics, but I'd assumed after a while that she wanted to see me end up fully feminine, a complete woman. "All right then," I said finally. "I confess it, I'd been frightened by the prospect of hormones. I was afraid you'd want me to have them, lots. I'd take them, too, if you'd wanted me to. But I love the way we are too, and I'm not at all eager to go anywhere further if I can't come back. Certainly not without you alongside me every inch of the way. And in me, every inch of you. And me always in you too. I love doing what you do." Gayle tried to smile, her eyes glistening. She reached into her drawer, and took out a plastic compact, the same kind that contained the wheel of her birth control pills, but a bit larger. "Here," she said. "These are like mine, a bit larger because you do need to overcome your male hormones. Just enough to make a difference here and there, maybe. This one is yours. We'll take our pills together each morning from now on. It'll be one more thing we two girls do together."

I opened the compact and looked in. Twenty-one fat purple pills. Four pink ones. Three white ones. A complete menstrual cycle. They looked double the size of hers.

"All right," I said.

"Take one now," she said, her gray eyes watching me mildly.

I did.

For a moment she said nothing. Then as often whenever we'd reached some new plateau of understanding, she growled, "Take off your clothes, lover. Here. Now!"

No questioning that command! I took off my suit jacket. a short Chanel style flared at the hips, and my skirt, then my blouse. And kicked off my shoes, one of the mid-heel pumps I'd bought with Meg when she'd started me on my women's wardrobe. I was wearing a pretty pink slip that day, with a fitted bodice, though the small mounds gathered by my bra scarcely justified it. Gayle watched me attentively as I adjusted the slip neatly on my body -- it had twisted when I pulled off my blouse -- and as I reached for the hem and lifted it over my head. Now I was wearing only my bra and matching hi-leg panties, and today not pantyhose but a garter belt and stockings. My long-legged look.

Suddenly I realized I was putting on a strip show for Gayle, who hadn't herself moved. She was merely sitting there looking appreciative. I paused and cocked an eyebrow at her.

"That's such a charming expression, sweetheart, your eyebrows are so beautifully shaped. I see you aren't wearing your breast forms. Your little breasts are as cute as your ass, sweetie. And now, this moment, I love it that you're a woman from the inside out just like me, those hormones inside you doing wonderful things to your body. But your breasts will never be proportional to the rest of you. And don't tell me you aren't a breast man. I'll never believe it!"

"I wear my breasts at the office, Gayle. I suppose out of a feeling of propriety, to feel solidarity with the women I speak to. I'm not sure why I take them out when I come home. Because they inhibit feeling, and I love feeling my nipples poke out against my bras and blouses? Because they aren't 'me' I suspect. Not the real me. Because as Meg said, they come off."

Gayle was silent, studying me. I stood there looking back at her, waiting for her response. To tease her, I rocked my hips sideways and twisted my torso with its little breasts, and tossed my head back, until I'd achieved a provocative model's posture, a girl's "come fuck me" pose. It felt delicious. Gayle didn't respond.

"No, you're right," she said suddenly. "You do need breasts! Large ones, proportional. For a C cup bra, maybe even a D. Breasts that don't come off. Because even though you're thin as a rail in some ways, your figure isn't quite right. It's cute but not ... generous. Every woman should be able to walk into a room feeling self-assured, proud, her womanliness thrust forward on her chest. You need to feel the same kind of assurance. To feel completely committed. Not to some distant hope or shape some day, maybe, but to what you are right now. So like every woman you know that the weight and heft and tenderness of your breasts are as much a part of you as any other part. More! Isn't that right?"

I was baffled. Where was she going? Suddenly I remembered. Meg had once teased me about getting breasts I could grasp with both hands. That was when I still sounded like a woman but wasn't yet living like one, when I had no idea why a young girl should ever want to wear a bra.

"You mean implants," I said. "Something saline or silicone to reshape my chest into a woman's."

"Yes, exactly," Gayle replied. She grinned and stretched her body backward, like a cat, hands clasped high far back over her head. "Why should you have all the fun nursing on me whenever I'm fucking you! I deserve equal time!"

"If you want me to have breasts, I want them," I said to her. I meant it, earnestly.

"Not good enough, Allie. You need to want them for you!"

"I want them," I repeated. Then I paused to realize what was meant here. My chest reshaped into a woman's. Not just my hairstyle or makeup to declare my gender to the world, but breasts to declare what I am to the world, to me, to everyone, inescapably and insistently, for every moment of my life from that moment on. Quietly I said it again, "That's what I am. A woman. I want them for me!

She heard me, and in an awed, quiet voice said, "Then you shall have them, Allie. Just as soon as we can arrange it. Come to bed now."

As I slipped on my satin nightgown and looked down at its shaped bust draped flat on my flat chest I repeated aloud what Gayle said -- "just as soon as we can arrange it." And as we slipped into bed together and began to hug each other, and began the delicious preliminaries of our lovemaking, I reached out to touch hers, to lift up one of her plump breasts with my fingertips, then with my palm of my hand. And as I settled into a position to take her nipple into my mouth I said, "Gayle."

"Yes lover," she replied. She was stroking my hip, preparing to reach for my penis, already stiff and waiting.

"I want them," I said.

"I want them for you," she replied. "But take these meanwhile." And there was no more talking that night.

A week later my brassieres were abundantly full, overflowing, and my heart felt full too. Two days after our decision Gayle took me to a plastic surgeon, who was impressed by my lack of development in the chest and took special pains when correcting it. He knew how a full figure improves any woman's morale, he told me.

It was an office procedure, under local anesthetic. He made nearly invisible incisions in the curve underneath where each breast would crease once I had them, and through those slits he inserted large shaped implants under my skin, just above the pectoral muscle, immediately behind each nipple. Then he injected collagen into the areola of each of my nipples, so they became pointy, projecting forward as if awaiting small mouths.

"The collagen will last perhaps six months, Allie," he said. "If you become pregnant during that time we'll forego replacing it, but otherwise, come in and we'll re-inject what's been absorbed."

"Thank you, doctor," I replied, while Gayle kept a perfectly straight face. "I don't expect I'll become pregnant, but I'll remember. I feel like a new woman."

"Good," he replied, pleased. "Certainly you'll find that your nipples have a new sensitivity to stimulus. The nerve endings are all concentrated forward now, isolated from other chest sensations, so now they reinforce each other. Women usually report greatly enhanced feeling under these circumstances. Wear a heavy bra for the next few days to give the implants an opportunity to heal into surrounding tissue."

I did. Connie and Meg noticed the next day that my modest breast forms were still in my top desk drawer though my chest was now thrust far forward, additionally swollen by the operation. They saw how I sat with my shoulders far back, posture-perfect, to help my bra straps carry the additional weight now hanging from me. I'd had no idea breasts were this heavy.

Still, they waited a decorous few days before making any comment at all. Then when I could quit with the heavy cotton bras, I came in wearing a translucent silk blouse and underneath it one of our frothy bras, a delciously tempting confection. They gathered around my desk. "Can we see, can we see?" they both exclaimed like excited schoolgirls.

I wordlessly unbuttoned my blouse and unhooked the plump front-hook bra I was wearing, and then like some Valkyrie or Maenad I sat bare-breasted before them. They projected well forward from my thin chest. My nipples pointed forward from them proudly. I smiled at them. I really did feel proud.

"Impressive," Connie finally said. "You were a little undeveloped earlier, dear. But now I'd estimate you can produce at least two quarts a day, maybe three."

"Can I touch?" Meg asked. She reached out her hand and allowed her fingertips to graze the tipe of my nipples.

"Ohhhh!" I cried out. The sensation was excruciatingly joyous! Then I caught hold of myself. "Oh, Meg, I've never felt anything like that!" I explained. "It was the most erotic thing! Electric! Incredible!"

"Careful," Connie said to Meg. "Look at her face. See what you've done? Blow on her nipple and she'll follow you anywhere!"

"We'd better tell her to wrap them up again now," Meg said. "So they can stay fresh for Gayle. That's quite a reaction, from one little tweak! I'll bet Gayle can suck Allie's brains out through those nipples!"

And that night Gayle made up for the months she'd claimed she felt deprived. "Now we're women together!" she said. We lay alongside each other head to breast and suckled each other for hours. I was in ecstasy the whole time. I felt and tasted heaven. So wonderfully a woman! I loved it! I loved it! Gayle had to kiss me to stop me from saying so over and over.

Undies and dresses and blouses and suits that had previously looked fine, neat or fashionable, now looked sensational, smashing when I wore them! I had a stunning figure, lean yet ripely curved! I woke up each morning overjoyed to see myself. I thought I noticed a slight softening of my chin line too, from the birth control pills I was taking. A slight enlargement in the derriere. I hoped so.

As October faded into November we talked our associates through the new winter fashions, and quite a few into and out of affairs with both men and women. I also talked now and then to Gayle's mother. She always wanted to know if Gayle was seeing anyone, asking in several different ways, sometimes mentioning that "Chris" was concerned.

I'd reply that whenever Gayle went out of an evening, it was always with me and perhaps with one or two other girls, never with a man. She seemed gratified to hear that, which surprised me, because mothers I had heard always want their daughters to hook up with a man and get married as soon as possible. When she'd ask if there was some special man I was seeing and I'd tell her 'no' she always sounded disappointed. She'd urge me to attend more Church Socials, to get out into circulation more. But she'd never urge Gayle.

Lovemaking with Gayle was as wonderful as ever. We penetrated each other alternatively as either one of us chose, giggling together and loving it. Many nights we practiced the lesbianism of our earliest happiest days together, Gayle sucking on my cock on or off through the night while I bathed my face in Gale's pussy juices, sucking or licking her clit whenever the whim arose. Or sucking her cock, if she was wearing it.

"You're perfect now, Allie!" she told me one morning. "I love you! Thanksgiving's coming, and it's time you met my folks."

At last! was my first thought. Not as her roommate of course, but as a man she'd been seeing for some time now. I could still improvise the appearances and sounds of a man, I thought. Meeting her parents was a necessary step in the direction I wanted to go with Gayle. Marriage. She'd need to know what they thought of any prospective husband-to-be. My Gayle was traditional, after all. A minister's daughter.

I hadn't proposed marriage to Gayle because I wasn't exactly sure she'd want to be wedded for life to the effeminate man I'd become, or rather, to the woman with a penis, a warm collapsible dildo. But finally I screwed up my courage and told her how pleased I was that she wanted me to meet her parents. Then I came out with it. I wondered what they'd think of Gayle marrying someone so obviously effeminate. This was the first time I'd used the "m" word in any conversation, and I paused, waiting.

Gayle seemed not to notice! She ignored my reference to marriage. "Oh no, Allie," she replied. "I don't think they'd want to meet an effeminate boy friend," she responded. "That would be too awkward. No, I want them to meet the lovely girl I live with! Their new daughter, remember? You'll come home with me this Thanksgiving as my roommate. As my dearest girlfriend."

Now there was a problem! I knew I could do being her girlfriend flawlessly. That's what I was! They'd never suspect I was anything other than that. And I loved pretending I was a girl in new social situations, exploring how it felt -- each time my femininity blossomed in different ways. Gayle and I and sometimes Gretchen or other friends would go out together to shows or movies or rambles in the park or to parties, and sometimes to bars for sociability. I found I loved the freedom a pretty girl enjoys to say whatever she feels, and to be well-attended by hopeful men. I now danced and firted with them, modestly, and it was fun to feel them trying to feel me up! I especially enjoyed feeling free of competitiveness with men, freedom from one-upping tensions, unable to relax.

But once I met Gayle's parents as a girl, how could they think of me ever as anything else? It seemed to foreclose our ever getting married! How could they ever accept a son-in-law they'd already welcomed into their family as a daughter? My heart sank when Gayle told me she wanted me to come as I am.!

Near tears, even though we were already in the apartment's hallway preparing to go out, I turned to Gale and confessed how I felt. All of it. How crushed I felt that she was closing off forever the possibility of our some day getting married with their blessing.

Curiously, Gayle was as unconcerned as if I'd raised only a minor technicality. "Oh, sweetheart," she said, "Don't worry your pretty little head about that at all! I have it all figured out, lover. We will both live together as long as we both shall live and want to, and with their blessing. Don't worry. And with you my girlfriend, the more affectionate we seem to be in their presence, the happier they'll be to see it! You'll see! Words uttered over us aren't essential, are they?"

