Friends

Friends

by Vickie Tern

i.

It seemed to be the darkest day of my life, though now there's no doubt I'm better off for it. Janice, she's my wife, she thinks so, and her friend Melissa thinks so, and they both tell me so often enough. Even my friend Ray thinks so, Melissa's husband, though he always says whatever Melissa tells him, so who knows what he really thinks? I guess it's true. We're all better off now, I'm sure of it.

But it didn't seem so last November. You know November. The trees bare and shivering, and it's gloomy even before you quit work, and it's night by the time you get home. Your neighbor's unraked leaves blow across your lawn. Ahead are months of icy sidewalks on bad days and wet slush on good ones. People hunker down, and everything looks bleak. And some of them decide it's time to change their lives.

This particular day I was a little late getting home from the office. An hour or so late. As usual -- I've got work, I do it. I didn't bother to phone Janice I'd be late -- she'd only get mad and hang up on me, and then I'd never get my work done. When we're OK I hardly ever think about her. But Janice is my life, and when we quarrel I can't think straight until we've made up. She knows I go crazy, and sometimes she pushes me to see how far.

This time, when I got home all I found was a plate in the micro, my dinner, and a note taped to the micro. No Janice. I thought I already knew what the note said, same as all the others, she was furious, she wouldn't put up with my thoughtlessness and insensitivity any longer, and so on. The usual. So I waited to read it till I sat down to my reheated dinner. Then I read it. And then I couldn't eat. Not even swallow.

Because it wasn't the same as the others. Here's what it said:

My dearest Bob, or not my dearest any more,

This is the saddest letter I have ever had to write, but

is also the happiest. We've had a good marriage, despite your

sometimes taking me for granted. But I won't mention that

again. I love you, so I really don't know how to say this.

That's why I'm writing it. When you read it I'll already be

gone.

I'm leaving you, because I've found someone I love more

than I love you. Much more.

I can't begin to tell to you how much more. So wonderful!

So gentle, considerate, and caring about things that really

matter most to me. Always aware of my feelings, and attentive

to my needs and desires. And an incredibly devoted lover --

I'm getting wet right now just thinking about some of

the things we do together. Lots of them things you've never

wanted to do, and some of them things you just can't do. You're

simply not able. I'm sorry, but that's how it is.

I intend to live with her, and I hope I can make her as

happy as she's made me.

I know this seems sudden, but I've been thinking about it

for a long time now, and there's no other way. You'll get over

it, dear. You'll find someone wonderful to love too, sooner

than you think, someone who'll make you feel as marvelous as I

do right now. I'm sure you will. I'll help if I can.

Still with lots of affection,

Janice

I sat there stunned. I reread the letter until the words made no sense. But they'd made no sense in the first place! Janice had run off. My wife had run off. With another ... with a woman? She was doing ... things, with a woman?! Another woman had seduced her to be a lesbian? She preferred being a lesbian to being married to me? We had a good marriage, the two of us! At least I'd thought so. And she'd just said so! I guess somehow I must have overlooked something. I sat there a long time, and it got darker and darker outside. Now it was night. What could I do?

I realized I was about to cry. Get hold of yourself, I told me. You need help, I said to myself. Go talk to Ray and Melissa about this. They'll know how I can get her back!

Ray and Melissa are our closest friends, and our closest neighbors, right next door to us. Married seven years the same as us, no kids yet the same as us. Inseparable, the same as us. Until today. A sob lurched out of me. So I crossed through our back yard into theirs, and knocked on their back door.

Ray answered. He was in the kitchen making something that smelled delicious, and he didn't even pause to take off his apron, one of Melissa's I guess from the frills all over it. He just took one look at my face, and he led me to a chair in their living room, and he sat me down, and he poured me a stiff one. And then one for himself.

I handed him the letter and emptied my glass. He ran his eyes down it and handed it back. I just sat there squeezing my hands, unable to look at anything. Then he got up and poured me another drink and sat down again.

I'd confided in Ray before, though mainly about business. Guys don't usually talk about personal things. But his wife and mine were always talking, on the phone, in and out of each other's houses, planning shopping trips and checking out gallery openings, and arranging lunches, and gossiping about everyone. So I hoped maybe Melissa knew something even if Ray didn't. She had to know something! Something to help me make sense of this craziness! Something to help me get her back! I almost started crying again.

"Bob," Ray said slowly. He avoided looking at me. "I wish I could help you. But women are a mystery to me too. I don't even pretend to know how they're really thinking or feeling. Melissa would be the first to tell you that. Married seven years and I still don't understand why she does things the way she does them. Her way. And insists on her way. I learned long ago, don't question, just do what she says and wait for it to work out. That's how she wants it. And you know, she's amazing. No matter how impossible it looks to me, it always does work out.

I just looked at Ray mournfully. What could I say?

"There's her car pulling into the driveway now. Just sit tight. I'm sure she'll think of something. Want another drink?"

I nodded, and he got me another double. I heard Melissa's car door slam, and a moment later her key was scratching at the latch. Ray leaped to his feet and threw the door open.

"I'm sorry, love," he said. "I was busy with Bob, here. He has a problem."

She came in, both arms loaded high with packages, and glanced in my direction. "I see," she said. Her gray eyes were barely visible.

She looked at me more closely as she set down some packages. Dress shop bags, department store boxes, mostly. Ray does the household shopping, and Melissa buys pretty much whatever she pleases. Ray once told me he isn't crazy about wandering up and down supermarket aisles dodging women who look barely thrown together and are quarreling with their kids. But he does it. His time's been flexible since his company put their production engineers on hold for re-tooling and then closed the plant. He still gets severance pay, and when that runs out he'll get unemployment. So he's in no hurry to find something else. Meanwhile Melissa works long hours, and is much busier than he ever was. She's a lawyer. So he takes care of the house. It makes sense, if you think about it. But he did look odd in that frilly apron -- Ray is all man, tall, handsome face, big shoulders, lean waistline, muscles, works out sometimes, you know. Maybe that's why he didn't even think about the apron.

"Hello, Robert!" Melissa always calls me "Robert" -- it's part of her formality with everyone. Sometimes I call her "Lizzie" in return, to give as good as I get. But not this time. Just a subdued, "Hi, Melissa.". Still, even in my deep misery I couldn't help but notice she looked stunning, a real knockout. Severely cut gray suit nipped way in at the waist, and a white silk blouse with a teeny bright red bow tie, high gray-clad legs under a tight mini skirt, and propped up by high, high heels. Slash of red across her mouth, and her eyes in deep shadow, almost black. Her 'power outfit' she once called it, sexy and formidable.

She had a lot of them, and she always looked stunning. She was a gorgeous woman. I could never figure why she married Ray, a big good-looking guy I guess, but not at all assertive, at least not when she was around. But they were a close couple. I guess because she liked being in complete charge. He always seemed to me completely under her thumb. As Ray once told me, she loved him because he always did whatever she told him to do. "She looks after my needs, and she knows I'll always help her with hers." An odd basis for a marriage, it had always seemed to me. But now, I realized, I should talk!

"How nice to see you here," Melissa went on. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Had dinner yet? Ray, have you asked Robert to stay for dinner?"

"Melissa, Bob's got a problem he thinks maybe you can help him with. I can't. I don't think he's too hungry right now."

Melissa glanced at me over her shoulder again as she set down the rest of her packages and her purse, and this time her bright eyes stared into mine for a second, searching for something, her red mouth impassive. "Obviously I know he has a problem, Ray, and obviously I know what it is. I didn't tell you to check with Janice and ask her too, did I? You should be more attentive. Robert, stay and we'll talk. Ray, if it's ready, please bring dinner to the table and we'll sit down."

Apparently Ray did all the cooking as well as the shopping since he was laid off. He went into the kitchen to get whatever he'd prepared. and I went into the dining room with his wife. She settled herself at the head of the table and gestured for me to sit to her right, where Ray usually sat, the privileged position. Ray brought in an extra place setting for himself and a tureen of hot soup, some kind of spicy chowder, and sat down to her left, opposite me. He poured wine for the three of us.

"Now then," she said. "Let's see it." She held out her hand. I was baffled. "The letter, the letter, of course! My but you look unhappy, Robert!"

"How did you know?" I asked her. Tears started from my eyes, and I started to choke up yet again. I handed her Janice's note. She glanced at it and almost immediately handed it back to me.

"Here," she said. "You'll probably want to keep this as a souvenir. And let me ask the questions, please, if you want my help. I don't usually answer questions like 'How did you know?' It wastes time. But this once I will. Janice saw me today and told me she'd left you, and why. I advised her to take an apartment now, and move in with someone else only gradually. She's done just that. So your news isn't as new as you think. Nor is your situation quite as drastic as this note implies. Not yet."

I swallowed, and just looked at her. What was it Ray had just said? That she was amazing? "The soup is excellent," she told Ray. "That touch of celantro is just perfect, just as I told you it would be." Ray nodded, pleased.

"Now. Your wife has left you for another woman. So what's the problem? Feeling deprived? Humiliated?"

"Some. It's as if I weren't man enough for her."

"No," Melissa said dryly. Her spoon paused just short of her mouth, and she stared penetratingly at me, so as to miss nothing in my reaction. "You seem to have missed the point altogether. It's just the opposite. It's as if you weren't woman enough for her."

I stared back at her, my mouth a little agape, and said nothing. Ray poured me some more wine, and I drank it. She was right. So probably my situation was hopeless.

She set down her spoon. "Let me ask you one more time. What's the problem? Exactly what is it you want?"

"I want her back!" I said, and my voice broke. "I want to live with my wife again! I want things to be the way they were!"

Melissa resumed eating again, casually, now nearly indifferent to the passion in my voice. "Well, obviously, you aren't going to have that ever again. If things were the way they were, she'd leave you again, wouldn't she? And consider. She's left you. So even if she came back you'd always wonder if she was planning to leave you again. That's obvious! What's also obvious is, you felt too secure with her, and now, no matter what, you'll never feel secure enough with her. That's how things are. No, if you're ever to get her back in any real sense, it will be because things are different. Not at all the way they were. Because you're different."

"What do you mean?"

"Your soup is getting cold, Robert. Finish what's in front of you, and then while Ray brings the next course I'll tell you what I mean." She said it slowly, as if I were a child.

I ate in silence. When I finished I set down my spoon, and Ray cleared the plate away. I waited.

"The operational phrase in Janice's letter is obvious. You are too unlike her new lover, 'simply not able' to do the things they do together. Your wife has left you for another woman, and describes the kind of woman. You are not that kind of woman. Not even a woman at all."

I waited. Melissa finished her soup, and turned toward me again. Ray cleared away her plate.

"If you want her back, you are going to have to nurture in yourself all those so-called feminine impulses and desires men always suppress. If you have any. A desire to find fulfillment for yourself by pleasing others. By being more gentle, considerate, sensitive, weren't those her words? You will need to be more of a woman. That's what she wants."

"Now, one simple question. Is that what you want?"

Ray brought in a platter, pasta covered with scallops, portobello mushrooms and slivers of vegetables in a thick herbal sauce. It smelled wonderful, delicate and spicy, strong yet somehow refined. He must have been at it all afternoon.

