A Work In Progress
By Apollo
Copyright 2005

Introduction: A Player

Sometimes you live your life sure of how things are. When you are kid they tell you all kinds of stories about how you get what is coming to you, or those stories where someone if made to be the person that you were mean to or overlooked. As you get older, you realize how much of that is bullshit.

Right?

Well, My name was James. Not Jim, not Jimmy, not Jamie, James. My mother always called me her little Jamie and doted on me and crap and I could not wait to throw that yoke off. I had grown up with no father, as the man that fathered me left when I was 3. I have no memories of the bastard and want none. I was an only son and I was my mother’s whole life. She hovered over me and I never wanted for anything. She always told me what a wonderful boy I was. Somewhere in my life I took it to heart, that I did no wrong. In high school, I never talked about my sexual conquests with the other guys my age. This was because I was actually having sex. The drill team colonel rode my cock every Wednesday afternoon, one of the cheerleaders sucked a load from me on Thursdays, and I fucked Ms. Herron in her car on Tuesdays. There were, of course the indiscretions between those regular moments, but all of the women and girls told me how wonderful I was.

I was pretty sure that I was just that good. My mom and all these ladies agreed, so how could it not be true?

I never really wondered why Miss Herron vanished between my Junior and senior year. I broke up with the cheerleader Senior year by telling her she really would be better with bigger tits, and the Drill team colonel I got rid of at the end of the year by letting her know I thought her ass was getting a little too fat. I had a scholarship out of state and the last thing I wanted was tearful calls to know if I was fucking other people, because I planned on doing a lot of it.

And I did. I passed a few harder courses not because of fucking the professor, because I had most men for my courses in business management, but their wives enjoyed having my eager and willing cock enough to help me out where they could. 

I have to say that graduating college at 22 with an MBA and a cock that had been dipped in most of the good wells around town, life was good for me. Because I have done so much so fast, I always had help from a girl who thought I was going to fall in love with her to get through two college degrees as fast as possible, business’s were throwing offers at me and I was lapping up the parties and schmoozing. I did more fucking when talking to the Southern California companies, but I had to go with the best opportunity and that was NYC, of course.

Within a year, I was climbing the ladder and into more than a few pairs of panties. Never anyone that worked under me, but if you are negotiating with your cock deep in your opposition as she moans, you are in the power position.

And that is how I rolled, as they on the streets. I was happy, unfettered and absolutely sure of how wonderful I was and that my life was laid out on golden paved streets until I died.

Chapter One: A meeting.

So when I got the invitation to my five year high school reunion, well I felt bad first because I hadn’t talked to my mom in a couple of weeks. I tried to call her at least once a week, but I had to call her going to a meeting, or a date, or getting my pants back on. Still she had to be happy to hear from her only son, right? Anyway, I got the invitation and decided that while I would love going to show them all how I really was better than they were, I just did not have the time to meet with people that did nothing for me in my life.

You see, we all do things like this. We get so wrapped in our own lives we don’t think about how our decisions radiate out and affect so many others.  I know that now, but getting to why will take us a while, so just stay with me here, okay?  Great!

So there I am in New York City, in a power tie being a power player, dating models, fucking them silly and leaving as soon as they nod off to sleep. I was happy.

And, I was oblivious. I really had been all my life, but I am getting ahead of myself again. I never thought a bit about the reunion until the night it happened. 

Way back home along the western Gulf Coast that night, a meeting was taking place. It was not a meeting I would have given a rat’s ass about and knowing it was taking place, I would have laughed about it. My mother lived in the same little teeny house I grew up in, I figured she was happy there, why disturb her? Three cars had pulled one after the other into her drive way. Doors opened and women got out. One stopped and moved to her rear door.

In New York City I came home as midnight approached, smelling of the awful perfume my female competition preferred and her pussy.

Four women, one holding the hand of a small boy stood on my mother’s porch and rang her doorbell. My mother answered the door and looked over each of the woman then stepped aside and let them all into her home later than she had ever received guests. She closed the door behind herself. As my mother met her grandson for the first time, my phone rang with one of my regular fuck buddies outside my building in nothing but a fur coat and a raging case of hornies; I was good for another round and wondered how she would like the taste of Marylyn’s pussy on my cock. I called the doorman to let her up. My mother talked to another mother and her just High school graduated daughter. Kaitlyn seemed to want to taste my cock more than she ever had before and it made me smile, my bet was she was at least bi-sexual and had no idea.  Maybe I could help her out. In my mother’s living room, they all listened to the last woman, scarred and disfigured and sick from bad plastic surgeries. All of the women were crying now, the five year old was fast asleep on his mother’s lap. I was falling asleep in Kaitlyn’s breath slow and even across my skin. A good cum does that for you.

My dreams were never really too vivid for me and I very rarely remembered them. This night was different. I saw a group of woman with red eyes gathered around a pot and my mother, a Deveraux by birth, putting strange items into a big pot. A photograph went into the pot and the women all said something. A clip of hair, the something repeated. The ritual went on and in my dream I could see a purple glow start from the pot. Then the dream changed, as dreams do, to the outlines of a man and a woman in bed. The man was restless, as if he was having a bad dream. The woman’s head rested on his stomach and the satin sheets, good ones like I had, shot up over his loins as if his cock had erupted into an erection. He groaned and shifted and she tightened her hold on his waist in her sleep. I was having a dream about a man having an erection in his sleep?  I was looking around for the scene to change when the man’s body, save for the outline was engulfed in a dull pulsing purple light. Well, this seemed a little interesting to my dreaming mind, more so that a bunch of women chanting around a chili pot. The outline pf man began to change, his body lines seemed to be flowing, his body shortening, his square shoulders narrowing, his hips flaring, his waist growing narrower. I wondered what the hell kind of dream I was having and why? I looked over his outline again and I got a laugh. In his light thrashing on the bed the satin sheet had gotten pulled up and the outline of his erect penis under them was gone. So much for his sexual prowess. The purple light faded from the man’s body and I felt a little aroused and mostly amused. Thank God that some things can only happen in dreams, I wanted to stay in the dream to find out what the woman would do when she woke up and found herself in bed with another woman then rather than the man she had fallen asleep on. The trouble was something was tugging me to wakefulness.

An Interlude

That something was my bladder and I had to pee so bad it hurt. I slipped out from under Kaitlyn carefully. Here in my own apartment, I didn’t need a light to move around, I would need one to pee, or I could sit down. Since the place was pitch black in the wee hours of the morning, I decided to sit. I nakedly padded my way into the bathroom and took a seat on the commode. It took my sleepy mind a minute to recall what I was to do. When I started to pee I almost cried out because the warm flow went all over my thighs. I chalked it up to going to bed after some great fucking, and fumbled in the dark for some toilet paper to clean up with. I wiped up my thighs and then up along my crotch. I yawned hugely as I wiped inside the soft folds and jumped, completing the wipe with a bit more caution. I padded my way back to bed and crawled back into bed beside Kaitlyn. She smelled really nice.  I wondered why I had never noticed and her hair looked lovely but it felt… damaged like she over treated it. It was funny to me the things women would do to attract us men. My stroking her hair made her turn back over and lay her head on my lower abdomen and then laid her arm up at an angle with her hand resting on and around the full mound there.

It was a nice feeling and I fell asleep hearing a soft moan from Kaitlyn.

Chapter Two: A Shock

I drifted out of sleep feeling as if I had been asleep for days, knowing it was just an after affect of a really good fuck session. I stretched languidly. I had the most delicious feeling between my legs. Kaitlyn was giving me head again. Now she was tasting her own pussy, she had to be lesbian. I did not even bother to open my eyes as I moaned and spread my legs more. I had no idea what she was doing down there but the feeling was like an electric charge from between my legs. I didn’t know how she was doing it but she was making it feel as if her tongue was right under the skin. It felt so good and I wanted her to keep it up until I exploded in orgasm. I felt as if my skin was a live and there was a growing pressure deep in my belly from the fluttering warm sensation inside me brought on by her tongue. It was making me gasp and writhe, wanting to both pull away before it killed me and to press closer for more. I could hear her moans from an open mouth. I thrashed my head as her tongue moved over a spot and it seemed to set all my nerves singing with loud pleasure, and almost as if I could feel each taste bud on her tongue. The air was so different from the warmth of her crouched between my spread thighs as it passed over my nipples which seems almost like just exposed nerves on their own. I cupped my hands under my breasts and ground down on her tongue as the sensation got to be too much and I began to shudder in spasms of orgasmic bliss. I have never cum like this and her tongue dragging over the swollen lips between my legs was making mini-little orgasms through me. It felt like I would never stop cumming. I had never had an orgasm go on for so long nor feel so intense. My hands were kneading breasts in moaning ecstasy, when I heard Kaitlyn’s voice in a husky whisper over me. “I can’t believe he brought someone else to bed but I am so glad.” I felt her drag her self up between my legs and the feel of our pubic mounds rubbing together sent me into another wave of pleasure. “Still can’t believe I let that bag of shit fuck me when he changes his credit cards, but it sure is nice to have someone as sexy as you to wake up to.” It dawned on me that the bag of shit with the credit cards in question was me! This bitch was stealing from me; she was the one using my freaking credit cards! My eyes snapped open as I intended to tell her to get the fuck out of my apartment. My words were cut off by the soft way she drug her smallish breasts over my nipples and it made me moan. “Are you in love with James, ‘cause you need to come out of here with me if you are sexy.” A hand cupped around the soft full curve on the right side of my chest and a sudden new more alarming dawning crept over me. She was cupping MY breast, my hanger, my jug, my TIT. “I’ve always had a thing for girls with nice big breasts, but it isn’t cool to admit that with the girls around here.  Liberated dykes can’t be honest.” She was rubbing her MONS VENUS to MINE! I suddenly felt a rush of panic. My name was James and I was a man with a thick cock that the women could not get enough of!  Well, except for Kaitlyn, she, apparently, was a lesbian that had been living off my credit cards for over a year and who found fucking me a disgusting act but better to hold my cock than a gun. She tilted her head as a hand slid between our bodies. “Your first time, honey?”  I felt her fingers rubbing my pussy and the sensation of her rubbing across the lips of MY pussy was more than I could have ever imagined. I had spent my life getting a woman wet so I could cram my dick into her and now I was feeling just how good it was to just be touched, a warming and deeply pleasurable without rushing headlong to the “big O”. 

