Trust Me

TRUST ME!

by Vickie Tern

I.

"Andrew dear, why didn't you ever get your ears pierced?"

I looked up, astonished. My wife was perched comfortably in our big easy chair, her nest most evenings when she wasn't out selling a client some building, her legs curled up under her, reading one of her magazines, all as usual. She was gazing at me casually with a mixture of curiosity and mild concern, as if the question had just occurred to her, and the answer didn't much matter, but it might, and she figured she'd ask before returning to her story, or article, or whatever.

"What?!" I asked. I couldn't believe it. She knew I'd wanted to, in fantasy, but she knew that for me fantasy and fact were separate, that I'd never have done it. And in fact she hated the pleasure I felt when decorating myself like a woman! She never allowed reference to it. She didn't want to know! My mind replayed what I'd just heard, and tried to re-hear it. 'Airs,' could that have been the word? 'Pursed?' No, nothing else made sense. But what I'd heard didn't make sense either!

"Your ears," she said patiently. "Didn't you ever want to get them pierced?"

"Well, yes," I replied. I wondered if I could tell her when that was. It was a few years ago, during those intoxicated, golden afternoons when I couldn't help indulging my love of dressing up, just before she came home early one afternoon to discover me dolled up curls to heels in women's clothes, coiffed and jeweled, strutting and posing in front of a mirror until I saw her in the same mirror, standing there watching me, shocked! At that time I was besotted by the fantasy that I could magically become a complete woman, and yet remain a man, no bodily alterations toward femininity being too extreme nor too permanent. Pierced ears were the least of the things I wanted but would never have except in my imagination. Above all, I gloried in imagining that my Monica was as delighted and entranced as I was when I was dressed to look like a woman, even turned on by it. Or at least mildly interested, and perhaps helpful.

But when she actually saw me cross dressed, reality replaced fantasy. Long months of resentment and grief followed while our marriage foundered. She made impossible demands I was too honest to accept, that it was a filthy addiction like smoking I should give up cold turkey, or taper off gradually, that a shrink could cure me, that I should take up golf or tennis instead, that I should settle for flashy men's clothes whenever I felt the urge. She had cross dressing confused with infidelity, as if by dating my mirror image I was being intimate with another woman. I argued in turn that it was harmless, for me a source of great joy, nothing more. Finally she understood that it was a compulsion, delightful to me if perverse to her, but a deep-rooted, powerful compulsion nevertheless, dating maybe even from a prenatal time of life. It was how I was. Finally we agreed that I could keep doing it, since I'd keep doing it anyhow, but it should always be in ways and places where she'd never know or be reminded.

Mostly I'd kept to that arrangement. It was tricky, but possible, and our happiness depended on it. We have a good marriage. We're a little unconventionally matched, maybe, but wonderfully compatible. I do most of my work at home, cost-estimating engineering projects, because home is where I can think more clearly than anywhere else, juggle all the variables in my head and watch them land right side up. Then I pipe in the results by fax or e-mail, and get other data back the same way. I don't much need to talk to anyone. I just do it, and do it better than anyone else. It's not something I especially enjoy, but there are compensations.

I like the arrangement with my company because I'm a deep-dyed homebody. Always have been. The thinking is intricate and conceptual, and it's easy to get lost in your mind. But I love working out the problems while doing simple homey tasks in the real world, like making the beds or fluffing the couch pillows, or scrubbing the kitchen floor, or sewing on shirt buttons, or cooking up intricate dishes for my beloved wife. I know, this is all women's work, but it helps keeps me sane. Early in our marriage we agreed that I would look after our household routines, shopping and cooking and cleaning, and Monica would take charge of the exceptional elements of our marriage, like our social lives or vacations.

This freed Monica for her work, which is selling real estate. She dearly loves it, and is a whiz at it. She's good with people -- she has the right combination of charm, persuasiveness, and persistence, and she does her homework too, her endless research on her clients and their needs and the properties she thinks right for them. She can be devious setting up intricate arrangements for a client to walk in, see advantages, and then think he's deciding for himself that this or that building and its financing are perfect for him. It's commonplace for Monica, about to close on an office building, to schedule the closing in another more expensive but more suitable building, lead the client in, and then let him discover that fact for himself. This especially amuses her boss, a smooth operator named Ben who has himself pulled off some very big deals in town. Sometimes he can't believe some scheme she's conceived will work, and they bet her commission on the outcome, double or nothing. He's right just often enough to want to keep betting and losing, and I've sometimes thought Monica schemes even that arrangement. Her job is demanding -- it gives her irregular hours additional to the regular work week she spends in her office. Sometimes she's out of the house all day and many evenings, and sometimes whole weekends. But she's hard-driving, and she enjoys it, and she enjoys the payoff.

This was convenient. I was too frightened of discovery, too embarrassed by my own desire, to dress feminine anywhere but in my own home with the shades drawn. So I did the housework dressed suitably, in a house dress, and if there were no deadlines then I could lounge through the afternoons fixing my hair to look pretty, or even pretend I was out on the town wearing my one figure-clinging evening gown. After we arrived at our truce I couldn't keep the evidence entirely away from her. A few times panties or a bra unknown to her found their way from my separate laundry into her drawers, and then I'd find them on my bureau to be stowed in my own panty drawer, no comment ever made. It was embarrassing once when we had Ben over for dinner, and Ben commented that with all my domestic talents I'd make someone a fine wife some day. I flushed, maybe too quickly, but Monica leaped in to snap "No, he won't, he's already married to me," and that was that.

Once or twice I'd forget myself, and ask her an idle question about women's styles, what do you call a high waistline, gathered under the breast and falling to a full skirt for example. She'd just bought such a dress. On such occasions she'd only reply sharply, "I told you, I'm not going to discuss such things with you. It would only encourage your sick habit." I didn't dare protest that my question was disinterested and innocent. I didn't dare say anything. It would only have seemed to her to be a deliberate extending of discussion of a forbidden topic, a flouting of our agreement. Where my transvestism was even distantly implied, she was not interested. Period. Until now.

"Then why didn't you get them pierced? Every girl does. Didn't you want to be a girl?"

Why didn't I do the nearly unthinkable, get my ears pierced and become one of the odd men who shared decorated ear lobes with most of the women on the planet? The ten thousand reasons why not flooded at me -- shame, fear of exposure, of jeopardizing my manhood, of gibes from my associates, of offending and appalling my wife when she saw the holes. Even fear of my own desires. It seemed dangerous for me to alter my body to match my fantasy desires, even in trivial ways -- who knew where that might end?

"Oh, I don't know," I replied evasively. That was too evasive, obviously, so I added, "I didn't want to offend you, I suppose, in part." Then I risked her wrath by asking her an obvious question, and thereby actually extending the discussion, our first since those hideous months before we'd agreed never ever to mention anything about it again. "Why do you ask?" I asked, delicately.

She scarcely noticed. Her turn to be evasive. "Different reasons," she said with a dismissive shrug. Then she realized that sounded too unforthcoming, too secretive, so she volunteered, "I found one of your clip earrings on the kitchen counter a few days ago, so I just wondered. It must have fallen off when you were fixing dinner, and you never noticed. It told me you're still dressing up day times. Though I didn't need to be reminded of that, of course."

I took another chance. "No?" I asked. Then waited for the storm. None came.

"Of course not. You're always leaving lipsticked kleenex in the bathroom. And often I can smell your perfume when we're in bed, when you don't shower first. Always the same perfume, Enjoli, which is fortunate for you, or I'd suspect you'd been with some other woman. But I found the bottle once, hidden in your toilet kit on the closet shelf, when you left it a little bit open and the smell had spread all over our bedroom. You're lucky I like the scent -- I even borrow a dab now and then. Then there are other things too, of course, like when you're careless about keeping our bras and slips separate, or when you kick off your heels under the bed and then forget they're there. Anyhow, when I found the earring I began wondering what kind of a woman you make. Still strange looking, I suppose, because you don't shave your legs, or fix your eyebrows, and any girl needs to attend to things like that if she means to look pretty. Or even presentable."

"Yes," I said, still too afraid to say anything else. Despite my bewilderment, I was in heaven! 'Our bras and slips' she'd said, talking about them as if we were equally feminine! Any girl, as if I was one of them. And she'd borrowed my perfume! She seemed untroubled to be talking about it. Perfectly easy in fact. And she even seemed to be implying that I should try harder to look pretty. If only I dared!

But there was more. "When I found your earring, dear -- those faux seed pearls set in silver? -- it's really lovely -- you do have good taste, I've got to grant that -- I realized it would go perfectly with my gray suit, the one with the cinched-in waist and flared peplum and short, straight skirt, you know it? You couldn't wear that suit now, but it would be quite becoming on you if you'd lose ten or fifteen pounds, I should think. Anyhow, I can't borrow your clip earrings, because my lobes are much too small for clip-ons. I'd only lose them. So I wondered why you don't have pierced ears, is all. Most women do. Then we could at least borrow each others' jewelry. We'd be like sisters."

My heart swelled to bursting! This conversation was my fondest dream! "Oh, Monica," I began ecstatically....

Then I interrupted myself, and came fully alert. I sat up, and looked at her. Why, after years of detesting my habit, or ignoring it and hoping it would go away, why was it she was now chatting with me like a girlfriend, or -- what was it she'd just said? -- like another woman, like a sister. There was something wrong here. This was my dearest fantasy come to life. I was overjoyed, and my suspicions wanted to dissolve into tears of joy. But there was still something wrong.

"Why do you ask, Monica?" I asked her again. "I mean, why now?"

My voice rose into falsetto, then cracked on the word "now" despite myself. I tried to swallow, and couldn't. I saw she was looking at me intently and that she had seen and heard my excitement, and I saw the slightest of smiles play across the corners of her mouth before she stretched her arms out and yawned, then began to settle her eyes back onto the magazine in her lap.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "But I think I should help you with things like that. You have so much to learn."

And she settled back into her reading as if fascinated by whatever had just caught her eye there, closed off to further discussion.

A revolution had just occurred, and she seemed no more concerned than if she had asked me why I had tossed parmesan into tonight's salad. She had given me the most glorious gift! Not only had she calmly accepted my dressing up, and chatted about it, she'd offered to participate! No, she'd said she felt she should participate. My throat was still choked, and I tried to wipe away the tears in my eyes without being too obvious about it. Maybe it was just that love had finally brought her to acceptance of me as I am? All of me? She knew I was a loving and caring husband, and apart from my transvestism we were well matched. Maybe it was mean and ungenerous for me to question her further.

That night we made tender, passionate love more devotedly than since the early days of our marriage, and she seemed serenely pleased as I held and caressed her, and hugged her close to me, and stroked my penis in and out of her pussy until her arms tightened on my neck and I knew she'd come. Then when we were done, and I was kissing her face gently over and over in sheer gratitude, she whispered "Yes, dear, I know how you feel." She kissed me once in return, then rolled over and instantly fell asleep.

II.

The next day she quit work early When I returned from an errand in the early afternoon I saw Monica's car in the driveway, heard noises upstairs, and went to investigate. There she was, just completing a fast shuffle through the guest-room closet where I kept my skirts, blouses, and dresses. I looked questioningly at her, but she merely looked up, appraised me at once in a single glance, and said, "No, you're no way ready. You have some nice things, dear. I'll bet I could wear some of your smaller dresses right now, and you can certainly borrow some of my loose-cut blouses and jumpers. But you do need to diet. And anyhow you can't quite pass safely yet. We'll have to do it in stages."

"What?" I asked her, again nearly incoherent. Her talk about sharing clothes, again like girlfriends or sisters, filled my heart with joy. But her reference to passing frightened me. Did she mean for me to go out on the street? To be seen?

"Darling, to do womanly things one should feel womanly, and move with a woman's self-assurance. So right now just put on a bra and panties and a short slip, and these slacks -- no one will notice there's no fly, and this over-shirt -- it's loose enough to hide your breast forms, I think. Are those sneakers unisex? Close enough for now. But no socks -- peds if you have any. Then let's go!"

"Monica, go where?" Again my voice rose with a rising hysteria, this time sounding almost flute-like.

"Why, to get your ears pierced, love. So we can share our jewelry and things. You'll love wearing some of my bangles and dangles. And you don't need to worry at all about offending me, not any more. I'm loving the idea already."

She went back to our bedroom, and I began to undress, in order to re-dress myself entirely in women's clothes, as Monica had ordered, though the outer garments were indistinguishable from men's. Nearly. In order to go out. Out into a world of men and women. In order to get my ears pierced. I felt excited and terribly apprehensive, both at the same time.