"How creative! A kind of seafood primavera!" Melissa said. "Very good, Ray! You've earned a treat, and I'll see that you get it, this very evening, in fact even before we leave the table!"

Melissa served me, then gestured toward the salad Ray next brought in, and I took some while she served the pasta to Ray and finally herself. I noticed there were several kinds of lettuce, with a hint of an aromatic vinaigrette, and that Ray had torn each crisp lettuce leaf into small pieces by hand, not sliced them.

"It's taken Ray time to learn to do everything exactly the way I like it." Melissa said. "But now I'm proud of him. Some women in his cooking class were first class chefs,, but he took top honors even so. A matter of motivation."

Ray smiled gratefully at her, and his eyes narrowed like a puppy being stroked and preened.

"What do you mean, is that what I want?" I returned to the question she'd put to me. I was beginning to sound stupid even to me.

"Still asking questions when you already know the answers? I asked you, do you want to become more the kind of woman Janice wants? Now you ask me, what do I mean by that? Robert, you tell me what you think I mean."

I reached out to find something to say. Melissa certainly knew something. She and Janice were well tuned to each other.

"Well, I never cook, in our house, like Ray here."

"I don't either. Never! Ray is the cook here. But I'm not any the less a woman, I think you'll agree. And I don't recall Janice's letter mentioning that her new lover is a cook. You're not eating, again."

"I go to the office and I come home. I watch television. Oh, I see what you mean, I think. I don't much talk to her, share things with her, tell her how I feel about things. Especially how I feel about her. And about things that interest her. Share her enthusiasms. Get excited with her about people we know." I had twirled pasta onto my fork carelessly, and some sauce dripped onto my chin.

"Wipe yourself," she said. "That's right. Yes. There are feelings and opinions women usually want to share while men usually don't. You aren't woman enough even to have noticed. Did Janice ever ask you to share your feelings with her?"

"All the time," I said.

"And did you?"

"I guess not."

"What else didn't you do?"

"Well, it gets kind of personal, I'd rather not say."

"Then I'll say. She's told me. Your sex life with Janice is dullness itself. You screw for your own relief, not to express or create and share pleasurable feelings with her, and you never improvise new variations. She asks for a little kissing and hugging and cuddling now and then, but you're too tired to bother. Am I wrong? She'd like oral sex now and then, to feel in the most intimately physical way that you care for her pleasure regardless of your own, and she's offered you that same kind of pleasure. But you think that giving or getting head is distasteful. Sort of dirty. Am I wrong? Now Janice has gone to enjoy those pleasures with someone who'll provide them, pleasures that really matter to her. You don't. Not any more. Am I wrong?"

This was all terribly embarrassing. Janice had obviously told Melissa everything. Over how many days or months?

I set my knife and fork down and leaned forward. "Melissa, what can I do? I want her back. I'll do whatever it takes to get her back."

"Oh? Are you willing to do whatever I ask you to do to get her back? No matter how bizarre it may seem to you? The way Ray does?"

"Like what?" I asked, a little wary.

"More questions. Robert, I can assure you, you and Janice can share your lives again. Not as before, but together. On her terms. This can be done. I don't doubt it for a moment."

She set down her cutlery, folded her arms, leaned back, and concentrated her gaze on me. "But you have much to learn. For this to happen will require that you completely reconceive who and what you are, and become someone else. You'll need to give unquestioning obedience to my least suggestion for months, perhaps three, perhaps more. You'll need to take a long vacation from your office and concentrate altogether on this project. Or work at home, or quit work altogether. At the end of that time, I will bring you and Janice together again, and help you to re-negotiate a new relationship I'm quite sure you'll both find satisfactory. Even better than you've had. I can promise you that. I have no doubt of it. But it requires unquestioning obedience."

"Now then. You can agree to my terms now or not at all. If you hesitate now, you're not worth my time, and I doubt you'll see your wife ever again."

I just stared at her! What was she proposing?

"I see you're finished eating. No, Ray, wait with the dessert. I'll ask one more time only, Robert, and then you'll have to take your problem somewhere else. Will you submit to learn from me how to be your wife's kind of woman?"

A leap of faith was required. I still didn't understand her. But Ray had said she knew how to accomplish miracles.

"Yes, Melissa, I will."

"You will," she said. Her voice was now lightly sardonic, and she was still eying me steadily. "Perhaps and perhaps not. It won't be that easy. No, Ray, don't get up just yet, not even to clear the table. I want you here."

Ray had started to stand and reach for our dishes. He now sat back down, looking at his wife expectantly, silent, waiting, a bit wary. He knew she was full of surprises.

"All right, Robert. We'll see. Let's test whether you mean what you've just said, that you'll do whatever I ask of you, immediately and unconditionally."

She looked at me steadily. "Robert, I want you to get under the table and give Ray a blow job, right now, before he brings us whatever he's prepared for dessert!"

Did I hear her correctly? I had! I knew it! I looked at her and half rose, more shocked than when I had read Janice's letter. Outraged. I was speechless! I knew this time I'd heard her correctly. Give Ray a blow job?! Was I a faggot?

"Good!" she said. "No indignant outcry this time, stalling for time and hoping for a reprieve. You did hear me! You may be capable of learning after all! I won't repeat myself. I assume you're standing up in order to crawl under the table as I've suggested."

"Notice how this little test respects your natural modesty, though you'll lose it before long if you continue with me. For now, no one will see what you're doing under the table, not even Ray. I'll know because I'll know you wish to obey me without question, and I'll know whether you're doing it well by watching Ray's face. Your private feelings will remain your own, whatever they may be. Until you come to feel that sucking cock whenever I request it brings you such pleasure that you want others to share in it by letting them see."

"Notice also, Robert, that I'm asking you to do no more than any woman does for a man when asked. When Janice hears about it, I'm sure she'll be impressed, especially that you're practicing same-sex oral sex, just as she does. Are you woman enough? We're waiting, Robert."

"Melissa, I need to go to the bathroom first."

Ray was speaking. Trying to get me off the hook, I suspect. I noticed that he spoke quietly, as if merely to excuse himself from the table for a moment, to stall things until I could recover myself and get used to the idea, or could decide Janice wasn't worth it, or until Melissa could change her mind. But I noticed he didn't move. He just looked at her as he spoke. She didn't even glance at him, but continued to gaze at me.

"All the better," she said. "There will be no male-bonded conspiracies against my intentions here, my pet. What I have in mind for Robert will take months even if Robert does everything I ask him immediately and precisely, the way you always do. You two will be together almost constantly, and he'll need to do whatever I ask of him, day or night. This isn't even a beginning."

"Right now I've merely asked your friend to perform without question or delay a common feminine sexual act, something every high school girl learns to do early in her adolescence in order to safeguard her virtue from worse. I don't doubt Janice did it to boys when she was in high school. Any girl who didn't, didn't date boys worth dating. You'll want to help him in this, Ray. Isn't that so?"

Ray nodded.

"And didn't I promise you a treat before dinner ended?"

He nodded again. Was that a gleam in his eye?

"Now, since you say you have to go to the bathroom, Ray, let me suggest that when Robert wraps his lips around your -- what is it you men like to call it, your 'love-joint'? -- let me suggest that you first relieve yourself directly into his mouth. I'm sure Robert will accommodate you. If he won't, he won't, and this little test of his dedication to his wife's return will have ended."

She turned her attention back to me. "Robert, you'll swallow everything Ray's cock offers you, gratefully, and you'll seem to enjoy it. In time you really will enjoy it, the way Ray really enjoys cooking these days. But if you don't want to provide your friend here the relief he needs, the physical pleasure most women provide most men, the loving mouth Janice was once willing to provide you in exchange for yours, the mouth and tongue she now provides her new lover, then you're not worth bothering with. Are you willing? Don't answer me. Just do it or don't!"

She sat back and looked as if she was losing interest in this whole affair. No more speeches. I was still half-risen, half-crouched. I swallowed hard, bent, and without quite knowing how I decided it, I slipped under the table.

It was snug down there. The table formed a low ceiling and the carpet the floor, with the tablecloth draped around like the walls of a Pasha's tent, and the light from the dining room diffused. Close up were sights not ordinarily seen. Melissa's knees close by, her legs curved gracefully down and crossed at the ankles, her high-heeled pumps firm on the carpet. Her skirt half way up her thighs, and those thighs like columns, and her legs clad in smoky nylon, smooth, perfect, authoritative, female. There I was on my knees in front of her, as if worshipful. As I looked she opened her knees, ever so slightly. No doubt in the upper-world she was amusedly watching for Ray's facial expressions to change.

I looked ahead of me and there were Ray's knees and pants legs. His hands were nowhere in sight, maybe to keep things uncomplicated for me. I crept over to him, swallowed, and rested my chin on his knees. He didn't budge. Well, what was I here for? I unzipped his fly, reached in and took out his penis, and held it between the thumbs and fingers of both hands. Slack and soft and smooth, about the same size as mine, also circumsized. The first time in my life I had ever held a penis other than my own. From my unique angle his purple cock head looked like a miniature Grecian war helmet. I tried to think that's what it was, a helmet, though its smooth pink-skinned shank intruded on my fantasy. It was slowly elongating and thickening. He leaned back to give me more room.

I tried to think of myself as a high school girl on a date, crouched on the floor in the back seat of a car. That helped a little. Very little. I needed more practice being a high school girl, plainly. But there was nothing for it. Blotting out any further thoughts I leaned forward and pushed the top of my head into Ray's belly, then lowered my open mouth onto his member. Then I pressed my lips tightly around it, closed my eyes, and waited for whatever would happen.

It was still soft, like a warm, fat snake. After a moment I felt a tangy liquid begin to enter my mouth, then more, and I started swallowing it as fast as I could. On the exhale I could tell that however fresh, it was piss. Though Ray was obviously trying to help by drizzling into my mouth as slowly as possible, a little fluid escaped the corners of my mouth and dribbled down my chin onto his pants. He'd never tell Melissa how sloppy I'd been while obeying her, I knew, but I worried nevertheless. I leaned closer and wriggled my face more tightly into his crotch to make a better seal, and began sucking ever so slightly. I drank and drank, and he pissed and pissed as slowly as he dared, until finally I had drained him.

While he was taking his leak I could breath only through my nose, my mouth was so completely filled with his soft, smooth cock and his salty urine. When he finished, and there was no more to swallow, I could still smell his piss when I breathed out through my nose. The aroma just wouldn't go away. Ray sat there, and my face stayed buried in his pubic hair, his prick still in my mouth. I wondered what his face conveyed to Melissa.

Then I began his blow job. I ran my lips all the way down to the base of his cock and puckered them while licking the fat, soft sausage that still filled my mouth full. Slowly it grew larger and harder, but I noticed that it stayed as smooth as velvet or wet satin. As it stretched out it began to provide me something to run my lips up and down, and I moved my head and mouth onto him and then pulled back, then down again. I kept tonguing and licking and sliding my lips up and down and trying to press them together around the base, but it got more difficult as his cock got harder and longer. My mouth stretched as wide as it could open with my teeth covered by my lips, and my jaw began to ache. But I kept going.