“Yesssss.” I found myself answer completely honestly as I angled to feel more of her hand only to be made to moan when she slipped her finger into the canal of my vagina. My vagina, that was going to be hard to accept but right now, it just felt good, and quite different than I had expected it to. As a man, I always had a concept of how my cock felt going into a woman’s pussy. Now I will provide that this was just a single finger, but most of the sensation I felt was at the finger sliding into me, right at and around the opening of my pussy. As her digit pushed deeper there was just a slight feeling of pressure, of fullness, and it was a nice feeling to have.

“It doesn’t make you dyke yet, honey, but trust me, it is better than men.” She murmured to me as I ground to feel more of her finger and stopped when the delicious, slight, and nice feeling of pressure turned into a sharp pain. Kaitlyn pushed her finger to that point again and I sucked in air through my teeth as my body moved off her finger hurriedly. “Christ!  A virgin! What is James doing with a virgin in his bed?!?”

Chapter Three: A Confession

“Kat,” my voice was strange to me and yet not, just like the changes to my body.  “I am James.” She looked at me with wide eyes, and then they narrowed and really studied my face. 

“Right!” She said after a good burst of laughter.  “If he was on to me, why couldn’t the creep just confront me instead of putting you here with me.” She had a point there; I was not James, at least not anymore. I got out of the bed and paced around the place trying to think, as I was in a real shit storm now.  All of my ID, all my credit cards, it was all for a man that, by the weighty bounce brought on by my pacing around, I was not anymore.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, I have to be having a really bad dream, but I am James.” Then it occurred to me that I was asking for understanding from… “You were fucking stealing from me you whore!” I was livid all over again. I started to get madder as she started laughing. “What the fuck is so funny?!?!?!!!”

“Lady,” She started getting dressed. “I don’t know who you are but you stay with this guy you are gonna get hurt. This guy is a user.”

“Wait!” I started after her. Damn breasts they were in the way and the bouncing around when I moved too fast or hard was annoying. 

“What?” She stopped at the door dressed. 

“I need a bra or something so I can go out.” I was talking about whatever came to mind first to keep from actually thinking.

“Sweetie,” she smirked at me, “my bra is not going to work for you.”

“Why not?” I demanded of her. She closed the door with a resigned sigh and took off her blouse as she came over to me, unhooking her bra as she stopped near me.

“I have to get outta here, you know.” She handed me the bra and I looked at it. It was an object of clothing I had spent my life working to get off of women and now putting it on seemed… insane, the whole thing was. “I came over to fuck him so I could get his new card numbers and wake up to you being planted in bed with me.”

“Kat.” I hooked the straps over my shoulders that went and reached back to try and hook the hooks behind me.

“Don’t call me that. You will never get it that way.” She advised. I considered the problem a moment, then took the straps off my shoulders and put the back under the globes of my breasts. I hooked it together and turned it around.  The thing was already digging into my skin. Kaitlyn seemed to be enjoying this. I put the straps in and instantly found breathing an issue along with the sharp pain.  I looked down and my breasts were spilling out all around her bra, which made me frown, and it really really hurt. “See I am a smallish C with a thin build.” Kaitlyn unhooked it and I took a deep relieved breath. “I’d say you got some nicely sized D’s there, what is your name?.”

“James.” I insisted again.

“And you are a curvy gal to boot.” She swatted my ass as I had soft often done in the throes of fucking her, but mine had been harder to her and it made me jump. “You need to get to a lingerie store around the corner if he left you with no clothes. Take some of his stuff to get there.”

“How do I know it fits right?” My voice sounded far away even to me as I saw she was getting dressed. 

She looked at me strangely and shook her head. “You are a sweet girl, James, get out while you can.” She reached for the door.

“Will you help me?” I was lost and getting more so each minute.

“James, you sexy girl, but when the real James come here with the cops, I plan on being gone.” She opened the door and started through it. “I believe this is payback for him, if I still believe it really happened by lunch time.” The door closed and I was left alone with a rush of emotion in the silence of an apartment full of things I had valued that, at the moment, were of not one scrap of usefulness to me. I dropped onto the sofa, put my face in my hands and cried long and hard.

Thankfully it was a Saturday, so I was not expected in the office. This meant that the 30 minute crying jag did not take away from my job, though I had no idea how I was going to explain this at the office on Monday. In all, I was a little surprised at how good a nice big cry felt and how much it cleared my head. I found a tissue and cleared up the inevitable results of the crying jag and was finishing that task when the phone rang. I picked it up and gave out a shaky, “Hello?”

“Jamie?” I heard my mother’s voice on the other end of the connection. “I’m sorry but I had to.”

“Had to what, mom?” I asked a little confused as to why she was apologizing to me.

“They came to see me last night.” She explained and I could hear the tears in her voice.

“Who came to see you?” This was getting more confusing.

“Sharon, Kay, and Kathy’s mom and sister.” She blew her nose away from the phone.

“Sharon?” The first name had me still more confused.

“Sharon Herron.” Suddenly realization dawned on me.

“Miss Herron?” I knew it was, Kay was the cheerleader, and Cathy was the drill team Colonel. All women I had taken my way with when I was in High School. “Why did they come and see you?”

“Because you skipped your reunion.” She sniffed. “They had gone to confront you.”

“Confront me about what?” I was suddenly very self conscious that I was naked and pulled on a button down oxford, my favorite shirt, to cover myself.

“About what you did to them.” She said softly. “To every woman in your life.”

“What are you talking about, Mom?” I was feeling very uneasy about this conversation.

“Sharon brought your son here.” The world started spinning. “Kay is all but a cripple from plastic surgeries from increasingly bad doctors that all started with a boob job, and Kathy is a vegetable as a result of a heart condition cause from severe Bulimia.” She was crying again and a part of me was mad at having this blamed on me.

“Look mom, I was just honest with..”

“You used them Jamie!” She shouted into the phone. “You walked all over them the way I had let you walk all over me and I am still doing it. I call to talk to my only child and you are always too busy for your mother. A girl gives you all that she has and you tell her she needs bigger breasts? Now you want to say you had nothing to do with it.” She was so shrill in the phone because she was crying; I knew it and I started crying a little myself. “So I remembered what I learned from the Bayous and we gathered to make you understand.”
 
“You did this?” I felt stunned to the core of my being.

“You would never hear me or any other woman, Jamie.”

“JAMES!” I screeched into the phone. “Undo this mother, now.”

“I can’t Jamie.”

“Mom, this is not sending me to my room,” I pleaded.  “You made me a woman! Please undo it.”

“I can’t Jamie.” She was weeping openly again.

“You want to mom, I can hear it.” I had to get her to fix it.

“I thought it was going to be a dream!” She sobbed. “I thought I was going to give a dream for you to see what it was like to be one of the women in you life. I... I didn’t know it was possible to make you female for real.”

“What are you saying, mom?” I asked as the world seemed to screech to a sudden and silent halt, save for my mother’s weeping.

“I am saying I don’t know how this happened or how to undo it.”

“Who does mother?”

“No one.” She sobbed loudly. “And no one would believe it happened.”

“I’ll come down there and make them.” I was sure I had a way out of this now. I turned for my wallet and froze. On the spot where I had dropped my wallet last night, was a fine leather purse. “Jesus, mom.”

“What?” She sobbed in my ear as I opened the purse and pulled out the ladies wallet. She was begging me to tell her what as I opened it up and saw my driver’s license. As I read it I sank onto my fine leather sofa in despair.

“My driver’s license says I am a female, mom……”

Chapter Four: A Resignation

“It does?” She sounded surprised.  Weren’t we all?  I threw the license down in disgust. “How is that possible?”

“Gee mother, I don’t know because me waking up with a vagina and boobs is so entirely possible.” I said with the disgust ringing solidly in my voice.

“It’s not like I expected this, Jamie.” She kind of spat back at me.

“What am I supposed to do now mom?!” I shook my head against the phone and cut her off before she could answer. “Here I am in a fine New York apartment decorated  in a just Spartan and flashy way, with closets full of suits and drawers full of boxers and I have no idea how to shop for a thing I need and the only woman who would have been able to help me out with out thinking I was a complete nut, is gone.”

“Someone was with you?”

“Yeah.” I snorted, all un-lady like. “I should thank you, she didn’t know it was me and I found out she was really mostly a lesbian who was screwing me to get my credit card numbers.”