Almost at once she returned. Or so it seemed. She had changed from her businesswoman's tailored suit to a tight sweater and a mini skirt, for Monica rather sexy apparel. I could see her breasts push out and sag into the sweater's support in the most seductive curves -- could it be she wasn't wearing a brassiere? Then her nipples showed in profile, and I knew she wasn't.

"Are you going out like that, Monica?" I tried to ask casually.

But she knew what I meant. She shook her shoulders at me and her breasts bobbed up and down deliciously. "Just want you to be reminded that it takes more than a bra to make a woman, Andy love. Though that is a very pretty bra indeed, I must say. A lovely place to keep breasts when you've got 'em."

I blushed, embarrassed.

"Just remember, it's what's inside that counts the most, pet. For now, just put in your breast forms and hurry. Have you been admiring yourself in the mirror again? What's keeping you? I've changed completely and you're still only halfway there."

I hurried into my slacks, sockless shoes, and oversized T-shirt, and as she predicted, looked merely unisex. I felt a little uneasy about the pants, which were form fit along my calf and snug on my ankles, and made a tight V at my crotch, neatly dividing my balls as if they were labia. But the T-Shirt covered the crotch, with its smooth frontage, so I slipped into my sneakers and declared, "Ready."

"Well, not quite," said Monica. She hauled out a lipstick and began dabbing at my mouth.

I could feel a waxy substance slipping onto my lips and coating them, and was shocked. "Monica!" I cried aghast. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, stop worrying, baby," she said, "You know perfectly well what I'm doing. It's pale pink, nearly invisible. Did you think I want to appear in public with a man who wears lipstick? You know better than that! No, you won't get to wear proper lipstick until it becomes you as a woman. Sooner than you might think. But with this, you can feel you're wearing lipstick, and get used to how it feels. Never leave the house without it. I'm sure you already feel much more womanly because of it, don't you?"

I did.

"All right, we're going to be out for some time. Visit the bathroom, would you honey? And sit down when you do it, just for practice -- you'll need to pull down those pants and your panties anyhow. Then let's go! I'll wait for you in the kitchen."

In the kitchen she handed me a small whisky on rocks. She was just finishing hers. "Here, dear. You seem nervous -- this'll calm you down." She went away while I sipped and swallowed. The whisky tasted like cheap stuff, but she'd put away the bottle so I couldn't see the brand. I prefer vodka. She returned. "Ready?"

And she swept us both out the door and into her car. "Just sit there, now, dear. I'll drive."

She did, to a rather nondescript part of town where she parked in front of a beauty parlor.

"I'm not going in there," I said, now genuinely frightened. It was one thing to be an imitation woman in privacy, and enjoy the illusion. But this was authentic woman territory, and I was not one of them. To go in there, I thought superstitiously, might make me more of one of them than I wanted. It seemed terribly risky.

"Oh, Andrew, don't be silly. Do you want your ears pierced by some teenager at the earring bazaar in the middle of the mall, in full view of everyone passing by? Or here, privately, by a professional?"

"You're right," I replied morosely. "But Monica, I haven't yet worked out how I'm going to explain pierced ears to clients and people like that. Shouldn't we think these things through a little more?"

"Andrea," she replied. "That's what I'll call you from now on, because that's who you enjoy being, and have always enjoyed being. I suppose ever since you were a little girl raised up to be a boy. Isn't that so? You told me all about that a few years ago, and I've read a lot about it since. Now Andrea, stop being nervous. You've thought about this all your life, haven't you? Now it's time to live your fantasy, and become the woman of your dreams."

"Monica," I replied. "I never said I thought I was a little girl. I said I was a little boy who liked to imagine he was a little girl, and sneaked his mothers' panties now and then to help with the imagining. That's all. There's a difference."

"Andrea, please, let's not quibble. I saw you dressed up to look like a woman, and I've been through your wardrobe. You love being Andrea. Your need to be Andrea almost cost us our marriage a while ago. All I'm saying is, you should be the best Andrea you can be. The prettiest. That's what we're here for."

"What is it we're here for?" I asked, now genuinely apprehensive. To play by myself was one thing, and to play with my wife in the privacy of our own home was so much more. But Monica sounded serious. And this salon was serious woman space, not a mirror in my bedroom.

"Oh, pooh! Look here. If you want to be Andrew now and then, you can always brush your hair longer to cover your ears, or wear just one earring the way most men do, or if you must, remove them both temporarily. But if you want to be sincere, truly yourself, wear whatever earrings you enjoy and show them to the world. I've got some wonderful chandeliers and cascades you'll love, for going out formal. Now, we're going in!"

A large, somewhat well-curved woman walked smiling toward us past three or four chairs, each with neatly arranged rollers, curlers, and hair driers in little pastel plastic bins. The walls were lined with mirrors. There were plastic bottles and sprayers everywhere, marked with elaborate French names in impossible scripts. "Monica!" the woman said. "How lovely to see you again. And you must be Andrea! I'm Joellen! Yes, Monica is right, you have wonderful possibilities. Just sit right here. You can see, Monica, I've cleared my appointments until closing time just as you asked." I was relieved, a bit. The place looked empty.

As I sat down where she indicated, she and Monica went over to a table with different boxes and bottles on it. Joellen showed her some, and they began looking through some picture books, talking animatedly in low voices, nodding frequently. After a moment they stopped, and both of them looked at me and smiled. "Look here," I said, "I'm here to get my ears pierced, because that's what I once thought I wanted, and because Monica sees advantages, and I can't deny there are some advantages." I didn't want to confess to a stranger that the thought of wearing Monica's earrings really turned me on, and had carried me here despite my apprehension. "But what do you mean, I have 'possibilities'? Just the ears are daring enough for me right now."

"Oh, Andrea, that's what we're talking about," said Joellen. "You'll also need a hairdo that can cover your ears when you want to hide them, isn't that true? And show them off when you're wearing something especially pretty. So I need to cut and set your hair. It's nice you've let it grow out, it gives me something to work with. I think enough. Enough after your perm, anyhow."

"What perm??!!" I shouted, and started to get out of the chair.

Monica came around and stared directly at me. "Andrea, behave! I told you this would have to be done in stages. If I'm going to be continue to be married to a man who likes looking like a woman, he will have to look like a presentable woman. And that's that! I think you get my meaning!"

I did. I quieted down.

"I tried ignoring you and pretending you were the man I thought I married. It didn't work. Not for long, anyhow. Now you're going to be the woman I also married, and I want you to be an even better woman than you've been a man. But in stages, so you can get used to things, and learn them. Understood?"

Not really, but I didn't dare do anything other than nod my head.

"My dear," Joellen added in a quieter voice, gently. "I thought you knew. A perm makes hair much more manageable. Then you can set it any way you want. Swept back like a man's might even look cute, with your face. All right?"

What could I say? I nodded to her too.

Three demoralized hours later, Joellen whisked the last of her pink cover-sheets from around my neck and said "There! Now that's just lovely! Nothing freakish about you at all! I think you can go anywhere you wish, and Monica will be proud to accompany you."

Monica was herself sitting in another chair at the far end of the salon, reading a magazine and glancing at my progress now and then. She looked up and studied me, then nodded. "Yes, wonderful! That's perfect, Joellen. Really lovely. Thank you. Andrea, I think we'll move the schedule ahead and go to the next stage tonight. You need more self-confidence. Looking the way you do, I think you'll finish tonight feeling pleased with yourself. Just look!"

I looked. Oh, my ears were pierced all right, and there were little gold posts poked through the holes until the skin could heal over. For the rest of my life there would be little pieces of metal on my ears, I realized, or else little tell-tale dimples. The thought should have been depressing, but to my surprise I didn't much mind. Not at all.

Moreover, my hair was cut and curled up and back, into cute waves softly framing my face. Oddly, now that it was curved and waved and shaped it looked shorter -- it occupied more space around my head, but my neck was now visible. And Joellen was right, if I wanted to hide my ears it was now a simple matter to comb some of the side curls back over them. I could even do it with my fingertips, fluff out my hair a little the way she showed me. Not too bad. Of course I'll have to try to brush it straight back when I get home, I thought, so it looks less...well...feminine. I'd wondered how women got that "big" hair look. Gels, sprays, and a body perm underneath it all, Joellen had told me. I supposed that gels and sprays could also return some semblance of a manly look.

More troublesome were my eyebrows. They were plucked thin and high and arch, giving my face a refined and delicate cast. Neat, well-groomed, but definitely not a man's brows. I would have no trouble passing as a woman with that hairdo and those eyebrows. The problem would come when I tried to pass as a man. With my face as it is, I would look like a girl wearing a suit and jacket, I thought. I'd always had a "weak" chin, implying a lack of manly determination But now it just looked small. Cute. Just right. Maybe I should grow a beard, I thought? But no. I've never had much facial hair, and a beard would ruin the effect when I was dressing in private anyhow. But even this thought didn't depress me. All this was what I had wanted, more or less. And it was certainly what Monica wanted.

"Monica," I said a little helplessly.

"A little eye-makeup, Joellen?" Monica said to her. "Just a touch. I think we'll celebrate Andrea's new face by going out to dinner. A casual dinner, we're not really dressed for anything fancy. But we don't want anyone to think she isn't who she is, now, do we."

This last was for my benefit, reminding me I had better act as ladylike as I could, or else suffer the embarrassment I dreaded. I also registered that it was the first time Monica had ever called me "she". It seemed so casual and natural as she said it. Joellen made a few quick strokes on my eyelids, and while she was at it she added a few strokes of dark red lipstick too. "There!" she said. "Just lovely!"

I looked in the mirror, and couldn't disagree.

"Come on, dear," Monica said, picking up her purse. "I know you love to admire yourself in the mirror. But if you're going to be a real woman you'll have to learn to use mirrors just to be sure you look the way you wish, and let other people do the admiring."

As we left the shop I protested, "Monica, this is too fast. I'm not going to be a real woman. Where did you get that notion?"

"Why, from you, dear. Isn't that what you've been dreaming in secret, dressing up all those years? But now that you're on the sidewalk looking like a woman, remember that people can see you. Stand straight and hold your head high, and push out your breasts. Young girls can slouch, but not women. You have a lot yet to learn. You need to do more than look like a woman. You have to behave like a woman, and move like one, and feel yourself to be a woman in your heart. Or you'll fool no one."

"Monica, after all these years, why all of a sudden are you encouraging me? I don't understand."

"You will, dear. Before too much longer. Meanwhile, why don't you count your blessings?"

III.

Our dinner was uneventful, and even pleasant. No, it was better than that. It turned out to be delightful, because despite all of my fears about the way I looked, nothing happened. The "first time" experiences accumulated so fast I didn't even notice many of them after a while, and Monica had to remind me about them.

Monica drove to a modest-priced Italian restaurant, and when I saw it was crowded I protested. "No, that's what we want, dear, for you to be out among lots of people who are paying no attention to you, so you can begin to get used to it. Just remember we're ordinary girls out for dinner and a movie, or something, and don't give it another thought. Of course if you're still nervous about the way you look, you're in pants, so you can believe you still look like a man. But no one else will. Joellen did a fine job with you. Wait and see."

As she got out of the car she looked at me again. "Small steps, dear, and for the present, one foot in front of the other, so you sway your hips just a bit. I think heels might help. No more flats or sneakers for the time being. And you'll need to carry a purse from now on when we're out together. For now no one will notice."

The Maitre D' came over. "A party of two, or are you expecting others to join you?" Others?! The thought flashed across my mind that this whole dinner might be another setup. A terrified pang pierced my vitals! "Monica!" I whispered, not trusting my voice, pleading.

"No, just the two of us tonight," she told the Maitre D'." Then to me, seeing my face, she said. "Don't worry, dear. I have other plans altogether."

"It will be perhaps ten minutes before I can seat you, ladies. Would you like to wait in the bar?"

I followed her in and sat down on an adjoining bar stool. "Oh, my, Andrea, you need to practice everything," she said. "A lady does not climb on a bar stool one haunch at a time. She steps up on the rail, braces with both hands on the edge of the bar, and then settles down onto the stool with her legs together. Like a lady." The bartender came over. "I'll have a vodka on rocks," she said. Then she looked at me and waited. I was on my own.

"A doub...." My voice was much too high. I lowered it a little, and decided to try gentle and breathy too. "A double vodka on the rocks, please." The bartender turned away.