Then at last his hips began to thrust up at me -- finally Ray was excited enough to want to face-fuck me. I tried to raise my head well over his cock to take it into my throat, because that soft helmet kept bumping into the back of my mouth. It slid part way down, but there just wasn't enough head room for me to change the angle and swallow all of his meat. So I sucked and licked and tongued him, and even tried blowing him up like a balloon, once or twice. He got larger, and humped at me even more vigorously.

Then suddenly he raised his hips high off his chair and pressed tight into my face, and his hands came from nowhere to push my head into his lap. Here it comes, I thought. For a moment he held himself high up, crammed into my mouth, tense, utterly unmoving, and my head was also immovable. Then that huge meat in my mouth began to pulse, spurting and squirting out something a little salty, like his piss, but this time slick and creamy, and a little sweet too. It didn't taste at all bad! Four, five, six, seven times he squirted into my mouth, then paused, then a few more times. My mouth filled up and I swallowed, and it filled again. I swallowed all of it. By the time he finished and had fallen back onto his seat I was rolling my tongue round and around the body of his cock and then its head, licking it clean.

When I'd squeezed the last few drops into the little slit on top of his cock head, and then licked them up, I kissed the tip of his prick and then tucked it back in his pants. Then I patted his bulge affectionately, and zipped him up. I don't know why. I suppose I was feeling rather intimate at that moment. Maybe I wanted to assure him it hadn't really been as unpleasant as he might have feared. Or that I was grateful for my first experience as a bona fide cock sucker. Or that I was feeling pleased to have brought him off, even feeling a little smug. Or that I liked feeling sweetly feminine, his worshipful date sucking on his manly cock. It was our little secret, in the dark, no one watching. Am I a faggot, Iúasked myself? My next cock would be no problem at all. No, not a faggot. A girl. How did Melissa know?

I crawled out from under and sat down again in my chair. I smoothed back my hair with both hands, and looked over at Melissa. The taste of Ray's semen had completely replaced the taste of his piss, I realized, now that I was breathing air not previously filtered through his dank pubic hair. I licked my lips and waited, worried that I might seem to be smirking.

"Well, Robert," she said, now highly amused. "Obviously you do have talents you've repressed. The woman in you is far more venturesome than the man. I must help you to liberate her. You did something down there at the very end of your session that surprised and pleased Ray even in the afterglow of his orgasm. I won't ask what, because every loving couple should have their own intimate little secrets. This one is yours."

Ray smiled at me affectionately. I felt a little uncomfortable, but I tried to smile back. His cum was slick on my lips. I tried to look at him the way a high school girl might look at her date. Well built, really very handsome in a way. I enjoyed pleasing him. He was still my old poker buddy. But now, well, something else too.

"Yes, I'll train you. Who knows, maybe you'll become a superb lover, and Janice will beg for you to take her on again. Maybe you'll find you're altogether a woman, a heterosexual woman who loves men and can't ever get enough cock into her to satisfy her. We don't know yet, do we?"

I sensed she was mocking me. I wished she wouldn't. She'd just seen how far I'd go to get Janice back.

"'Bobbie.' That's your name when you're being girlie-girlie. And that's from now on. I don't expect ever to see 'Robert' again. 'Bob' we'll keep on hold. Maybe Janice will want to use that name if you end up more a 'Bob' than a 'Bobbie'. Bobbie dear, you've just had your dessert. You can go home now."

"Before you go to sleep tonight, I want you to shave off all of your body hair, every last hair below the tops of your ears, and then to sleep in one of Janice's prettiest nightgowns. To be a woman, you will need to feel like one and look like one. Always. I'm sure you can find a sexy nightgown in her drawers. In fact, I'm sure she's left most of her clothes behind. They're all yours now, those that fit you, for the time being. I think you're close to her size. From now on you'll wear only women's clothes, until you've really become the woman Janice seems to want. Tonight you've earned the right."

I hadn't even thought to see if Janice emptied her closets when she left me. But Melissa was too clever to misjudge something like that.

"Come back tomorrow at six-thirty am, ready to live your first full day as a woman. I'll do your nails the first time, bright red, so from tomorrow morning on you won't feel the least bit tempted to leave the house looking male. Come fully dressed and made up, bra, panties, lipstick, hairdo or wig, everything. You'll have lots of housework to do tomorrow, so pick out an ordinary house dress, or a plain skirt and blouse, nothing high drag, and some sensible shoes, no heels just yet. Janice will be charmed I'm sure when she hears that you're trying to win her back by wearing her clothes."

"Probably you'll make a mess of your face until we can get you some adequate training in the use of cosmetics. Don't worry, you have a promising face, and I can see you'll end up looking just lovely. But I do want you to fix your own face from the beginning. I want you to find for yourself your own kind of woman, to create your own look, so you can begin to discover what kind of woman you are. While you're doing it, just think that you're making yourself as feminine and attractive as you can for your man. For Ray. You're going to learn to be gentle, considerate, sensitive, caring, and devoted to him. And sexy."

"He'll help. For part of each day I'll want you two to just cuddle together, and be sweet, and feel tender, and share thoughts about how you feel together. If you're pretty enough, and nice enough, I'm sure Ray will want to kiss you, and kissing will lead to other things, and then you'll feel just wonderful, and that'll be your reward. Won't you, Ray?"

He nodded, entranced. How terrific was that blow job I'd given him? Whatever, Melissa certainly sounded like she knew what she was doing. I could only hope so.

"Now, I leave the house promptly at eight-thirty. I'll want you to learn everything you need to know about housekeeping from your intimate friend here, starting tomorrow, beginning with how to fix a wife's breakfast and present it to her in bed. That happens at seven. Ray knows lots of tricks Janice will want you to know once you start housekeeping for her, if she ever lets you. I'll come home early tomorrow afternoon, and I'll try to keep my daily calendar open for a while, to give you whatever other attention you need. Ray can help you feel like a woman, I'm sure, but he knows very little about being one."

"That's all for now, dear sweet Bobbie. Oh, one more thing. Always wear a dash of perfume. Choose one and stay with it. A personal signature is very feminine. And like red nail polish, it'll help keep you committed to what you wish to become. A lovable woman. That's all, dear."

I stood up. I noticed that Ray wasn't looking me in the eye. Did he now think of me as a faggot his wife had designated to be his girlfriend, and now he was embarrassed he'd once been buddies with me? With a cock sucker? That last kiss on the tip of his prick might have been a bit much. Whatever possessed me?!

"Oh yes!" Melissa added. "Bobbie darling, probably you didn't know it, but your friend Ray is bi-sexual. He's had the hots for you for a long time now. I'm glad that the two of you have finally gotten it together, and that now you're his femme. When he's playing out his own femininity he gets pretty swishy, even for me. But your job will be to make sure he always feels like a real man."

"Remember, no hanky-panky when I'm not here. Kissing and hugging and cuddling, of course. You're now Ray's girl, and the two of you should feel affectionate and loving toward each other. That's part of learning how Janice wants you to feel. In fact, the more affectionate you feel the better. But no fucking up the ass except when I say so, not by either of you." "

"Bobbie dear, Ray's cock will provide your after-dinner dessert every night until further notice. That's if you've been a good girl all day. His cum will be your reward, and sometimes his pee -- that'll be between you two. I know you won't either of you disappoint me. Bobbie, I promise you, when I'm finished with you Janice will be proud you're her girl friend."

With that she smiled at Ray, and Ray beamed back at her, obviously admiring, devoted, and grateful. I suddenly realized he had special reason to feel grateful. Melissa had just provided her husband his own personal toilet slave and cock sucker for the foreseeable future, guaranteed affectionate. His prick was going to become as familiar to me as an after-dinner cigar. Satisfying him sexually, learning to provide him with whatever a man wants from a woman, was going to become my purpose in life. Should I feel grateful? Was I being taken? But how else could I ever hope to get my wife back? Did I have any choice?

I went back across our back yard to my own house, filled with more hope than suspicion, pleased that Melissa had agreed to tutor me, impressed by her judgment, and a little awed by what lay ahead. I did indeed have a lot to learn.

ii.

A month later, I'd learned most of it and was practicing, and after another month I was accustomed to it all and found I preferred some of it to my former ways. I even loved some of it.

I found after some anguished embarrassment that I loved wearing women's clothes. I looked forward to picking out a different outfit to wear each morning, appropriate to whatever we were planning that day, and then picking out matching accessories. In no time I had a sure eye for mixing, matching, and coordinating. Men's clothes seemed so monotonous in comparison! And the clothes always felt sensuous, hugging, clinging, draping, floating over me like feathers, some nubby and some silky smooth. Being a girl could be lots of fun! When I forgot, Ray always reminded me.

I always slept at home. "This is my house and Ray's," Melissa said, "Though you're free to invite Ray to visit with you and to spend the night, any time. That's any grown girl's prerogative with her boy friend. As I've told you, I want you to cuddle and feel intimate with each other as a matter of course. Enjoy each other's bodies. Love your enjoyment of each other. But as I've told Ray, I don't want him tempted by your soft tush until you're ready to make mature choices. So remember, Ray takes your virginity only when I say so and with your consent, and you get into Ray's pants only for blow jobs. From now on think of your own prick as a clit, fit for fondling, not for insertion into anything."

Whether Ray was in bed with me or not, early each morning I rose, showered, depillated if necessary, perfumed myself lightly, and dressed myself in Janice's underwear and clothes, or else my own. Then as the sun rose I crossed the back lawn to Melissa's house, to fix her breakfast and Ray's. I hoped none of the other neighbors noticed. But if they did, I decided, they probably thought I was Janice.

First thing, I brought Melissa her morning coffee and newspaper, on a tray topped by a bright-colored single-stemmed flower. After the first few days I woke Ray too with a tray loaded with bacon and eggs, and toast, and waffles or pancakes, and coffee, also topped with a single bright flower. Or I returned to our house to awaken Ray that way. Within a few weeks we were sleeping together at our house as a matter of course, spooned in with each other. At first his arms around me felt imprisoning, but within a week they felt protective. Hairless myself, I liked tangling my fingers in the hair on his chest.

Melissa told me always to awaken him with a kiss. I felt silly the first few times, but I did it, and after a while it seemed natural, even kind of nice. When he was still asleep or first waking up, his lips were soft, and gently responsive. "I'm the head of this household," she told me. "But Ray is the man of the house. Be glad he's there for you to practice on, so you can learn more about a woman's concerns." I looked forward to a time when I could awaken Melissa the same way, to practice eventually awakening Janice the same way.

One day when it seemed respectful, and not at all an intrusive question, I asked Melissa in a soft voice if I might kiss her awake too. Just for practice on a girl. She glanced up as she unfolded her newspaper. "When the time is right," she said, almost automatically. Then she looked at me a bit more warmly and started to sip her coffee. "You're feeling more affectionate in the morning, aren't you. More girlish. That's nice. Suppose from now on you awaken Ray with a kiss on his cock, whenever you find he's sleeping in a position that allows you access. Then if you're both in the mood, you have my permission to let nature take its course." With that she concentrated her gaze on the paper, and I was dismissed.