“She remembered you were a man?” Mom seemed curious.

“Yeah, why?  IS there something you know about this?”  I asked sitting up a bit.

“Call your doorman.” She suggested.

“Why?” 

“Make something up, just call him.”

“Fine.” I sighed. I reached into my purse and dug for my cell. I called down to the head doorman, Ralph, who picked it up with his usual chipper professionalism. I had never really noticed it before, odd. 

“Trengo Tower, this is Ralph.” His smile seemed to shine through the phone.

“Ralph, this is….” 

“Miss Adair!” Ralph had never been that excited to talk to Mister Adair. “Is there something I can do for you?” Now I needed a reason to have called him.

“Yes, uh Ralph.” I was not used to the sound of my voice at all.

“Are they making you work today, ma’am?” He seemed genuinely upset at the prospect.

“No Ralph, I just … well I need to do some shopping and I want to change my whole wardrobe.” It was true, why not go with it.

“And I have some trash bags sent up to your apartment?” Now I knew I was not imagining it, Ralph would not have crossed the street to put an axe in Mister James Adair’s head if it was on fire.

“No, Ralph.” I told him, the old familiar male part of me going on to tell him to shove the trash bags up his ass after it was full as I was actually saying. “No, call the Salvation Army to come by around 4 and pick up what I have, okay?”

“Of course, Miss Adair, and I should have your car ready at?”

“Oh Ralph.” I giggled.  I actually freaking giggled! What the hell was that?!? “You are so sweet.  You shouldn’t though the other tenants will get mad you do it for me.”  Yeah!  That was it; I got him with truth there!

“I do it for most of the tenants, ma’am, you know that.” BASTARD! He never got Mister Adair’s car and I thought I caught him keying in one evening that I was going out.

“Okay, Ralph, I’ll need it in about and hour.”

“Thank you Miss Adair.” I hung up the cell and lifted the receiver end of the phone back to my mouth, just in time to hear my mother muttering a soft sound of shock.

“What did he call you?” She asked and I knew she already knew the answer. 

“Miss Adair.” I fell back against the couch and pulled my hair the instant I did it.  “Ow!”

“What?” My mother asked quickly.

“I have long hair!” I pulled it up from my back. “He thinks I am just what my license here says, Miss James Adair.”

“Then the woman that was with you today might not remember you were Mister James Adair now either.”

“Mister James Adair would not have giggled at the damn doorman.” I shook my head.

“You were kind to him, Jamie.” She corrected me.  “There is nothing wrong with being nice to people.”

“I know mom, I just don’t know what I am doing.”

“Well I think you are going to take a shower and go out and get new clothes, right?” They were not so much there, but the tears were still in her voice.

“Yes, mother.”  I nodded and stood up. “I don’t have much choice unless I want to look like a woman not happy with being a woman.”

“I love you Jamie.” She said to me.

“You know I love you too, mom.”

“Bye.”

“I’ll call when I get home.” I hung up the cordless phone and dropped it on the charger and looked around my apartment. It was going to cost me a fortune to redecorate this place. I made my way to the shower to clean up and get out to the store.

Chapter Five: A Simple Act, Revisited.

All things being equal, this was far from a low stress situation. If you accept that, it was far from believable. It’s like the guy that claims he woke up with the murder weapon in his hand and has no idea how everyone else in the house is dead. I had to pee again as well as go to the shower. The apartment seemed bigger to me now. I swore I could be getting into the bathroom in about five steps. I should have been in the tiled overly apportioned bathroom, and I was only mostly there. As a man you have an idea of how breasts would feel to have, but I was quickly discovering that it was not at all what I thought. They were heavier than I thought to walk around with and the bouncing of them was not as nice as I thought it would be. Much nicer for a man to watch, these things were attached and bouncing meant pulling skin or something else. I padded my way over to the toilet and started to raise the seat. I felt tears threatening again. I was not going to be able to raise the seat until I got this fixed. I sat down like I would have before this damn change and sighed. Forced to have to sit anytime I went. What a pain. I was vacillating in my thoughts between the need to cry and the need to tear out someone’s throat when I felt the muscles below my bladder start to relax, at least that was the same, and realized it was a good thing that I had been forced to sit. I started to relax all around down there and I ripped off a good one. I made a silent thinks for Kat having left and not having heard that and a part of me was shocked that this was the first thought in my mind. Before, I would have walked around passing gas with no concern for anyone else being around. It was my place after all. Now, however, I was horrified that someone might have heard me doing what was natural in the process of the body getting rid of unneeded or toxic things from my body. I started humming to hide the noises a bit and felt the whole reason this started, peeing, getting underway. Once more my thighs were instantly coated with the warm flow. “Dammit!” I cursed in the echo of the tiled bathroom. I adjusted my position on the toilet a bit and was rewarded be no longer peeing on myself. Two times in one …. 

My mind grasped that this was exactly what had happened in my now almost forgotten early-dark bathroom run. Then I had gone back to bed after cleaning up my thigh and my pussy in the dark and I had gone back to bed and fell asleep with… I cupped a hand to my left breast … Kat’s hand cupping to my left breast. I had been changed then and had just been too sleepy to know it. 

Well I was all finished and started wiping up. I had been able to do one end of that equation either up or down. When I started to clean up behind me, I discovered that the either direction policy was not the best way anymore. I needed to start at the bottom and go up, for sure. With the extra clean up now needed from that lesson I started to stand and felt dribbles between my legs, I forgot to wipe my pussy. I reached for a few more squares and cleaned up the rest of the way. This was going to be a long weekend until mom could get me back to normal.  I turned to look at myself in the mirror, which seemed a lot bigger than I remembered it.

Once more it was realization time for me. As I looked at my naked reflection in the mirror, the old James part of my brain knew it would have tried to ‘bag’ the temporary James. I would have told myself that I was doing this woman a favor. I turned and started the shower to let the water warm up and went back to the mirror. Had I seen the woman I was, for the time being, I would have convinced myself I was doing her a favor by letting her sleep with someone as fabulous as me. I had been six feet, two inches tall and a regular at the gym. I did not work out to build muscle but to keep trim. My weight fluctuated at around one hundred and eighty pounds. A cocky tallish man, that had been me. Now I was…. I was maybe five feet tall?!? I had lost over a foot of height in this thing???  I turned, I seemed a little, thicker but I did not feel heavier, save for the new weight to deal with on my chest. I had short hair with streak of auburn and a sandy blonde among the dark brown. Now I had hair that was halfway down my back with those colors, especially the blonde, clearly artificially highlighted. My hair still swept from being brushed back at the right temple. My eyes were a dark shade of brown, I had never noticed them much before, and my features had softened more. My eyebrows still were thin and arched and just like they had been before. I, thankfully, did not have my Van Dyke goatee, as that would have looked strange and creepy. My cheek bones were more prominent but softer as were the lined and angles of my face. I would have called myself fat, before this, but I could not have been more than one-thirty to one hundred pounds. I was lighter than I had been before mom cursed me to this. I turned a bit more to see what I could from behind. I cringed inside a bit without thinking about it. I would have to make sure I got things that were not too tight around my hips lest I make my ass look huge. I stopped my study as steam started rolling and went into the shower.

I was lucky I had been a vain man, I realized as I started towards washing my hair, because I had all kinds of shampoos and conditioners. As I stepped back under the spray of the shower head, I sighed. The water was almost hot and it felt good. I had to turn to get my abdomen wet and then leaned my head back under the spray. It was another shock. Men always want think, very long, very full hair, preferably blonde and porn starlet curly. As I got my straight long hair wet, I thought the weight of my wet hair was going to snap my neck all the way back. Gods the hair weighed a ton. I shampooed and I conditioned as well and as fast as I could to let it dry out at least a bit. I turned and got my scratchy shower puff and the soap to squirt on it. I started scrubbing like I always had, starting with the face and work down, and scrubbing vigorously. With my eyes closed I started down past my shoulders and on the path to yet another discovery, vigorous is not always right! When I lifted my left breast to scrub over and under it, the puff felt like sandpaper with glass shard in it over my nipple.  I gasped and changed my tactics a bit; being sure to take some care around my labia left I do that again! I started rinsing off and aiding the removal of the soap with my hands. In doing it, my fingers grazed the lips of my sex a few times and it occurred to me that, as Kaitlyn had shown me, that alone felt nice. I knew the hot water would last a while longer so I decided to explore a bit. My fingers parted my lips and rubbed lightly just inside. “Mmmmmm!” I bit my bottom lip as this was feeling very nice, I could feel the finger moving around down there softly and it did feel good. I always pictured woman masturbating and grabbing their breasts while they did so, I was too busy trying to find a spot to brace to even consider it. When my fingertip brushed my clit, I cried out. Not in orgasmic bliss but shock. There was a little pain mixed in with the overwhelming flood of sensations from that brush of the hidden nub. I recalled how intense it had been with Kaitlyn this morning but she had never really touched that button. I tried to remember what her tongue had been doing and I did a pretty good recalling of that bringing myself to a belly rolling but otherwise silent orgasm. It was a different feeling than the onrush of release I had experienced as a man. It seemed more appropriate to think of it like waves as the pulse just seemed to radiate out build to a peak and then crash in glowing little echoes of pleasure. This was all diametrically opposed to what I had thought it was before. I had assumed it was like it was for a man, a building until a cannon shot of sexual after-matter and complete relaxation, as if having done some strenuous activity. The truth now was that I felt a glow and wanted it to keep up but I was here alone and I had things to get done. 