"No," I had to confess. "But your parents think so! And marriage does have advantages. It provides each of us assurance that at least once, at one time, we wanted this relationship to last forever. And it does sort of commit us to try, out in public, where everybody knows!"

She placed her palm on my cheek. Nowadays I always wore a light coating of makeup to give me that perfected complexion she loved, and of course a shadow of blush just under my cheekbones, which were now rather prominent thanks to our dieting. I knew I looked pretty, and I wanted to look pretty. For her! Her eyes were as wide, as large, as open as on that night we first met and talked.

"My sweet darling," she said slowly, earnestly. "I could never feel more loving of you, more appreciative. We'll live together as long as you'll have me, and with my parents' full approval, and we'll be as intimate as we ever have been or might wish to be. I promise you! Because I do love you. But this is how. This is the only way how. Are you mystified now? Of course. But trust me, Allie. You'll know soon enough, my lovely baby girl!"

I trusted her. I had to trust her. We clutched and fondled, then kissed each other where we stood, pulling each other's bodies tight against each other, our lips sealed tight against each other's, our tongues taking possession of each other's mouths. I opened my eyes for a moment, and saw in our full-length hall mirror two pretty women wearing stylish dresses and fashionably high heels, ready to go out, deeply affectionate, intimate, wrapped in a passionate embrace, their bodies pressed as tightly together as two women with full bosoms could ever squeeze themselves.

We did feel as committed to each other as two people ever could. Seeing was believing.

 

vii.

"It'll be a long weekend, Allie. Five days, Wednesday through Sunday, so bring clothes for at least that long."

"All right," I said. After much shopping, with Gayle, Meg, even Connie, on my own as I gained confidence, my closet was full and I loved everything in it. The morning ritual of selecting an outfit for the day was so much more fun than just putting on clothes, especially when Gayle praised some daring combination that came off with flair. Thinking about fashion yet comfort for the trip, I took down some designer jeans that had always turned heads when I wore them.

"No pants at all of any kind, sweetheart," Gayle said with a little regret in her voice. "Some of the Church Board members think pants on women are an abomination. So, dresses and skirts only, and of course stockings -- bare legs are for summer. Some cocktail dresses for social occasions. For more casual, try to go as girly as you can. Skirts all above the knee, cute, pert, kittenish, flirty, those are what younger women wear in my town."

"Sexy not allowed?"

"Sexy is very allowed, Allie. I know it sounds peculiar to a big city girl like you, but in a town our size, to want to be attractive to men is a proper girly thing, so sexy is altogether proper. So take your prettiest lingerie and an exotic nightgown or two. That miniskirt I love that shows off those cute round rear cheeks of yours whenever you bend over -- could those hormones be rounding your butt already? And those teasing French lace panties that don't quite cover the curves. I want all the men to admire you. I want to see pricks standing straight up when you pass by, like telephone poles on a highway. That formfit elasticized blouse you can't wear even with a bra, the one that wraps around your breasts and nipples like a glove and thrusts you out forward and leaves nothing to the imagination? That's ideal. You have a gorgeous figure now, sweetheart, with your small waist and large boobs. Flaunt it. You can even look a little whorish. Make the men drool. Make me proud!"

"Gayle, I'll get raped!"

"Not by these men. Not by most of them. You'll see. They're all very proper, all look and no touch. Lead us into temptation is what they pray daily, because then when they're done leering they can remember to resist and feel proud of themselves. That way they think they've earned Brownie Points with the Head Honcho upstairs. They think He thinks that absolute virtue consists in having no fun at all."

"You grew up in a strange place, Gayle. No wonder you behave a little strange sometimes."

Gayle beamed at me. "Takes one to know one, lover," she said. "We found each other."

"You found me," I corrected her.

"Little by little you found yourself, and became what you now want to be," she said. "Don't you? But I made you what you are today, I admit it. I hope you're satisfied."

"Very." I went over to her and took her around her narrow waist, and she took me around mine, and we pressed our crotches against each other. That hallway mirror image of us came back to mind. Two women in love. I gave her a light kiss on the lips, which she returned.

Then I broke off. "Nothing decent to wear at all?"

"Decent is allowed. It's boring for the men, but some women insist. Older women wear proper. Us city girls are something they do accept now finally, but they still need to swallow hard to get used to us, women who wear power suits and severely tailored blouses and sit in offices telling men on the phone to cut the crap and deliver the goods. And sit at home telling their husbands the same thing. But most girls who remain there grow up to run households and be attractive to men and have an affair or two, and meanwhile remain girls until they're grandmas. And most boys grow up to run businesses and head families and remain boys all their lives because they don't know how else to be. Anyone with any pizzazz leaves home. A few come back afterward, you'll meet one or two. You'll see."

We rented a car for the four hour drive to the comfortably prosperous town where Gayle's family lived. As we left Gayle's apartment she looked around slowly and regretfully, as if committing each wall-hanging and article of furniture to memory.

"It's only for five days," I told her, trying to console her for some unnamable loss she seemed to be anticipating. She nodded, then turned toward me and looked me over the same way. I'd done my hair especially carefully that morning, thinking ironically that as Gayle's parents' potential son-in-law I wanted to look especially beautiful, to make a good impression on them. My hairdo formed a pretty halo around my delicately made-up face. I'd gone especially heavy on the eye make-up. Dana's secret recipe, sauce for the feminine mystique.

"You look lovely, Allie," she said.

"Thank you," I replied. She seemed in a strange mood indeed!

"Allie,...." she began, as if a crack had opened in some dam, and the first trickle of water had appeared of what would shortly be a deluge while the whole dam crumbled. Then she took a deep breath, and the crack disappeared. But she still felt under pressure, I could tell.

"Allie, you do trust me, don't you?"

"You know I do," I said, as intensely and devotedly as I could feel she needed to hear it. "Absolutely!"

"Absolutely, no matter what?"

"Absolutely!" I told her.

"Because Allie, this is not going to be easy on you, this trip. It may seem a little boring, much of it, but believe me, Allie, you will not be bored. Shocked, bewildered, betrayed, gratified, but not bored. This is going to be one of the most difficult experiences of your life, at least since you lost your parents. But there's no other way. You have to go through it to arrive where I need you. It's just...it's just...."

"What?" I said as gently and quietly as I could. She seemed agonized, my poor darling.

"Just remember," she said, beginning to recover herself from whatever it was. "Just remember that I love you, and you love me, and you'll see when we emerge that we'll be living together happily ever after, making a life for ourselves exactly as you've hoped. Not exactly the way you've imagined it, that's all. Different. In some ways better." She smiled to herself. "But you can't know that yet. You can't even imagine it."

Now I was absolutely baffled!

She had now concluded this strange speech. "I've made all the arrangements. I know I'm right! But you'll just have to trust me. You do, don't you?"

"I do," I said solemnly.

"Then darling, I now pronounce us woman and wife. You wanted a marriage, didn't you? Well, there it is. Now let's get in the car."

Gayle took the wheel. As we drove off I saw Gayle's wistful mood evaporate, leaving behind the capable woman I'd first seen in that personnel class we took together months back, and the lover I'd come to know since then.

"It's like this, Allie. We won't see a lot of each other this weekend. You'll be staying at the local Inn, and I'll be staying at my folks' place, in fact I'll be sleeping in the same room I slept in as a girl. You know, the same banners and teddy bears and posters of cute guy rock stars I'd put up before I knew what I really wanted. They've kept it that way as a shrine to me. I'll always be their little girl. You know how it is."

She glanced at me. "No, poor Allie, you don't know. You never were a teenage girl yourself, were you? Well, cheer up. Now you can be just that. I want you to enjoy being a teenage girl. More than that!" She glanced at me again, and licked her lips. "I've arranged it. When we're done you'll be just like me, a woman with a past!" Now she looked at me yet again and grinned mischievously. "More mystery! But you'll love it I suspect. I'm sure you won't be bored."

More mystery indeed! But at least it sounded like fun.

Then she added, "We'll see each other probably only on three occasions this weekend once I drop you off at the Inn. Always with lots of others crowding around. I'll be entirely occupied by family and things. There'll be only the Thanksgiving dinner, which will be a mob scene, and then Friday night the ladies are planning something, and Sunday in Church will be another kind of mob scene."

I made a disappointed noise. She glanced at me again, still gripping the wheel firmly. "Sweet Allie, don't you worry. You'll be busy every moment, same as me. You won't have much free time to miss me, I promise you that!"

She nodded to herself, then looked at me again with a superbly commanding expression . "I made you what you are today, Allie, and I know you're satisfied. But don't think I'm done! We're getting close. Fix your lipstick." Then her eyes went back onto the road ahead.

As we approached the outskirts of town Gayle gave me a quick briefing on the people I'd meet. Her father was Minister of All Souls Church, attended by everyone who mattered in the community, the strait-laced and righteous and the very wealthy, who were the honorary righteous. Most of the town's civic leaders belonged. The Church Treasurer was also the President of the Fiscal Security Bank, and yjr Church's Board Chairman Ben was the head of Mercantile Enterprises, the town's largest employer, and also Gayle's parents' closest friend. We drove past "ME" signs on warehouses and packaging plants and office buildings it seemed forever before crossing a railroad track and then, finally, entering a more residential neighborhood.

"The head of ME as they call it is Ben, the founder. He has more money than anyone. He could buy the town but doesn't need to, because everyone already feels bought, they do what he wants. You'll meet him, he's a lady's man -- watch out for him. His son and heir's Chris, you'll see him at our family Thanksgiving dinner and afterward too. Our parents expect certain things from us, but neither of us feels committed -- we have certain understandings, Chris and I. Watch out for him too. He makes plays for girls whenever others can see him do it. It can be embarrassing."

"This is the 'Chris' who's been looking forward to 'the big event'?"

"He's the one. Anyhow, to be anyone in my town you have to belong to my father's church. That means you must practice unassailable virtue as attested by my father, who never sees anything but virtue anywhere anyhow. Which is why I had to leave home to find out what I really wanted and how to get it." She smiled, pleased, and glanced at me again. "Which is how come I found you. Here we are!"

She pulled in at the Inn's front entrance and waited. I got out, and a boy in uniform came to put my luggage on a wheeled cart. Gayle waited, feeling for a way to say something.

I leaned in to kiss her goodbye for now, and she pulled back slightly, amused. "Two women kissing? They'd talk about it for weeks." Then she gave me an intense look, loving but pitying. "You're a lovely girl now, Allie, remember that. Say it."

Odd. But why not say it? "I'm a lovely girl."

"No matter what! And remember, you told me that you trusted me. Say that again!"

"I trust you, Gayle!"

"Good. You do that! Bye bye, baby! Love you" And she drove off.

Bye bye, I called out to her in my mind, wistfully.

"Bye bye to lots of things, baby!" came a voice behind me. "Your innocence for openers!"

I turned as rapidly as my high heels allowed. "Gretchen! You're here too?"

Gretchen was there all right, dressed fashionably as always, with a provocative twist to her body as always. "I wouldn't miss it, Allie honey! And I'm necessary, moreover. Gayle didn't tell you? I'm your guide to this weekend's various events. I've got the car, and I know what's going on where and you haven't got a clue. have you? That didn't occur to you? I guess not. Gayle's made all the arrangements ever since you met her, so you haven't had to think for yourself or take any initiatives, have you? You just do whatever Gale says, don't you? Well, she asked me to look after you, so you just do whatever I say. You have quite a time coming."

I didn't want to answer, so I didn't.

She looked me over, her expression ironically amused as always whenever she saw me. "You look absolutely adorable, Allie. You're the prettiest boy here. I'm sure you're the only man in this town who at this moment is standing on a sidewalk wearing lipstick and high heels and a short, flirty skirt, showing his cleavage and waiting for the action. The other local weekend crossdressers are still in their factories and offices I'd guess. Gayle told you to flaunt those new boobs of yours so you'd look authentic? Like a woman, not a man?"

"I am a woman, Gretchen." But suddenly I felt naked, exposed. The way Gretchen talked, brassy, skeptical, in your face always, I became vaguely aware that my womanhood, my self-image, was more fragile than I'd thought it. It seemed to depend on what other people thought me. With Gayle or Meg or Connie I had no doubt that I was one of them. With Gretchen I was starting to feel like an imposter. A near-miss.