My makeup gradually improved, and it began to be fun, doing as instructed on each lesson of the videocassettes Melissa brought home while using the different items of makeup she brought home. Now when I looked at a woman's magazine, it was for ideas how to improve my eye make-up, or hair style, or coordinated matching of blouses and skirts, or finally, of evening gowns and eye-shadows, if ever I would be permitted to attend a formal wearing a formal. Janice had several I tried on sometimes, and a white sequinned one was simply exquisite. I longed for an occasion when I could wear it.

In very little time I understood why generations of women have complained that they have nothing to wear, even though their closets are bulging. The requirements for women's costumes are daunting. Nothing may be worn tastelessly or twice, certainly not for the same kind of occasion, and everything must blend. A woman nicely turned out is a work of art. I learned to become an artist.

It seems silly now, but I felt paralyzed at first when Melissa wanted me to leave the house dressed feminine. I just couldn't. Despite her assurances and my mirror's, I was convinced everyone would know at a glance that I was male, and a peculiarly perverse and degenerate male. I couldn't be persuaded otherwise.

So Melissa cleverly designed a way for me to learn I was passable beyond doubt. As she left for her office one morning, she called over her shoulder, "Bobbie, I'll be sending some legal papers home later today. Be sure to sign for them when they arrive. It's important."

If Melissa said it was important, I had to do it. As she certainly knew I would, I spent the morning in a fever of anxiety. Could I hide behind the door when the messenger came, and just pass my hand around it to receive Melissa's papers? Would I look to him like a woman, or like a man wearing women's things? What kind of voice should I use. Should I smile at him or look aloof? Should I curtsy? The silliest ideas passed through my head. What if he made a pass at me? I decided that I had to be so convincing a woman there'd be no doubt of it, so I took a whole hour on my face, and then fixing and re-fixing my hair. I practiced on a closet door, opening it, leaning slinky against the opening, and saying in a sultry voice, "You have something for me?"

When the front door chimed I had just about decided I was too formally dressed for the morning, in a dark silk, high styled suit. But now there was no time to change again! With my heart in my throat I opened the door and stood to one side.

There stood not a male messenger but a nicely dressed girl in her late teens. "Hi," she said. "I'm Andrea. I work in Melissa's office. She told me to have you sign for these."

She handed me a fat package of papers, then unfolded a receipt and handed it to me with a pen. I leaned the paper on the package and signed.

"Thanks," she said as she took it back. "Love your perfume. And that suit's scrumptious! Going to a wedding, or special luncheon, or something?"

I nodded. I wasn't sure I could say anything.

"Thought so. Well..." she looked at my scrawled signature. "Well, Barbara, you're gonna hate my telling you this, but you have a run in your pantyhose -- I'm afraid you're going to have to change them."

I looked down, but didn't dare bend down to see. Without even thinking, I said, "Oh, dear!" in a natural-sounding, high-pitched voice. "Thank you!" I was so nervous I couldn't not use a high-pitched voice. Then I remembered politeness. "Thank you, Andrea."

"No problem, Ma'am. See you again!"

And she was off. I closed the door, and within a few minutes my heart had slowed to where I could breathe again. Then I smiled, and I smiled all that afternoon. My first encounter with anyone other than Melissa or Ray, and it never occurred to her I wasn't a woman just like her! I could do this thing! Janice might be willing to give me a second chance after all!

It then occurred to me that Andrea might have been a setup in some way, instructed to address me as a lady no matter what my appearance. Melissa was capable of such tricks. But a few days later, the same thing again, only this time unintended and without prior warning. And this time, a uniformed Fed-Ex messenger. I felt comfortable, though I was only wearing a high-necked blouse and skirt-not-quite-to-the-knee, and very little makeup, with my hair pinned up. It was one of those days when I was practicing walking in heels. I knew I had nice legs.

I smiled as I signed the messenger's delivery pad, and he smiled back, holding my gaze longer than necessary, signalling an interest in an invitation for something more. I felt this somehow, and lowered my eyes, and said, "Thank you," and smiled again, and slowly closed the door. At the last moment, he smiled back, and said, "Thank you, Ma'am," and tucked his pencil in his cap, and turned away. When Melissa got home and I gave her the package, she looked at it, genuinely surprised. "This should have come to the office, not here," she said. Then she looked at me sideways. "Are you all right? Were there any problems?"

"None," I replied. And I told her about the messenger's extended attempt at eye contact.

"Yes," she said. "Men do that all the time. He must have found you attractive. Well, just remember that you're a married woman. And that you're spoken for."

"That's easy," I replied. "Ray is the most attractive man I've ever known!" It just slipped out!

Melissa smiled broadly. "Yes, isn't he." And mercifully, she left the implications alone. She just said, "You'll soon be ready for a trip to the beauty parlor, and to shop a few boutiques, Bobbie. You are certainly getting there."

An occasion came sooner than either of us realized it would. A few weeks after my training began, Melissa had a period, and mentioned that she was having cramps. She asked Ray to come rub her shoulders and back, and Ray took his arm from around my shoulders, went over to where she sat, and obliged. She did look tired. "When you're finished with her, Ray, I'll be waiting," I said, maybe sounding a little catty. She stared at me and said nothing. They were married, after all.

The next day she came home with a package, and after she had disappeared into the bathroom for twenty minutes she called me to join her. When I arrived she said, "Bobbie, sit on the edge of the tub and just listen for a moment. I want this lesson to be unforgettable."

I sat there and looked up at her. Ray was Melissa's cook, but that day he was teaching me to be Janice's, and I had a roast in the oven, and wanted to get down to baste it, and there were still vegetables to prepare.

"You aren't sympathetic enough that women have periods and feel bloated and cramped, so from now on you'll share mine. Maybe later, Janice's. This is an high colonic enema and a specially valved plug. The plug will restrict discharge of whatever I put into you, so if you feel cramped, you can't eliminate it until permitted. Not even to pass gas, poor dear, until this valve is turned. Now, I'm going to fill your lower intestine with fluid, the way a woman's uterus bloats monthly when it sheds its lining, and you'll retain most of it except at certain intervals tonight and tomorrow, when I'll allow release of some of it. The fluid is a vaginal douche, a mild laxative, some female hormones to create special mood swings as they're absorbed, and some mild soapsuds. Oh yes, and red dye, so your napkins and tampons will remind you what time of the month it is, and accidents will be as embarrassing for you as for any other woman. Bend over."

I hoisted my skirt and dropped my panties, and Melissa inserted the nozzle. Ten minutes later I was cramped and swollen, and had to go the worst way.

"Back to the kitchen, darling," she said. " And finish preparing our dinner. But slip this pad into your panties first, in case there's an accident. Every two hours you can have 30 seconds to discharge your menstrual fluids. Other than that, you'll retain them, or absorb them, or leak them. Next month, the same thing. Or if Janice should take you back and want you to share her monthlies with her, the same thing. Maybe with some shots to give you PMS as well. So don't think of this induced menstrual period as temporary training, or as a punishment. Think of it as a fact of your life monthly from now until your menopause."

I could barely straighten up. Two hours later I was near tears when she released the valve and gave me my thirty seconds to relieve the pressure. And two hours later still, the same. Two hours after that I was in bed with Ray, sobbing. "I hurt," I cried out to him. "I don't deserve this."

Ray was hugging me and trying to console me when Melissa came into our room. "Well, the hormones seem to have melted all that male stoicism," she said. "That's nice, Bobbie dear. I suspect more of them might speed your progress in other ways too. Now you can have a bit more relief, and I'll remove the plug, and you can switch to a tampon. Remember to change it in the morning. You'll have a few more small cramps during the day, leftovers. Then tomorrow evening we'll do it all again. Aren't you glad that Ray's here to console you? Even though men don't really understand, do they? Well, Ray does, because I gave him this treatment a few years ago, just once, and Ray is a dear, so once was enough."

Four days later the ordeal was over. Once or twice I cried from the sheer discomfort, when the cramps wouldn't let up even briefly. Once I had to excuse myself from dinner and go to the guest room to lie down. Once "to cheer me up" Melissa said, she took me to a beauty parlor just after filling me with fluid, and had them give me a permanent, curls my hair had grown long enough to sustain, and I had to act as if I were at peace with the world when in fact I was in agony. I was so concerned not to double over and become a spectacle that I hardly paid attention to where I was, a beauty salon for the first time, and what they were doing to me. I recall sitting in a chair while my hair was being wound up tight, and different plastic bottles were squirting on me, and I was sitting under a dryer hood with my clothes completely covered, so women passing by scarcely bothered to glance at me -- I seemed so much just one of them. I tried to read a copy of Vogue from a table alongside, to distract me from waves of discomfort that swept over me periodically. But I could pay little attention. I remember they did my nails, and it was then that my ear lobes were pierced. All while I was too distracted to feel frightened by these commitments to femininity. Afterward Melissa questioned me how I had felt, and she seemed pleased when I answered, "Like any other woman who goes to the beauty parlor while she's having her period, I suppose. Terrible!"

It was only a day or two later that I realized what I had said. Any "other" woman. My identity was changing. Also, my nipples became sore from the hormones in my menstrual fluid. As my period ended, Melissa handed me some large pills. "Here," she said. "You'll take these daily from now on, like any other woman without her own ovaries."

It all seems perfectly easy now, so it's hard to remember that at the time each teeny step toward femininity seemed a dangerous leap over an enormous gulf. I was frequently terrified as Melissa raised the ante and required more of me. One time, maybe because she had just doubled my hormone intake, I burst out into tears and then couldn't stop crying. No real reason. I just felt overwhelmed suddenly. We were getting ready to go out to dinner, the three of us, and I'd chosen a rather tight, flippy mini to wear, I thought in good taste, and Melissa had sent me back for a calf-length dress. "We're not dining in a whorehouse tonight, dear," she commented. "You really need to control your sluttish tendencies."

I realized she wasn't wrong. I liked feeling provocative. But I came apart. I suppose I'd been trying too hard, going as girly as possible, so no one would dream that I was a man in women's clothes. But when I started sobbing, for once Melissa didn't turn aloof. Instead she hugged me, and kissed me gently, and when I had calmed down a little she quietly reminded me that half the human race had already walked where I feared to tread, and that it was nothing, really. Perhaps I felt anxious about seeming to be a girl because in some way deep in my psyche, I desired it? "Let go being a man," she coaxed me. "Ray does that so much better than you do. Be the woman he'd love you to be, the woman your wife desires! Just a woman in the normal, everyday course of things, because that's what you are and it therefore requires no further thought."

Another time toward the end of my training I was buying panties to replace those that were sometimes stained beyond recovery whenever Ray and I ... well, never mind. I was wearing a nice skirt of course, not even pants, and I know my hair and face were persuasive. But I suppose I forgot to move carefully, to walk with my thighs close together and my shoulders held back, or I forgot to keep my wrists loose, or perhaps some other movement betrayed me, because the saleslady asked with a strange smirk, "Shall I wrap these, sir?" Earlier I would have felt embarrassment wash over me and drown me utterly, and I would have fled from the store confused and ashamed, then and there. Instead I felt indignation. "Well, I'm certainly not going to wear them all now, young woman," I snapped at her in my best high dowager voice, and she completed the transaction rapidly, with her own shoulders sunk down in shame. When I told Melissa about this encounter, she pointed out that its importance wasn't that I had been "read" because of a moment's lapse, but that I instinctively felt insulted to be thought a man. I smiled at that. So I was!