The most daunting thing was going to be getting my hair dry before Ralph got my car around for me, a very slight second to that was what to wear from my current wardrobe to cover that I had no bra or would at least keep me clothed.

Chapter Six: A Wardrobe Problem

I barely heard the phone of the loud whine of the hairdryer. I rushed to it and Ralph was on the other end of the line. “Ms Adair?”

“Yes Ralph?”  I found the urge to cover myself while on the phone very strong again.

“Your car seems to be low on fuel.”

“Just call me a cab, Ralph?”

“Right away, Ms Adair/”

“No, not right away.” I would have been ready already before my mother’s lovely little game. “Call it in about an hour and I should be ready by the time it arrives, okay?”

“Very good, Ms Adiar.” We hung up simultaneously. I sighed and went back to trying to dry this unruly mane I had now.  It took me nearly an hour to get it good and dried and set in some sort of style that was not horrid. I would have loved to have had something to tie it back with, but I didn’t. I moved to my closet and walked into it. I was struck with just how freaking drab it was. There here shades of gray and dark blues and blacks. I sighed and found a powder blue oxford that I loved. The tails of the shirt hung down to my knees. I pulled the shirt around me and before I buttoned it, I marveled at how it felt on me. I buttoned it and rummaged around through my slacks. I passed them and looked to the ‘business casual’ of my Khaki pants. The legs of the pants hung past my toes by a good six inches and the waist was a little big, but I got them on and rolled up the bottom hem of the trousers and used a belt to keep them on. I checked myself in the mirror. It was okay, except for the fabric of the shirt was doing little to hide the shape of my nipples. I pawed through for a jacket I might have held onto for too long and found one that was not like a creature trying to devour me. I looked again after pulling my hair out of the collar of the sports jacket. It was sad, but, It was all I had right now. I started for the door, snagging my purse along the way and almost closed the door before I remembered that I had not put my wallet back inside the leather bag. The phone rag as I was looking for the leather wallet.  It was Ralph again. “You cab has been waiting, Ms Adair.”

“Ralph, please tell him I am on my way down and I need him for the day, I have to get some shopping done.”

“Very good, Ms Adair.” Good, I was free to return to my search. I found it in less than a minute and recalled that I had no shoes on.  I frantically searched for a pair. The phone started ringing as I was pulling on and tossing off shoes. I knew it was Ralph, but he was going to have to wait. I found a pair of tennis shoes that did not look like some version of clown shoes and stayed on with two pairs of socks. I rushed for the door, my purse swinging out behind me as the phone started calling for me again. When I got down to the front lobby to rush out to my cab, stumbling in my too big shoes, Ralph hung up the phone. “Ms Adair! I have been trying to call you…”

“I am sorry Ralph, I got stopped but I am here for the cab.”

“Sorry, Miss.” Ralph took off his hat. “The cabbie said he could not hire out for the day.” Great. Now I had on shoes that did not fit, I had these glands on my chest that were threatening to pull me over or beat me to death if I ran too hard and no cab. I felt a rush of tears building.

“What am I going to do?”

“I have a nephew that is starting his own Limo service.” Ralph offered. A limo sounded nice. “Not too gaudy yet, but he just got his first brand new one and maybe I could have him take you on your shopping?” That sounded pricy to me.

“Am I going to have to tell him all the good stores?” I acted as if I knew what they were.

“Oh no!” Ralph beamed at me. “I can get him to knock down the fee for you and he used to drive one of the big CEO’s wives before he quit to start his own service. He says he knows some shops that are better than the big name stores because of her.” 

I pursed my lips as if deep in thought. “Mmmmmm’kay.” I smiled brightly at seeing the happy look on Ralph’s face He rushed through the revolving door and was all but jumping up and down. A big white car rolled up out side and Ralph opened a door to the back and looked back to me inside. It looked to me like Ralph had already made the arrangements. I chuckled a bit and made my way into the limo.

It was a nice car. Not too big, which was good, but there was a privacy glass and I was going to need that. The glass was half-way down now. “Where to, Miss Adair?”

“James.” I gave my name out of habbit.

“Where to, Miss James?” 

“No, no.” I shook my head. “My name is James Adair.” 

“Maurice.” He smiled as three cars passed us blaring their horns.

“I need a place to buy shoes Maurice.” I flipped my hair back over my right shoulder. “Lots of nice, good shoes.” 

“I know a fabulous boutique, Miss Adair.”

“How about a discrete place to buy some … underwear?”

“Several.” We pulled away from my building. “It all depends on if you are looking for something….: he stopped to search my face in the rearview as he drove, “I mean how.. uhm…”

“I need regular underwear Maurice, but I prefer not to wave them around in front of the entire City.”

“Excellent.” Maurice beamed. “The shoe place I am taking you is on the same block of a very nice shop for lingerie.”

“After that, we need to get a lot of clothes.” I leaned back in my seat and watched the City pass by as if it were a movie world so far away from me.

Chapter Seven: A Start?

The shoe store was heaven. My calves were hurting from walking in the too big men’s shoes and I wanted desperately to get into something that I did not feel like I was going to kick across the room just walking. The first pair I picked out were some sneakers and I planned on wearing them out. The trouble for me was I did not know when this would be over and I might have to muddle through for a couple of days and there was a social function sponsored by our company that I had to attend, mostly to keep my eyes and ears open and be ready to move when I needed to. So, I was going to need something dressy. I tried on some very lovely high heels and the sales lady was very good when I had trouble walking in them at first. She suggested a lower heel than the six inch stiletto I had picked out, but I knew it was a matter of finding the way to balance. I walked a little more and slowly I got the hang of doing most of my balancing on balls of my feet rather than on my heels. The shoes were black, but I needed clothes yet, so I bought several more pairs in various colors. Then I spotted the boots in the rear of the shop, I looked those over and bought a pair of nice calf high riding boot and a little wicked impulse purchase of some thigh high stiletto boots.

Now that the shoes were dumped into the back of the limo it was a block walk in my new sneakers to the lingerie store. Maurice looked as if he wanted to come help me after all the bags I had from the shoe store, but I smiled and shook my head and pushed into the boutique with a stomach full of butterflies. A bell rang very softly as the door opened and a woman maybe 35 or so smiled to me.

“How can I help you?” She asked.  I looked nervously around the shop. This seemed to make her nervous as I got closer to her.

“I need to buy some bras and things.” She looked suspiciously at me.

“Okay?”

“I don’t know how to.” I whispered to her feeling the heat of embarrassment in my cheeks.

“You don’t know what size you need?” She seemed even more confused now.

“I don’t know anything about them other than they are supposed to hold… you know… you up.” Gods this was humiliating. She smiled to me and paid her hand on mine.

“I can help you learn how to do it all on your own.” She gave me a little wink. “I’m Stephanie.” She held my hand in hers after she came around her little counter.

“I’m James.” It was knee jerk to say it.

“Okay James,” she shook her head, “Jamie. Come on back here and we will get you measured up and start looking.” She led me to the back and as we entered what seems to be a secluded room a little electronic bell went off. I heard the steps of someone else moving outside the room we were in to the front. “Let’s see what you have now, Jamie.” Stephanie turned to look at me and I flushed with embarrassment again. “Come on,” she encouraged me softly, “get off the men’s stuff and let’s start.” She pulled out a measuring tape. I swallowed and pulled of the sports jacket with the rolled up sleeves and then the far too big slacks. “You are going for clothes after this?” She asked seeing the labels on my clothes.

“I kinda have to.” I said laying the pants of a chair and un buttoning the button down oxford shirt. Stephanie was watching and waiting for me to finish so I just pulled the shirt off and tossed it aside, my stomach in knots, embarrassed as hell, and looking at Stephanie’s eyes as I had no urge to see anything but professionalism there. My hopes were granted.

“Hmmm.” Stephanie approached me with the tape. “I think you came to the right place Jamie.” She wrapped the tape around the peak of my breasts.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“Well,” she then put the tape under my breasts and again measured, “I could be wrong but I don’t think you have ever gotten a bra that fits you right out of any department or clothing store.” She looked at the measurement and I could see her calculating in her head. “Not many sized for you off the rack of the average clothing store.” She gave me a smile.

“How can you tell?” I thought there would be more measuring but she seemed to be done.

“You measure in two places. Under,” she indicated the area beneath her breasts, “and then over.” Now she made a circle from her ribs over the tops of her breasts with her two index fingers. “You take the two and find the difference. This measurement is the number.” She made the circle under her breasts. “And the difference between the two should give you your cup size.”

“The letter.” I interjected.

“Exactly.” She smiled “Now for you we have a chest of thirty-six inches and a bust line of forty-four inches.”

“A difference of six.” Numbers were a strong suit of mine and a reason I was as good as I was in business, so it was just a reflex to give the difference.

“Right.” Stephanie smiled and nodded again. “That is not an overly common size.” She went out and I could hear her moving hangers outside as I sat there buck naked behind the closed door, praying she would not just throw the door open. There was a soft knock once the hangers stopped. “Jamie?” Followed the knock and I hid behind the door.