"Not yet you aren't a woman, sweetie. Not to me! You're what Gayle wants, a sweet sissy boy who's been drifting and dreaming his way into thinking he's a sweet girl and is just about persuaded. But don't worry, this weekend we'll make a real woman of you. Let's get you checked in."

It was rather a nice place, as I looked around the lobby. Oak and marble, well appointed, comfortably affluent without seeming opulent. I said so to Gretchen, wondering if my room would look that way too. For once she was silent. We both followed the bell-hop, and when he opened the door I saw there were someone's dresses draped on a chair, and a vanity case in the bathroom. I looked around puzzled as the attendant put my bags onto a rack for me, then left.

"It's 'our' room, sweetie, not just yours. We share. This is Thanksgiving weekend, they're full up."

"There's only the one bed," I said. Except for that girl I'd dated once who left me for a hunk, Gayle was the only girl I had ever shared a bed with. And intimacy with Gayle was a private matter between us alone, unique, and precious to me for that reason. I cherished it. I was true to her. I wasn't too happy about this. "I'm faithful to Gayle" I said determinedly, staring at the bed.

Now Gretchen really was amused. "What're you worried about, Allie? Two women snuggling together? Don't worry, we won't snuggle. And this bed's just right for a man who likes to wear dresses, I see. Queen-sized."

Then impatiently, "Unpack and let's go find something to drink -- I hear they have a nice cocktail lounge, and the restaurant's pretty good too. There'll be no alcohol at Gayle's house. Maybe we should buy a flask to carry around?"

I'm really not sure how what happened next happened. We were seated in the "Pow-wow Room." Gretchen ordered Maragaritas for both of us, double sized -- a "ladies' drink" she called it -- and while we sipped them and ordered another round she quizzed me about my sex life.

"I'm curious," she told me. "You didn't originally want to be a girl, did you? It all happened because Gayle wanted you to be a girl?"

"Pretty much. Because Gayle wanted it for me. But at every step she made sure it was what I wanted too."

"I'll bet she did. You'll pardon me Allie, but you do sound naive. How well do you know girls? Did you sleep around much when you were still pretending you were a man? Before Gayle made you into her girlfriend?"

This was going to be a long weekend, I could see. "No," I said. "There was only one before Gayle, really. And she left me for another guy. 'A really buff guy' she called him. I'm not."

"Tell me about it. A buff guy's nailpolish doesn't usually match his lipstick the way yours does, does it? Well, did you try sleeping with really buff guys yourself after she left you, to see what the appeal might be? Or did you wait until you owned a few pretty party dresses, and then start dating them?"

"I've never dated men! I'm not gay, Gretchen!"

"But you're supposed to be a woman, Allie. Don't women manage to sleep with men now and then without being gay?"

I had no answer to that. Gretchen was trying to confuse me. I was getting confused.

"Didn't I hear that you once felt attracted to a man in a coffee shop, someone you picked up while you were being true to Gayle?

How had she heard of that!? "I turned him down," I said, before I realized I'd confirmed the rumor for her.

"You turned that one down and then regretted it?" Gretchen said. "And then never went trolling for another?" She sounded incredulous.

I was silent.

"I've seen you dance and flirt with guys when we're out together."

"It's what's expected!"

"But fun, too?"

I was silent.

"So do you know what you are really? A little boy with a crush on a girl who'll do anything to please her. A natural submissive. She gets you to act out until you can convince yourself you're a genuine wannabe woman, maybe. Maybe even a gay man still in the closet, hiding out even from himself? You know, maybe I'm wrong about you, Allie. Maybe you're sincere after all. Sincerely confused! Let's have one more of these things and then find the restaurant."

She ordered a third double Margarita for each of us. For both of us. I was starting to come unfocussed. I shook my head a few times to clear it. It didn't clear. I told Gretchen.

"Too much stress, I'd say. Too much fear. You're a guy who'll soon be meeting Gayle's parents and lots of other strangers while wearing panties and a bra and all the fittings out in the open, with his hair done up to look pretty. A guy because all you've ever really done that real women do is shop and get your hair done. And that's not being a woman."

"Thass not so," I said. "Talk to lotsa women 'n girls all a time. Like a girl."

Gretchen didn't relent. "But this time you're in person, not just over the phone, not just voice to voice. You may think you're expressing your true self through your make-up and clothes and voice and all, but it's all stage costume. What you're really doing is hiding! Sure you're nervous. Here, take one of these."

She handed me a teeny white pill. "While you're here you'll need some of these. I'll decide when. It's kind of like Prozac, but stronger. You won't feel less confused but you'll worry a lot less. Go with the flow. That's what we want." She watched closely while I swallowed it. "There. Add alcohol to that pill and stir and you'll find you're a little suggestible too, inclined to say 'Sure, why not,' whenever anyone wants you to do anything. But that's the point, isn't it?"

What point? I nodded. And I don't remember too clearly all of what happened after that.

She led me into a restaurant and we had dinner with wine and I couldn't slice my meat because my knife and fork kept getting mixed up in the wrong hands. Gretchen came around to my side of the table and said never mind Allie you're a dear anyhow, just suck on them. So I did, lying there on my back on the bed with my breasts exposed to her hands and they were feeling so wonderful, so very wonderful, her hands, with my hands tied to the bedposts and her breast in my mouth. Then mine in hers, first one then the other, and my nipples so luxuriously responsive and erotic that my whole body went into a kind of orgasmic spasm. I was a single tense clenched bundle of glory until she stopped fondling them. I opened my eyes to see her perched over my crotch.

When she saw I was finally focussed she said deliberately, "You love Gayle, don't you Allie."

"Mmmmmmm!" I told her. She was naked. That wasn't right. But I was too.

"And you're always faithful to Gayle, aren't you. No sex with anyone else!"

"Always!" And tears came to my eyes. Gayle was everything to me! I was hers.

"Of course, always!" she said smugly, and she fitted my erect pole into the opening of her pussy and slowly and carefully slid herself down onto it. I sighed. It was warm and wet and slick, like coming home to Gayle, only to Gretchen.. When she got all the way down, she wriggled and touched my nipples, and again involuntarily my hips rose up to push against her crotch, my whole body stiff and tense and extended into ecstasy. Then when she lifted herself up I saw my cock emerge glistening. Then she came down again. Then up. I was her personal dildo.

It felt good. I wanted to help her, so I began to move with her. Faster, all the while she watched me steadily to time my orgasm with hers, faster and faster until I screamed out "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" and she closed her eyes satisfied as I spurted and spurted into her.

"Oh, God!" A wall of remorse suddenly fell on me! A whole building! What have I done? How could I do this?

Gretchen smiled satisfied and said, "There we are, Allie. Now you're no longer a virgin in your own mind! Your first night away from Gayle and you fuck her best friend! Welcome to Infidelity City."

Oh, God! "I didn't want to. I didn't want to," I said despairing, over and over.

"Tell me about it. I'll put my pussy on your mouth. Tell my pussy all about it. Persuade my pussy that you didn't want to. See if it listens."

She wriggled forward until her crotch was directly over my mouth, then lowered herself and clamped her pussy lips onto my lips. She was slick with the flavor of my cum, familiar to me from Gayle's usually telling me to lick myself back into me to rejuvenate myself. But she was slick with the flavor of her own juices too, deep and musky, not Gayle's. She was trying to annoint me with them, to make me hers. I closed my mouth tight. That amused her. She looked down at my face, still twisted in agony over my betrayal of Gayle, and she pinched my nose. A moment later I opened my mouth to gasp air. She sat down firmly and squeezed her thighs on my head, and I was clamped to her, and then she squeezed something inside her and a large glob of semen and pussy juice passed from inside her vagina directly into my mouth. She continued to pinch my nose, and I was choking. I swallowed it.

"There now. Now eat the rest of your dinner, Allie sweetheart, all of it. Lick it all up. Persuade me not to tell Gayle."

To my shame, I tried to lick up all the evidence. To persuade Gretchen not to tell. I spend the next half hour slurping her juices and mine out of her. She enjoyed it and she enjoyed her triumph over me, both, in orgasms she celebrated each time by urging me to suck and lick even more dedicatedly! I felt defeated. By my own desire to suck on her. By my own body's betrayal of me. By my own faith in the purity of my feelings for Gayle, too. As we finally separated to sleep, by mutual consent we turned our backs on each other, and Gretchen uttered a judgement.

"Allie, as a man, you're all right. I can see why Gayle wanted to harness this loyalty of yours, make it jump through hoops and sit up and beg. But as Gayle's new woman? As a man-turned-woman who wants to marry her? What do you think you are now? Could she possibly want to marry you? An available slut? Any woman's cuntsucker? Answer me! Go back to being a man!"

My eyes were shut, tight shut to hold back tears. "I shouldn't have done it. I don't deserve her!" I began to wail. "I'm ...!"

"No, that's true," Gretchen interrupted. "You don't deserve her! And she was never going to marry you. Don't think we're done, yet, sissie-boy. There are lots of things you need to know and she needs to know you know! Here, take another of these, it'll help you sleep." And she handed me another pill. Demoralized, I swallowed it. And slept.

 

viii.

The next morning I still felt addled, as if I hadn't slept much at all. All that alcohol and guilt. Guilt for what? And then I remembered. I started to cry. And once I began crying I couldn't stop.

Gretchen heard my strange racked whining, and I suppose it woke her up. When I lifted my head for a moment I saw her propped on one elbow and staring at me, her bed partner, a supposed woman who now lay next to her with her shaking and sobbing. I lifted my face to stare tearfully at the ceiling, as if beseeching help, and then flung myself down again. I couldn't stop, This was not me! But it was me! One long anguished wail!

"It's time to get up, Allie," Gretchen said. Her voice was gentle,

subdued, surprisingly compassionate. Did she sympathize with me? "There's more for you today!"

"Why? Why? Why? Why?" I cried out in terrible grief, beating my pillow with my fist with each as if punishing myself or punishing Gretchen for doing this awful, this terrible thing to me.

"Because!" was all Gretchen would say. Considering what she had just done, done to me, her voice sounded sorrowful. That seemed to me odd. I looked at her.

She saw and her eyes glazed into impassivity. Then, "What's your problem, sissy boy? You got a good fuck, and you gave as good as you got! Get up and pull yourself together! The big Thanksgiving Dinner is gathering at Gayle's parents house. We've got a way to go, so take your medicine like a man and let's get started!"

When I went into the bathroom I saw she meant it literally, another little white pill lay alongside my birth control compact and make-up kit. I took it and soon felt better. Whatever had happened, whatever would happen, it wasn't my fault and it didn't matter. I was smiling vaguely when I returned to lay out my dress and other things, the black silk two-piece Gayle and I had decided was exactly right for the Minister's table. Gretchen was wearing dark purple, and I told her the color suited her. She kissed me on the cheek and smiled too.

Gayle's family lived in a large half-timber parish house across the street from the Church, and cars had already assembled when we arrived -- their driveway was crammed, and Gretchen took the last available space on the street.

A cheerful and garrulous woman met us at the door. "Well, Gretchen, it's been a while, you've been such a stranger, but my dear, you're always very welcome, and aren't you looking just lovely. And Allie, you must be Allie! How wonderful to see you at last! I'm Gayle's mother, of course you've guessed that. Let me introduce you right away to everybody, so you can feel at home! All members of our family, like you!" She smiled for both of us at her little joke. I smiled back. There were dozens of people there. I felt a little dazed. It was just as well.

She led us both into their living room, a great wood-paneled reception hall used by different bible-study or church social groups, she said, fit for serving coffee and cake to hundreds. Comfortable chairs and divans were arranged in different conversational groups. At one end was a wall of books, and far away at the other a grand piano, taking up no more space than it would in a hotel lobby.

A plump, bald man in a clerical collar was leaning forward in his chair and holding forth to a fascinated group of eight or ten people gathered around him, also leaning forward to hear him better. He paused in mid gesture as we approached, and with bird-like attentiveness he waited for his wife to speak. "Dear," she said, "You remember Gretchen. And this is Allie, Gayle's friend. They live together. We talk by phone. They've been looking after each other." She was cueing a faulty memory, I realized.

I uttered the appropriate words, and Gayle's father said "My dear, how good of you. Any friend of Gayle's. You're even prettier than your voice. A genuine pleasure!" And he warmly shook my hand and peered intently at my bosom. "Genuine!" he repeated as if reaching a judgement.