With each step from that first morning, I found, there was no going back. Melissa saw to that. Over the next few months she insisted that I accept body hair removal, painted nails, pierced ears, a feminine hair style, then later beard electrolysis, hormone treatments, and voice training. And she insisted I wear only women's clothing, always wear make-up, and when I appeared on the streets to appear only as a woman, always to seem like one. To persuade myself that I have always been a woman at heart, a woman who mistakenly thought herself a man. My willingness became the way Melissa measured the strength of my commitment to convince my wife to return to me. She reminded me of this whenever I balked. During the third month of this feminizing discipline I became increasingly impatient to show Janice what a dear girlfriend I'd become, how loving we could be when she returned. I practiced on Ray all the time.

iii.

I was glad when my first period ended and I could put away my napkins and tampons for another few weeks. At least mine were predictable, not likely to begin embarrassingly when I was out shopping or at a business meeting, where I'd need to excuse myself, or worry whether I'd stained my skirt or slacks before I'd noticed. But one evening two weeks later Melissa came home with a special gleam in her eye.

"I think tonight we'll try to make you pregnant," she said.

"What!?" I replied, stifling a note of inquiry even as I uttered the word, Melissa did not respond well to questions. "That should be interesting!" I finished lamely, with hollow enthusiasm. What could she have in mind?

"I don't mean you'll get pregnant," Melissa said. "But about now is when you would be ovulating. I think we should try. You need to know how a woman feels when she contains a man, and then can feel his seed deep inside her, and can imagine how at that moment his seed may be bonding with a part of her own body to form a new life."

"Melissa, I don't have a vagina. Or the rest of it."

She looked at me with contempt. "Are you such a virgin you can't even imagine what I'm talking about, Bobbie? I thought you had a feminine imagination! Don't you want to know how women feel about everything women do? Don't you want to understand being a woman?"

I realized what she was proposing, and heard the implied threat, swallowed hard, and said "Yes, Melissa, I do. I want to experience everything." This was going to complete my journey into faggotry for sure. True, it would provide some sense how Janice felt when I fucked her, so some day I could fuck her with greater consideration, the way a woman would I suppose. The way some woman was doing her with a dildo, maybe at this very moment. I swallowed again. "Melissa, I don't want to be a virgin any more," I added.

"Good!" she said. "You'll find a pretty nightgown on the bed in the guest room upstairs. I selected it for you a few days ago, when I realized you're just about ready. Change, make yourself pretty with whatever makeup is in your purse, and wait for me. I'll be a few minutes. Oh yes, you'll find a large box of prepared douches in the bathroom. Give yourself two now, so your insides will be sweet and fresh. Then you may want to douche again later, perhaps. Perhaps not."

I did as she asked. Then I sat on the bed, waiting. This was some kind of watershed moment, I was thinking, but I have to go through it to get to the other side.

When Melissa came in, I was shocked. Her hair was bound back severely, as it sometimes was days when she meant to intimidate opposing attorneys, but for the first time she wasn't impeccably dressed. In fact she was wearing a black chemise that covered her breasts and ended at her navel, and below that, nothing. Well, not quite nothing. She was naked from the waist down, but strapped to her mound, in the appropriate position if she had been a man, was an enormous erect penis. It looked to be maybe nine or ten inches long, and it would have frightened me except that it wasn't that thick. Maybe only an inch. Only an inch, I said to myself, when nothing thicker than the enema nozzle or once, Melissa's probing finger, had ever been in there.

"Here you are, Bobbie dear. This will change you from a girl into a woman. Let it know how it feels in your mouth."

She stepped close, and sitting on the edge of the bed, I bent slightly and licked the tip. It was a soft rubber or plastic, but rigid enough. Habit took over, and though it was much thinner and longer than Ray's cock I quickly fell into the same rhythm, licking and sucking and running my lips up and down it, even deep-throating it once of twice. Melissa took my head between her two hands and guided my movement up and down her cock a few times. It was soon slick with saliva.

"Now, sweetie, on your back, spread wide, and pull your knees up as high as they'll go."

I did that. I felt terribly vulnerable. My asshole utterly exposed, about to be invaded.

"Now close your eyes, and keep them closed until I tell you otherwise. Grasp the bars at the head of the bed, and don't let go until I tell you."

I reached over my head behind me, found them, and held on. It felt good, having something to brace myself with.

"There. You're ready. Now, Bobbie, tell me what you want."

"I want you to fuck me, Melissa. Put your prick into me."

"My, how romantic! Ask me again. Beg me. Persuade me you're eager for me, overwhelmed with desire!"

"Please, Melissa," I said. "I'm ready! I want you! Please, please, make love to me! Now, please!" As I said it, I was thinking first, let's get this over with. Then I was thinking, let's make a beginning, so I can see what it's like. How Janice feels when I fuck her. Then I was thinking, I wonder if it will feel as good as Janice sometimes seems to feel when I take my time with her. Maybe I'll learn to love it?

Before I could think further, Melissa touched her cock's head to my puckered anus, thrust it in an inch and stretched me nearly painfully, and paused. I took a deep breath, and held it, feeling a peculiar sensation, a little like passing a turd. The feeling changed from full to snug to comfortable. Then in a single spasmodic thrust of her hips she buried it into me. I felt her loins squeezing tight against my thighs, then she began to slide it out again. Then in, all the way in, but slowly, the nine or ten inches this time making a gradual progress into my ass and deep into my guts. Almost majestic. Then out again."

"Do you love me for doing this to you?"

"Yes, Melissa." I thought I sounded too dutiful. "Oh, yes, oh, yes!" By the second "yes," I was thinking, this is strangely pleasant! Rather wonderful, in a way. Feeling so full of her. Of her dildo, anyway. When she was fully into me yet again, I said, "Yes, I love it!" By then I did!

She did me slowly, in and out, for another few minutes, now and then lubricating herself with something I could feel but not see.

Then she stopped and withdrew all the way. "Just a moment," she said. "I want to change to something thicker. You'll appreciate it more. Eyes tight shut."

I gripped the bars and waited.

Then slowly something warm and fat pushed against my anus and then slid in. Warmer and fatter and smoother. What was she using now? It stretched me to the utmost. But it was all the way in me much sooner, and then just held there while her hip bones pressed against my thighs.

"Wrap your legs around your lover," she said. "Dig your heels into the small of his back."

I did. The prick snuggled into me more tightly, then pulled almost out, then pushed in, and I began to seek it when it wasn't filling me up. I began to lunge down toward it so it could re-enter me sooner. I tightened my legs around his back, and pushed myself at it.

His back. Why did I say that? I realized that the pleasure of feeling a fat cock moving in me had monopolized my other sensations. The waist my legs were embracing wasn't Melissa's, smooth and narrow, but thicker. And a little hairy. I almost opened my eyes to see what was happening, but the body pushing at me suddenly changed rhythm and began a feverish pounding. I winced, closing my eyes even tighter. Then I grabbed the bars behind me hard, and thrust back hard.

"Now, Bobbie, now you can throw your arms around your lover's neck and cover him with kisses, and open your eyes."

I did. I felt the friction of a beard on my lips. I opened my eyes. Of course. It was Ray, eyes shut, frowning in concentration, pounding his meat into me as hard as he could, faster and faster. An erotic sensation began to move through my loins, and I wondered whether his belly was masturbating my cock. No matter. I felt repelled for only a moment. I was being fucked in the ass by a man. But now that was irrelevant. More and more, it felt glorious as he worked his cock through me, in and out. I hugged him as hard as I could with my arms and legs, and we began to move to his rhythm as if we were one body, until he stiffened and pushed himself mightily into my asshole, deep, deep, and I could feel his fat prick spasm. Did I imagine now that I could feel his hot seed spraying deep into my guts? That I was now keeping his precious cum safe inside me? That now, as Melissa said, we were lovers?

I locked my lips to his and kissed him deeply, as he held his body tight against mine in the spasm of cumming, and in spasms of my own I felt myself cum on my belly, and his too. I realized I had been holding my breath! Now as I disengaged my face I began to breath again, deeply, through my mouth. Ray kissed me, and I kissed him back, just a peck this time. He pulled his cock out of my ass, and I felt empty. I didn't want him to go. Reluctantly I unwrapped my legs and just lay there with my eyes closed, savoring the afterglow. So many new feelings down there.

"Now," Melissa's voice said, this time from the bedside chair at the head of the bed. "Now, Bobbie, you're no longer a girl. Are you a woman or a faggot? Do you love Ray's cock in you as a woman would love it, or as a man?"

"I don't know," I said. I honestly didn't. But I realized I had just confessed to her that I loved Ray's cock in me. I considered the matter some more. No way did I feel like a man. "I feel like a woman, I think," I added uncertainly.

"Well, there'll be lots more times for you to find out. From now on. Never mind your douche this time. Now you want to know that your man's semen is inside you, that you're absorbing his essence and making it your own. Here's a tampon, meanwhile. Slip it into you so you don't leak, and get dressed. We're going to celebrate the loss of your virginity by going out to dinner. Nothing fancy, but be sure you look pretty. You have a lovely glow in your cheeks, a well-fucked look, and I'm sure you'll want everyone who looks at you to think, 'there's a woman who looks well-fucked,' not 'that's a man'."

Our excursion to a small local restaurant seemed so anti-climactic after what I had just been through, what I had done, that it didn't occur to me the world might doubt, when they glanced at me, that I was what I seemed. I felt like what I seemed. I wore a skirt and a short blazer open to show a loose purple silk blouse hung with a long gold chain. My hair was a mess, but I primped it here and there with my fingertips until it recovered the curls from the permanent wave I'd gotten during my period, and it passed well enough. I changed my tampon in the ladies' room, and as I walked back to the table I thought to myself, I've just had a man inside me. I'm desirable. His cum is still deep in my body. I felt proud, and very feminine. My hips were swishing as I approached my chair, and Melissa looked at me smiling. She knew why.

Thereafter, Melissa didn't require that I suck Ray's cock nightly before dessert, or instead of dessert. "From now on, you two can go upstairs to the guest room or over to Bobbie's house for an hour or two after dinner," she said. "You can watch TV if you wish, but there are better things for lovers to do. What you do is your affair, not mine. Just be sure that they're the kinds of things that men do with women. Just be sure you're exploring your femininity with Ray, Bobbie. That's what Janice would want, wouldn't she?"

After a while I began to dress and make myself up to look as nice as I could for dinner, because I knew I'd always have a date afterward, and I wanted to look my very best for Ray. Whether I then cock sucked or fucked him, I knew he appreciated my trying to look my prettiest. When Melissa suggested that I take my hormones by injection instead of pills, I agreed, to help speed the process of feeling and looking more feminine, for Ray for now, though of course eventually for Janice.

iv.