"Not bad, dear," my wife said, amused. "A little like Jackie Kennedy, but not at all bad. There are worse models. Now, see how many firsts already? You've been called a lady, you're out and passing with over fifty people paying no attention to you, you've learned to sit down at a bar, which can be an essential skill in the months ahead, and you've used a woman's voice to get what you want. Do you think you'll be all right using the ladies' room by yourself later, or will you want me to come with you? Try the men's room now, and you'd cause a riot. Maybe even get raped. Wouldn't that be a first? From now on, dear, you have to think about such things." The bartender set down our glasses, and she went on. "Look at that! My but they're generous here. And yours is a double? Well, I suppose those tranquilizers I gave you back at the house have worn off by now, so I suppose it's all right."

"You gave me tranquilizers? Is that why I haven't been scared to death of everything you've been doing to me?" I remembered only at the last second to tone down my voice.

"Of course, dear. Do you mind, now that it's done? I'd never have gotten you out of the house and into a beautician's chair without them. You know that. And now look at us. Two girls out together. Your dream come true. Isn't it?"

"Yes," I had to confess. My voice was a little husky. "Thank you, dear. But you've never answered my question, why are you being so nice to me now, after years of hating..." I hesitated, and finished lamely, "of not wanting to know about...everything like this."

The Maitre d' called out "Jackson, party of two," and Monica said, "That's us. Or strictly speaking, that's you, Andrea. Andrea Jackson, isn't that sweet? Easy to remember, too. I'll keep my married name of course, and Andrew will too whenever he needs a name, but Andrea needed a new name. Do you like it? It's her maiden name. She's not married." She was teasing me again, and I didn't know what to reply.

As we were shown to the table and the Maitre held out my chair for me, I slipped in as daintily as I could, and smiled at him, and sat down. "But why," I asked again. "Why now?"

"Quite simply, because I realized not long ago that a husband who wants to feel like a woman is what I want. It's what I need. I want you to be look and feel the way you are right now all the time. Even more so. Much more so. Like I said, I have plans. For both of us."

Her voice had lost all of its teasing banter. She was quite serious, and as she turned to look directly at me and continued she sounded even more serious.

"Andrea, do you love me?" she asked soberly.

"You know I do."

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes, of course."

"Not 'of course.' I mean really."

I hesitated, and decided to jump off the cliff.

"Yes," I said. "I trust you." I meant it. Unequivocally.

"Good," she said, and she smiled so happily it nearly broke my heart to see it, she looked so beautiful. "Then trust me. You won't regret it. I promise. And we may yet grow old and feebleminded together."

"Monica, is this something serious?"

"Not any more, sweetheart. Shall we order, and then visit the ladies' together?"

"I'd like that," I said.

The final "first time" of the night was, when we got home, Monica asked me to fix my makeup, slip into a short, frilly nightie, and make love to her like a woman. Previously she'd shown no desire in oral sex, and after a while I'd quit trying to interest her. Our sex lives together were fine, I thought. We usually fucked gently and devotedly, one atop the other according to mood, or alongside, and she kissed my mouth, and I kissed her mouth and suckled on her nipples, and we both came, beautifully, usually together. And that was it. It was wonderful. I loved it, and thought she did too. We had no need for contraceptives or worries about pregnancy, because Monica had no patience with children and wanted none, I had no special feelings either way at the time, and we had both agreed as a condition of our marrying that I should get a vasectomy. As I did. Our sex was always pleasant, generous, and without anxiety.

But this time as I kissed the tips of her tits she wrapped her arms around my head and cried out, "Oh!" so passionately, and then "Oh!" again and again, that I almost came on her belly. I'm sure she orgasmed as I nursed her, and she clasped my head tightly to her soft, swelling breasts, first one, then the other, then the first again. "They're so very sensitive!" she said. Then she said, "Let me!" and began to suckle on my teats, small as they were. Gradually a strange and exotic feeling seemed to emanate >from her mouth into my breasts, and she reached down to pull gently on my penis while she nursed on me. The feeling grew stronger, and became my whole body's, and as she sucked and pulled and licked I finally came too, in one single grand unclenching, as if all of me was a single throbbing organ.

"Now turn, and lick it up, and lick me, my darling," she whispered into my ear. "I want to kiss your clit."

An exceptional request, but I was enraptured, and turned and began licking my cum from where it had spread like syrup into her navel and all over her swelling, smooth, white belly. Slowly I worked down to her crotch. As my tongue found her clit and my nose began fucking her slit, I felt my limp penis enter her mouth, all warm and wet and delicious, and I felt her tongue working over it, and her lips wrapped around it at the base, pumping, until half-hard, I came again. She swallowed my juice with little squeals as her hips bucked into my face and she came yet again too. Afterward we slept wrapped up snug in each other, a sweet tension spreading through me each time she moved against me.

That was how we made love from then on. It was like falling in love all over again. The next morning she asked me to shave and use a depillatory, and I was delighted to oblige. Then she looked so sadly disappointed when I dressed in jeans and a shirt to take some papers to the office that I faxed them in, then changed to a skirt and blouse, and as she requested, two-inch heels. Then between short sweet kisses, my lipsticked mouth on hers, she told me I felt wonderful wrapped around her, but she'd like me to use some softening lotions on my hands, and she'd love for me to begin a regimen of shots and pills to make my skin just a little smoother and my body softer, more rounded. I could deny her nothing, so that very morning she sent me to a special doctor who told me that many women and some men prefer their bodies that way. I was wearing a skirt and light makeup, as Monica put it, "so we can play on the street with our little secret." I felt awkward, a little silly, but the doctor didn't seem to notice or mind. The first shots she gave me induced a kind of euphoria, and when I commented on it to the nurse she said, "Yes, the doctor puts in just a little extra so her women patients will enjoy their new selves all the more. And to overcome possible nausea or tummy aches from intensive treatments like yours. Don't forget to take your pills every day."

Each night we made love the way women do with each other. As a few weeks passed my skin became smoother, and soon my nipples became hard and pointy, sticking out from my chest, so deliciously sensitive that I felt complete only when Monica's lips were wrapped around them and pulsing gently. Then it was ecstasy! She kept my penis so drained and softened that I couldn't have entered her even if she'd wished it. But I'd almost forgotten that I ever had wanted to.

She went in to work daily, as before, seeing clients and selling real estate, and sitting in her office plotting how to see and sell even more. As ever I did all the housework and prepared all the meals, and faxed in my contracts and figures whenever I was asked for them. But now I dressed like a woman full time. She was always disappointed when she came home and found me dressed like a husband and not a wife, so I gave up on being her husband. I dieted down to where I could wear some of her prettiest clothes, denied only her tight, snug outfits, and we acquired some of my own for me on several afternoons spent shopping at the mall. That was a lovely time, giggling together like schoolgirls. She'd comment how the boys would love to see me wearing this rather daring outfit, or that one, and we'd laugh and hug each other. She asked me to point out fellas I thought looked especially cute, and if she agreed with me we'd speculate how this one was hung, or how long that one would last inside one of us, and then giggle really wickedly.

In fact, Monica seemed to feel sorry for me that I'd had no girlhood of my own, and she talked to me all the time about hers, and about some of her friends'. Everything from how it felt to shop with her mother for her first training bra to games played with dolls, to gossip about boys and dates, and curiosity about sex, and first crushes on guys. Then in detail that made me uneasy at first, about her various experiences with men, cock sucking and seducing them and getting laid, crudely or romantically, depending upon time, place, and the man she was with. Like one intimate girlfriend to another, she'd talk to me about her experiences and feelings making love with different college boys, or with various business associates before she'd met me. She'd talk about how cocks feel in a girl's mouth or pussy, even while we were making love ourselves. She told me how she had once taken a man into her rear end, when he had insisted on it, and found it wasn't too bad. "It felt all snug and comfy," she said. "And that night I swallowed his cum at both ends."

Sometimes she'd forget herself altogether, and say things like, "You know how it is, when you run your lips up and down a huge cock trying to bring a guy off, and his precum keeps dribbling onto your tongue and tasting sweetly salty, but your jaw aches and you wish he'd headfuck you and get it over with?" It was as if she were back in college dating, and I was her room mate. Or, "I remember the first fully erected prick I saw -- a huge turkey neck it looked like, but that royal purple head felt so satiny smooth on my lips when I kissed it that I didn't care. Was your first one like that?" Or, "Oh, Andrea, have you ever had a really glorious, delirious fuck, felt filled so completely that the least movement was rapture for you, and each time he pulled out became a hunger for him to plunge himself into you again?" Monica seemed to forget that I wasn't a woman, and when I reminded her that I could only imagine such things, she'd cover me with kisses as if trying to make up to me for my deficient girlhood. She really wanted to believe I was her best girlfriend, and to share everything with me!

Increasingly my pleasure while making love to her, as we kissed and licked and lapped and sucked and caressed each other, as women do, blended with her pleasure remembering different men in her past. I didn't mind -- I wanted to share everything I felt with my new sweetheart too. I once asked her if she'd ever had sex with a lesbian, and she said "Before we were married, yes. But since then, only with you, my darling. I do hope to straighten you out soon, though, so you can also enjoy men too the way I do." Had she so completely imagined me to be a woman that she had momentarily forgotten that her wife was a man. Or was it the other way around? It was confusing, but either way it was flattering, and rather dear.

Our jewelry, earrings, and accessories we decreed held in common, and we were each delighted when we saw that one was wearing what had been the other's. Sometimes we went to small, intimate restaurants like two old girlfriends, or to movies. When for some reason Andrew had to replace Andrea to visit and deal with officialdom downtown, or go to the office, I couldn't wait to get back home and be myself again. They were months of pure bliss.

IV.

One morning while we were dressing, Monica for the office and me to do some shopping for dinner that night, Monica said to me, "Oh, never mind that. We've been invited out."

It took a moment for that casual remark to sink in and astonish me. "What?" I said "By who? How?"

"Oh, don't look so shocked! It's nothing! I told two of the girls we deal with at the office about you, that you're pretty much house bound these days, and they asked me to bring you over for dinner to help clear the cobwebs out of your mind. It's nice to meet other people now and then. That's all!"

"That's all? Do you mean meet them as Andrew or as Andrea?"

"Of course as Andrea, silly. I'm proud of you, and want to show you off. You've come such a long way. Though your hair could use a touch up. Don't worry. Run over to Joellen's this afternoon and tell her to do her magic, and I'll pick you up at six. I think your green silk taffeta would be fine." She paused to appraise me. "Ask her to lighten your hair just a touch, and to do your nails. You're a lovely woman now, Andrea, and you have nothing to hide. Time to move on."

I took that to mean she had to leave now, so the discussion was over, so I asked hastily, "Wait a minute. Are these...er...girls married? Will they have dates? Will there be men at this dinner?" For some reason I felt ashamed to be seen by men who knew I was a man. I'd sacrificed all of my manliness, willingly, but they might be offended or amused by it, and think me ridiculous.

"You are a shy one, aren't you, love. 'No' to the first question and 'Maybe' to the second. Denise and Tinka are lesbians who have lived together for years and are a respectable couple, like us. Denise is pregnant, and they're both looking forward to having the baby. Then a boy friend may show -- she wasn't sure. A friend who's a boy, named Eric. He's the baby's father. But there's no problem between them about it, because he's gay. He wouldn't even screw her once, not even to please a dear friend, so they had to use a gravy baster to deal with his donation. An ideal stud, because all he wants from them ever is conversation. I've met him. He's no way effeminate, just not attracted to women. They're nice people. You'll enjoy them. And they're really looking forward to meeting you! Tell Joellen I'd love to see you in bangs, I think you'd look just darling. Ta ta!"

And she was gone.

I scheduled my session with Joellen for the early afternoon, right after my weekly shot, and I felt so good when I waltzed in that I didn't notice at first that Joellen had four other customers having things done to them, and two other operators combing, teasing, polishing, doing what needed doing. The place was packed! Joellen saw me and came over saying, "There you are, Andrea dear, just sit right here and we'll get right to you. My you look lovely! Your skin seems so much smoother today. Are you doing anything for it?"

"Monica thought I'd feel better if I took some shots," I said with a nervous little laugh. "And I must say, I certainly do!"

"I'll bet!" said Joellen. "Well, let's lighten you and tidy you up for tonight. Monica called and told me what she wants. I agree with her about having bangs, now that your hair's a bit longer. You'll look adorable. But now that you're really into it, this time we go the distance. Nails, facial, waxing, everything. Monica tells me you're never going back. Welcome to the world of women, honey! You'll love it! We should probably talk about some permanent changes to your face, but that can come later."