I couldn't correct him about my voice -- we'd never spoken on the phone -- nor about my breasts. So I barely uttered an audible "Thank you," and he returned to his spellbinding anecdote, something about how St. Paul had agreed, the Fiscal Security Bank's 22% Visa interest was rent people pay for money they borrow, not usury. I stood listening politely while he took up gays in the military, willful sinners who undermine and sap our national moral fiber. Then we moved on.

Another short man held sway in the next group, sitting regally as if on a throne with plump thighs wide apart, surrounded by three older women in thin pastel chiffon flounce dresses. Before Gayle's mother could say anything he looked at me and his eyes narrowed. "Yes, Allie, of course. Gayle's Allie," he said. She sings your praises, says you're quick with telephones or computers, a quick learner, good people skills, always ready to try something new. Isn't that so?"

I nodded.

"I'm Ben. Of 'Mercantile Enterprises,' you know, the plant here? I hear you know marketing and customer service and don't mind relocating. Well, I need good people with good ideas who can expand with the business. Call me and we'll talk!"

He whipped out a card and handed it to me. Relocate? Me? I'd done that already, not long ago. He had the rest right, though. I took his card and mindlessly tucked it into my clutch purse.

"Gretchen, still drawing pictures?" he asked, uninterested in a reply. Then he turned his attention back to his three ladies, all three looking wide eyed at him as women do when they are playing little girl to attract a man.

We rounded the piano and there was Gayle! I have never been so happy to see anyone! She was so beautiful! But she glanced at me as if scarcely noticing! This time she was the one deeply absorbed in talk. A young man sat half-listening across from her, and at his side a girl who was paying no attention at all, her eyes wandering the room and passing listlessly over the three of us. Gayle finally looked at me, and I stepped forward to give her a peck on the cheek!

Then I was dumbfounded! She turned away before I could reach her, and continued to talk animatedly to the couple before her! My God! She knew! About me and Debbie! She was punishing me! I felt wrenched by guilt. Yet oddly unconcerned at the same time, bemused, indifferent. Gretchen's pills, I didn't doubt it. It seemed only fitting that she glanced at me as if I were part of the furniture, no more. I mean, I was her beloved, and she meant to welcome me to the cradle of her girlhood, a home rich with memories. But I'd ruined the purity of our dedication to each other! There was now a poignancy in the pleasure I took in the way her hair fell over one eye.

"Allie, Gretchen, glad you could make it," she said when she saw that we were still there. Then she resumed her conversation. We were dismissed.

"Gayle, if I may for just for a moment," her mother said. Gayle stopped for a moment and waited, impatient. "Allie, you don't know Sue, I think, and you haven't met Chris either yet. They're the oldest of our family friends, and I must say, I'm as delighted as they are that it's finally happening. After years and years of expectations, a wedding! This very Sunday!"

"How nice," I said to Chris. "Congratulations!" Chris was one of those beefy types I'd gotten to know and dislike in college, a frat boy, self-confident with nothing to justify it. He looked me over with more interest than was appropriate for a nearly married man. "Best wishes," I said to Sue, who didn't seem to hear.

"Yeah," he said. "There's lots to do I guess. Sue'll fill you in. She wants you in the procession, there's a shortage of girls or something. Some special thing, she needs to pick some out-of-towner who won't make the other girls jealous they weren't picked. You're it. Also you're supposed to go to their hen party tomorrow and scream with the rest of them. My bachelor party too, if you're up for it!" He leered.

I glanced at Gayle. She was waiting for him to finish, maybe for us to go away and stop interrupting her. But I thought I saw her watching me with her peripheral vision. Maybe it was my uneasiness that gave that impression.

"I'll be happy to do whatever's wanted," I said. "Just tell Gretchen when and where and she'll get me there."

Sue spoke up almost tonelessly, rapid-fire. "Good, I'm glad, you'll need to have your gown fitted tomorrow afternoon, we'll meet here for lunch to go there, and then there's the girls' get-together at Kirstie's at nine tomorrow evening."

"We'll be there," Gretchen replied. I smiled vaguely.

My peculiar detached mood lasted the rest of the day. The next room was as large, with a massive dark oak dining room table, and I saw the turkey was already carved in several huge platters on the sideboard. It turned out this hospitality was catered, institutional, not the family reunion around a family dinner I'd anticipated. It was more like eating in a restaurant. No drinking, not even wine. I was seated well away from Gayle, who made conversation with the half dozen people in her vicinity, Chris and Sue sat next to her and Chris's father and her mother were opposite. The family up there, the guests down here. Gayle seemed animated enough, but she didn't glance at me even once. I smiled at whoever said anything to me. Gretchen, several seats away, looked on amused.

Driving back to the Inn that evening I told her how impersonal it had all seemed. How Gayle didn't seem to recognize me.

"Should she, Allie? Are you the same person she dropped off here yesterday? The boy she made into a girl, her personal fucktoy? What'll you do with those boobs now that it looks like she's quit with you? Keep them anyhow? I bet -- you wouldn't want to give up that pleasure you feel whenever someone touches them, now, would you? That means you'll have to keep wearing bras too so they won't sag. That means you'll have to keep wearing blouses and dresses and make-up and getting your hair done, because your chest isn't a man's any more. That means now you're a man who'll live like a girl for the rest of your life, doesn't it? A queer girl, a lesbian. Or maybe a queer guy, a femme gay who lives like a girl, if you decide you'd like to feel hot meat sliding into you. Either way, Allie, from now on you're queer. Get used to it."

"What's eating you, Gretchen?" I asked. "Gayle asked me to trust her. I trust her. I don't know why she's behaving like this!"

Gretchen was silent a moment. Then, "I told her about us, Allie!"

"What?!" My face suddenly flamed! Shocked! My God! Not that I wanted any deception between us, I'd have had to tell her, but only when we got back and into each other's arms again. "She knows? What did she say?"

"She said that I'm welcome to you. I can have you. She said I should feel free to hand you around."

My heart sank. "She said that? Bitterly?" If she felt bitter, maybe I can woo her back, I was thinking. It would mean she cares! I've hurt her, but all sorts of penitential acts might bring her back. What might I do for her I haven't already done?

"No, she scarcely heard me. I don't think she cared, especially. Why should she? She's putting all sorts of things behind her now."

Dazed, we headed for our room. "Here," Gretchen said. "Take this pill and let's fuck! That much you're good for. Being as how you're still a man, even though Gayle turned you into a fetishist. You're so suggestible. You can't imagine what I want to do with you tonight!"

I guess I did take the pill. And I guess we did fuck. Because I remembered nothing the next morning, but when I woke up I was naked, and my face and hair and whole body was covered, sticky and stiff with cum and pussy juice. I asked Gretchen what in the world we'd done.

"What do you think? You bad thing you! Touch one of your nipples and you're flat on your back begging, wriggling your hips as if a long cock was already deep inside and working in and out of you. Should I tell you how insatiable you get? Should I tell you I hired a Rent-a-Stud and you wore him out? Should I tell you I did no such thing? Would it matter? Clean up and put on a pretty slip. You have a fitting for your gown today, remember."

I did. No pill, and gradually I became more and more despondent. Life with Gayle as I knew it was ending. She'd distanced herself from me. I deserved it, I was having sex with her best friend. Or rather, her best friend was having sex with me. But she'd turned indifferent before she could possibly have known that! And she'd arranged earlier for Gretchen to look after me, she must have known! Gretchen was her trusted friend? What was happening? Was this a kissoff? Was this Gayle's kink? Make me into a girl and make me like it, let her girlfriend have a taste, then goodbye, have a good life, enjoy yourself? I sat staring through a window at the bleak late-fall landscape until Gretchen told me it was time for our ladies' luncheon, then for the bridal party to go for its final fittings. That cheered me some. I wondered what kind of bridesmaid I might make?

Lunch was really very nice. Gayle wasn't there, I suppose she was with her family. The other girls asked me what I did, and I told them, and they were fascinated! Some wanted to know more about our product lines, was it true that our Goddess panties were so sexy they could bring a man to his knees, and was our Everstay line as cock-suck proof as they claimed in the ads? "Because I do love cock," this crinkle-haired blonde explained to me. "But I also like to look proper when I get home and my husband asks where I've been."

Some of the girls confessed that in high school they'd belonged to a Sluts Club in their Junior year, competing to see who could get laid by more boys in one set month, then to a DomTrixters Club in their Senior year, competing to see who could humiliate more boys more completely on a single day. Gayle came in second in her Junior year, I learned, a respectable 39 guys had been in her long enough to cum. "But the winner was really serious," I was told. "Julie, her name was. She just laid down on the first of the month and didn't stand up again till midnight on the thirty-first, just as the 127th guy pulled out of her. Then she turned pro, and never did get off her back. It's nice to find out what you want to do with your life while you're still young. She runs her own service now, hires lots of high school girls and housewives part-time. Just like you."

"Who won in your Senior year?" I asked.

"The humiliation contest? Oh, Gayle," a dark girl with bobbed hair replied solemnly. "Easily! At half-time our last football game, the whole school was cheering, and these four foxy cheerleaders, the cutest you've ever seen, they all suddenly danced out on the field in the skimpiest yellow spangled skirts you've ever seen, with the most gorgeous figures, and they pranced around together making the most seductive girly moves you've ever seen in perfect coordination, they must've practiced them together for weeks! The same curly blonde wigs and bright red, pouty lips, they looked gorgeous! Then they finished by mooning everybody with the most luscious rear ends you've ever seen, skirts held high up, they'd been wearing no panties at all the whole time. And before the Principal could get down on the field to stop it they turned around and flipped up the fronts of their skirts, and lo and behold, they were guys! The whole time! Everybody just roared! And then they danced off the field all together sideways, holding hands crosswise, their penises bobbing up and down."

All the girls giggled at the memory. The dark-haired girl went on. "Of course they were expelled immediately. Which was unfair, because none of them knew where they were or what they'd done. All they remembered was going to an audition for a school production of 'A Chorus Line' a month earlier, and Gayle telling them they'd do just fine. It seems Gayle had hired some hypnosis expert to help them learn their dance steps, a graduate student psych major, a girl with a sense of humor. They learned all right."

"Whatever happened to them afterward?" I asked. It worried me.

"Oh, they're fine," she said. "One's a secretary over at ME I think, and one's managing a Starbuck's downtown. They're both still very pretty, very popular. One was grabbed by his parents and brainwashed and sent out of town, I hear he's finally a guy again. Married a classmate, one of Julie's best girls as a matter of fact. They say he's devoted to her, takes care of the house whenever she's out busy with clients, that he does everything she asks the instant she asks. I'm not sure -- whenever we invite them over she tells us her husband's all tied up. And then there's Lacey, she was the team quarterback until that moment. She never did get to play in the second half of the game, of course. But she got her high-school equivalency anyhow and went on to college and I hear she was on the Mid-Central Girl's Soccer Team that won the State championship. She's finished law school by now I suppose. Gayle never mentioned any of this to you?"

"No," I said. "I suppose she'd put it all behind her by the time I met her."

Gretchen had been listening, watching my face and the expressions that had played across it. "Well, it's time to move on into the future," she said. "Allie, you'll come with me? Or with one of the other girls? I can take two more in my car!"

The Wedding Gown Boutique had a luxurious pink and pale yellow reception area and then a series of private fitting rooms, each equipped with a smooth, suave, impeccably groomed woman to help with the fittings. A little the way I'd always imagined brothels were fitted out. "Bridesmaids this way" the Madame suddenly announced. Gayle hadn't yet arrived, but the other bridesmaids were all there chattering with each other. When I attempted to go with them she stopped me. "Oh, no," she said. "You're Allie, aren't you? You aren't a bridesmaid. You're the Maid of Honor! We've had your gown made up specially. This way."

I waited seated on a slipper chair until a one of those enamelled women entered bearing high on a hanger an exquisite pale blue satin gown with a full length full skirt swooping up to a tight waist and a fitted bodice with a princess neckline, each breast cup's edge curved around visible cleavage. The sleeves were slightly puffed at the shoulder and then fitted to snug tight on the forearms. Grand, regal, and daring, all at once. It was too gorgeous!

"That's marvellous!" I said, staring at it in awe, breathless. "The loveliest gown I've ever seen!"

"Isn't it?" the woman said, smiling, with a glance up at it. "It's you I'm sure, very feminine yet self-assured. I'm told you advise many other women how to negotiate difficult and intimate places in their lives. This is for such a woman. We need to see about the hipline, though. Your measurements as we were given them seem a bit narrow for your waistline and bust."