A month later it was February, with a hint of Spring in the air. As my appearance changed I realized I'd never be returning to my former self or my old job, so I resigned, and at Melissa's suggestion took a short course in cosmetology. The other girls were mostly teenagers, but I fit in. I loved learning little tricks for looking romantic or mysteriously beautiful, and what those girls told each other about how to control their boy friends was a revelation!

By now I was habituated to feeling like a woman. I dressed in women's clothing all the time, enlarging Janice's collection with many items of my own, less cute, more my style, conservative but with a kicky flair, more like the kind of woman I had become. More me. Sometimes I shopped with Ray and asked his opinion of things, and it was disappointing that he was as uninterested in dress styles and colors as I had once been. I had a regular weekly appointment at the beauty salon for a wash, set, and manicure, and Melissa had me take a few collagen shots to improve my appearance, to give my lips a more pouty expression "more attractive to women as well as men," she pointed out, "because we women enjoy imagining full lips sucking our slits the way men love to imagine them wrapped around their meat. I'm sure Ray will love it."

That reminded me. I was looking and feeling more and more like a woman every day, but I still had no idea how women really make love with each other. I wanted to be as attractive to Janice as I could be, in every way, when she returned to me. I mentioned this to Melissa, and she just said, "You're doing just fine, honey. Just look how Ray can't wait to be with you each day. You're a lovely girl, and you'll be lovelier before we're through. Janice will adore the new you."

She had expected to schedule me for breast implants, but they weren't necessary. I responded very quickly to my accelerated hormone regimen. It smoothed and rounded my body, and my breasts grew to fill a B Cup with my nipples still swollen, still deliciously sensitive, more growth expected. She was pleased to see how gently I cradled Ray whenever he sucked on them. I took voice training, and now whenever I answered the phone, no one ever confused my voice with a man's. All this, I told myself, was to show my commitment to my marriage, so Janice could see how much I cared for her.

But I have to admit it, uppermost in my mind when I was dressing and primping for dinner each evening was looking beautiful for Ray, so he'd feel tempted to nurse on me, or push his beautiful cock into me night after night. That felt so delicious that even the anticipation filled my whole body with longing every afternoon, and when he gently slid into me I'd feel fulfilled almost all at once, then begin building toward more voluptuous tensions, then the exquisite feelings of peak and release I realized were female orgasms.

To know that you're desired! Sometimes it sent me to shops far outside of town, where for example I could buy handcrafted earrings that were just perfect for a new hairdo I was trying out. To feel pretty for my man! Even though he never seems to notice! That certainly is how women feel, I realized! Previously I'd thought it silly. Now I understood.

One night after dinner Melissa disappeared upstairs, and Ray and I went into the living room together, feeling especially affectionate. An hour later I was so filled with his semen, the dear man, so brimming over that I needed to change a tampon yet again, and thought I might even need a pad. No spares in my purse. I went upstairs to borrow something of Melissa's.

"Aaahhhh! Oh! OOOhhh!" Loud moaning came from Melissa's bedroom. I paused outside her door. They weren't really cries of ecstasy or sexual gratification, more like cries of relief, like a parched throat swallowing quarts of water after a long drought. They didn't sound like Melissa, either. I peered in where her door was still open a crack.

I could see Melissa facing the door, slouched back on the bed, leaning back on piles of pillows, her arms draped apart like a mid-eastern potentate, her thighs and knees spread wide, her legs hanging off the bed. What seemed from behind to be another woman was kneeling in front of her with her face buried in Melissa's crotch. She was really working away at it. I'd never seen anyone so hungry -- it was almost like feeding time at the zoo. She was slurping, and sucking, and licking, and writhing as if trying to push her whole head all the way into Melissa's slit, and moaning because she couldn't. As I listened, her outcries sounded more and more like squeals of delight, the kind I'd just been making with Ray.

So Melissa likes being eaten by another woman, I thought! Well! She always did seem a little dykey to me, I thought. I wonder what Ray knows about this.

But as I looked, I couldn't tell if Melissa was enjoying it or not. Her face was calm, impassive. I suddenly realized she wasn't concentrating on her feelings, but was instead looking straight at me through the same crack in the door, straight into my eyes, unruffled and untroubled, as if she were merely nursing an infant, or had momentarily looked up from a book in her lap, not from that frantic head still rutting into her. Then she smiled at me and looked down, where her hand affectionately stroked the other woman's head.

Who was she? Where had she come from? What was happening? When had Melissa taken a lover? How had I never noticed before? Did Ray know? I went back downstairs and was about to tell Ray what I'd seen, but he was uninterested -- he pulled me down on top of him and began trying to paw my bra open again, obviously ready for yet another go. The dear man! So, ten minutes later I was on Melissa's living room couch again, plastered around my darling Ray with my arms tight around his neck and my legs clamped around his waist, and he was creaming me with swift, deep thrusts into my asshole. Oh, God! He was so wonderful!

"Ohhh, uhhh, ahhh, uhh!" I kept calling out. "Uhh, uhh, ohhh! Deeper! Ohh, ahhh, ahhh!" Then again as I felt him spurt deep inside my bowels, I came too!

"Oh, dear, God, your prick is so heavenly," I said, still thrusting toward it as it softened. I couldn't wait for him to climb forward as he always did, and drop it into my open mouth for licking and cleaning. But right now I wanted him to remain in my ass forever.

"Melissa was right," I heard a familiar woman's voice say just over my shoulder. "You do make a wonderful woman. You and Ray are the most passionate couple I've ever seen. Didn't I tell you you'd soon find someone who would help you feel the way I feel about Melissa? And didn't you?"

That voice! Janice! Janice's voice, from the easy chair just beyond my head! My wife's voice! I squirmed, trying to turn around to look! How long had she been there? Had she seen and heard this whole show? Should I feel ashamed? Proud?

Just then Ray disengaged his cock from inside me, crept forward, and straddled my head with his knees so I couldn't move. His balls and prick dangled over my mouth, and he lowered them as he always did, so I could lift my head slightly and choose which I wished to lick clean first. I tried again to look behind me. "Janice?!" I tried to say. Ray's softened prick filled my mouth full. I had to suck and lick the cum off it, and then off his balls, before I could turn to confirm who had spoken. My mouth began licking reflexively. "Thanith?" I asked between slurps.

"Yes, that's who. Melissa thought it was time I saw how happy you are now that you're fully feminized, how much you've changed. So I'd agree to the way she changed our original plan."

"Thanith?"

"Just lick your lover clean, dear. Yes, Janice. Your own dear wife. My! When Melissa and I first hit it off, I guess nearly two years ago now, and we talked about what to do with you, she told me you'd make a marvelous cock sucker, properly motivated. Well, I wanted you to love licking pussy, not sucking cocks. My pussy! Now look at you! A cock sucker is certainly what you've become. And to judge by what I just saw and heard while Ray was reaming you, that isn't the half of it! You seem now to be the most passionate and devoted woman a man could wish for, at both ends!"

I gave Ray a customary last lick on his balls and kiss on the tip of his prick, his signal that we were finished. He then dismounted from my head and knelt beside me, kissing both my eyelids. Even though I was still struggling to turn to look at Janice, I closed my eyes to receive this now familiar post-fuck affection, and without thinking I lifted my mouth and kissed his gratefully, with a soft peck, as I always did.

"That's just beautiful, Bob," Janice said. "Or Bobbie, I suppose, now. Don't let me hurry you! Enjoy your man!"

I felt a sudden, terrible twist of shame. "Janice!" I cried out! "This was for you! I did all this for you! I've became a woman so you'd come back to me! So I'd know how you feel! So you'd want to live with me instead of the woman you'd gone off to live with!"

It struck me like a club! My high, flute like voice got so high that it squeaked. It does that when I'm excited -- Melissa and Ray think it's cute. "Good heavens, Janice! Was Melissa the woman you went off to live with? Melissa? But how?"

"Oh?" Janice said. She ignored my question. "You became a woman for me?" I wished she looked less amused. "And now that you're a woman, do you prefer me to Ray? When Ray was sliding into you just now and you were moaning like a bitch in heat, and when he started pounding you, well, even I had to come see who was making all that noise. You never made those sounds with me, my dear, and certainly you never brought them out of me! For taking pleasure from a man, you're more of a woman than I am!"

I sat up and tried to straighten my clothes. I could feel Ray's cum begin to leak out of me again. I hoped it wouldn't stain my dress, a favorite of mine and also of Ray's, a slightly formal black satin, off-the shoulder and decollete. I tucked in some kleenex and I pulled up my panties and I looked at Janice, bewildered. I had become a woman. What more did she want? There was something wrong.

Janice looked down for a moment, looking for the right way to say something. Then she looked up, and her expression was now more kindly than amused. She began slowly. "Bobbie -- I guess that's who you are now -- Bobbie dear, I do appreciate your efforts. I can't imagine anything more considerate. You're a dear love. Always have been. But I'm afraid you're the wrong kind of woman."

I listened, my eyes wide on her.

"I take pleasure from women. You know that now. I began in college, in between boy friends. It was nice. Then during the past few years, when you've been working late at the office, or sitting in front of the tube being a bore, and I wanted to get out of the house, and I didn't want to violate our marriage by taking up with some man, I'd go out sometimes to one of the few places a lone woman can go and feel safe. There aren't many such places. Movies, maybe. Then I started stopping in at our local lesbian bar, you know it, "Tops 'n Bottoms"? The one in that shopping plaza just down from the mall? Just to chat? Mostly just to chat, but after a while, sometimes to do other things. And arrange to do other things with other women, in various places, sometimes at their places and sometimes home afternoons and evenings when you were tied up at the office."

"Then one evening a dear friend introduced me to the most wonderful woman she knew, strong-willed, clever, a woman she said could get anyone to do anything. She said she'd change my life, that I just had to meet her, and one night I did. Can you imagine my surprise? Melissa! It was Melissa! Can you imagine Melissa's surprise?"

"Well, the long and the short of it is, Melissa and I have been lovers ever since! Passionate, deeply devoted lovers. Nearly two years, and even with her living right next door I couldn't ever get enough of her! When I'm licking her pussy, or she nuzzles mine, it's just bliss. Sheer bliss! When we caress each other, rapture! When we sip each other's breasts it's utter ecstasy! I can't keep my hands off her. That's why I'm here right now. We arranged for me to stay away for three months, travelling around the country, until she'd finished changing you. But here I am, back a little early. I missed her so. I had to come back!"

"Last summer it was, when we decided finally what to do about you. I thought, finally. It came about like this."

"I told Melissa one day that I wanted to leave you for good and live with her. The same sort of thing I put into my letter to you. But she said no, it wasn't possible. For one thing, she'd put so much work into training Ray, that now he's a perfect housekeeper and cook, and her sexual slave in lots of ways, when she wants one. He does anything she asks, she told me, and he loves and worships her. She couldn't abandon him for me, he'd be devastated. And he couldn't come with us either. It wouldn't be fair to take him away from his friends, because they're all he has most of the time, when she's wrapped up in her lovers. He never has sex with her any more. 'He's already given up too much for me,' she said."