“Yes?” The door opened and covered me and I was happy to see Stephanie not only had bras but a couple of pairs of panties as well.

“I thought these would fit but let’s make sure and then get started on these bras.” She handed me the panties and the first pair, I would learn later were French cut, fit nicely and felt good too. 

Another hour later, and now it seems so… stereotypical, but I had at least seven pairs of shoes and four bras and about 14 pairs of panties, several pairs of real nylons a couple of garters and a couple of pairs of panty hose in the back of the limo. I was a little excited about having it all somewhere deep down, but I have to admit that I had a lot of shoes before too. I think as much as men like to complain about women and shoes it is just because we want to use it to make our… wait, themselves feel better than women. I put up the privacy glass, eager to add to the bra and panties I had gotten to wear out of the store. The tags for the me were in the bag, but Stephanie had felt for me and allowed me to keep the bra that had finally fit and the French cut panties on. Now I kicked off the khakis and pulled on a pair of nylons. They had felt good and I wanted to get used to walking in the shoes before the party tonight.

Chapter Eight: A Changing

I was not prepared for shopping for clothes. As a man, you get clothes by inches and the style and colors were, it seemed now, severely limited. I spent hours trying on dresses and skirts and silk blouses and cotton blends and cocktail dresses. I even went through some evening wear. The trouble, I was finding, was that the sizes seemed random to the manufacturer. A size six by one was huge but by another it was too small in the chest and hips. Luckily I was in a high dollar store for the dresses. I picked out ten different skirts and 14 blouses in various colors, and jackets to match or compliment the skirts for work and four little dresses and littler skirts for play. As with Stephanie, I was letting the saleswoman guide me with matching and mixing the colors. I picked out a few cocktail dresses and two gowns, and all of it needed to be tailored. There was a slinky little back cotton blend cocktail dress that I paid extra to have sized to fit me right and returned for me to wear tonight.

I had Maurice drive me to a department store so I could buy some jeans and other simple clothes and now I was back in the limo with those purchases. I called to Ralph while we made our way through traffic and cancelled the Salvation Army pick up, because I was going to get out of this thing. Not that I told Ralph that but… I had to get back to being me. I hung up the phone and looked down at the clothes from my life before it got all mixed up and then to the bags of jeans and khaki slacks and pullovers and oxford blouses. I took a moment in traffic to just for a moment consider how things were going.

I should have been uncomfortable, the truth was… I was not. I sat with my legs together partially folded back, a position of sitting one cannot perform with a pair of testicles without a great deal of discomfort. I kind of liked how my panties felt on, though I had more than a few practical pairs of cotton ones, I liked these satiny French cut ones and was kind of looking forward to some of the skimpier skirts I had bought to see just how uncomfortable the thongs were. Even the bra was tolerable, but comfortable was not a fitting word for it. Nothing cut in, but it was like having an ace bandage around your chest in that it was not quite restrictive, but your knew where all the straps were. I felt… pretty and that was nice. My hair wasn’t such a bother with the velvet schrunchi I had bought to club it back. It felt… nice to be who I was.

I was feeling this sort of love for man kind and decided I should see how it felt in women’s clothes rather than the ones I had worn out of the house. I was in another world and started stripping off the shirt I had worn all day without checking to make sure I had put the privacy glass back up. I tossed the shirt aside and kicked off my new sneakers and then wriggled out of the khaki trousers. I leaned over to root through my bags having no idea I was giving Maurice quite a show, and more of one as I leaned over the bags. I settled on a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. I pulled on the shirt and then saw the glass was down. I frowned and then put it out of my head, Maurice had been nothing but nice to me all day, he would not treat me like that even with my forgetfulness. I wriggled myself into the jeans and pulled on the khaki windbreaker I had bought. Once my shoes were on, I sat back and sighed.

It still felt nice.

I watched the city go by for the rest of the drive and considered my options for the night. I should have been thinking about finding someone to undo this magic thing, but I was thinking about that little black number and how good Tina had promised me it would look when taken up properly. I was going to be stunning and I had a strapless bra to aid me with my first foray out. I would rather not be making it when I thought about it on the phone with my mother, but this was a see and be seen event and these were usually crucial to keeping your career on path. I suddenly realized we were in the garage of my building and Maurice was looking at me in the rear view.

“You look very nice, Miss Adair.” He said with a different timber in his voice.

“Thank you Maurice.” I smiled to him, having put my inadvertent display to him out of my head. He got out and I turned to gather up my bags for when he let me out. The door opened as I was still gathering. “Just a second, Mau…” The door closed after a weight moved the seat beside me. I turned and was looking at Maurice. My stomach tightened up a little. “What’s up, Maurice?”

“I liked you showing me what you have.” He said in a voice that was almost slurred with some dark emotion and I did not care for the light in his eyes. “Uncle Ralph says you are the nicest woman in his building so maybe you’ll be nice to me when I show you what I got.” 

“Look, Maurice” I started feeling my stomach tighten up and my mouth go dry, “I didn’t mean to..” I looked down as he did and gasped. He had taken his hard cock out and was stroking it with a wicked grin on his face.

“Mouth watering, huh?” I flushed with rage and shame and anger and did the only thing I could think of to clear his mind. I slapped his five inch hard-on as hard as I could. He groaned and rolled against the door. I planted a knee in his crotch and used it to leverage over him and open the door and getting an even louder groan of pain as I crushed his balls with my knee.  When the door opened, he fell out onto the garage floor and I climbed over him with my bags in hand.

“I will not only, not be using your service again, I will not be paying you Maurice.” I turned and glared at him. “If you so much as look at me ever again I will report you to the commission and I will be telling your Uncle!” I turned and stormed off for the elevators, which would deny me the satisfaction of slamming a door on him.

Chapter Nine: A Dressing

So there I was with bags full of shoes and jeans and pants and easy blouses and under things. I had stopped and told Ralph never to call his nephew for me again and to arrange for me to have another car for tonight’s party. I had then rushed up to my apartment. I should have been looking at all the clothes now, but I had bigger issues to fry, the bras. I stripped down to bra and panties and turned back and forth. The size of my breasts did over shadow other curves but I felt so pretty in the bra and panties. I started going between each of both back and fourth forth and back. After a half hour of taking off and on a bra and standing in my high heeled shoes, I was not so worried about the other girls knowing I wasn’t really one of them. I finally stood in a pair of the thong underwear. They were… uncomfortable, but only really because of the sensation of having a wedgie. They were not over tight and they kind of framed the curves of my hips well. I was looking at myself now in a way I had avoided before. I was not the kind of woman I recalled ‘going after.’ I was pretty but I was short and about one hundred and thirty pounds. My thighs were thick with muscle and the high heeled shoes seemed to be something my feet were trained to, even if my mind was not. My legs looked a little fat but looking at them uncovered, that was muscle. My hips were a completely different thing now though. They had sort of been there before, as a man, mostly straight, but now they curved out from my thighs and dramatically back in at my waist. Looking at them I thought they might qualify as ‘child bearing hips.’ I had stood on the scale to get my weight and now I ran a hand over the slight paunch of my stomach. I ran a hand over the material of my thong and through the dark curly hairs so plentiful around it. I would need to at least trim up my pubic hair. I let me eyes move up and onto my breasts. My gods how much different it was to have a pair of these than I thought. They were more in the way than balls were and balls were usually only a problem sitting down. I cupped both my hands around my breasts.  You never got away from these things. I was also surprised at how different the sensations they had were. I kneaded them now softly and it felt very nice. The nipples were mostly ticklish and in playing with them now, not nearly as erotic as I thought.  Maybe you needed a partner for that part. I tweaked a nipple too hard and gasped loudly. As I blinked into the mirror I recalled a sexual encounter with Cathy where I had dismissed her bitching about how hard I pinched her nipples.

“Sorry Cathy.” My soft full lower lip moved more than the thin, almost not there upper one in my apology. I pulled on a long Tee shirt that hung to my knees and declared the cool hip ness of some commercial product. I had several of these because nighties and night gowns had been a little daunting for my first ever time to buy omen’s clothing. I picked up the phone and called down to Ralph. “Ralph?”

“Ms Adair!” He seemed to be on the verge of bursting into a puddle. “I am so sorry about Maurice, he just a kid and think he knows…”

“Ralph,” I stopped him, “I have a dress coming soon. I need to shower and do my hair before my party tonight.”

“Of course, Ms Adair.”

“Will you stay and bring it to my room as soon as it arrives? Or do you have a date?” I smiled as a finger twirled in the loops of the corded receiver.

“You know better, Ms Adair.” I could almost hear him blush. “I’ll bring it up.”

“Thank you Ralphie.” I smiled and hung up the phone, humming to myself as I went to the shower completely unaware I had just called the door man I had tried three times to have fired for his incompetence, Ralphie. I was pleased that I could keep my short kimono, though it was not as short now. I pulled off the thongs at the bathroom door and then turned for my bedroom. I dumped my boxer shorts out of the drawer and put in all my bras and panties. I picked out the strapless bra and the lone black g-string bought with this dress in mind and how it would cling to me, or how it was supposed to. I stepped into the warm flow of the steaming shower head, my old razor in hand. My shower now was going to be longer, but this time I needed to shave legs and trim around my pussy. 