She measured. "Yes, that's what you are. Would you like to try this dress on now?

I nodded. She held it high up, and I raised my arms. It slithered over my head and settled on my shoulders, and she hooked it upin back. The waistline hugged me, and the fabric snugged against my hips. I twisted my hips left and then right. The full, billowing skirt swung free and then gracefully curving, reversed direction.

"This is the most comfortable dress I've ever worn," I whispered, awed. "And yet so carefully tailored! So intricate!" I looked in the mirror, and swirled the skirt again. I've never felt so feminine! So sexy!

"Comfortable because carefully tailored, dear," said the woman, pleased. "The bride specified that this dress should be made like hers, so the girl who wore it could imagine herself also a bride on her wedding day. You'll have a bouquet to carry in the procession, pale blue to reflect the dress, pale pink to match the bridesmaids' dresses, and white to harmonize with the bride herself. You look lovely, my dear. And of course you'll continue to look lovely in this gown for years to come. It's a classic style, suitable for all sorts of grand balls. And after the ceremony this Sunday, it's yours."

"Oh?" I hesitated. "Please thank Sue for me. It's a rare privilege, invited to be her Maid of...."

But the woman was already gone, carrying the dress away for wrapping. I now owned a stunning gown. My heart sang. I didn't understand why I should feel so delighted, but I did. When I emerged from the dressing room, I saw that Gretchen had returned to the reception area and was waiting for me.

"Are you also a Maid of Honor?" I asked her?

"No," said Gretchen. "It's a long time since I was a maid. You're the maiden in this scenario, as you are in real life. You won't be truly a woman until some man has barrelled down deep inside you and left his spermy calling card there. Not until you've wrapped your legs and arms around him so tightly you hope he can never escape. But he does escape. And then maybe he returns. That's when you'll feel the way women feel. How Gayle feels. That's why she's doing this for you!"

"Doing what, Gretchen? It's Sue who asked me to fill in as her Maid of Honor."

"Never mind," Gretchen said. "Here's your gown coming now, wrapped and ready for Sunday. Let's go shopping for matching shoes and then go home. I have a single pearl strand I can lend you, and with a pearl button in each ear you'll be ravishing. We'll have your hair done again Sunday morning just before the ceremony. But that's not till Sunday. You aren't ready for Sunday just yet. You have a way to go."

The Hen Party that Friday night at Kirstie's wasn't at all what I'd expected, a sedate girls' night out and gossip before the big event. Gretchen told me to dress whorish, the way unmarried girls in the town did to attract men, so I did. Heavy eye makeup of course, and a tight lycra and satin blouse that lifted and aimed my breasts like a pair of automobile headlights.

"Use your indelible lipstick, Allie," Gretchen advised. "There's a good chance those lips of yours'll be wrapped around some man's tube before the night's out, isn't there, when you're dressed like that. You'll want the color to last at least as long as he does."

"Gretchen, I don't appreciate your mockery. I don't do men," I said.

She didn't reply. I'm not sure she heard.

Kirstie's turned out to be a Gender Club, some nights Lesbian and some Gay, any of them Transgender, with suitable entertainment for each. Tonight was an All-Girl's Hetero Night. The Stallions, a five man dance and strip group, was booked to perform, and the tables closest around the small stage were all reserved for women of the the bridal party. There was Sue, and some of the other women I recognized from lunch. They smiled and waved at me as we came in. I was one of them. And there was Gayle. This time she came over when she saw me.

"Doing OK?"

"Yes, thanks," I replied. But I felt uneasy, addled. Guilty that I'd been unfaithful to her and she knew it, but also a little resentful that she'd pretended not to know me on Thanksgiving Day. I started to say something, but choked it off.

"I hear," she replied with a broad smile. "Sweetheart, you have a lot to learn, but you're learning fast! Enjoy it all! All of it, no inhibitions, no regrets! At home I go by my parents' rules, I told you! But in this place there are no rules. Just do what the other girls do and go with the flow. Be as feminine as your heart desires. Love it! OK?"

"OK," I replied doubtfully.

"By Sunday night you'll be a different person, you'll see."

And she breezed away, stopping to chat animatedly as she went, with some of the girls I now knew had been her schoolmates.

Gretchen took the chair alongside a little table and I squeezed into one immediately in front of the stage, the table at my back. The room was jammed with perhaps a hundred women, young and middle-aged, the older ones wearing expensive dresses and jewelry, the younger ones dressed hot and tight like me.

Inside of a few minutes I knew I was in trouble. The lights went down, a thumping music began, and five bronzed and muscled guys pranced and slithered into a spotlight on the small stage, each dressed in a different macho outfit, soldier, fireman, lumberjack, something like that. It didn't matter what because ten minutes later, the music pounding louder than ever and the women crowding the room now hooting and screaming, they were stripped down to shiny Speedo jock strops, their muscles prominent and their hips squirming as obscenely huge bulges thrust and rolled on the front of their crotches. They fanned out and moved toward the edge of the stage, until each was bumping and grinding not a foot from the face of the woman closest to the stage at each table. And I was one of the five. I stared at the bulge in front of me. The thin dayglo green nylon covering that cock and ball package outlined them like shrink-wrap. I looked up at a handsome, craggy face and saw it was looking mildly down at me. Then I looked again at that package waving provocatively in front of my nose. Then up again. He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

"Ladies," shouted a voice over the speakers, just barely audible over the big beat and the whining guitars. "Ladies, in honor of the bridal party with us tonight, if we encourage them, the Stallions tonight will show all!"

A huge din came up, women shrieking in an ear-splitting cacophony, that soon leveled into a repeated war cry syncopated with the pounding percussion, "Show all!" "Show all!" "Show all!" I looked around and saw that the other girls seated in my position at the other tables were staring at their men eagerly, eyes shining, transfixed by the sight of all that heavy male meat moving immediately in front of them. Moving closer to their faces! The rhythms intensified, and I realized that some women were now shouting "Off! "Off!" "Off!" while the others continued to scream "Show all!" I looked up again at the man in front of me. His eyes were closed. I looked at his crotch, which was now shifting and pitching and rolling and yawing and heaving directly in front of my nose.

Suddenly it was naked! No more nylon shielding! There were his huge balls, hairless! A monster-sized prick, now no longer contained but out in the open, plump, proud, already swollen huge, awesome, and yet nowhere nearly fully erect. And now the rhythmic beat from the music and a hundred women's throats was deafening, and every woman in the room was chanting a command to the five of us closest to these hunks, those cocks, "Do it!" "Do it!" "Do it!" Unrelenting! Overwhelming! I saw in the corner of my eye that two of the girls had leaned forward, and that their men were now thrusting their cocks toward their mouths, then away, each time closer! Then between the lips of the girl closest to me. No hands. Then into her mouth! She slid those lips forward and three, four, five inches of that prick disappeared into her face -- it was now a rampant, stiff tower with this young girl trying to swallow it at one end, joined to that man at the other!

I looked at my man's cock, now filling my vision, with an enormous, swollen pink helmet mounted on its peak and a single short slit in its center, glstening, now not an inch from my mouth. All those women were now screaming a tumultuous, rhythmic "Do it!" "Do it!" "Do it!" at me, it seemed. I looked up at that craggy face once again, almost prayerfully, and saw that his eyes were still closed but that he was now smiling, as if in anticipation. Again I looked at that bulbous cock head. It looked like a larger version of Gayle's dildo, the one I loved to feel in my mouth. But more real. A real man's! I felt a strange urge.

And like the other girls, I leaned forward. My lips closed over that warm rubbery globe, and with a gentleness I hadn't thought possible given all that writhing musculature, it began to move deeper into my mouth until it pressed against the back of my throat. Then out a few inches, and in again, sliding between my lips. With tears in my eyes, I began to suck. Then harder. Then to bob my head up and down on it in cadence with the audience's throbbing chant, now changed to "More!" "More!" "More!" I was transfigured, beside myself, a creature of the pulsing sounds that drowned all my senses, an avid moist mouth and tongue with pursing lips eager to suck cock forever! I couldn't have stopped if I'd wanted. In and out of me that prick thrust, and down and up I bobbed, deeper and deeper it went each time, my mouth the instrument of the will of every woman in that room as I sucked that man's cock in and out in a frenzy of devotion! More, more, more, and I pulled and sucked and lipped and sucked on that fat tube more and more and over and over until that man's meat swelled up and expanded to fill my whole mouth and seemed to grow hot, then gushed and gushed salty sweet slick stuff down my throat while I swallowed and swallowed, my eyes tight shut, absolutely out of my mind!

I knew what cum tasted like of course, my own when I sucked it out of Gayle's cunny, but I didn't know that straight from the tap it was so much more dense, even ropy. It coated my mouth like liquid nylon. I licked my lips. The lights went on, the show was over, and I checked my make-up. The Everlast lipstick had held up, but I added more anyhow, and smiled. I felt girlish, I don't know why.

Gretchen was elated, rapturous. She never said a word, but all the way back to the Inn, whenever she looked at me sideways her shoulders would start to shake, and at one point she had to pull over to the curb until her fit of laughter passed. I didn't dare say anything to her.

I learned the next day I'd had a narrow escape. That on evenings when the Stallions were showing all there was an understanding, the girl who brought her man off first got to be taken into a back room and fucked all night by each of the five in turn.

"They're absolutely unbelieveable," one of the bridesmaids-to-be told me at breakfast, congratulating me for having brought my man off second and commiserating that I'd missed out on the night of a lifetime by only eight seconds. "I won last year. And I went home the next morning ready to divorce my husband. And I would have, too, but he was crying and sobbing, and in the end he agreed to let me take men into our bed once a month, as many as I wanted, while he went to a motel. I advertised for them and found some great hunks, and now we're all happy. I even trained my hubby to watch. I think he likes it now, at least to judge by the way he sits there and beats his meat while those men are plowing me into the bed one after the other all night, and I'm shrieking. I know I love it. And when I'm sore afterward, he's very considerate of me down there. Very satisfying. Very!" She smiled to herself, remembering.

I told her that if only I'd known that it was a contest I'd have tried harder. She consoled me that it was a considerable accomplishment, what I'd done, though it was a shame I had to miss out by only eight seconds. "You were way faster than number three," she pointed out. "Just keep at it, you'll get there. You've got a real natural talent!"

"It seems so, but she needs more practice," Gretchen replied for me. "We're working on it!"

I smiled modestly and said nothing. I could feel that Stallion's sperm still coating my mouth and lips. It wasn't too bad.

 

ix.

Gayle called that afternoon while I was getting ready to go out with Gretchen to do the sights and visit the ME plant. It was now Saturday.

"Gayle, I'm so ashamed," I started in when I recognized her voice. "I don't know what came over me. I won't ever...."

"Oh, don't apologize, angel," she said. "You looked darling, sucking so solemnly on that big lollipop. And then gobbling all of it down! You wanted to be a woman, didn't you? Well, this is all part of your education as a woman. And I know you enjoyed it! I saw you, you know! It looked as though you couldn't ever get enough of him into you! You need more opportunities, more men, you know that baby?"

I decided not to say anything. "I guess," I said finally. "Gretchen keeps saying so." Could it be that I had enjoyed it? Was it that obvious to everyone else?

"Allie, I need to ask you for a big favor," Gayle said next. "There's a stag party tonight, Chris's last night as a bachelor, you know. The usual, the guys getting together to kid him, horse around, look at porn movies maybe. They can get pretty raucous I hear, and I know it's not your thing, and as it wears on it can get pretty rough I guess, the way they talk and the jokes they tell. Nothing you haven't heard before I'm sure, but lots of the girls here would be shocked to know what lots of their guys really think of them, how they talk about them. I thought I'd best not ask any of them to help out."

"I know about guys like that," I said. "I never was much good at it myself. I'm glad to be out of that kind of thing altogether. Thank you."

"You're a doll, Allie! That's so very sweet! But these guys do need someone to serve them while they play their practical jokes on each other. You know. Prepare the platters and serve the food, refill glasses, keep the liquor flowing, do whatever seems to need doing. Justine volunteered, but she's sick and can't make it. Would you? Sweetheart? Please? It should be fun, and it's a social occasion, a chance to try something different. Just go there looking your prettiest, and take care of things while they do their things.