I'd never told Monica I was never going back, I thought to myself. We'd never discussed it. Did I want to be a woman for good? Well, right now I just loved being a woman with my wife, and that was good enough for me for now. When I left Joellen, there was a spring in my step, and my nails were long and red, and my face felt so perfect it might have been lacquered on. I spent the rest of the afternoon dressing, and practicing my postures and gestures, walking daintily, staying loose-wristed, talking all up and down the scale instead of in a male monotone, things like that. I felt very good about my upcoming coming-out dinner party, and felt like celebrating something. When Monica arrived home to change she was pleased to hear me humming and singing in the kitchen in my sweetest falsetto, no longer nervous. She suggested we have a drink before we left, because the girls were likely to serve only wine. But on top of whatever the doctor gave me I was already two drinks ahead of her, feeling no pain at all.

I remember the first part of the evening well enough, but very little of the rest of it, and nothing at all about how I got home and into bed. In fact the next morning when I woke up, Monica was already half-way out the door to work, with time for only a few amused, cryptic remarks, something about how some girls can't wait to make up for lost time, and how I'd certainly never need a gravy baster. Then as I stepped into the shower I noticed that my rear end was crusty with something or other. But I didn't realize what until later that morning when I was rinsing some of our lingerie. Monica's panties were only lightly soiled, with that heavy, musky aroma I was learning to love dearly, I spent so much time with my nose in her crotch. Mine were stiff with a clear dried fluid in front, which I recognized as my post-vasectomy cum. I wondered how it got there. But the seat of my prettiest panties, the ones I'd worn last night, was stiff with dried, thick stains and streaks, gobbets of them, and I realized it was someone else's heavily laden sperm. What had happened? What had I done?! I spent the day agonized, fearful I had thrown away my new precious relationship with my beloved wife, worried I might have done some perverse thing to disgust her, that now she would leave me.

So when Monica got home I met her at the door with a Martini, and with many kisses and flourishes I fed her the most elaborate meal I knew how to cook. She seemed untroubled. But she'd also seemed untroubled the first day after she'd caught me wearing a dress, that time we nearly broke up over it. That's how she was until she'd calculated how to deal with a problem.

Over dessert I asked her, as casually as I could, what I had done at Denise and her lesbian friend's house.

"You really don't remember any of it?" she asked me, her eyebrows raised. "Not at all?"

"The early part," I replied. "The delicious dinner with Denise and Tinka, I think that was her name. She's a wonderful cook. Four kinds of wine, and she kept refilling my glass I'm afraid. Denise looked huge, almost ready to deliver, but still very beautiful, glowing, and Tinka was looking forward to taking care of the baby when Denise goes back to work and returns to a heavy schedule of out-of-town selling trips. But can that be right?"

"That's right. When the baby's born Tinka will take over. That's how they mean to share the child-rearing. Tinka will do it all. She's the homebody, loves cooking and keeping house, and so on. Denise isn't."

"Now how is it I already know that?"

"You went upstairs with Tinka to look at her recipe files, and promised to send her some of your own. You took a long while at it. She told us you got to talking with her about breast feeding as against bottles. One thing led to another, and you started sampling the alternatives, apparently. Then fell asleep. She said that you looked and felt so sweet at her breast that she hated to take her nipple out of your mouth and wake you."

Monica then grinned broadly. "Don't look so agonized, sweetheart. I didn't mind. It's a normal instinct. I love nursing on your breasts too, such as they are, as you know. And you on mine."

"Yes."

"Anyhow, when you were safely downstairs again and had fixed your face, both women marveled at the way you look now, how convincing a woman you've become. So they decided to put you to the test."

"What test?" I was afraid I was getting closer to solving a mystery I didn't really want to solve.

Monica let out a rich laugh, and gestured to her coffee cup. I hastened to refill it. "Why my dear, dear Andrea, you really don't remember?" She scrutinized me closely. "No, you don't, do you! What a shame! Every girl remembers her first, but it seems you don't, so now you'll have to have your first all over again. In a way that means you're still a virgin!"

"Monica, please!" I couldn't tell if she sounded sympathetic or mocking. "What did I do? Did I do anything wrong? Will you forgive me?"

"Come to the couch, and we'll cuddle, and I'll tell you everything, love."

Like a guilty puppy hoping for forgiveness, I followed her into the living room. She lay down on the couch with her head on the arm rest, and I lay down alongside her, tears now running down my face.

"You need to use waterproof mascara, darling, if you mean to be so emotional in the future. And I can tell you're wearing Enjoli for me tonight. That was very considerate."

"Monica, whatever I did, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I don't want to lose you! Tell me you still love me!"

"Of course I do, pet. And there's nothing to be sorry about. It was everything I'd hoped for for you. Except that now you're going to have to do it again, so you'll have memories of it to carry into your old age."

She waited until I stopped sobbing into her shoulder, then continued. "Denise decided that Eric could provide an ultimate test of just how feminine you'd become. You remember Denise's sperm donor? Eric? No? Not even his face? Well, Eric must be the world's strictest homosexual, who loves boys and men of all kinds, and women of no kind. Who won't ever let a woman touch him for any reason? Well, when you came back downstairs again Eric had just arrived, expecting to meet my roommate, the woman I've been living with lately so far as he knew. Tinka described what you'd just been doing, how lovingly you'd been suckling at her breast, and Denise wondered aloud if you would suckle on a prick just as lovingly."

"I was trying to stay neutral, so I just said I didn't know. But Eric knew from the moment you walked back into the room that you were not born female, and he seized the opportunity. 'Here, Andrea darling, suckle this,' he said to you without a second's hesitation, and he pulled out, well, I must say, a monster prick. My dear, you may not have a woman's chromosomes, but you certainly have a woman's instincts and desires. Without a second's hesitation you dropped to your knees between his knees and kissed the tip. Then you felt his crown all around with the insides of your lips, running your tongue all around that silky smoothness I've talked about now and then. Then you licked and sucked Eric's whole shaft so lovingly and passionately that we each of us wished we were men, while we watched, so you could do us too. It was the finest blow job I've witnessed, with far more intensity and finesse than I've ever been able to bring to the job. But as you know, I've never been much interested in oral sex. Until recently."

"Then when Eric reached his climax, you swallowed him up without a slurp. It seemed as if he were pumping gallons down your throat, and you swallowed it all, as if grateful for it and hoping for more. I got so wet watching you that I would have leaped on Eric myself, if he'd have let me. He'd never, of course.

"Then after the shortest possible recovery, less than five minutes, while you were still licking his cock clean, he gently turned you around and laid you belly down across Denise's hassock, and lifted your dress and pulled down your panties, and with your own saliva still drenching his cock, he entered you from the rear. You gave such a delicious groan as he went in. I was so happy for you. And you groaned again as he pulled out and then re-entered you, and then again, faster and faster as he fucked you, until you reached a crescendo and your groans had become pulsating shrieks as he came, and you came, simultaneously. No girl ever lost her cherry more gloriously! And you don't remember any of it? What a terrible pity!"

"So darling, in a way you passed the test wonderfully. Your behavior with Eric was immediately, instinctively a woman's. But you failed the test too, because he immediately took you to be a drag queen or transsexual woman, not a genetic woman, and immediately got the hots for you. We argued whether that in itself was relevant evidence of your true femininity, but Eric said he feels the same way about Sylvester Stallone, so we decided that it couldn't count."

"Then Tinka proposed a tie breaker, and it was so effortless that I'll remember it all the days of my life. She was helping you adjust your panties again, and we were wondering whether you needed a tampon or maxipad to get you home, there was so much of Eric's cum flowing out of you, when suddenly she lifted your dress all the way over your head, and lowered your slip off your shoulders, and took off your bra, and sat you down on the floor and sat down alongside you, and took you by the shoulders and began to suckle on you. You know, your little titties really aren't much more than pointy nipples yet, but there's enough there to fill someone's mouth, and Tinka began nursing. Denise joked "Tit for tat," but then we fell silent, because something so beautiful happened. Obviously you were going on instinct alone. Your mind wasn't really there, hadn't been for some time. But your arms came up as if by a miracle, and you ever so gently, so lovingly cradled her head in your arms, and pressed her face to your breast, and held her, and rocked her ever so slightly. Tears came to everyone's eyes. Even Eric's. I suppose no one can be unmoved by the sight of a mother gently nourishing her infant. That's what you seemed to be doing with Tinka."

"Darling, everyone agrees you have true womanly instincts, that you are absolutely convincing, absolutely persuasive. And now think of it! You've also had sex with a man, and enjoyed it. You know what it's like. Now if you want to flirt with a guy and then feel an urge to go the distance, you can, like any other woman. I don't mind, as long as it's with a man, as long as I'm the only real woman in your life. You're the only woman in mine. Please, dear. Take me to you right now. I want to pleasure you. I do love you."

What could I say? What could I do? I lowered my blouse, and unhooked my bra, and nursed my darling first on one of my pouting nipples, then the other, while the most delicious feelings arose as her mouth pulsed on me. I looked down on her dark, curved hair, and I have never felt so tender, so utterly warm and joyous. I whispered my affection and she kissed me, and I kissed her. And then we went to bed and made love as only women can.

V.

A month or so later we were still at it. I had forgotten what it was like to wear men's clothes, and Monica seemed to be so utterly enraptured by my femininity that I couldn't think of displaying anything else to her. True, I had been unfaithful to her when I had made love to Eric, and Eric had made love to me. But somehow that didn't seem to be a violation of my marriage vows. It wasn't with another woman but with a man, a gay man, and I wasn't even aware of it, at least afterward. So Monica thought what the other women thought, that it was merely evidence I had become one of them, except for the technicality that had made it possible for me to relate to Eric. She only regretted that it hadn't happened years earlier, when I was still a teenage girl, so I could have weaved romantic dreams around my memory of it. She only regretted that I had no memory of it at all.

I was still doing cost estimates on various projects and faxing in the results, and still earning a good income, but no one in the office had seen me for many weeks, and I was thinking of quitting and just setting up full time as a homemaker for the two of us. It was what I much preferred doing. And keeping myself pretty for Monica took time.

Monica encouraged me. She was working very hard, many days and evenings spent out with clients showing them real estate. But that was what she loved to do, so it never seemed taxing to her. She was herself her firm's top salesman, and we were banking most of her high commissions on each sale, because we didn't need them to live on. Financially we were set. As she pointed out, the difference between more money than you need and a lot more money than you need is no difference at all. We had no children, and no plans for children, nor any possibility of having them, so it was pointless for us to save for their futures. We lived in our own present. I had begun faxing recipes back and forth with Tinka, and I longed to have more time to try out more of them. We neither of us again referred to the incidents of that night when my mouth and my rear end lost their virginity -- that too was in the past.

At least we never again referred to that night until the week I finally quit my job. We both were looking for some way to celebrate my elevation to homemaker full-time, when coincidentally Monica learned she had won a quarterly sales competition run by her firm. The prize was a long weekend free in the most luxurious resort hotel in the state, complete with a suitable new wardrobe, for ourselves and also for any other couple we chose to bring along for company. We selected Denise and Tinka, the only other couple we'd seen since that lovely evening some months back when Monica had changed her mind and heart about my cross-dressing, and had led me into the womanliness I now loved, and she apparently loved too.

Then we all had a fine time selecting new lingerie, dresses, skirts, blouses, shoes, accessories, makeup, everything a woman needs to be stylish and beautiful and playful at a resort. Denise reserved her credits against the day her figure would return to some semblance of acceptable, and Tinka's new wardrobe stressed nursing bras and front-buttoning blouses. But once again, Monica and I were like schoolgirls vying with each other to purchase the most tasteful yet sexy outfits we could find, giggling together the whole time. It was such fun!

The night before we were due to leave, Denise had a false labor scare, the first of several as it turned out. So Denise and Tinka didn't dare come with us. We decided to hold the two double reserved rooms by renaming the occupants Mr. and Mrs. Sloan, my married name with Monica, and Ms Jackson, my "maiden" name. We hoped Denise and Tinka would change their minds, but if not, maybe we'd find some other use for a separate room. "Maybe you'll get lucky, and you won't want me around," Monica said. I kissed her reassuringly.

Apparently, something else did occur to Monica. As we approached the hotel desk she whispered to me "Just follow my lead, and go along with whatever I say."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Never mind," Monica replied. "You trust me, don't you? Remember?"

"Yes," I said. "Absolutely!"

"Then act sexy. Feel sexy. Swish your hips. See if you can distract the registration clerk. Since you're here as a girl, start enjoying the fun parts of it."

I tried, but the main person distracted was me, because I never noticed that Monica was registering us into two separate rooms, until the clerk announced, "There we are. 407 Mrs. Sloan, and 409 Ms. Jackson, adjoining rooms with a door that can be locked on either side. Will your husband be joining you later today, Mrs. Sloan?"