So we worked out another plan. We'd all stay right here. But you'd be changed into a different kind of person. I'd leave you the way I did, and you'd feel distressed the way you did, so you'd do whatever Melissa asked you. Melissa would then make you into a substitute for herself, for when I couldn't be with her. You'd become more like a woman in your lovemaking. More considerate, and sensitive. I didn't mind your remaining a man, but I did mention one day that it would be nice if you were more like a woman whenever you were caressing my nipples, or licking my pussy. If you had a delicate touch. If you had breasts I could kiss."

"Well, Melissa saw no problem with that. 'You go away and enjoy yourself,' she said. 'And when you get back, I assure you your Robert will look and behave like a woman.'"

"And what do I find, now I'm back? My husband looks and behaves like a woman, all right. And he thinks and feels like a woman, apparently. But not my kind of woman. Not a woman's woman. I told Melissa I didn't care whether you finished butch or a femme, I can go either way. But you're neither. You're a man's woman. Dear, you aren't my woman now, you're Ray's woman. Can you deny it? Let's face it, I came home to find that my husband has become a cock-starved slut who loves to fuck other men! At least one other man, anyhow."

"I did tell Melissa I didn't want to come back and find I was married to a faggot, and she assured me I wouldn't. And I guess you're not. You're not a man who likes men. You aren't gay or queer. In your own mind you're straight. In your own mind you're a woman who likes men. Aren't you? Well, that wasn't supposed to happen. I think Melissa may have done this deliberately. She can be so sly, that darling! But you're not who I wanted you to be."

I swallowed hard. I loved being what I was. Should I plead with Melissa to make me over again, this time into a lesbian? The remembered feel of Ray's cock swelling in my mouth silenced me.

"I'm sorry, darling. We can still have some kind of relationship, I'm sure. But as what? Not as husband and wife. For heterosexual loving you prefer Ray to me, now, don't you. And you never were much of a natural lover of women at best. I suppose Melissa's had something in mind all this time, and we'll just have to find out what."

"And you know something else? Even if you were now what I asked for, a lesbian lover for when I'm not with Melissa, I'm not sure I'd want you that way any more. I've been with a lot of women in the last three months. A lot. No men, I've been faithful to you, just as I know you've been faithful to me. But now I know your limitations. You don't have a pussy, that delicious fragrant slit women like Melissa have between their legs. You have nothing for me to lick but that oversized clit, nothing like Melissa's tender little button. I see you do have breasts now, and they look just lovely. But I suspect you grew them for Ray, not for me, and you think of them as attractive to men, not as a means for pleasing other women. Isn't that so? Well, Melissa's breasts are altogether for women like me, and I just love them. And mine are hers."

I could feel my wife slipping away even as she sat there. As if from a distance, I called out "Janice! Please come back!" She just looked at me. She knew I meant something else.

"Janice darling!" Suddenly there was Melissa's voice.

We both looked up. Unnoticed, Melissa had come down. She was now leaning over the back of Janice's chair, listening. She began to caress Janice's hair, and then her hands slipped down past Janice's shoulders and began to tease Janice's nipples through her thin sweater. I noticed that Janice had no bra on underneath, and that she was relaxing into Melissa's hands, surrendering her breasts into them.

All the while Melissa looked steadily into my eyes with a slight superior smile that told me the only way I'd ever live with Janice again would be on Melissa's terms. She'd won. And I didn't even know yet what game she'd been playing.

"Janice honey, come to bed," Melissa said. "Ray, would you take Bobbie over to her own house, and spend the night there with her? She needs some special loving tonight, I'm sure, the poor confused dear. I have some things I need to explain to Janice. Then tomorrow we'll all have cocktails and dinner here, and talk some more, and if Janice and I agree that what I've done is for the best, we'll explain everything to Bobbie, and I'm sure Bobbie will understand everything. And agree to everything. Bobbie honey, I told you that you and your Janice will be together again. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. You will be."

She leaned over Janice and kissed her. Janice lifted her head to kiss her back, and then reached one hand way up to pull Melissa's head closer. Their kiss became grew in intensity, and became almost ferocious. Then she stood up, and without another word to me the two of them made their way upstairs, wrapped up in each other.

Ray came over and sat down next to me. He took my hands and clasped them in his. They were much larger and stronger. "Bobbie, remember how I told you once that my wife does things in strange ways, but they always work out for the best? Tomorrow you'll understand. This isn't what you or Janice expected, exactly. But it's been the only way all along. You'll see."

He leaned over and kissed me, full on the mouth. My cock stirred ever so slightly in my panties, and he reached up to caress my nipples. I started to melt, yet again.

"Lets get over to your place," he said. "We don't need to be wearing all of this clothing any more tonight."

v.

Ray left me soon after breakfast, to begin preparing what he called "our first dinner together as lovers," whatever that meant. I took Melissa her breakfast as usual, and took up a second identical tray for Janice, not knowing how I'd feel when I saw them together, or even if they were sharing the same bed. They were. They were sitting up chatting animatedly, and I interrupted them with my knock. As I came forward to set the trays down and arrange them on each of their bed-tables, Melissa watched me with the same superior smile as last night. This time Janice had some of the same. "Oh, lovely, Bobbie," she said. "How very sweet. Just set it here, and we'll call you when it's time to take it away. Love your hair. And I didn't tell you yesterday, your figure looks so much nicer now."

"Thank you, Ma'am," I replied without thinking, as I straightened the flower on her tray. My own wife! 'Ma'am' I called her! The two women resumed their private conversation as if I were no longer in the room. I turned and left.

I spent the morning house cleaning -- now that Janice was back, and somehow might be living in this house with me again, everything had to be spotless. I separated out our dresses and lingerie in our drawers and closets, in case she wanted to reclaim hers. I now had plenty of my own. At midday I shaved off the few fine hairs that were to be found on my body -- hormones and electrolysis had seen to the rest -- and then I soaked in a perfumed bubble bath until my skin felt like satin all over.

Then I spent three hours in the beauty parlor getting a makeover with all the trimmings. I wanted to be stunning, ravishing. For whom wasn't clear -- Janice would drift into my mind's eye, admiring my new femininity, perhaps taking me into her arms, and then Ray's face would smile at me. And sometimes my own face, pleased that I was looking my very best. I must say, I emerged from my beauty treatment absolutely gorgeous! This is what I should have been doing all along, I decided! I studied my face a moment, then took my purse, tipped the operators, and tripped out feeling more self-assured than ever before in my life. As a man, it was already clear, I had been cruelly tricked into gender confusion and what I once would have thought were perverse practices with Ray. But I was no longer a man. As a woman, I had Ray as my lover and some further relationship, yet to emerge and be explained, with my wife. So as the woman I now looked like, the woman I felt myself to be, I couldn't lose!

Needless to day, I dressed carefully in my most stunning outfit, a constructed purple cocktail dress, beaded, with a form fit bodice and a darling flared skirt, and I came over to Melissa's at about 5:30, the cocktail hour. Ray was in the kitchen putting sprigs of parsley on a dish of canapes. His eyes sparkled when he saw me, and he reached over to grasp my breasts with both hands. I allowed him a moment, then slapped his hand away gently and smiled, and told him not to be vulgar, and asked how I could help. He nipped briefly at my neck, handed me the dish, and told me to carry it in to "the other girls" in the living room, and he'd be along with the drinks in just a moment.

There they were, seated together on the couch and looking just beautiful -- each had also had her hair done, and had put on her best dress, and made up carefully. They were in the middle of an animated conversation, with lots of giggling. Whatever the misunderstanding over me, obviously they had made it up. I wondered what they'd decided.

"Bobbie dear, there you are," said Janice, looking up at me with a radiant smile. "Just set those down for now, until Ray comes along with our drinks. We were just talking about George Fontana, Joanie's ex, you remember Joanie? She divorced him and later married that lovely ship's captain, the one who's away from home months at a time, and she doesn't seem to mind? Well, George was always propositioning other women, promising them anything, getting into their panties, and then on to the next conquest. At the office, at home, at parties, anywhere. He must have hit on you too, one time or another. No, of course not, not then. But did you know him?"

I knew him. We'd been nodding and drinking companions at the golf club. But you couldn't carry on a conversation with him. He'd break off whenever any woman came into the room, so he could put his moves on her. No one ever accused him of sincerity.

"Well, George tried getting each of us into bed with him, of course, but of course we weren't either of us interested. We each love the man we're married to, for better or for worse, past, present, and future. And we love each other too, of course." Janice paused and looked me over more closely, appraisingly, as if for the first time. "Why, you know, Bobbie, you really are just lovely now! The hormones softened your face just a bit, didn't they, and your lips look good enough to eat, Your hair worn up is so flattering! And fuschia is your color, no question of it. George would have loved to meet you looking the way you do now!"

She smiled slightly and added, "You might have loved to meet him too, you know why? It seems that George's success with the ladies' can be attributed to charm, but also to a huge cock, over ten inches I've been told by someone who has reason to know, and unbelievably thick. That explains why he thought he was God's gift to women. Because obviously, he was! But once he was in and out of a woman, he never looked back."

I set the canapes down, and settled carefully alongside the other women. Ray came in with a tray of drinks, and handed each of us what he knew we'd want. "You ladies gossiping about old Meat-on-the-Hoof?" he inquired. "Old George? Who's he done now?"

Melissa replied, "Be a good boy and go back to the kitchen, dear. This is girl talk." He did.

"Now wait till you hear this!" Janice leaned toward me and put her hand on my knee confidentially. Then she looked up, again distracted. "That's Nuit d'Amour you're wearing, isn't it, Bobbie? It's very nice. I've often wondered if it would do for really formal occasions, you know, evening gown affairs? Is it heavy enough? And would it hold up through hours of dancing, and who knows what else?"

"It's fine," I answered. "It goes on a little musky, so it should be just right for making a grand entrance, and then it stays deliciously flowery all evening. Through all kinds of activities, I've found. All kinds!"

She slapped my knee lightly and said, "Naughty!" and then continued. "Well, George remarried, a rich woman out West it seems, who tried out his cock and wanted it all for herself. She believed his promises, and didn't know that George's thing was always on loan elsewhere. Well, she was busy running the cattle ranch she'd inherited, so it was a while before she found out. She used up three private detective firms, and they finally implicated half the women in the county."

"So one night George was coming out of a shower, when she came up on him from behind and reached for his equipment. Of course he let her. But she'd hidden in her hand a remarkable instrument. A rubber ring with little steel razors inside, and spring loaded clamps. They'd just invented it for castrating bulls any time with no fuss, just slip it on, and when the bull has wandered somewhere else and has his mind elsewhere, on some heifer maybe, trigger it. No fuss, no bleeding, and remove it a few days later when the wound has closed and begun to heal. She had this one modified to trigger with a remote."

"Before he even knew, she'd fastened it around his things, you know, just where they hung down below that cock of his, and locked it on. So now any time she wanted, even while he was sleeping, she could click on the remote and unman him without the least mess. Convert him into a steer, she told him, for bulls to use when they ran out of cows."

I wondered if this story had a point. Were they thinking of fixing me?