I hesitated. I hate that kind of male frat bash, and I dislike the kinds of men who went to them. I always had.

"For me? For you too? Then I can forgive you for anything, you'll see!"

My heart melted. I was still her sweetheart! "Anything," I said. It was a chance for me to make it up to her! To prove my dedication! "Whatever you say, Gayle. Where?"

"The President's Lounge at the ME plant," she replied. "Eight tonight for as long as it lasts."

"We were just going there," I said. "Sightseeing. Gretchen says the plant is something no one who comes to town should miss."

"That's right. That's good. It's Saturday, but Ben'll be there, he always is. I'll phone and tell him you're coming. He needs to talk to you about a job."

"Gayle, I've got a job. A lovely job! I don't want to move down here."

"Oh, honey, of course, I couldn't tell you until now, but you don't have a job. Ben's bought us out! I just heard this morning that it's final. My holding company and all of its subsidiaries, including your marketing firm, all of our operations are moving down here. Connie and Meg too. You know that you three women can do your kind of work anywhere at all, sit in any office anywhere and talk to sales associates in any city in the country. Ben's really impressed with what you've done re-organizing things in just the few months you've been there. He wants you and Connie and Meg to set up and train other similar groups in other cities, to franchise them nationally in fact! At double your salaries, not that you care a lot about that, but Meg will, she has expensive tastes. Especially in men."

I was silent at this news. Then, "You'll be moving back down here? Back to your parents' house? To live under your parents' eyes? How can we continue...?"

"That's right, baby. Not to their house, to a place of my own. And you'll have your own. You're almost ready for it now. You'll see. It'll be fine. You'll love it. Even though it won't be at all what you've been expecting!"

The bottom fell out of my stomach! "Gayle!" I said.

"Trust me!" she said. "I want this for you!"

"I trust you," I replied. But I didn't. She seemed too flippant, too manipulative now. Too commanding, even. Too much was too new! Move down here? But did I have a choice?

"None!" Ben said. Now we were sitting in his leather-lined office in the ME main administrative building. "You come down here and work for me or you get out of this line of work altogether! It's in your contract, standard clause! You must have read it. It's in this contract too. Sign it now, or leave and don't look back. Your old office is closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, and it won't ever re-open. Gayle's apartment is already sublet, and your things are already on the way down here. Removal expenses all paid by ME, of course. You've got nowhere to go. Here's a pen!"

I took the pen he held out. For a moment I looked out the window, but then I signed the contract he'd placed in front of me. Gretchen, sitting across the way, seemed amused.

"I hear you've got a remarkable talent, young woman," Ben said, his narrow eyes fixed on me as he took the contract back and placed it in a folder, and the folder in a drawer, and locked the drawer. "But second best isn't good enough here. I expect you to be number one in everything! I'll want to assure myself of that personally!"

My God! I thought. What have I signed?

Gretchen broke in at that point. "I'm sure you'll be happy with Allie in that respect and every other, Ben. Gayle will see to it. Don't concern yourself!"

He showed us out, and as I passed through the door he patted my fanny. I didn't like his proprietary attitude toward my body, whatever was in that contract I'd just signed, and I told Gretchen that as soon as we were alone. I was also worried that I'd be exposed as a man if he tried to get too intimate. I mentioned that too.

She looked at me pityingly, or very nearly. "Allie," she said. "Trust me. Or if you can't, trust Gayle! You have no worries on that score. All he wants is for you to suck his cock now and then. It's no big deal. You've got a talent, remember?"

What could I say? I had to believe her. It wasn't as if for the first time. Not any more.

The plant was even more enormous than it had looked as Gale and I drove into town. It had its own mini-shopping mall, with its own stores for its employees, even a unisex beauty shop. Just above it were the offices of Phone Marketing Surrogates, PMS, my new employer. "That's who I work for now?" I asked.

"That's where you work," Gretchen corrected me. "You're the systems and personnel expert, so it's yours, you're the Boss. Connie knows the business, so she's your CEO. From here you'll train up other Allies and Connies and Megs in other cities. Meg's in charge of the original pilot company now -- she'll have to hire two more consultants. She's thinking maybe she'll convert an old boyfriend to do the work, the way Gayle converted you. Whatever works."

"Who named it 'PMS'?" I asked.

"Gayle, of course. She thought you should be able to say sincerely that sometimes your PMS can be hard to cope with, same as every other girl's. More seriously, to remind you every day which side you're on now, that you live and work in a woman's world and that there's no turning back."

And that night when I was getting ready to go help out at that bachelor party as Gayle had requested, she repeated that statement. "Especially after tonight, there's no turning back, Allie," she said. "You'll be the girl Gayle has always wanted you to be, make no mistake. The girl you need to be. Use your Everstay makeup again, and slather it on, but don't worry about your dress -- they'll give you a uniform to wear when you get there. Oh, take a pill to ease any stress you may feel. Here."

It was just as well. Gretchen dropped me off by the main entrance, and when I arrived through by the delivery door another girl was already in the kitchenette laying out cold cuts, and I could already hear loud male voices and laughs from the next room. I thought she hadn't yet gotten dressed. She was wearing black stockings, black lace hi-cut panties, a garter belt, and high stiletto heels, and not quite covering her generous breasts and nipples was a thin fringed black ribbon.

"Your Gayle's friend? Justine's replacement?" she asked. "I'm Julie. I'm so glad you could make it, I'll need help with these guys, and all of my girls have been booked elsewhere for weeks. Here's your uniform. Same as mine, but you get the split crotch panty girdle to keep your unmentionables tucked in but your asshole available. Real boobs? Beautiful, honey, you've got to tell me who did them! These guys will love you! And that'll take a lot of the pressure off me."

"What...! What is this?" I asked, a little shocked, as I realized what she was saying. Not a lot, the pill was taking effect.

She was amused. "A bachelor party, love, what did you think? We're serve the food and drink, and we're the entertainment. Be sure to keep track of every blow job you give and every fuck up the ass you get tonight, honey, because I charge my clients piecework rates. Anything they do to your boobs is free. Gayle tells me that one touch on your nipples and you're on a rocket to the moon, insatiable. Which is just as well with this crowd. Here, put that potato salad into this bowl and set it over there, would you?"

"You know Gayle? Gayle told you that?" I didn't feel quite as betrayed as I should have, but this didn't seem right.

"Gayle and I go back a long way, Allie. We were classmates all through high school, though I beat her out in a contest in our Junior year, and I don't think she's ever forgiven me. I'm here personally as a favor to her tonight. She wanted me to look after you, to see you enjoyed it."

"Enjoyed what?" I asked, already afraid I knew the answer.

I did. "The fucking and sucking, sweetheart. The sucking and fucking. This is your rite of passage. Tonight you become a woman. What's not to enjoy? Tonight you're going to discover for yourself why it's a good thing to be a woman. Tonight you'll be glad that's what you are. Do you know how to tap that keg over there? The one in the other room must be nearly run out, to judge by the noise level."

I changed into the costume she'd handed me, and feeling both naked and obscene I went into the other room holding up a platter of sliced pizza with both hands. My breasts lay across the platter, almost naked. Each of the men who took a slice contrived to rub his hand on my nipples, and despite myself I began to feel a familiar yearning build in my crotch. As more of Gretchen's pill took effect, I cared less. God, it felt good! I smiled at the next man to cop a feel, and set down the platter, then smiled again at him.

The next thing I knew it was yesterday night all over again, but over and over! I was gobbling away at his stiff pole and trying to push it all the way down my throat. Just as he came and I was swallowing, that wonderful slick feel of jism coating my lips and my teeth again, that delicious salty taste, someone cupped both my tits from behind and I felt a soft, probing knob push against my rear end. Whoever it was tweaked both my nipples at the same time, and I shrieked aloud in joy, and thrust back, just as I felt something hot and wet slide into me. Oh God, it was like Gayle's dildo, but smoother, brawnier, more ... robust! And much longer! In and out, while I climbed to the stars, and then they exploded in my head and in my belly all at once.

"There you are, Allie, you sweet thing," I heard over my shoulder. "Now you won't need to worry about lubrication for the rest of the night. You're as slippery as you need to be now, and you'll only get moreso. You're so wonderfully tight still! Gayle told me I'd be your first! Am I?"

I turned to look at him. He was a thin young man with blond hair and a sharp chin but gentle eyes. And a great cock, that I already knew. I liked him. I smiled and nodded.

He kissed me. "I'm glad. Well, you have things to do. I'll be back later."

Another cock came weaving toward my face while I was still on my knees, and I grabbed the owner around the thighs to steady myself, then tucked his sweet thing into my mouth. Another slid effortlessly up my ass. Both felt like satin. I felt pure joy, rapturous, at both ends! When they finally throbbed and squirted and soaked me, another set replaced them. I lost count despite Julie's one instruction. So delicious! So very delicious! All these men intent to make me happy!

At 4:00am I felt someone shaking my shoulder. The same young, blond, pointy-chinned man who had first taken my virginity. That dear man! I smiled at him again.

"Everybody's gone," he said quietly. "Even Julie. I've been watching you sleep. You've had quite a night. You'd better get home though, so you can get some more sleep and then get dressed for Church. There's a wedding, you know."

"Yes, Chris, he's getting married!" I croaked. My throat seemed so sore! Too many cocks in and out of it? "He's getting married," I repeated. "I didn't see him."

"Well, he saw you, honeycheeks. Quite a few times. Can you stand?"

I wriggled luxuriously, and then turned to lie on my back. There he was. He bent over me. I took him around the neck with both arms. "One more for the road," I whispered to him. "Please!" The intensity of my desire surprised me!

Out came that long, long cock, I could see it this time. I raised my legs to his shoulders. "I want to watch," I said. "I want to watch your dear, dear face when you cum! Tell me your name, lover."

"Steve," he said, and he plunged into me. I could barely feel him this time, there was so much cum inside me, and so much jism all around me, and I was stretched so big. But he must have felt me, because he came in only a few minutes. I moaned in pleasure as he stroked in and out. He kissed me, once on each nipple -- I was bare breasted by now, of course -- and I had an orgasm then and there! My ass clenched on him, and he throbbed and came too! I felt his hot spunk fill my guts! I saw his face strain, and then turn blissful.

"Thank you, Steve," I said dreamily.

"Thank you, Allie," he replied. "Here's the dress you came in, and the topcoat. Can you stand up now? You may be a little sore."

I could. I was. And it felt as if the ocean of cum sloshing around inside me was beginning to leak out and down my legs.

"Do you have a tampon?" Steve asked in his always-gentle voice.

"Probably in my purse," I said sleepily. "Gretchen will have put one there. She thinks of everything."

She had. It stopped my leaking long enough for Steve to help me to his car and drive me home. He saw me to the door. I threw my arms around him one more time and gave him a long, passionate, langorous kiss. Then went inside.

"A lovely, lovely man," I crooned to myself as I stripped off my panty-girdle and stockings and crept into bed next to Gretchen, who woke just long enough to see my condition, my hair a hopeless mess, cum-soaked from head to foot, my breasts mauled.

"You mean Steve?" she asked. "The one who drove you home just now? Yes, he is. They all are. You know that now, don't you, now that you're finally really a woman."

"Mmmmm," I replied, and I fell asleep again.

The next morning I felt even more sore, but after a long, hot, soaking bubble bath the world looked bright again, and I could sit up cheerfully while I tried to brush my hair into a semblance of order.

"You're a dear!" I said to Gretchen when she came back from breakfast to see how I was getting by. "But you're so sneaky! You knew all along what was going to happen, didn't you, and you didn't tell me, not a word! Isn't that so?"

"That's right, Allie," she said, her face quite serious, relaxed, even friendly. I realized that she'd never really spoken to me as a friend before. Previously there was always a hint of mockery in anything she said. "It's nothing anyone can tell anyone. Before, you were a man playing at being a woman. Of course it's fun, delightful, being a woman! I wouldn't have it any other way. Of course you followed Gayle's suggestions and decided that you wanted to be a woman. That's a no-brainer, given a choice. I certainly would! You did it to please her, though, didn't you? But now you have your own reasons. Don't you. And they have to do with the quintessence of being a woman. The pleasure a woman can take in sex. The ways she can use men while men think they're using her. The glow we can feel when we've been well and truly fucked by a lovely, lovely man. Like Steve."

"Yes," I said. "Like Steve. Will he be at the wedding today?"