I was taken aback, but Monica seemed to be expecting the question. "I don't know when if ever, " she said to the clerk. "But just a moment."

Then she turned to me, and looked me straight in the eye, and said, "Andrea dear, what do you think? Think carefully now. Will my husband be here this week end, as far as you know?"

A strange question. I wish I'd understood what she really meant, because I answered after only a moment, "No, I don't think so, Monica. I think this is supposed to be a girls' weekend."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Why do you ask?"

She ignored my question. "Then it's settled, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so, Monica." I was absolutely baffled.

"Good," Monica said. "Then we can enjoy ourselves any way we want. This weekend is for fun."

And turning back to the clerk, she answered, astonishingly, "Yes, my husband will be here around six, in plenty of time for dinner -- just send him up when he arrives. Mrs. Jackson doesn't have a husband, but we'll make arrangements I'm sure." She smiled at the clerk, who smiled at me. Confused, but playing along, I smiled back.

When we got up to our room I started to unpack, and Monica stopped me. "No, Ms. Jackson's room is right there, " she said. "Through that door there. You heard me, that I'm expecting a gentleman. So if you don't mind, dear, why don't you go in there and change to a bathing suit? This hotel has a famous hot spring pool we'll want to try. And it may be that a girl in a high-cut bathing suit like that one you've brought can make her own arrangements. We'll leave the door open for now. But you might want to close it before this weekend ends. You never know."

I was beginning to understand, and I didn't like what I understood. Monica had a date for the weekend, and had made me promise that there would be no jealous husbands spoiling the fun, just two girls who like to see each other enjoy themselves. I was feeling a little depressed when Monica came in wearing an absolutely smashing yellow flowered bikini with a gauzy top. Reflexively I started to get an erection, even though Monica and I had been making love only "like women do," for the past three months, and I hadn't inserted my penis into her the whole time. Luckily I had already pulled up the bottom half of my one-piece, so my prick was hidden, and Monica didn't have to deal with an irrelevant hard on. I was trying to fit my breasts into the bathing suit's cups when Monica broke into my meditation on my strange sexual half-life.

"Oooh, look!" she said. "You really have a figure! They are coming along beautifully! I'd never noticed before."

"What are?" I asked her. "What's coming along?"

"Your breasts. That bathing suit is really doing a job, squeezing whatever's up there into those cups. You don't need breast forms any more. Was your mother well-endowed? It tends to run from mother to daughter."

"Yes, she was," I replied. "Very. But if big breasts run in my family, they don't run in my direction."

"Don't be too sure, sweetheart," Monica replied, her eyes still on the two distinctive bulges the bathing suit had shaped on my chest. "It's wonderful how quickly things can happen. Let's go check out the pool and the guys. Don't forget your bathing cap, or that sweet curly hairdo Joellen gave you won't survive till dinner."

She handed me my hairbrush from my dresser, and grinned while holding up a lipstick from her own beach bag, and I understood and smiled, and left my lipstick on the bureau. We were still sharing. We still enjoyed the old intimacy. We were still girls together. By the time we got to the pool my mood had changed for the better, and we both teased and joked and flirted with a well-hung young man who was obviously a little young for either of us, but whose Speedo bathing suit left little to our imaginations. We both traded sexual innuendoes with him, and watched him get hard, until it was time to return and change for dinner. Monica was right. There were lots of fun parts to being a girl.

We were just about changed for dinner and I was spraying a stray curl back where it belonged, when there came a knock on Monica's door. The bellhop with something, I thought, so I didn't turn around to glance through the door between our rooms to see who it was. Then when my hair was in place I turned and saw! There was a man in the doorway, and my wife was plastered onto him, her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms tight around his neck, her face buried in his! They seemed to be drowning together in a single, long, passionate kiss. It went on, and on. His head held itself carefully on hers, as if he might be tongue fucking her mouth, and when they finally came up for air I saw that he had been. Monica was now delivering kiss after kiss to the tip of his tongue, and his cheeks, and each of his eyes. I was horrified! Finally he lifted her gently off him, effortlessly, and she unwrapped her legs from him and just stood there close, rubbing her body against his, preening herself on him.

"Well," the man said. "If that's how you mean to greet me every time we see each other, I'm going out and coming back in again!"

"Every time!" my wife said. There was a throaty ferocity in her voice I'd never heard before, an animal hunger. What was going on?

Then I saw. The man bent to pick up his bag and bring it into Monica's room, and as he turned he glimpsed me standing there, beautifully made up, every hair in place, wearing my draped purple silk dress, shocked beyond belief. It was Ben, Monica's boss at the real estate office! I just stood there stock still!

"Well," he said with an instinctive grin, turning on high-powered charm as if it were a searchlight. "Another beautiful lady." He straightened and gave me a relaxed, confident grin, as if he knew that I was going to be delighted to meet him. Ben was planning to spend the weekend with us? Who had invited him? Monica? I just stood there.

"Do we know each other?" he asked, as if knowing my answer had to be every other woman's, 'Never mind, lover, we do now!' The man was incredibly attractive! And he knew it! I could feel fear rising through my shocked astonishment, laced with rising jealousy. Monica's boss! Her business associate! The man she'd worked alongside every day for years! For how long now? My jealousy rose higher. I couldn't compete with all that charm and power! All that wealth at his disposal! I'm losing her! My wife! Monica! I still couldn't move!

"Maybe we do know each other," he said suddenly, and he turned toward Monica. "I thought you said your husband wasn't going to be here this trip."

"He isn't here, Ben," Monica answered, looking me in the eyes. "He promised me he'd stay away. This is my dearest girlfriend, Andrea. Andrea, I'd like you to meet Ben. I've been wanting you two to get together for some time now."

"All right," Ben said. He turned toward me and his brilliant personality re-lit itself. "I'm delighted to meet you, Andrea. Monica's told me so much about you!" What had she told him?! Everything?

"Just a minute, darling," Monica said to him. "I want to speak with Andrea a moment, and then the three of us will go to dinner." She smiled at him, then let go his hand and walked into my room, almost closing the door behind her.

"Are you all right, honey?" she asked me, still searching my eyes.

"I don't know," I said. A sob rose up. "Monica, what's going on?"

"Andrea, I'll tell you what's going on. Listen very closely, because I'll say this only once. Ben is my lover. He's been my lover for months now. Many months. He is the greatest lay a girl could ever hope for, and I'm going to spend the entire night tonight with him. In that room. Not with you. I'm looking forward to it. I have been all day. In fact if a day or two passes when we haven't got time to make love, I start to day dream about him and can't tend to business. But so you don't feel left out, I'm going to ask him to make love to you first. I want you to make love to him too, with real desire in every move you make. In fact I insist. And I want you to watch us fuck at least once, before we close you out and do our private things together for the rest of the night."

"I know how you're feeling at this very moment, but remember, you've had Eric. You'll be glad to have Ben too. Trust me."

"Now, we're going to have dinner together, the three of us. The whole time we're at dinner, I want you to be looking at him and imagining yourself in bed making love to him, because that's where you'll be soon afterward. Think about what you'll do with him first, and then what next. How you'll suck his cock, or maybe just lick it. Wonder if his cock is so huge it will hurt your rear pussy when he pushes into you. Wonder if his cum is sweet, or salty, or creamy, or a little sour, like buttermilk. Whether you want to wrap your legs around his neck or his waist when he fucks you, or whether you'd rather have him do it doggie style. He's your man tonight, for a little while, and I want you to have a girl's most romantic anticipations about what he might do, to be really eager for him. Don't be nervous. You'll love it. It's nothing really new for you. Just keep thinking that it'll be better than with Eric. Much better. Trust me, darling, it will be much better!"

She paused, then kissed her fingertips and touched them to my lips. "At least I'm sure you'll remember this experience, love, you first real deflowering. Just hold in mind that Andrew isn't here. That Ben isn't your rival. Ben is a dear friend of your dearest girlfriend, and she wants to share him as a special gift, and soon he'll be your special friend too."

And with that Monica turned, went back to Ben and kissed his cheek, then took his arm and looked back at me. Ben extended his other arm, and I took it as we started out. Then I remembered what Monica had asked me to do, and as we waited for the elevator, I placed my other hand on his arm as well, as if I were hugging it. I could feel iron muscles under his jacket. I felt utterly helpless.

VI.

Dinner was a confused memory even while it was happening. I couldn't remember anything Monica wanted me to practice about how ladies dine out. I didn't hear the waiter ask for my order, and then realized I hadn't even read the menu. When I said, flustered, "Oh, just a salad, no dressing, thank you", Monica smiled approval -- she was always after me to look more svelte, and I'd already gone down two dress sizes since she'd begun my full scale feminizing. Several times she grinned mischievously when she saw me staring at Ben's crotch. He had huge shoulders, yet he moved like a dancer.

In fact Ben was the soul of affability, and tried to compliment me on my dress, and my hair, and my perfume, and he asked me with sincere interest how I spend my time now I've retired >from work, his eyes penetrating into mine. I tried to reply politely in my littlest girl voice, because that was all I could muster. Yet, my imagination kept feeling him penetrate my asshole with his prick, his hidden meat burying itself in that very same pristine bottom I was sitting on at that very moment, and I was disconcerted. Monica knew what was happening of course, and was vastly amused. When we left him to go to the ladies, she clutched my arm and barely suppressed her hilarity, and said, "Isn't this fun?" For her it was.

I have to admit it, after we got back to the room, for me it was too. A little. This time I drank very little wine. I wanted to be all there. Both of us took off our dresses and put on our sexiest negligees -- Monica told me to slip into the new one she'd bought me just last week, and I realized she'd bought it for just this purpose. Ben stripped himself naked, and lounged back in a soft chair like a Lord of the Manor accustomed to being served. As indeed he was. He was solidly built, muscular, and looked regal, somehow commanding, fully in charge. As he studied my figure in its flowing, lacy satin, I felt suddenly naked and vulnerable and helpless. All of a sudden I hoped anxiously that I could somehow please him. Monica seemed to know he would have this effect on me. "Isn't he gorgeous?" she asked me. "All right, darling," and she sat down in a chair to watch and curled up her legs, her favorite relaxed position. "My pretty cock sucker darling. Show my man what kind of a woman you are now! Don't worry. He'll be gentle."

He was gentle, as if he knew this was all new to me, my maiden voyage all over again. He suggested that I kneel between his legs and kiss his thighs and just get used to things first, just hold his penis gently, and stroke it, with one hand or both, and kiss it only if the mood took me. I felt very strange, very humble, kneeling in front of this powerful naked God. I gently, timidly took up his soft cock in one hand, and found that it was quite heavy. I needed both hands to grasp it all around, and then it started to grow. After a minute or so I kissed it shyly, and then kissed it again. It got bigger. When it was half-hard I looked up at him, feeling like a very little girl indeed, because its size already worried me. Could I get it into my mouth? He smiled encouragement.

So I began to lick it, ever so daintily, on its very tip. He felt deliciously smooth on my tongue, just as Monica had described it, and his pre-cum tasted like sweet cream. I tried to remember how Monica told me I had blown Eric. I tried to remember what girls had done with my penis in high school, when they wanted me to know they liked me. I tried to remember everything Monica had resurrected about giving head when she was a girl, those old memories she had been so eager to share with me. Was it for this? I slid my tongue down his shaft, and worshipped it with my lips and tongue, and cupped the huge purple head in my lips, opening my jaw wide. I felt my face strain, but finally the entire head was stuffing my mouth, and I started to suck. Now, at this moment, I thought to myself, I am a cock sucker. A true cock sucker. I am just what my wife called me. I am sucking a man's cock. The idea that I was a man sucking another man's cock was intolerable, so I concentrated on feeling myself to be a woman sucking a man's cock. I am a beautiful, desirable woman sucking her man's cock, I repeated to myself. I felt it! My head arched coyly, sinuously, until it pressed into his beautifully muscled abdomen, and I lunged down.

His silky smooth cock head entered my throat, and I tried to swallow it whole, even with his whole body attached. For a moment I gagged, then I felt the whole of him slither freely in and out of my mouth and down and up my throat. Then I lost it. I began to face-fuck him furiously, my arms resting on his thighs and my hands lightly caressing his groin. My saliva slicked his pole as I bobbed my head over him repeatedly, mindlessly,, and felt him begin to swell, then to throb. Then cream poured out of him into my mouth and all over my face, no matter how frantically I tried to suck and lick and swallow it all. I tried to catch my breath, and heard him breathing heavily. Then we both held still for a moment. When he put his hands on either side of my head, pressing his palms on my curls, and turned my face to look up at him, I saw he was satisfied, and I smiled. I felt a delicious warmth in my tummy. I glanced down, and saw his cock still staring up at me, glistening, enormous, like a small baseball bat. It hadn't gone down at all. I'd had that in my mouth and down my throat?