When I stepped out of the shower, the bathroom was filled with steam and my legs were denuded of hair, as was my pubic region. It was like the few times I tried a new way of trimming my beard before, after a certain number of mistakes, better to wipe it all out. I dried off and slipped on my kimono. I started out of the bathroom to give the mirror time to defrost, with a towel wrapped like a turban around my head. I was a little proud of that turban towel. It had taken me five times to get it right. I was feeling like quite the sexy little woman and sauntered halfway into the living room before I noticed… Ralph stood there holding my dress with one hand his face a little pale. I felt the smile touch my lips as I started over to Ralph nothing on me other than the silk.

“Is that my dress Ralphie?” My voice was, well, sultry.

“Y.. y… yes, M… Ms Adair.” He seemed to be holding it in front of him like a shield. His cheeks flushed when I sauntered over and took it from his hand. It did look even more like it would fit me than it had in boutique. Good, I thought and smiled to myself before I looked over at Ralph.

“Why Ralph,” I looked up into his eyes, “are you happy to see me?” I was feeling loose and pretty and adventurous and not thinking too much about what was going on, just like a man….

Chapter Ten: A Teasing

I knew he was, I could see the outline of him in his slacks. I should have been outraged or at least creeped out by it, but it made me feel pretty and there was a sense of power in it too. He stumbled over answering me, so as he did I took the dress over and laid it on the couch. The robe I wore threatened to reveal my backside to him. It was for when I was a taller man, so it did not. “….Just wanted to make sure you got that f…f…f…for your party.”

“You’ve been looking at me, haven’t you Ralph?” I turned to face him, unable to hide most of the grin I was feeling.

“No, no ma’am.” He looked away quickly.

“Oh now Ralph,” I shook my head. “Your nephew,” I still could not say his name, “didn’t run me around all day with no money up front for no reason.”

“He shouldn’t have… done that to you.” I could see the anger in Ralph’s eyes over my humiliation at the hands of his nephew.

“You’ve never been married have you Ralph?” The question came out of me before I realized it.

“No, Ms Adair.” He blushed madly and looked down at his shoes. I suddenly realized something. Ralph was a kind heart and a good man, and he was what people back home would have called ‘A little touched in the head.’ Ralph was sweet and decent and simple minded. Not enough to make him disabled or require he have help, just enough that he would have been used and taken advantage of, and I had petitioned over and over to remove this sweet man before all this change. Now, I was teasing him horribly. I crossed over to him and wrapped my arms around him and hugged him. He lived with insults, I was sure as I had been around the tenants that regularly trashed him and demanded his job be given to someone more qualified. My heart broke for him and I could feel him tense as I hugged him. Finally his arms encircled me. I have to admit, he was a strong man and it felt good to be held, better than I thought it would. He still had an erection, but I had done that to him so I would politely not tease nor mention it.

“I was teasing you before Ralph.” I admitted in a very quiet voice. “I was being mean and teasing you before.” I stepped back and pulled my robe a little tighter. Ralph was practically glowing red now.

“S’okay.” He muttered. “I sh…sh…should go.” He turned and started to the door.

“Ralph,” my voice stopped him, “you can come talk to me anytime you want okay?”

“Thank you Ms Adair.” He smiled a little.

“Call me Jamie.” I smiled to him as he looked back to me. He blushed scarlet and rushed out of my apartment. I scooped up my black dress and headed into my bedroom. There was a full-length three sided mirror. I stood there in my robe a long moment looking at myself in it and thinking of all the times the old James Adair had talked about the vanity of women and laughed about it with the guys over a beer. I could not recall one woman’s apartment that had such a mirror in it. I stripped out of my robe and looked over my temporary body again. I had a little gut and not the abs of the swimsuit models I used to date. I used to openly encourage women to have breast enhancements, now I was looking at breasts that needed a 38 F cup bra. They were heavy, and, quite frankly, they kept getting in my way. I could tell by the definition of the muscles in my legs that this was a body that had seen workouts but gravity and the weight of these things meant that they were not round and perfect like men think all breasts should be. I turned and frowned. Thanks to the wide curving flare of my hips and most likely the in-line skating and cycling I did almost daily before, I had a full round rear-end. A big ass. 

I stepped away from the mirror and pulled on the g-string panties. It was almost worse than a wedgie and I knew it was going to annoy me all night. It took me a few times to get the strapless bra on right, but I finally did. The dress was the hardest thing yet and in the end I ended up with a wire coat hanger in the zipper’s tab to get it on. When I looke din the mirror I was pleased. I was not a swimsuit model but I was pretty and feminine. I gathered up my purse and headed for the door, trusting Ralph did have my transportation arranged so that I would not have to worry about wrecking my car on the way home.

Chapter Eleven: An Aftermath

Two hours later, the car stopped at the front door of my building and Joe opened the door for me.

“Evening Miss Adair.” He tipped his cap but I barely noticed. He rushed around me to push the elevator button. “I hope you get to feeling better, Miss Adair.” The elevator doors closed on Joe.

I had never spent such a miserable evening any where. The doors opened to my floor and I rushed to my door feeling a combination of frustration, humiliation, and rage. I slammed the door closed and locked it behind me. I had spent the night talking and certain that maybe a tenth of everything I had said had reached the ears of my colleagues and co-workers, or at least the male ones. John O’Brien, a man whose job I wanted and was doing for him already, had spent all of a ten minute conversation with me trying to find a way to look down my blouse. I caught a CEO of a real estate firm staring at my ass. Man after man had ogled me and it got more obvious the longer the night went on. I could have standing there talking about Nuclear Physics, world famine, or just grunting like some monkey and they would have all heard the same thing. All they cared about were my boobs. All they could thing about is getting me out of my panties. A few men from other companies had made lewd offers the longer the alcohol flowed. When I threw my drink on one that offered to let me have ‘the ride of my life on his bed,’ he had the nerve to be angry and call me a bitch!

By the time someone squeezed my ass, I had had more than enough. I could feel the tears threatening and I knew crying would ruin me in my career, so it was time to go. I charged for the door concentrating on the rage. Once in the car, the humiliation set in. How could they treat me like that? Most of them acted as if I should be honored at the crude advances and open attempts to see more of my body than I was willing to display. By the time the car stopped, I knew that was what they were thinking because I had thought it too. I had even grabbed the occasional ass at a party, just as someone had grabbed mine tonight.

I washed myself twice in the shower.  There was no exploring of new sensations this time, only the burning urge to wash those looks off of me. I was not sure how I was going to be able to work on Monday. Then I recalled that my co-workers were only a small part of that gathering and there was no drinking in the office, so most would be able to act professional. It was my first time to be on the other end and it was not the honor I had thought women should feel it was to be treated like I was. 

When I got out of the shower the phone was ringing. I had one of those feelings like it was ringing urgently, but, of course, a phone just rings.

“Hello?” I asked into the receiver.

“Jamie!” It was Mari Willbanks. She and I were equals and working hard to get to the top of the ladder faster than the other. It had been a bitter rivalry before, now… “I saw you rush out and I was worried about you girl!” 

“I’m okay.” I said quietly into the phone.

“Jamie,” she said in a lecturing tone, “I am outside your building.” 

“Okay.” I hung up the phone and called down to Joe to let her in the building. I knew I had a few minutes so I got a long tee shirt that used to hang to just above my knees before and now it was halfway down my claves, swept my hair up into a towel built turban and made my way to the door just as a soft knock sounded from it.

I opened the door and Mari instantly hugged me, and fiercely. “I saw Reily reach and your eyes shot open wide, that little bastard.” She patted my back and I closed the door as she headed for my sofa. “You still haven’t redecorated from tossing out that creep you had?”

“No.” I shook my head and sat on the sofa as well. The truth was I had no idea what she was talking about. I had tossed out a live in girl friend before, but then she had started being frigid and… No, I tossed her out so I could fuck other women and not listen to her crying when I got home reeking of perfume from an interlude. When she wept telling me how she loved and needed me, I had packed her shit up and tossed it out into the hall. “Too busy.” I swallowed.

“First thing Monday, we file a complaint.” She waved a finger at me.

“And you know that will get you and I both fired, Mari.” I stared at her. “Oh don’t act so naive. That’s why Susan became free when she come to our place looking for work. Russel Thayer was feeling her up in the copy room and she filed a report and he got canned instantly, it took them six months to make her quit before they had built up enough of a case to terminate her.”

“They can’t so that,” Mari shook her head at me, “it’s the law.”

“No one writes down that you fired them because they filled a complaint, Mari” I shook my head right back. “You get it for having nothing to do because they made you manager of a new department that they then phase out because it is a duplication of effort or something like that. The real reason… that complaint.”

“No wonder we get paid less than they do for the same amount of work.” She shook her head slowly. “I need a drink, you?”

“A sti… a drink sounds nice.” I smile to Mari.

“Maybe we should tell Mrs. Reily what her husband is doing?" Mari offered as she poured us both a brandy.

“And what makes you think King Phillip Reily isn't going to tell his doting pampered housewife that I wasn't shaking my ass on table tops?"

"But you are a professional woman," Mari was horrified at the thought, "how could she think you would jeapordize your carreer by doing that?"

"Phillip," I said imitating Fancine's nasally voice, "has just added number four to his current rotation of fuck buddies." I took my glass from Mari. "There is a part of her that knows he is cheating on her, and is okay with that as long as she has the lifestyle she wants."

"S'not fair." Mari puffed and took a healthy drink.