"I hope so," Gretchen said. "He's the Best Man. Just as you're the Maid of Honor, though now you're no more a maid than I am. But stop fussing with your hair, Allie. The hairdresser will be here in a half-hour, and she'll make both of us look as beautiful as we can be, you for your Gayle and your Steve, and me for myself. Doesn't that prospect fill your heart, you dear? I thought so. But you'd better lay out all your underthings now, and your gown. I'll find those pearls for you to wear."

At noon we were both ready to drive to the Church for a brief rehearsal before the main crowds began to show up for the 2:00 pm ceremony. I looked so beautiful! I had never felt so happy! It was just wonderful!

Gretchen saw and understood. "You've been fucked to your heart's content,for once. For the first time. It's like being in love, honey." Her voice was low and sympathetic. "Like first love, now for the first time falling in love with someone you've just found out you really are. Someone far more satisfying than that man you thought you were, that uptight nerd who trapped you inside himself just a few months ago. More satisfying even than the woman you thought you were yesterday, before you found out for yourself how marvelous it is to be a woman desired by many men. Before you found out your power over men. The fact that they want you means that you can use them to please yourself."

"Yes," I said. I skipped a step, twirled, and primped. "It's wonderful! Gretchen, it feels so very good!"

"That's what Gayle has wanted for you all along. Because she loves you. Now you know!"

"Yes," I said. "I didn't know. But now I know."

En route to the Church, Gretchen wearing a severe black beaded cocktail dress and me in my pale blue satin and tulle gown alongside her, we passed a fairly large mansion on an acre or so of grounds, visible and accessible from the road. Tudor half-timber in construction, but solid, modern, prosperous, comfortable. She paused and looked it over.

"Interesting," she said.

"What is, honey?" I asked her. I was feeling no pain. Life was beautiful, and I had just been born.

"This house. This is where Chris will carry his bride across the threshold after they're married and return from their honeymoon."

"So?" I asked, wondering what was so interesting about that. "He's the son of the richest man in town. His father owns Gayle's whole family, and Christianity too from what I overheard about how St. Paul chooses Visa over its competitors. And now he owns Gayle and me too. Though if he wants to pat my bottom again the way he's planning it's going to cost him stock options, and if he wants a blow job he'd better plan on getting it from a President for PMS who's on the board of the whole ME conglomerate."

Gretchen glanced sharply at me, but said nothing. Maybe she hadn't realized how quickly I'd understand the meaning of my attractiveness to men. "No," she said. "I don't mean that. Look at the house. There are two main entrances. One on either side. It's a private estate, but it looks set up to be two separate apartments for for two families."

I looked. "So it does," I said. "Odd."

"Yes," Gretchen said. "Gayle mentioned last summer that the place was being renovated this way. It's a landmark house. They had to get approvals. They got them, of course."

The topic wasn't very interesting to me. "Maybe Chris wants to live in half the house and rent out the other half to cover the mortgage." The idea that the son of Mr. Gotrocks could worry about a mortgage was briefly amusing. His father held all the mortgages there were in this town.

"No, but I can think of another reason why they'd have renovated the house this way. That's what's interesting."

"I suppose," I said. "But let's not be late for the rehearsal. I need to change my tampon." I was still leaking cum from the previous night's delicious debauchery. And I had a secret desire at least to slip a tampon dispenser tube into me again, then push another tampon into my vitals, and pull the tube out. It felt so good!

 

x.

Two hours later I was standing by the altar in the midst of the ceremony, still daydreaming in the indolence of my new complete femininity, overjoyed to have discovered who I really was despite who I thought I was. It was lovely.

And then with no warning came the worst moment of my life.

The wedding guests were seated, and the pews were decorated with white ribbons and pale yellow bows. The bride's processional party had gathered behind, waiting for the organ cue, Gayle's father was in full regalia up front among the baskets and sprays of flowers, his embroidered and gilt-woven ministerial gown looking more Givenchy than ecclesiastical. Chris as the groom and Steve as his best man arrived up front in full morning coat and cravat and stood waiting. The music began, and I walked down in stately procession and took my indicated place. And I smiled at Steve, the dear, dear man, and he smiled back at me, and we smiled at each other serenely while unnoticed by either of us the groomsmen in black and bridesmaids in pink arrived and lined up behind us. I was on the girls' side, one of them, one of the lovely girls in a beautiful gown, like Gayle I supposed, feeling very special. As I'd been instructed, I handed my bouquet behind me, and someone took it.

There was a pause. The audience hushed.

Then the organ began playing a loud but solemn "Here Comes the Bride," and all heads turned to watch.

And a little flower girl in pink with white socks and sensible white Mary Janes, smiling self-consciously, someone's seven year old cousin, came sprinkling flower petals.

Then all alone came Sue, all white, a hooded and deeply veiled vision in white, carrying in her arms a huge white bouquet, white roses, snow drops, baby's breath, slowly treading forward on the white petal-strewn carpet. The bride proceeding to her sacrifice, her ritual deflowering in due time by the groom who stood there waiting for her. Chris, his plump and florid face seeming a little choked by his wing collar, was watching Sue move slowly forward. Steve told me I'd had him last night. In my mouth? In my ass? A few times, both? No recollection -- thank God for those pills Gretchen had fed me until I'd finally learned how to live without them by accepting myself as I am. Beautiful. Feminine. Desired. Myself.

Sue reached the altar and stood next to me, and her groom stepped forward to stand next to her. They both faced Gayle's father.

"Dearly beloved," he began. And as always happens when I hear a religious liturgy intoned, I stopped listening and began daydreaming. About my own wedding some day to Gayle. No longer myself in a morning coat or tails but now in a full resplendant bridal gown, my face and hair done exquisitely, much as they were now. Modestly, sweetly holding both of Gayle's hands while words were uttered over us that would weld us into one flesh forever.

Chris and Sue had decided on a double ring ceremony, and Sue handed me her bouquet to hand on when the moment came for the rings, each one separately blessed, to be placed on each finger. As was done. "With this ring I thee wed," each of them told the other in a barely audible voice. Gayle's father intoned more sounds while I sank back into my happy thoughts, that I was beautiful and beautifully dressed, and that the girl of my dreams loved me for what I had become for her, the girl of her dreams.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife," Gayle's father declared aloud, his voice resonant, speaking for God, as God, echoing God's edict. "And what God hath joined, let no man nor woman put as under!" There was a noticeable stir among the audience. It was done. No one would dare put it asunder. I wondered if Gayle, one of the bridesmaids behind me, would feel tempted by the example before her to seek to be pronounced wife and wife with me. Soon. Not by her father, anyhow, I thought. Should we both wear white? Or pink for her and blue for me? Maybe this very dress, it fits so beautifully.

There was handsome, beefy Chris looking at me expectantly, and I realized I had just heard the Minister tell him "You may kiss the bride." There was an awkward pause, and I remembered that at this moment I was instructed to reach over the bride's shoulders from behind, lift the veil over her head, and drape it behind her, her face now that of a married woman, finally fit to be seen. I smiled, reached across, and did that. Sue stepped toward her beloved, and they took each other in each other's arms, and they kissed deeply.

The congregation applauded as with a radiant smile they separated and turned to face the aisle to begin their recessional. I saw then that the bride was not Sue.

The bride was Gayle. She had become Gayle. Was I still dreaming? A nightmare! I shook my head! She was Gayle! My Gayle! My Gayle had just married Chris while I had stood by calmly and watched! She was married! This was Gayle's wedding! Not to me!

Gayle was standing next to Chris beaming her joy as I took all this in, astonished! Then they took each others' hands to proceed back down the aisle, and the organ churned out Mendelssohn's joy in utter abandonment. For a moment Gayle just stood there. She looked at me with a wide smile. I heard her say, "Thank you, Allie. Thank you for everything! You're a pet! I love you!"

Then the two of them ran down the aisle away from me together!

I was dazed. I don't know how I got to the the wedding reception at the town's largest hotel, or to the dinner and dancing that followed. I braced myself against the wall while others dashed here and there, every few minutes blotting my mascara and taking deep breaths to keep from sobbing. I have never felt so utterly alone! So utterly betrayed! Deeply hurt, enraged, I thought of rushing back to the Inn and tearing off my beautiful full skirted dress with its bodice fitted to my breasts and its lovely flounce and ... but I couldn't! I couldn't just put on pants again and just be a man again and leave town! The gown was so very lovely! My breasts were so lovely! And there was nowhere for me to go.

Gretchen came to stand next to me as we both watched Chris take my Gayle by her hand and lead her into their first dance, the first dance of the rest of their lives together. A sob escaped me.

"All women cry at weddings, Allie," Gretchen said softly. "Go right ahead."

"Oh, Gretchen!" I started to say in response to her sympathetic voice, and I almost broke down. But then I realized that Gretchen must have known about this all along. Together with Gayle she'd manipulated me into becoming what I was, a woman, unalterably a woman, a hopeful woman, and now a lost woman! "Gretchen, why?" was all I could get out. Not angrily. Broken-hearted.

"Because, Allie!" Her voice was low, solemn.

"No, that's not an answer!" My voice became high, shrill.

"Don't you trust her, Allie?" she replied. "Don't you trust that she has her reasons?"

"What good are her reasons now?" I managed to gasp out between my suppressed sobs. "I've lost her!" And I began to wail.

Gretchen spoke sharply, and brought me up short. "Do you regret anything she's done till now? Do you really regret what you are now?"

I paused. I had to answer honestly. "No," I said. "I regret nothing!"

"You don't regret that she's betrayed you repeatedly since you drove here together? Setting you up to fuck me? Setting you up to suck your first cock ritually in front of a hundred cheering women, and like it? Setting you up to get screwed fore and aft and sideways all through last night by maybe two dozen guys, until the pleasure and the power of it overcame any feelings of violation, and you felt honored to be used like a woman? Proud of your womnan's body?"

I had to shake my head forcefully. "No regrets!" I said.

"You're still filled with jism. Doesn't it feel good to remember that your tampons are still soaking it up?"

I nodded. I couldn't speak. I should have felt humiliated. But instead, my morale rose. I still wanted to be everything she'd made me. I no longer felt betrayed. Rather, abandoned. Forsaken. Terribly alone.

"Then be happy for Gayle. Be grateful to her. She's just made the marriage of the century for this town, probably for the whole State, and she's remade you into something you're proud of, and she's set you up in a whole new career. Even set you up with the most powerful cock in town to suck on now and then. You wanted to marry her. Well, marriage is founded on love and trust. Love her and trust her even though you feel you're an utter fool to do so!" Gretchen paused. "That's what you've done until now, and you know now that in the early days you really were an utter fool to trust her."

I thought back to those days, when Gayle was teasing me out of my masculinity step by step, turning me into a girl step by step with my consent but without my realizing it. I'd been her creature. Now I was her creation. I had to trust her.

We stood together a while longer, watching all the powers of the town enjoy themselves, all the older respectable wealthy folk circulating and slapping each other on the back and kissing each other's cheeks, and preening, and watching all of the younger ones go off to dance or as happens at weddings, go off to do other more private things in the upstairs hotel bedrooms. They were my social set now. I'd been Gayle's Maid of Honor at the wedding of the century. Everyone would feel honored to know me. I wondered where Steve had gone. I wanted him to ask me to dance. I watched Gretchen take a husky hunk by the arm and chat him up, and move him onto the dance floor, and then when I looked again they were nowhere to be seen. She'd done with me whatever Gayle had asked her to do with me. Seduce me, and thereby disabuse me of any possessiveness I felt for Gayle. Or I might think Gayle felt for me. Prepare me to share her. Prepare me to let her go.

When the time came for Gayle to throw her bridal bouquet, I was chatting with a few of the mothers and their daughters, asking them about some of the men I saw wandering the edges of the dance floor. I didn't notice at first that Gayle had come up right in front of me. All the other girls massed alongside and behind me, shrieking their delight, and Gayle then tossed her mass of flowers -- straight at me! It couldn't miss! It filled my arms! She smiled at me and disappeared. It was a last sweet gesture. Maybe a message of some kind?

Eventually Gayle and Chris reappeared wearing travelling clothes and waved to everyone, and everyone threw rice at them and followed them out to the front of the hotel, and they looked happy and waved yet again, and then got into a car parked by the curb. They were headed for the airport and the Virgin Islands for the next two weeks. Two weeks spent in each other's arms.