"It's time, little lady," he said to me. Incredibly, with a single bend and twist, he stood and then scooped me up and carried me over to the bed. I felt so utterly helpless! So dependent! I gazed into his eyes, and saw there only tender concern. "How shall I set you down, Andrea dear?" he asked. "Back or tummy?"

"On my back, please" I replied. Then as if I were someone else, I said, "I want to see your face, and kiss it. You're wonderful!" Over his shoulder I saw Monica leaning forward, her finger tips propped up under her chin, attentive to everything that had been happening. When she heard me say that, she positively glowed! "Isn't he?" she said when my glance caught her eye.

Then this superb man screwed me thoroughly, inside out! He wrapped my legs around his neck and leaned on the undersides of my thighs, and told me to grasp the ornate bed stead behind me to brace myself, so I could move under him if I couldn't bear just lying there. Then he pressed that huge soft cock head against my anus, then paused, then proceeded further. His incredible cock was still soaked in our juices, and feeling I was giving birth, or being born, I felt him split me wide and enter into me. Just the cock head, but the feeling of pressure was incredible, at first almost painful. But it soon changed to a different kind of pressure, a richer, joyous feeling of fullness, a sweet yearning slowly building as he moved the enormous length of his member deeper into me and then pulled it out again, and in and out, until just as Monica had described, my breathing became moans and my moans became shrieks, and they coruscated one after another. Faster, as my body rose to meet every thrust, and then began to fly. The pressure in my loins crested, then suddenly transmuted into pure bliss. I felt like one whole, perfect, incandescent orgasm! At that moment I felt him straining and lunging toward an impossible goal, and then suddenly he went rigid, and his prick throbbed an ocean of cum into me, or so it seemed. We just lay there quietly a second time, again breathing heavily. He smiled at me. I raised my head and kissed him on the lips, tenderly, then lay back satisfied. I had never felt more like a woman. He withdrew and rolled off me, and I felt a yearning emptiness.

After a moment I sat up and looked over at Monica. She was all smiles. "You were wonderful, Andrea," she said. "I felt like applauding. This time you'll remember. I'm sure of it. Isn't being a woman just marvelous, when there are such men? But now come sit over here. It's my turn now."

I sat down, and my wife sat down on the bed and leaned over Ben's face while he looked up at her. She licked his lips and then his tongue the way I had licked his cock. There was a coiled tension about the way she moved, and he reached into her crotch to finger fuck her, his wrist undulating in an almost snake-like movement. And so they played with each other for a few minutes, their desire for each other building, until as I could see his cock was even larger than I had remembered, a tower standing sky high. Then suddenly my Monica pushed him down, rose over him, and impaled herself on it. Her whole cunt swallowed it up, how I can't imagine, in one single savage thrust. Ben then rolled over her, and I was altogether forgotten. He humped her with brutal force, his great body plunging in at her over and over, but she loved it. Each time he lunged she cried out "Yes!" and then louder, "Yes!" and then louder still, "YES!!" It went on and on. They were like some enormous power plant, their whole bodies pulsating and surging and pistoning against each other, desire rising higher and higher even as they gratified it. Finally there was a tremendous explosion, both of them together shouting through choked throats, loud deep guttural cries, and the bed seemed to shake. When I could see them again they were both soaked, and so wrapped up in each other there was no way to tell where one began and the other left off. Monica's eyes were glazed, but as they crossed my line of sight I smiled at her, and she seemed to smile wanly back.

A terrible thought suddenly crossed my mind. Her cunt was loaded with his cum. His huge prick was still crammed deep into her, bottling it all up. She disliked contraceptives of all kinds, and of course she never used them, which was why she'd asked me to have a vasectomy. But Ben hadn't had a vasectomy. His cum was thick, clotted, dense with sperm, I was sure. I could see it on the towel I had been sitting on, already soaked, with cum still flowing out of me. I knew she'd had no period within the past two weeks -- I couldn't remember seeing menstrual blood on her panties recently when I'd rinsed them out for her. She might be at the peak of her fertility right now!

"Monica!" I called to her in alarm!

Monica looked over at me serenely, her draped body now at peace, deeply satisfied in some primal, special way. "Andrea," she said. "Now go to bed. Show's over. I wanted you to see for yourself that I'm having sex with a real man, and no mistake about it. Now you know. Good night! Ben and I have some things to do now that are just between us. I'll see you in the morning. We'll have a swim before breakfast. Any time after seven. Don't worry about waking me, I'll still be up."

And she turned her attention back to the man she was wrapped around. I stood up, and walked into my room, and closed the door. For the rest of the night, I heard occasional strange moans and cries and grunts coming from their room, but didn't dare imagine what might be causing them.

VII.

The next morning as we walked down to the pool I tried to take Monica aside to ask if she had taken precautions, but she clung to Ben the whole time, and he gazed down fondly on her, and there was no opportunity. The well-hung young man was at the pool again, and with easy affability Ben introduced himself and then introduced us all around -- his name was Jeff -- and then organized the four of us into a game of water polo, boys against girls. The young man fell against me repeatedly in his efforts to block my shots, and it became obvious he was trying to feel me up. This was new for me, and made me uneasy. But my bathing suit molded me beautifully, and after last night's escapades I decided to let him. Then there was no getting rid of him. In fact, with a glance toward me, Monica invited him to breakfast with us, and then to play golf with us, then tennis. As we dressed in our tennis outfits with their short, flirty skirts, she suggested I wear black panties fringed in French lace, not my proper tennis panties. So Jeff never took his eyes off my pretty bottom, and I beat him easily even though I was trying to play like an inexperienced girl, as girls do with boys they like. We spent the whole day together.

As we dressed for cocktails that night, Monica told me, "Ben and I are going out for drinks and dinner tonight. Just the two of us. We'll be back late. Jeff'll be here to pick you up in a few minutes. Do you know how to dance young people's dances these days? Have fun!"

That night, tired out from slow dancing, and dirty dancing, and hop dancing, I couldn't think how to turn Jeff off at the door, so he came into my room for a nightcap. He'd been wonderfully personable and attentive all through dinner, and at the dance he'd been lighthearted and increasingly affectionate, but always gentlemanly. He fixed drinks for the two of us, then sat down on the couch next to me, and we talked.

Then he stayed the night. He surprised me with a soft kiss full on the mouth, and I surprised myself by kissing him back. He began playing with my nipples and the little titties that seemed to be behind them, and I melted, and my mind roamed to the feel of Ben's cock inside me, and I wondered what Jeff's might feel like. He sensed my surrender. I was terrified he'd find out I wasn't a true woman when he reached into my crotch. But when he felt the Super-Max Pad I kept there to simulate a mound of Venus and cover my male equipment, he smiled.

"It's just as well," he said. "I don't have a condom with me anyhow. But if you don't mind, I can try to please you through your back door. Have you ever made love that way? Do you mind...? Would you...?" I kissed him even more deeply, and my hands stroked his thin, strong shoulders. I had my own Ben!

I didn't mind. I would. It was as if I had been mesmerized by this new kind of sex for me, being penetrated and entered and filled by someone firm, attentive, and considerate. Some time during the night Monica and Ben came home, and I half-woke to see that Monica was looking in on me. When the light from her room fell across my bed and revealed me sprawled across Jeff, our bed covers tangled on the floor and his long cock still in my hand, I heard her enter and pick up a blanket, then cover the two of us. Then I felt her kiss me softly on the cheek, and retreating, close the door behind her.

And so the weekend went. Jeff and I were together almost constantly, and he fucked and screwed and sucked and licked me as often as I did these things to him. I managed to speak to Monica briefly in the Women's Locker Room about the risk she ran of getting pregnant by Ben. But she was strangely unconcerned. "Do you think so? she said. "Well then. He just pumped another load into me in the Sauna, when I was sitting in his lap. He's inexhaustible, that man. You didn't notice? Here, suck it out of me."

And she leaned way back on a bench and spread her legs wide, and looked at me imperiously, waiting. So I dropped to my knees and leaned way in, and lapped and sucked and scrubbed her slit and her pussy with my tongue, as best I could. His cum still tasted like heavy sweet cream, I found as I cleaned her out, unlike Jeff's, which was also delicious but a little salty. She had a small orgasm, nothing like those wrenching cataclysms she and Ben shared, but she smiled gratefully at me.

"Feel better, now? Andrea, you can't follow me and Ben around like a puppy, or a human douche bag, waiting to slip your tongue into my pussy. The two of us fuck all the time. You'll just have to wait until we get home, and then I'll explain things to my husband. But he's not here, remember?"

I had no choice.

We wore every outfit we had bought for the weekend, and Sunday night as we gathered up our luggage to go home, Monica was amused that I was limping, walking a little spraddle-legged. I might have overdone it with Jeff, I was thinking to myself. But he'd been so sweet, I couldn't refuse him! And he felt so good in my mouth or my rear!

"Andrea dear," Monica said. "Try to walk a bit more respectably. You are the very image of a well-fucked woman. Ben's just gone off at a business meeting in Detroit now, but I hope he gave Jeff a handsome bonus before he left. Obviously he was worth every penny."

I was shocked! But also a little depressed! "Jeff was a prostitute? He did it for pay? Not for me, because he admired me?"

"Oh, my dearest Angela, he did admire you! He's one of the highest-paid male escorts in the business, and he takes on no clients that don't interest him. That first time we met him at the pool, he was looking you over. He told Ben later that he was willing to romance you for half his fee, and even to sleep with you for no fee at all. You have a delightfully sluttish innocence, he said, and certainly know how to enjoy a man who knows how to enjoy you. But he has to earn a living, so we paid him in full. He was worth every penny just to keep you busy while Ben and I played with each other round the clock, and also in furthering your education as to what it means to be a woman. How wonderful it can be. And doing it safely, without risk. Now we really can talk to each other about how different guys feel inside us, can't we?"

And Monica linked her arm into mine and laughed a voluptuous, knowing laugh. I felt even more uneasy. "Oh, c'mon," she said. "Didn't you have a perfectly scrumptious time?" I had to admit it.

When we got home, Monica suggested we have a long talk. "Andrea, now my beloved spouse returned to me," she said, "I have some things I need to tell you that you need to know. But we'll talk in a restaurant. In a public place, because I don't know if you'll be upset or not when you hear them."

She took one long look at my face, and then broke out, "Oh, my dear, my darling, my lovely pet, please don't look so sad. You look ready to dissolve! No, I'm not going to leave you! I'm never going to leave you! I love you! I need you! Now more than ever! You don't know how much! But when you hear what I have to say, maybe you'll want to leave me. I hope not. I'd feel desolated! Maybe even betrayed. But not by you. So we need to talk things over quietly!"

We said very little to each other as we drove to our favorite restaurant, the little Italian restaurant where we had first met, as it were, as girl friends, and I had first learned not to be afraid to show my femininity to the world. Again, it was crowded. Once the Maitre d' had seated us, and we had ordered drinks, I just looked mournfully at Monica and said nothing. This was her sell, and I didn't even know what kind of property she had in mind.

She took a deep breath and began. "First of all, I want to tell you again, I love you, and I don't ever want to lose you. No matter what. I'm not going to tell you everything now, just enough for now. More later when the time comes. I'm not hiding anything, but I do want you to come to the same conclusions I've reached, all on your own. And that means thinking things through a little at a time. I think I know what you want most from life, and from our marriage. But I'm not sure you know, yet. All right?"

I nodded.

"You saw that I've been having an affair with Ben. It hasn't been for too long. Maybe three or four months. He's been hitting on me for years, and I've been turning him down for years, but he's a man of enormous persuasive charm, and I confess it, one afternoon when the office had closed down, and I knew you were prancing around in your skirts and negligees and things at home, not too eager to see me home early, I thought I'd just try him out.

"Well, he overwhelmed me! Like a summer storm! Sudden down pouring fury, thunder, lightning, all of it! I couldn't get enough of that massive cock into me! It's very special, gentle yet thick enough to stretch anyone, and so insatiable, you know? Yes, you do know, now. I couldn't get enough of his ferocious energy into me either! All that vitality! You know that now too. Could you resist him? No, not even with all of your male conditioning to avoid sex with men. How could I, once he'd reached me."