Janice noticed my expression. "Oh my poor dear," she said. "Bobbie precious! Don't worry one bit! What's yours is yours, and we all of us love you just the way you are. You are the most faithful husband imaginable! Just look at you! No, this is about a man who didn't keep his promises at all. Just listen!"

"So there's George, with this band around his balls, and no way to get it off without tripping the spring and then 'Zip!'. His wife told him he'd wear it one full year, and during that year he'd have to fuck whoever and whatever she told him to fuck, when she told him, or else. Naturally, he agreed. It didn't sound like too bad a deal."

"Well, then she took him out to the barn where her horses are stabled, and she told him, 'Back East they say you're hung like a horse. Well, they don't know horses back East. Tonight you'll service those mares over there, all eight of them. We'll see if they even notice. Cum into each of them, or it doesn't count. Then when you get the hang of it, do the stallions. They won't mind getting laid by a queer. All six of them.'"

"'From now on you fuck all fourteen horses at least once each week. More often if you feel like it. Then in between, you'll work on the nine hundred head of cattle we keep in the corral and in the next valley. During the next year I want you to work your way through the whole herd. Figure out how many a day that is, besides the horses, and pace yourself.'"

"'I don't think you're going to have much time or energy or hankering left for any of our local ladies. But if you do, you let me know, and I'll get you some more mares to service.'"

"She set two men to watching him, guarding him really, to make sure he did what he was told, what he'd agreed to do. They were told to use the remote if he rebelled, or fell too far behind, or tried to escape. So that's what our George has been doing all year now. Ploughing his way through the ranch. Cows and horses, five or six a day I guess, with that huge dong of his, all so he can keep the parts that hang down below it. Melissa says she hears he's gotten to like it. They say he gets a hard on now whenever he passes a Burger King! And you know what? Tell Bobbie, Melissa."

Ray came through with refills, and smiled at me when he handed me mine. My heart warmed immediately, and I beamed back at him, so very pleased! Melissa glanced at me, sipped at her drink, and leaned back.

"Well, there isn't much left to tell. Last week a number of women in town got an engraved invitation to a week-long celebration at that ranch, dances, barbecues, white water rafting nearby, helicopter skiing nearby. It seems that George's new wife promised him a horse of his own when his year was up, a stallion that's been fixed, to remind him of his own year under the gun so to speak, so he'll behave in the future. And his year's about up. Most of his former girlfriends from around here plan to attend. They want to find out what the invitation really means. You see, it reads 'You are cordially invited to help us celebrate George Fontana's gelding, the reward he richly deserves after his year of caring for all the animals on our ranch the same way he cared for their predecessors. He will receive it on the first day of the week's festivities.'"

"It does seem she means to remove the instrument as she'd promised, but not the way George expects. A woman after my own heart. I should think the incidence of adultery in that county as well as this town has dropped by 90% since those invitations went out."

"Poor George," Janice said. "He'll still be able to perform, I hear, but his wife will call the shots, so to speak, since that's what he'll need to remain interested in sex. I wonder if she means to have her stallions return the favor to him through next year."

"Oh, Janice," said Melissa. "What an imagination! Let's go to dinner."

It seemed to me the story was saying that men who offend their women are at grave risk. Ray certainly took no chances, but even so, he would have felt uneasy to hear the three of us giggling about George's prospects. I found I could be just as amused at poor George's situation as the two other women, who resented a libertine however well-endowed, and themselves had no testicles to feel threatened by the very thought of anyone losing them. Could it be mine no longer mattered to me, that I'd found something better to cherish?. Someone else's?

Ray's dinner was superb. We sat in our customary places, with Janice opposite Melissa at either end of the table as the hosts in charge, as it were, and Ray and I seated opposite each other on either side as usual. I wondered if Melissa would ask me to drink Ray before dessert, as so frequently during the past few months, to show Janice how well she had trained me. But instead we sat over coffee and cognac, and talked.

"Melissa," Janice said. "Lets review what I'd expected from you, and what you did, and then you can tell us your reasons, so we'll all four of us know."

"I wanted to live with you full time, but you weren't ready for a commitment. You wanted to see other women too. And our husbands, whom we each love, made for complications. So I decided to settle for second best, a husband who'd do with me the things I do with you. I went away to provide him with a reason to want to change, and to give you time to change him."

"You were supposed to teach him selfless devotion to my pleasure. So he'd lick my pussy for hours, and fuck me for hours the way your dildo does, without climaxing himself until I'd finished using him. So he'd caress me the way a woman does, slowly, languishingly, deliciously, perhaps even believing himself to be a woman while doing it. In brief, to do everything I do with you, and love it the way I love doing it with you."

"Now what happened instead? You didn't train him to be my lesbian lover. You trained him to be your husband's cunt. Now he sucks on your husband's cock for hours, I hear, and your husband fucks him for his own pleasure, though I don't deny Bobbie loves it. I don't think he's been near a woman since I left him, much less learned anything about how to satisfy a woman. Except for some of his anatomy, he's become a woman himself. A heterosexual woman. Maybe he doesn't care at all for real women any more, not even for me. That's not what we agreed would happen."

Janice was finished. She sipped her cognac and waited,

"Janice dear," Melissa said. She got up and moved behind Janice's chair, and bent over. They began to take soft kisses from each other's mouths, one after another, and again Melissa began rotating her fingertips across each of Janice's nipples. Again Janice began to yearn and melt toward Melissa even before Melissa spoke.

"My lovely Janice, the moment you went away I realized our plan was deeply flawed. I'd been wrong about my feelings. I love you and want you. I didn't want your husband ever to fill in for me. Or ever to desire you sexually. I didn't want to share you with anyone."

"But we are each of us bound to our husbands. We couldn't either of us abandon them. Loyal, faithful men who love us and serve us, yours now if not then. Ray long ago gave me his absolute trust. I own him. I could never desert him. I thought in fact that I should be rewarding him!"

"Then again, for me to turn Bob into your second best lover after me might be to create my own potential competitor. Suppose some day you wanted to break off with me for his sake? I wanted to arrange so you'd remain with me for his sake, if it came to that."

"So I trained Bobbie to be the ideal girl for Ray that you are for me. I'm not sure he loves Ray the way you love me, but now he's willing to do whatever pleasures Ray, and to take his pleasure from Ray, and to do it for as long as Ray wants, the way you do such things for me. The way we do such things for each other. That sounds to me like love. And it's a wonderful bond between all of us."

"I should say, "she's" willing to do whatever pleasures Ray. As you've seen for yourself, Bobbie is now for all purposes a woman. She's one of us. At each stage I asked your husband to choose, and at each stage he chose to be a woman. Now she is a woman. Ray's woman, as you point out. And Ray is her man."

But look what you now have. Your husband is now your dearest girlfriend, or sister, or whoever you wish her to be. From now on the two of you will have so much in common as women you'll never run out of things you're eager to talk about together. You can tell each other anything, even about the things you each do to please Ray or me, or that the two of us do to please you two. And you'll each understand each other and feel delighted, and that will double your pleasure. And ours."

"Just think of all the things you can now do together you'd never do as husband and wife. The two of you can go shopping any time and both love everything about it. For yourselves or for each other, or for Ray and me, enjoying yourselves as women do. Bobbie will appreciate whatever lovely things you buy because now she has the same fine eye for women's clothing."

"You can even use the same hairdressers, and compare notes on styles. You already share the same wardrobe. I don't think any marriage anywhere is more solidly bound up by common concerns and understandings and affections than yours and Bobbie's. You each even have loving same-sex relationships you can talk about with each other. They just don't happen to be with the same sex."

"Because of what I did, the four of us are now beautifully bound together, in honest mutual affection. This is a much better arrangement. We can each trust that each of us will want us all together always, and know that we will never alienate each others' affections. Even if you two were to sleep together, which doesn't seem probable, even if you were to make love, Ray and I would know it's to understand more profoundly what you each do with each of us, to learn to be better lovers to us. In effect, you two are now the intermediaries of my marriage to Ray. Because you each make love to each of us, we don't need to with each other. And we're the intermediaries of your marriage. Bobbie will wish to do with Ray whatever I may wish to do with you, or you with me. It's a four-way relationship in which we each remain perfectly faithful to our spouses, and to our lovers, and neither couple ever cheats on the other."

"Of course we'll live together. That's what I promised Bobbie, and that's what will happen. We'll live together, but we won't usually sleep together. We'll sleep with our lovers. From now on I'll sleep with Janice and Ray will sleep with Bobbie. Our husbands will wife-swap, that is, they'll swap their wives for each other. Each will be the loving partner of each other's loving partner. And all will seem respectable to the outer world -- not even our closest friends will ever notice. Our marriages will grow closer and happier than ever!"

By now Janice was in a musing trance, her head lolling back and her lips parted, her eyes closed, while Melissa continued to fondle her nipples. Then Melissa lifted her eyes toward me. "You see, Bobbie. Its just as I said. Things aren't as they were. Now that you're a woman, your wife is willing to share your life again. We'll all four of us visit each other often, across the back yard, and share recipes as well as spouses, and shop the same dress sales together. You have your wife again, as the dearest of girlfriends. And meanwhile, you know that Ray loves you. There's no question of that. He's giving me that look again even now, asking me to finish talking so you two can go home together, and get to bed and enjoy each other. The way Janice and I have enjoyed each other for years now."

"I always felt sorry for Ray, whenever I was with Janice and he was banished to the front room, or I had to send him over to your house to play Gin Rummy with you. This more than makes up for those nights now, doesn't it, Ray?"

"Now, Bobbie, you and Ray will keep house for the two of us, unless you're yourselves working. It's only fair. I know you had to leave your job so we could arrive together at this lovely moment, and that you can't return to it now as your old self. So do come work for me. I need a secretary who's pretty, well groomed, and can do intricate database processing when necessary. You'll blend right in. And you can still serve Janice and me our breakfasts. I look forward to years of them."

Now Melissa's speech was over too, and she kissed Janice once more, then sat down.

I'm sure Janice was no longer paying attention. She was looking at Melissa with adoration. This arrangement was so very much more desirable than any she'd ever imagined! Without a word she suddenly stood, then crouched and slipped under the table. Melissa moved her pelvis to the edge of her chair and smiled, then spread her legs. A moment later Melissa closed her eyes, and her smile ascended to heaven as Janice's face apparently found her crotch.

She did first glance at Ray, and my eyes followed hers. Ray was just sitting there looking at me, also smiling. His pelvis also seemed to tilt toward me. I too slipped off my chair and sank to my knees, and crept over to him, and threw my arms around his thighs. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as I buried my face in his crotch. I glanced over and saw that Janice had pulled Melissa's panties way to one side, and was nursing hungrily on Melissa's clit. I unzipped Ray to take him in hand for the hundredth time, then to put him in my mouth.

I knew that for the rest of my life there was no way Janice would ever want to leave me again. We were bound together by our common submission, devotion and love. We four friends are closer than ever, I thought as I carefully lifted Ray's cock out of his pants. I loved it, that Janice loved it that Ray and I loved each other, and that Melissa loved it too. Then as I started to suck on Ray's cock, for the first time I loved it that Janice and Melissa loved each other.

END

(c) 1996 by Vickie Tern