The car was pasted with pompoms and soaped with "Just married" signs and trailing a few plastic pop bottles and a soup can tied to a rear panel. They drove off. I stood out front in my beautiful gown in the early evening chill, and watched them drive away, the soup can rattle fading into the distance and then disappearing. They were gone.

I had been deserted. I knew she'd be returning. But not to me. She'd live with Chris in that large house with two entrances, and we'd see each other on social occasions, maybe at dinner parties in that very house, and we'd smile at each other for old time's sake. But I was alone. I would sleep alone. I stood by the curb thinking, I don't want to go back to the party. I want to go to the Inn and change, and then fall face down on my bed and cry my heart out. "Allie," a man's voice behind me said gently. "This isn't easy for you, is it?"

I turned around. It was Steve. He had already changed to an open necked sport shirt and a brown tweed jacket and a neat pair of brushed suede pants.

"No" I replied. "Not at all."

"You miss her already I bet."

"I do. She's gone."

"In a way. Would you like to go somewhere quiet for a drink and some conversation? A wedding can be so depressing afterward for friends of the bride and groom who aren't themselves married. We always wish them well, but...."

I looked closely at him. Men in brown tweed always seem understanding and kindly disposed, I thought to myself. It was still early.

"Yes, Steve, I would like some company. But can you take me to the Inn first? I need to change into something a little less demanding." I fluffed out the layers of tulle and ribbon and satin that rocked back and forth from my hips to the ground like a giant bell, my legs the clapper. He nodded and went to get his car. While I waited, I fluffed out my hair.

We were both silent on the drive to the hotel. Steve wanted to respect my mood, but he also seemed to share it. He indicated silently a parking space where he'd be waiting for me, and when I got out I stood and watched his car pull into that space and then ... wait. He didn't mean to abandon me too. That was reassuring. But also there was no escaping it, I would need to be sociable a little bit longer.

Once in my room I cast off my voluminous dress and tossed it on a chair, then on impulse I changed out of the corset that had trussed me into that gorgeous gown and sustained me through the ceremony, and instead put on the sexiest black lace bra, panties, and garter belt I owned, and then rolled on my stockings with lacy tops. Because I'm an attractive girl, I told myself determinedly -- men can't wait to be intimate with me! And I stroked heavy eyeliner on my eyes, and with a fingertip stroked shine on my eyelids. I'd at least feel desireable to me! Then I changed into a short decollote cocktail dress, one I'd brought with me even though it was way too flirty for Gayle's parents' ever to see, and I touched my hair. And then went down to the car.

"Wow!" Steve said when he saw me. "Allie, you are the most beautiful girl I've seen since I arrived back here! And you know there were lots of lovely girls there this afternoon."

Wow yourself, I said to myself. Maybe it was a line, though he seemed sincere. I'd find out. And anyhow, if we were headed for a bar somewhere, at least I could get plastered. I checked the long list of "don't say" words I'd been given during my long journey through femininity to arrive finally here, in a car with a man who'd fucked me sweetly but I scarcely knew. Yes, a woman can get "plastered," or "sozzled." Men can get "pissed" or "shit-faced."

"I intend to get tiddly," I told Steve as we drove to whatever destination.

"I know," Steve said. "So do I."

Now what did that mean?

Steve then surprised me. He said. "You miss Gayle. And I miss Chris. They both knew we'd feel this way, and the last thing Gayle told me as they drove off was, "Get to know Allie. You'll find she's well worth your knowing. And let her find out the same about you."

Gayle could talk like that. Polite meaningless-seeming words that were freighted with important meanings nevertheless. "Do you know what she meant by that?" I asked Steve.

"Yes, I think so, Allie. Wait till we get where we're going and we each have something alcoholic in our hands.

I was surprised when we arrived. The bar was subdued and well appointed, not crowded, but comfortably filled with well-dressed and well-behaved people. Young people much like ourselves. As my eyes got accustomed to the gloom I could see a small dance floor in the middle distance. There were people dancing to muffled, tasteful music. We picked up drinks at the bar and Steve led me to a booth. I sat where I could still see the dance floor, while Steve sat with his back to it, facing me. Little by little I made out couples dancing. Men with women, Men with men. Women with women.

"This is a gay bar!" I said aloud. Another? Like Kirstie's, only for dancing and companionship, not for entertainment? Two of them in the midst of this straitlaced town?

"And lesbian. And bi. And transgendered, yes," Steve replied calmly. He leaned forward. "This where we all come to meet our friends."

I listened wide-eyed, silent now.

"Allie, I'm gay."

I waited.

"And you're newly transgendered, a new girl. I know. And to complete this round of re-introductions, so we both know everything, you need to know this too. My roommate Chris, the man who just this day married your roommate Gayle, he's gay too. Well, really bi I guess. He'll park his thing anywhere, but he's always willing to reciprocate, to let others park their things anywhere in him. So we get on just fine, Chris and I. We always have, ever since eighth grade when we first found out what we especially like about each other."

I just stared.

"There are bars like this in every town, meeting places for people who're different. Even in this town, The Minister of All Souls Church doesn't know, of course. He never comes here. He doesn't believe that people should consume alcoholic beverages in public, so he doesn't think they do. He preserves his innocence. So of course he knows nothing about Chris, or about me. Any more than he knows anything about you."

"Wow!" was all I could say, dazed by what Steve was saying. It had enormous implications.

Suddenly I found my voice. "When was this wedding planned? Why?" I made sure I sounded gentle, curious, no way resentful. It was easy. Because unexpectedly, that was how I felt.

"Last summer. Chris and Gayle had no choice. A family obligation. Ben wanted the marriage for respectability, once and for all to quell the unfounded rumors about his son. And for Gayle's father the marriage was a union of the secular and the sacred. All Souls Church would finally find financial security, and the owner of ME enterprises would secure a strong voice to plead for him in the hereafter, when he'd surely need one. It was a match made in heaven. But it needed additional arrangements."

"You know I'm sure that it's customary for the bride to give her Maid of Honor some special gift, a token of appreciation for all she's been though on her friend's behalf. A gift of love, as a matter of fact. Just as a bridegroom does for his Best Man. Well, she didn't forget her gift of love to you, Allie. She left it with me."

"Oh?" I said. Now it was coming.

"You're very lovely, Allie. Chris is a bull, and he's a fine man, and I enjoy being with him, and I look forward to many years yet when the two of us will enjoy each other just as Gayle is enjoying him, probably, right now. But I've missed being with gentler people. I've missed delicacy, and beauty. I've missed the femininity of some of my partners before Chris and I decided to go steady. So he and Gayle worked it out. A solid marital arrangement. Fifty-fifty. Chris and I will be together half the time, and if you're willing, during that time you and Gayle will be together"

I hadn't touched my drink, but my head was swimming. Steve reached for my hand and held it. And didn't release it. He had very large hands. His touch was warm and gentle.

"Gayle told me to tell you that you aren't altogether a woman yet. That you'll need to know the love of a real man before you can be a complete woman. Someone you can love too. To love to feel him inside you. To want to feel him inside you. To know that he wants you, and you want him! To have the supreme confidence that comes from knowing you're desireable and loved! When that happens you'll complete the journey Gayle planned for you. When you've been as intimate with a man as you and Gayle have been with each other, in the same ways, and as loving, and have learned to love it. Perhaps even to love it as much.

I looked up into Steve's eyes. They were as soft and warm and kind as his hands. His temperament seemed to be as tweedy as his sport coat. He really was rather handsome. And he knew that I was beautiful. He'd said so. As he held my hand, I felt especially beautiful. It was a warm feeling. Special. And I have to admit it, the idea that I was still under Gale's tutelage aroused me. This man she had prepared me to accept over these past months, without my knowing it, aroused me.

"Allie, I'm the little personal gift Gayle wanted me to give you as her beloved Maid of Honor and dearest friend. And now that I've seen you and spoken to you, I'm delighted and honored that she thinks so highly of me."

The more I saw of this wonderful man, the longer he spoke, the more I felt the same way. But I indicated nothing. A girl should never seem too easy.

"Chris already had me. What to do? He knew that while I love him dearly, he's a rare exception in my life. That I've always preferred femme men, gay transvestites or transsexuals, men who want to be women or believe that's what they are. So he wanted me to have such a lover for the times he's with Gayle. He wanted me to be happy even when we were separated. And Gayle needed someone to be with when she wasn't with Chris, someone devoted and companionable, preferably also with a stiff cock. Best of all would be some one person willing to become what we both needed. Someone bisexual, intelligent and passionate and loving but also delicate and beautiful."

I listened. I realized that Gayle must have known this moment was coming all along. From the moment she'd approached me in that coffee shop after class, she'd known there would come a time when the woman she wanted to bed down with, formerly a man, would need to be abandoned so she could be with her husband. And that the man her husband bedded down with would be feeling equally deserted.

"We looked, but there aren't any such men. Gayle was near despair when she first saw you in that business school class. But she told Chris after talking with you in some coffee shop that it might all work out after all. Then when she went jogging with you, and then went to bed with you, she knew it. Her word for you as you've developed your potential and then realized it, as you've moved from being a clever, decent and compliant young man to becoming a passionate and sensitive and beautiful young woman has always been the same. Each time she's spoken to Chris to reassure him about your progress, she's called you 'Perfect.' Perfect in every conceivable way. With you as you are, Chris's and Gayle's parents will never need to guess what their son is, or what I am, or you once were, or what we've been planning, or why. They'll preserve their innocence. If you want to be what you are, we can all be happy."

Here it comes, I thought. I felt somehow deeply satisfied.

"Allie, if you're willing, Gayle and Chris agree that you'd be perfect as the rare, delicate, precious gift that Chris would like me to have. If you'll have me."

I knew I should feel annoyed to learn that I've been taken for granted, used, for this. But I didn't feel annoyed. I felt privileged. Cherished. Cared for. Tended as carefully and tenderly as a beautiful flower raised for many months to become the grace note of a single beautiful occasion. I wouldn't ever have Gayle for my own exclusively, I knew that now. That had been a dream. I'd have settled for a half a loaf. But all along Gayle had wanted me to have more than half a loaf. She'd wanted me to have two half-loaves.

With that realization, I knew I should be blushing with pleased embarrassment. But I wasn't. Instead I was remembering that on impulse earlier this evening, I'd put on my sexiest black undies. I wondered if Steve was responsive to sexy black underwear. Did he ever secretly wear any himself? Something in his politeness, his gentleness, the fact that he was the chosen and faithful partner to a massive bull of a man, told me that he might welcome surrender to a either a man's or a woman's domination. Especially a woman he persisted in thinking was still in some sense a man.

I thought too about Chris. What was there in Steve that paired them so well? If I liked Steve, was it possible I might enjoy Chris too? Gayle did. And Gayle and I had always enjoyed the same things.

"And I want you to know right now," Steve told me. "Now that I've met you, I agree with Gayle. You're perfect. My head is swimming at my incredible good luck that we're here now, tonight."

I suddenly realized that logically, inescapably implicit in all this was a proposal of marriage. Respectability would require that we live as separate married couples, no doubt in that house Chris and Gayle had prepared for us, the one with two entrances but inside, almost certainly, no dividing walls. But I would not be taken for granted. I decided immediately that Steve would have to propose to me properly, formally, on his knees. And once I had him on his knees, I was sure I could find other uses for him.

Enough speculation, I told myself. Time to find out some answers. Steve was still gently holding my hand in his two large hands. I placed my other hand on his and carefully lifted them both to one of my breasts, its upper curves warm and bare. His eyes widened, and then he closed them again, the better to concentrate on the erotic sensations sent all through his body by his fingertips. I let those fingertips brush my erect nipple in passing, and a yearning sensation pierced me from that nipple all the way through to my groin. Steve moaned slightly as he felt what I felt. He too was beginning an erection. Perfect.

I stood up. still holding both his hands. "I think I'm lucky too, Steve," I said, staring steadily into his gentle eyes, never taking my gaze off him, until finally he looked away, a bit embarrassed. Was it Steve who was blushing this time? "Both of us are lucky. We've both lost the loves of our lives, in a way, but we've both found something too. We've found each other, haven't we? And we need each other. I'm still feeling lonely, and I'm sure you are too. I want to be held tonight. Held close. I need to be held close. Would you like to dance?"

 

END

© 2001 by Vickie Tern. May be copied to free archives. Any others, ask (VickieTern@aol.com).