"I'd gotten too used to you, I guess. You're gentle, and considerate, and sweet, and everything I've always wanted in a man. You're also everything I might want in a woman too, they're the same traits. I asked you to get that vasectomy, and you did, with no hesitation. Giving up for me your whole posterity! All of your wonderful potential as a parent! For me! Because I asked you to do it, and it was done, and you've never said a word to me about it since! You are a priceless marvel! I bet if I was to ask you to give up your manhood altogether, your balls, you'd do it. I've been thinking of asking, because they aren't doing anything for you now any more, and they're interfering with your womanhood in some ways. But all in good time."

"I can't say Ben is selfless. Ben gives nothing, you negotiate with Ben. He's not nice. But in bed he's a force of nature, with that huge cock, and those power-hammering, pile-driving fucks. He can keep it up all night! After that first afternoon, I couldn't give him up. I wanted all that too!"

I was getting very uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was taking, so I asked, "But why did you bring me in on this? Why did you set me up to have sex with your boy friend? To humiliate me?"

"Humiliate you? My dear, dear, sweet Andrea, I heard those shrieks of joy while he was reaming your ass, and I saw your expression when you were slurping down mouthfuls of his cum. That huge prick of his really can get to a girl. I saw how eagerly you sucked him. You even deep throated him, and that's not easy with a cock like that, is it? I suspect that when he finally came in your bowels, you felt an incredibly deep satisfaction that you'd brought off such a man, and that now you possessed his seed. That's all part of being a girl. Isn't it?"

"I couldn't stop with Ben, so I wanted to share him with you. I wanted my lover to be yours too. That's what I wanted for you! That's all part of being married. We're life-partners. We share everything. Especially our feelings as women. And you've wanted to be a woman, haven't you? To feel like one? And now, don't you?"

There was something troubling about this last statement. The distinction between wanting to be a woman and wanting merely to feel like one no longer quite made sense to me. "Woman or no woman," I told Monica. "I'd never have consented to sex with Ben if I hadn't already gone that route. I suppose I felt that after Eric had done me, and I'd done him, I'd crossed the line. I was no longer a virgin, and as they say, another slice off a cut cake is never missed."

"I suppose so, dear," Monica replied. "But remember, I've spent months preparing you to enjoy sex with men, so it would be enjoyable esthetically and all other ways, and not seem some kind of sick perversion. Men have all kinds of inhibitions against sex with other men, and we've had to overcome them, the two of us. And we have overcome them, haven't we? You wanted Ben to push himself into you any way he could, so you could give and get pleasure with him any which way, didn't you? And once you'd tasted Ben, you wanted Jeff. It does seem you couldn't get enough of Jeff, doesn't it? That's what I wanted for you!"

She smiled at me. "I think you know that already, darling. We women know. Could you resist either of those men? And now, you've got some wonderful romantic memories of your first times with men, no matter how many other men you may sleep with before we retire together as two little old ladies. Still sleeping together I hope."

It was time to get to the heart of the matter. I suppose as far as infidelities went, I couldn't protest. I'd already fucked three men out of wedlock, and Monica only one, so far as I knew. Mine were after she'd begun her affair, but still....

So I came out with it. "There's something else, too. You just spent three days getting pumped full of cum, and that man is a fountain, and I'm sure he's potent as a goat! You didn't douche once, and you didn't use contraception, and I'll bet that except for the cum I tried to suck out of you, and whatever's dripped out of you since then, it's all still there."

"Probably, darling. I slipped in a tampon to be sure. I love the thought that I'm keeping part of him in there with me."

My voice rose a little. I didn't know if I was desperate or exasperated, but I wasn't getting through! "Monica! You'll get pregnant! You may already be pregnant!"

"No, darling, I can't get pregnant. I already am pregnant. Over three months pregnant. Ben must have struck gold right off, that afternoon we first took up with each other. I never thought about protection that afternoon. I guess I was too used to you."

I just sat there, too staggered to move, even to blink.

"Anyhow, when I found I was pregnant, I decided, OK, it's just as well. As I just said, I love the thought that part of him is in there with me. But how do we care for the baby? I'm a businesswoman, not a care giver. I don't want to be tied to feedings, and diaper changing. Should I get rid of it? So I went and talked with Denise and Tinka about what they were doing, now that Denise was pregnant, and Denise pointed out that I might not be much of a care giver, but you certainly are. You love domesticity, and you have the most generous and tender heart in the world. And then the rest just fell into place. I would have the baby, and then you would take care of it. Completely! You've been flirting with womanliness for years and years, and motherhood is a woman's highest estate!"

"Darling, this really is what you want. Trust me. I know! It'll take more time for you to get used to the idea, and you'll certainly want to talk with Denise and Tinka about what's entailed. But you'll love it. I know you'll love it."

"There's one other thing, and I couldn't tell you before now, only now, but it's very important to me. Another reason why I wanted to set you up with Ben. I thought to myself, after all, Andrea and I are both going to have Ben's baby. It's only fair that Andrea should share in the fun first. So we should both get laid by Ben, not just me. We both should be knocked up by him. His sperm should be planted in both of us. You can't say you didn't enjoy it, can you, Andrea? He plays a lovely tune, even though you're now like lots of girls who have been indiscreet. Now you have to pay the piper."

I sat there dumbfounded. I couldn't even think.

"Wasn't that a delicious dinner, darling," Monica asked? "But you've scarcely touched yours! Well, no matter. Your figure is coming along so beautifully. That nice, round tush! I can't keep my hands off it! Let's call the waiter for the check. Which one of us should pay this time, do you think?"

A few weeks later Denise and Tinka had their baby, well past term, a ten pound boy, and they were both delighted with their heaven-sent opportunity to raise a male properly for once. Denise returned to work and Tinka took over complete care of the infant.

A month later still, Monica and I were both amused to see how we had both swollen, Monica in the belly, and me in the breast. "Sympathetic vibrations" Monica called them, though I was convinced my now-distinctive breasts were a by-product of the doctor's shots and my own wish-fulfillment, and also of Monica's near-constant stimulation of my nipples with her tongue whenever we were having woman sex. She said I'd changed so much she'd now feel strange, to be penetrated by a woman with a penis, so there would be no more of that ever. But whenever we were spooned with my head in her pussy, she loved to flick my penis with her tongue as if I had a long clit. That felt exquisite! I no longer ejaculated, but we both had the most marvelous orgasms, repeatedly, each session.

I asked Monica if she was still seeing Ben, and she replied that ladies don't kiss and tell, and asked me slyly if I was jealous of him or her or both? Then she answered me more seriously.

"Sweetheart," she said. "I love to feel a man inside me. You're no longer able, and I want you to be more and more able to do womanly things. That's why, from the moment I realized we could be partners with this baby, I wanted to have only woman sex with you, not man sex. I knew I'd want you to become more of a woman, whatever your more limited desires for womanhood at the time. But I don't want to sneak around getting laid. So if you'd like to double date, just tell me, and we'll arrange it. Any man should feel privileged to stroke his pole into you, if that's what you want."

"Of course, you may find you're more and more a lesbian as you grow deeper into your womanhood. And that's fine with me. I'm certainly a lesbian as far as you're concerned. And as a lesbian I am absolutely faithful to you. Why don't you go over and have a long talk with Denise and Tinka about all this. It's time for you to visit their baby and see how things are, anyhow. I would, but I have a very big transaction in process, a whole high-rise skyscraper I mean to sell to someone who thinks he prefers a two-story office park. He doesn't realize yet that the skyscraper is far better for him given its location. He will, but it takes time, right now all of my time."

"So I'll be home late tonight. Some of it will be dealing with the client, and then some of it will be Ben. He loves pushing that gorgeous cock into my round tummy, pouring sperm into me like a fire hose, he says, introducing his baby in my tummy to tens of thousands of its brothers and sisters. I still can't get enough of him! But I'll be thinking of you, love! Don't wait up."

VIII.

What could I say? I called Denise, and she asked me over for supper and the evening -- Tinka was trying out a variety of mushroom souffles to see which should be served at the baby's christening, and they wanted me to settle an old dispute between them about onions versus garlic. They sounded like an old married couple, I thought to myself. But then, that's what they are.

So when I arrived, the first thing they did was take me into the nursery. There lay Mikki, the sweetest little creature in all the world, all dimples and puffy cheeks, sound asleep, working his teeny, delicate lips as if he was nursing, now and then jerking his little limbs as if dreaming, and as I watched, a miracle, a full-scale sneeze from someone much too tiny to accomplish anything so complicated. So very, very precious! I was absolutely smitten, and they had to lead me back to the living room, or I'd be there yet.

"Have a stiff drink, Andrea" Denise said. "At least you're not pregnant. Not at the moment, anyhow. I can tell you've been spinning in one of your wife's webs, and that's why you're here. She's a wonderful woman and we all love her, and you're lucky to have her and that she loves you to pieces, and that's the truth. But she does make her own plans and keep her own counsel."

So I just unburdened everything: Monica's affair with Ben, her sudden change of heart about my cross-dressing, her encouraging me, no, pushing me into a womanhood I now knew was irreversible, and didn't want to reverse, how my little liaison with Eric had prepared me to suck and be fucked by her lover Ben and even to enjoy a brief affair with a young man she hired for the purpose, even her too-swift assumption that I would be willing to care for the child of her adultery, her infidelity, my rival's baby, just because she knew I was sufficiently tender-hearted, and had also gotten laid by the father. I set it all out. I assured them that I loved Monica this side of distraction, and that life without her was inconceivable to me. But in all of these matters there were questions that had never been answered, and without answers, I just didn't know what to think. How to feel.

Denise asked Tinka to bring me another double, and waited until I had it. We were sitting in the living room, and our conversation continued through dinner -- a delicious dinner I want to cook for Monica real soon, maybe even also Ben, so I left with all the recipes -- and it didn't finish until I was standing on their front steps saying good night yet again, many hours later, thanking them profusely for all their help. Because finally, I understood.

Denise took charge. "Andrea, to begin with, Andrew is dead. I saw you with that baby. I've listened to you. Give up on him. Cut off his balls. Castrate him as punishment for distracting you >from your proper role in life. You're a woman. Maybe you never were a transvestite. Maybe you were always a woman, or most of you was, but you were too womanly, too hesitant, too scared to take the plunge. Anyhow, it doesn't matter now. Monica did you a favor, bringing your real femininity out into the open, and letting you learn to enjoy it."

"But she didn't do it for your sake alone. Like most women she was raised to think that effeminate men are contemptible, not admirable for wanting to be the same thing they are. It's a kind of self-hatred many women feel, maybe. Especially wives. Or maybe, like Monica at this very moment filled to the hilt by that thing of Ben's, they get hung up on a single concept of cock and cock alone being desirable, and then they just hang there. A man who doesn't act like a man isn't a man, they think. Well, duh! So he must be a woman. One or the other. But why? Different strokes."

"You must certainly have noticed that a lot of things happened at the same time around five months ago. Monica got bored with your gentle decency and fucked someone with balls, and got her cunt planted by one of the great cocksmen in this part of the country. Then she breached a hard-argued three year old agreement with her husband never to say anything about his compulsive cross-dressing, and instead she started to encourage it, in fact to push him over the edge. And she stopped fucking her husband, who was more and more becoming her wife, and turned exclusively lesbian with her -- only with her husband, not with the big prick she's still teamed with and is no doubt at this very moment twisting into her pussy. And she sends her former husband off to a willing endocrinologist for hormones, to get him physically converted as quickly as possible into a wife. Complete with breasts. Breasts are crucial in this equation. Real ones, implants need not apply. How they hangin'?

"I may need to shift to a C cup," I replied. "They're beautiful. I love them. So does Monica. She's always kissing and sucking on them."

"I'll bet. Puts you in the mood, doesn't it? Tinka, do you want to tell our sister here something that she ought to know?"

The baby had awakened and started crying, so Tinka said, "Just a moment. I want to get Mikki and change his diaper. Then I'll bring him back in here for his feeding."

She did. That sweet little thing was already nuzzling her breasts. She opened her blouse and unhooked a flap on one of her bra cups, and the darling dived right in. In a moment he was nursing and sucking and grunting on Tinka's breast, and Tinka had blissed out while she hugged him. But, I realized, it was Denise who had had the baby, not Tinka. How could this be?

"Easy," said Denise when I asked her. "I had the baby. Tinka had the breasts and the desire to nurture another human life. Our endo had the hormone women secrete at birth that causes breasts to make milk. Put them all together, and what you see is what you get."

Tinka smiled up at me. "That's right, Andrea honey. If you have real breasts, you can make real milk. You do have real breasts, courtesy of your pregnant wife. Does that suggest anything to you?"

