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

Perfect                    by: Vickie Tern

 

i.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I nodded,

"My place?" she pointed.

I nodded.

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

I nodded.

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

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

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

"What?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No way, Gayle!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have parents," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

"So?" I asked again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let me hear!"

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

"Same idea, but lower," she said.

"Like this?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did. Whatever!

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

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

 

ii.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

iii.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn't altogether sure she was joking.

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

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

I lifted an eyebrow at her.

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

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

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

I got the hint and nodded agreeably.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So far," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

iv.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That too," I replied.

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

 

v.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was teasing.

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

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

I had no answer.

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

"Yes, once," I confessed.

"Did it feel nice?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How?"

"Leave that to me!"

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

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

I nodded.

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

"Yes," I said. It was true.

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

"Yes, Gayle, I do!"

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

I nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ahhhhhhh!" I said, relieved yet lamenting.

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

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

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

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

"My sweet girl," she whispered.

"Yes," I replied.

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

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

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

 

vi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I lack two essential qualifications," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, of course."

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

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

I must have looked surprised.

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

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

"But you don't need those things, sweetheart. Most of them. Your body's proportions are much like a woman's already, I noticed that about you almost as soon as we started talking after class, and