"Never is, hon." I lifted my glass to her and joined her in the drink, not about to tell her I knew about Phil's adding his secretary to the list of women he was sleeping with because James the man had walked in on the two of them with her having a mouth full of his hard dick rather than her note pad covered with a dictated letter, or that I had then joined in. How humiliating that must have been for Stephanie.

Chapter Twelve: A Commiserating

“What happened tonight, James?” Mari asked before taking a sip of her brandy. She thought I should be used to all the stares, but then as far as Mari knew, it seemed, I had always been a woman. I had not and this was all new to me.

“I don’t Mari.” I shook my head and looked into my snifter. “I mean it just got to me. All the whispering and the fact that half of the men there tonight would not have known I had eyes much less what color they were.” I was talking now from somewhere deep inside me and it felt good, even if I was sniffing a little and teary. “Maybe I should be used to it, but why should we have to get used to that?”

“We shouldn’t.” Mari nodded in agreement with me. “But you were right about what they do when you report sexual harassment.”

“I know.” I nodded and turned and hooked a leg under me. “What about when they act like you are an AA? ‘Get me some Coffee.’ I mean not even a please!”

“Yeah but look at how half those guys treat there assistants.” Mari nodded. “They get it worse.”

“Not worse than Charlotte treats her parade of Assistants.” Now we both giggled a bit.

“It’s kind of funny how she can’t keep one a full year but it is never her fault, is it?”

“Imagine how she must micromanage her husband.” I grinned, picturing the woman telling him how to put on his underwear and shave his face and how quickly he ought to be doing both.

“I am glad we share Dorothy.” Mari nodded.

“She’s great.” I nodded and sighed.

“What are you going to do on Monday?” Mari didn’t let the silence hag too long.

I shrugged.  “I am going to go to work. What else can I do? Whine that people weren’t nice to me?” I had limited options as it was a social function. “I’ll tell you this, I will make the first man that stares at my chest not be a man any longer. I am not going to let them treat me like that anymore.” I wiped away a tear as Mari set her glass on the table and pulled me to rest my head on her shoulder.

“Good for us.” She said softly and stroked my hair. 

Mari was older than I was and somehow it seemed we were more like sisters rather than competitors now. She had come over because she was worried about my state of mind. Three days ago she would not have spit on me if I was on fire as it might give me some comfort. Mari was a shark when she wanted to be, but I had never allowed her to show me that softer side before, and she was wise to keep it to herself. I would have used it against her. I would have worked hard to show everyone that she was too weak to be ruthless in business. I would have crushed her if I knew she felt anything like the emotions she was showing now as we continued our conversation quietly. She stroked my hair and it felt good and relaxing and nice to have a woman to share my feelings with that understood and cared about me. The other thing that stuck me, as funny as I started nodding off to the soft sounds of Mari’s deep breathing, is that three days ago this scene between Mari and I would have had a whole different feel had I been able to see it. I would have assumed walking in on two women all cuddled together that they had been making love.

I was learning I had been so very wrong about so much, but I wanted to get back to being me and not this James Adair, Even if she was pretty and I could think clearer now.

Chapter Thirteen: An Attempted Return

I woke in the morning alone as Mari had gone home. There had been no tickle fights, no cuddling in bra and panties, and no accidental kisses that had led to vigorous, moaning girl-girl sex. We had simply dozed for a bit and when we woke, she caught a taxi home and I dressed for bed.

On sleeping was another issue for me to deal with and I was be forced to get used to being unable to sleep on my stomach as I had most of my life. The trouble was that I now had breasts and sleeping on them was most uncomfortable. I had not slept well the last two nights but I got some sleep and I had one more day, well Sunday, before I had to be at work on Monday. I woke up and showered and went through my new clothes looking for an outfit to wear walking. I had decided to head down around Little Jamaica to see if someone would help me find someone to reverse this situation I was now in. There were good points and bad points, but I wanted to get back to being me.

I took a taxi, after Ralph kindly called one for me, to 241st in the Bronx. It might not have been wise to a white woman to be wandering around Wakefield on her own, but I did not think of myself as a white girl. I got a few stares going into the bodegas and shops around but eventually someone came up with an address for someone who might be able to help me break a spell. None of the buildings were exactly welcoming but the people, despite the reputations given to them, were kind to me and I was soon knocking on an apartment door. A very dark skinned man answered and flashed a smile to me, his teeth a brilliant contrast to his skin. “You come to break spell.” It was not a question that he asked in his very thick accent. I nodded and he opened the door for me to come in. His apartment was adorned with a bizarre assortment of tribal looking artifacts and Catholic symbols and pictures. He gestured to a plush chair in which I sat. “What spell on you?” He asked as he sat across from me. 

I related my story of having been a man before and now, not so much. He listened and asked, “Who start this mojo?” 

“Well, in a dream I saw my mother and a group of women whose lives I affected.”

“Yo muther?” I nodded. “De others, dey muthers?”

“Two others were.” I ran a hand through my hair nervously. He seemed to be worried by my answers.

“Any one having your child?” He looked at me.

“One, yes.”

“Dis no good.” He shook his head.

“What do you mean?”

“De muthers make old and powerful magic.” He gestured as he sat back in his chair. “You mother and your child’s muther… it powerful magic. What did you see in da dream.” I related those events to him and as I did his reaction gave me a sinking feeling. “I can’t beat dat magic. I would like to help you.”

“Is there someone who can?”

“Dat’s a coven.” He explained. “You have to get them all to undo what been done.” He stood while I sat feeling helpless. If I could have just relied on my mother to undo it, it would have been easy, but getting all of the others there was going to make it a Herculean feat. I stood and thanked him and asked if I could call a taxi. “I have someone drive you home.” He put a hand on my shoulder in comfort and while it did not help that much, it was a kind gesture. In truth I don’t recall much of leaving his apartment or the drive home. I cried silently through most of the drive home.

Chapter Fourteen: A First Day, Again

Once I was back in my apartment, I started trying to find phone numbers. I had to get this group back together to undo what they had done to me. I spent hours trying to track and find, with little success. As darkness fell, I finally had the three numbers of Sharon, Kay and Kathy’s mother. When I told them my name both of them slammed the phone down on me, I suppose that they assumed it to be some sort of sick joke. I kept calling Kay but there was just no answer. Around 11 at night, I gave up on getting her answer and went off to bed. I had to be at work in the morning.

I knew from Saturday and Sunday I was going to have to get up extra early to be at work at the very least on time. I had to allow time to dry and style my hair in the simple up-do I practiced for the party before deciding to go with my hair down. I chose a lovely maroon suit and skirt and fund a bra that compressed my breasts, almost painfully, to keep from having too much interference with the lines of the jacket. It was a little hard to button the blouse I wore over a camisole as the buttons were on the opposite side from a man’s dress shirt, like my own that I was now using for pajamas. The hardest part of it all had been getting on the right undergarments. I was wearing pantyhose and a pair of four inch heels that matched the suit. Overall, I looked professional.  I was pleased with it all.

I headed down stairs to the car that Ralph should have waiting for me. It was there of course and Ralph opened the door for me. “Have a lovely day, Miss Adair.” He smiled. I don’t know why but I laid a hand on his right cheek and kissed his left one.

“Thank you Ralph.” The door man blushed deeply as I walked away, feeling a little smug at having brightened his day so. As I sat in the car through the City traffic, it occurred to me that Ralph was not as old as I had assumed him to be. The more I thought about it, the more amazed I was at how little I actually saw him. It might as well have been an ornament to me before. It was good that I was being nice to him now.

When I got to work I found that several of the big accounts I had been working on, I was now a secondary on, backing up a man. I found I was doing the work that needed to be done to make a deal stick while the men commiserated, as I had done before about how they had closed the deal. What good was it to close a deal if the deal would not hold legal water? I had always insisted on working alone before, I knew many of my male counterparts preferred a secondary to double check, but I had always wanted the work I had done to be my own. Now I was left cleaning up after the sloppy half-assed work these men had done. By six at night I was still working through the mess Phil had made of the deal I had been wrapping up as tight as a drum. I was having to call and reassure lawyers as well as Bill that the deal was right during the day, and now I was making the paperwork match what it should have been. Mari sighed at my office door. “Phillip?” She asked. I nodded with a pencil in my mouth as I tapped buttons on a calculator. “How he messed this up with the groundwork you laid for it, I will never know.” I shoved a bit of paper at her, a copy of Phillip’s expense report. “Christ, why don’t they fire him?”

“Because then one of us would have to be considered for his job.” I said as the numbers added up correctly for the third time.

“I’d settle for his salary.” Mari chuckled.

“Well,” I started putting papers in folders and setting them out in order, “I have it all ready so I am going home. I have some calls to make.” 

“You have a taxi coming?” She asked.

“I will.” I winked to her. “See you tomorrow?”

“Sisterhood.” She held a closed fist before her chest and headed home. I got my jacket back on and buttoned and then my purse. I called Ralph who gushed to send a taxi to me. Before I left, I laid the folders neatly on Phillip’s desk with a post it about the final numbers being on all the paper work for him to close the deal. I pulled out my cell as I rode down to the street level on the elevator and left voice mail on his cell phone and his office phone telling him that I had prepared the correct final files for the deal and left them on his desk. There was no way he could blow this deal with the work I had done.