"Did Monica know about this plan of yours, Denise to carry the baby, and Tinka to nurse it?" I was feeling resentful yet elated. Cheated yet victorious. I couldn't sort out my own feelings. What had Monica done to me? Did I mind?

"Not when we decided on it," Denise said. "Only when she first found she was pregnant. I'll bet just about when she discovered that having a sweet-tempered, cross-dressing, home loving husband has certain advantages. Especially if he likes filling his bras with real tits."

Tinka broke in. "Oh, Denise, you're too harsh on poor Monica. Let me put it a different way. She loves you, Andrea. Very dearly. This is for you, in a way. It's her gift to you. For the two of you. When you got your vasectomy, she didn't know how womanly you wanted to be. She had no idea. She did know that she didn't want to be a mother, that she didn't have the time, or patience, or certainly the desire. So when Ben knocked her up she was going to get rid of it. It was intrusive on her, and certainly on the two of you. But by then she'd seen what a wonderful little homemaker you are, and she got to thinking that she'd deprived you of one of the great joys of life, parenting, when she asked you to sterilize yourself and because you're sweet, and loving, and obliging, that's what you did. She realized you'd love to raise the baby, and that with you in charge she'd lose no more time from her work than it takes for a peasant woman to give birth and get back into the field. A few days, a week at most, with no infant to tire her out. She could have her cake and eat it. Motherhood and a career both, with no conflict between them.

Denise added, "Motherhood for her husband, anyhow, once she'd made him into her wife. Very clever. I'd do it myself, if I hadn't already thought of it and done it."

Tinka smiled at her and blew her a kiss. The baby seemed to be asleep at her breast, his little hand lying lightly on her soft curves, but his mouth was still working. She covered him with a light blanket and held him close.

"Andrea," Denise said. "Pardon me for being suspicious, but when someone mentions cheese, I smell a rat. What's this "liaison" with Eric you mentioned? What kind of liaison?"

I told her what Monica had told me, that when we last visited together, after talking babies and bottles and breasts upstairs with Tinka I came downstairs absolutely zonked, and Eric got me to cock sucking him before he corn holed me, and that I loved it. All of this supposedly being proof that I was a true woman, finally. Or maybe that I wasn't."

When I finished, Tinka was smiling, and Denise the same, even more broadly, "I don't believe that woman!" she said. "She should be Ambassador to the Universe! President of the World!"

Tinka explained. "Oh, we went upstairs for my recipes and started talking babies and nursing, all right, you and me. I could see you were over the hill and not likely to remember anything, so I told you our little secret, that I meant to breast-feed Denise's baby, our baby. You asked how, and I took you to my breast, and you were soon sound asleep. It was so very dear. Then you didn't wake up until Monica came to get you and take you home. Eric never did show up that night."

Again, I was astounded! "He didn't? But Monica....But there was cum all over my panties the next day!"

"Oh, these days Monica's got no shortage of cum to redistribute any way she pleases. She's wonderful, your wife," Denise said. "She'll say all kinds of things to get people to do what she wants, because she knows it's what they really want themselves, that it's the right thing for them in the long run. And she's always right. It's uncanny. Think about it. Anyhow, you should meet Eric some time -- he's all man, you'd never guess he's gay. Girls feel flattered by his attention because he's so good looking, but he's perfectly safe. He'd never hit on Denise or me. Nor on you either, I should think. You're not his type. He likes guys who look even more manly than he is. Tight buns, hard pecs, you know, weight lifter macho types. He'd go for Ben, but Ben would probably flatten him. Girls like us are safe enough."

Now I was really dumbfounded! "My own wife seduced me into blowing and getting fucked by her boyfriend, partly by telling me a fairy tale about my already having sex with Eric, so it didn't matter! Why!? And she has gotten herself pregnant by him, and gotten me physically rearranged to nurse and raise their baby. Why? She's not that cruel. Nor that vindictive. I never did anything like that to her! I've tried to be a devoted husband! Or wife, anyhow! Why?"

Denise began speaking to me much more gently, but very firmly. She could hear my pain, my fear that my wife was really another woman, a stranger, my bafflement. So she started right in.

"Monica told you all the reasons, I'm sure. Didn't she? Right after you got laid by the man who is now the father of your child? I'm sure she did. She's very up front and honest. That's why people trust her. Because she knows what people really want, and she knows how to sell it to them. She's a real ace at it. It's what she does!"

"Think of it this way. She could have told you that she got you fucked by her boy friend because you're a nice guy, and she was feeling guilty that she had been unfaithful to you, so she thought she'd make you think you'd done something like that yourself, and that would get her off the hook, even the score. So she invented this story about you and Eric getting it on. But it didn't work. If you did it, you didn't know what you were doing, so it didn't count, but anyhow you didn't do it! That story didn't wash her conscience clean. So next she seduced you into her lover's bed. Then she felt better. I'm sure that's why she did it. Among many reasons why. But that reason if she'd confessed it to you wouldn't bring you to the next step of your enlightenment, finding out what you really want. You might not forgive her. You might even divorce her. It's quite a betrayal, looked at one way. So I'm sure she didn't tell you . Right?"

"Right, I guess," I said. Monica confesses her sins to nobody. "All right. She got me to fuck Ben for all of the above reasons, and I'm not sorry I did it. I'm glad.

"I'll bet you're glad," Tinka broke in. "You're a woman, right? And that stud is God's gift to women! Monica had yet another reason to get you well and truly laid. You didn't think you were a woman until recently, right? You were a transvestite, not a transsexual. You liked looking like a woman, and feeling the way you think women feel, and doing womanly things. But that's not being a woman. That's being a man who enjoys expressing his feminine sides, which all men have and most men suppress."

"A heterosexual man, that is. I'll bet even during your flounciest cross dressing, you hated the idea that you might be gay, a man who wants to have sex with men. Most men hate that idea. Its unbearable, unendurable. But there you were, getting fucked by Ben and loving it. So you had to think, either you really are a faggot, a fairy, one of those pathetic nancies like Eric, or else you're really a woman. Right? So at that moment you decided you're really a woman, not pretending but actual, though in a man's body. Didn't you? I thought so. You crossed the line. Monica set you up with that stud to drive you so deep into your own femininity you'd never emerge, and never want to emerge. Never again feel ashamed to think of yourself as a woman. And it worked! Didn't it?"

I had to admit that Tinka had a point. "But that still doesn't tell me why she decided to keep the baby," I said. I had a feeling I was fighting a losing battle but winning a war. "Maybe she did worry that I had deprived myself of fatherhood, or motherhood, or whatever, and wanted to make it up to me. But why didn't she tell me? We could have worked it out together. Why all this elaborate manipulation?"

"Two reasons," Denise said. One is that as she got to know you, she saw that you'd make her a perfect wife and mother, but she knew there was no way you'd agree. Not a prayer. That's much too weird a notion for you. For any man! Especially any heterosexual man so ashamed of his cross dressing he couldn't confess it even to his wife."

"But there's more. I'm sure she plans to tell you this after the baby's born, to surprise and delight you with the news. She didn't let Ben off the hook. She gambles. When she first found she was pregnant, Ben offered to pay all the costs. He's never had a kid of his own, and he wanted her to carry it to term.

She saw he wanted it, so she put that little brain of hers to work. She saw a way to get as close to Ben's money as she already was to his cock. To get it inside her. She set conditions. She made a bet with Ben that she could do the impossible, have the baby and turn her husband into a woman to nurse it and raise it, so she could keep working full time on this big real estate deal they've got going. And, so that psychologically it would really seem to her husband to be his very own baby, she would get him to accept Ben fucking him, getting filled with Ben's sperm at both ends. It was a big gamble. The bet was a full partnership for her if she could sell her husband that proposition."

"Well, Ben thought it was a safe enough bet. If a woman can sell her own husband that, she can sell anyone anything, and is well worth a partnership. So if he loses, he wins. But Ben didn't think he'd lose. Would any man alive agree to get fucked three ways like that? To suck your own wife's lover's cock, and to open your own ass for him to plow at will, then to stay home and raise his baby while your wife is still getting it on with her lover nights and weekends?"

"Ben was right. No man would do those things. But Monica knew that another woman might. And that you liked looking and feeling like a woman, close enough for openers. And that Ben wanted that baby, and that this was his chance to have one, and he was sure he'd win. So the bet was all signed and sealed, and all Monica had to do is deliver. Including, deliver you from your peculiar notion that you're a man, and then deliver you to get fucked over by your wife's lover. She saw no problem. When she first told us about all this, way back, before you had even the slightest notion, she was having an affair, before you even dreamed that your relationship with her was about to change, she was already amusing herself by calling it her sucker bet."

"But it's an open question who got more fucked over. In effect, >from now on you'll have Ben working for you half-time to make you even richer than you are. Soon the two of you will share a full half of Ben's big deals as well as a full half of Monica's, not just a percentage. That's a very big piece of money. Eventually, if you think about it, the baby will get it all, which may be why Ben finally agreed. He's got no wife as well as no kids -- he's been too successful with the ladies to want to settle down and raise a family. So Monica decided that she knew better than you what you really wanted, and better than Ben what Ben really wanted, and she figured a way to get the two of you to agree on what you both wanted, and in that way get what she wanted. So she made the bet."

"You're practically a multi-millionaire. You can set up as a society lady if you want, and even get a nanny to raise the kid if it seems like too much bother. Even get a wet nurse, if you really want to spend your life polishing your nails and doing nothing else. You're married to a great provider, and she's provided for you and the kid for life. You didn't know that?"

Tinka finished with Mikki and put him back in his bassinet, and sat back down on the couch. "Oh, look at that look on your face," she said. "I can't tell whether you're laughing or crying. Come here."

I went over and sat down next to her, absolutely blown away. Like that day when Eric didn't show, and I never sucked his cock, and he never fucked me. Tinka took me in her arms.

"Precious baby," she said. "This has all been very confusing for you. All of this scheming so you can be happy and everyone else can be too. Come drink me. Soon you'll be nursing your own baby, and we'll have such good times together. There are so many things for us to share about raising babies. Much better than trading recipes."

"For instance, my sister Carol wants to get her baby weaned to whole milk in bottles in just a few months, so as not to bother breast feeding at all. Her pediatrician doesn't mind if she tries. I think she's wrong. Breast milk is far better for an infant than bottled. It provides the little dears more of the mothers' antibodies, to protect them when they're most vulnerable. So Betsy, my neighbor down the road, says she means to nurse her Billy until he gives it up all by himself. He's already past two now, with no sign of quitting. Why should he ever quit? Some little boys just can't ever get enough, I guess, even when they're supposed to be grown men."

"That's it, darling, suck deep. I've got lots, and it's good for me to be fully drained now and then, and little Mikki's always falling asleep before he's emptied me. It's so comforting, isn't it. Anyhow, that doctor's done wonders with you. You're not even lactating yet, and look how your breasts are already quite heavy. You'll probably be able to nurse Ben and Monica's baby until he goes away to college. Or if she's a girl, until she gets married and has babies of her own, and you're a grandma."

"But most likely it'll be until Ben and Monica present you with yet another baby. And then another. Remember, Monica's always thinking ahead to the next move. She's usually way ahead of all of us! Monica's probably confessed to you that she now knows she loves feeling a fat cock ramming and thrusting into her, day in and day out, her pussy overflowing with spunk, that she can't do without it. Ben's got one of the best, as you already know, and he's attractive and available. And you also already know that Monica doesn't like contraceptives. So once she's set you up to take care of one pretty, sweet little creature, and to nurse and nurture and care for the darling out of your most profound innermost desires, what happens next seems to me pretty inevitable."

"Your life is pretty well laid out for you. You can't complain she's having all the fun and you're doing all the work, because she's also bringing in all the money, and you're always invited to join in the fun. You can always schedule Ben for a rerun into your mouth and ass. Or you can always give up on those dangling things down there altogether, and get yourself a proper vagina for him to stuff with his meat, or go find someone else's cock when you feel like a fling."

"Or if you still prefer women, you might plan to spend the night with us now and then -- you're a dear friend, we'd just love to have you, and under these circumstances I see no need to kiss and tell. You can make up for all those pyjama parties you missed because when you were a girl, you thought you were a boy, and never suspected that you were going to be the lovely woman Monica's made you! You'll taste delicious when your milk comes in, and look at you now, sucking so sweetly. It feels so good! We can taste each other in lots of places. Three girls can have so much fun together!"

"Now, don't tell me none of these ideas appeal! Andrea, to sing the old song, 'She made you what you are today, I hope you're satisfied.' I'm sure she's satisfied. I'll bet you are. Really satisfied, deep down. Aren't you?"

END (c) 1996 by Vickie Tern