Chapter Fifteen: A Shock

I got home feeling a burn in my calves and was very thankful to get inside and get my shoes off. Ralph had my mail in hand when I arrived and we had made small chit-chat. What I was discovering about Ralph was that he was bright, just painfully shy. I had often thought of him as simple minded for having such a menial job, but the truth was, I was starting to feel, that he truly enjoyed his interaction with most people. I would have bet before all this mess started, I had been making that truth hard to see for him. I began going through my mail, sorting out the crap from the bills when I cam across a plain envelope that had been printed out to me. I set it aside on top of the bills and went to change into something more comfortable for around the apartment. I had plans on a tee shirt and jeans but ended up in one of my many remaining men’s oxford shirts. I went into the kitchen and made myself a little meal and went back to the table to eat and finish with the mail.

I made my way through the usual utilities and started into the credit cards. I, once again, had erroneous charges, but now I knew why. I called and reported my cards stolen again and knew that this would be the last time I had to make any calls about the bad charges. The meal was a simple one of Ziti pasta, some Ragu meat sauce and boiled and then sliced to fry Italian sausages. I would have some for lunch and maybe dinner tomorrow. At last I was down to the odd envelope. I opened it, as I did all my letters by tearing off one end of the envelope, when I turned the envelope a single small piece of paper fluttered down onto my marble table. I blinked as I read it, unable to touch it as I read.

Kay O’Connor dead at 25.

Kay O’Connor has been reported as a victim of a suicide. Police found a note explaining how the complications of botched Plastic Surgeries has left her with constant pain and horrible disfigurements and she could not carry on. “She reportedly purchased a handgun several days ago, so it appears she has been considering this for some time.” A detective reported. The Medical Examiner agreed with the officers on the seen, that Miss O’Connor’s fatal wound was self inflicted.

It had Kay’s graduation picture with the short article. I scooped up the envelope. There was no return address and the postmark was from Colorado. I should have been wondering who sent it, but all I could think of was what the witchdoctor had said to me.

I needed to restore the coven to break the spell and now one of the coven was dead.

I might have to get used to being Miss James Adair and not Mister James Adair.

I was not giving up, but things were looking bleak on it getting back to the way it used to be.

Chapter Sixteen: A Cycle

I was still finding myself falling into some old habits. The worst was going to pee. I still found myself more often than not lifting the seat to go but it was becoming less of a problem with the second time I peed on myself. I was also finding myself far more self-conscious about the noises involved in defecating. It was hard to explain because before it was just a function and men did not discuss noises from the bathroom, but now I wanted to hide the noises. I also found myself more inclined to close the bathroom door even alone in my apartment.

I had felt kind of crappy beyond getting the article about Kay’s suicide. Not that this did not feel like a blow to getting back to normal, but the other was like a dull ache in my lower abdomen. I woke on Tuesday morning, and headed into start a morning ritual of taking care of business and then a shower. I walked on the bare, cold tile floors and flicked on the light. As I passed by the mirror, I glanced into it and gasped. I looked like a murder victim. What had been my favorite powder blue oxford was covered in blood at the bottom hem. I pulled up the hem and my thighs were coated with blood as well. “What the hell?” I asked of my reflection. It took me far too long to realize, I was having my period. Once I did realize that little fact, I could only say, “Shit.” I filled one sink with cold water and set the shirt in for it to soak. I peed and got in the shower to clean myself up. The whole time I was wondering what in the hell I was going to do about this. I mean I had planned for a lot over the weekend, but this was one thing that had never occurred to me. I had no one to go to about what to use or how to buy it or anything. I kept wondering how things could get worse.

I called to find a drug store that would make a delivery, and I found one on the third call. I asked to get me one box of just about everything they had. I put on a clean shirt and went through the rest of my morning ritual, drying my hair and styling it up again, I dusted on some makeup and went through the pain of eyeliner again, I was getting better at it but it was still very hard. I tried again to get on mascara without glopping it on. The first attempt I had made was horrible on Monday. I did not have to make three tries at it today. As I was putting on a light colored lipstick, something else that I was being forced to get used to, the doorbell rang. I went to it and Ralph was there with several bags and a credit card receipt for me to sign. I added a tip and signed it and took the bags. I had discovered the day before that while thong underwear might look good, it was a challenge to get used to having a wedgie all the time, and now I found they were not conducive to a sanitary napkin to attach on. I was thereby forced to use a tampon. The insertion was a bit different feeling and I followed the instructions on the box rather than leap off the cliff with something inside me. I tucked several more into my purse and finished dressing.

I should have worried about what Ralph or the delivery guy must have thought of me, but at the moment I was running late for work and could only think about getting out the door. Needless to say, I found my mood very dour. Thank God Ralph was on the ball and had a car waiting for me. I checked my voice mail as the taxi hurried along the city streets, vaguely aware the driver was looking a lot in his rear-view mirror but did not seem to be looking at the traffic behind him. I was wearing a sweater and a bra that pushed up my breasts a bit and I could only guess what he was looking at, and I was fairly sure I would be right. I would have made a comment, but I had three messages from Phillip. Each one seemed to get angrier. He was acting as if I had hung him out for this closing without what he needed. I could not understand what he was in such a panic about, because had I made it any easier on him, I would have stapled the files to his forehead. I tried calling his office but there was no answer.

Chapter Seventeen: A Disaster

When I got to my office, I found Phil tearing through my desk, all of my file drawers open and files scattered everywhere. “What the hell are you doing?!?” I demanded.

“I have the Barney people waiting on those files you were supposed to have ready,” he snapped at me. “You are not going to torpedo me on this deal Jamie. Where are the papers?”

“Did you bother to check your voice mail?” I asked him as I set my purse on my credenza.

“What does that have to do with anything?” He demanded. I walked out of my office and I heard him following after me. I went into his office and over to his desk. His briefcase was setting on the files. I picked it up and handed him the file folders.

“If you had, you would have heard me telling you the files were ready and on your desk.” I shoved them at him. Phillip muttered something I assumed to be an apology and rushed off to his meeting with the clients. I headed back to my office to see how big a mess it was.

I had given it a cursory glance before but on closer inspection, Phillip had literally trashed my office. I spent the better part of four hours cleaning up the mess and wondering who in the hell let him into my locked office and why they would do it. 

By lunch time, I had my office back the clean and neat organization I liked it to stay in. It was easier to work in a clean work area, and I sat down to read through my e-mail before I went to find myself a salad for lunch. My skirt had been tight the morning and I needed to watch it. I was not familiar with retaining water that might be associated with my troubles from this morning. I dispatched through my e-mail and gathered my purse to go get some lunch when my phone rang. “James Adair.” I said after picking it up.

“James, can you come to my office?” It was the Executive Vice-President, Matt Karlsen.

“Of course, sir.” I answered with a smile and set my purse back on the credenza and left my office after closing the locked door. I headed down to Karlsen’s office. Louise, his Administrative Assistant smiled and waved me into the office. I opened the door and saw Karlsen and Phillip sitting and thought I knew what was going to happen.

“The Barney people would not sign the deal.” Karlsen said and I suddenly knew things might not be what I thought they were going to be.

“Why?” I sat on a nearby chair. “I had those numbers air tight and there was not a loophole against them in it.”

“I am sure it had something to do with having a week to be prepared and we weren’t.” Phillip all but snarled.

“Phillip says you had the files misplaced.” Karlsen added.

“Misplaced?” I was in shock. “I could have only made the more available to him if I had gone out to Long Island, broke into his house and glued them to his hand.” I stood up. “I left him voice mail on his office phone and his cell phone before I left last night telling him that I had three files on his desk with all the paperwork in them and all of the signature lines marked. For him to lay his inability to follow a simple routine at my feet after he grabbed my ass at the party is not only insulting it is ridiculous.”

“James,” Karlsen said as calmingly as he could manage, “maybe you can reassure the Barney people and get them back in?”

“I can make some calls.” I nodded.  

“Please do.” He gestured to the door.

I left and spent the next two hours calling people at the Barney office and reassuring them and coaxing them to come back to us rather than another firm. After my last call Karlsen came in, closed my door and sat in the chair facing my desk.

“Did you fix it?” He asked.

“Did I fix Phillip’s screw up?” I asked rhetorically. “Yes I did. I have been holding his hand through this whole deal.” It had been my deal before and all of the paperwork was just as I had gotten my AA to lay it out so I assumed I had done the paper work for Phillip now. “I just saved this firm by getting a multi-million dollar deal back that I had put together only to have Phillip ride in and take all the credit.”

“The president is considering him for the open VP slot.” Karlsen stated.

“Promoting him?” I rocked back in my chair.

“He has a wife and children James.” Karlsen said as if that made it all fine.

“Will I be working for him?”

“I need you on my team James,” Karlsen stood. “You are far too valuable a woman for me to loose you.”

I looked at the open door as the clock struck five in the evening. I was getting paid less than that nimrod Phillip for the same job and I was doing his job and mine, all while playing less grab-ass, and actually making the company money. I was too good to be promoted because I helped these men look good and I was a woman in the so called management ranks.

Bastards.

Chapter Eighteen: A Passing

As it has a tendency to do, time started to pass. Winter rolled into the City, and I found myself becoming less thoughtful about the things that were different before the little coven met to change my life. I was spending more and more time on the weekends trying to find anyone who might be able to help me, but anyone that did not laugh, or look to see if I was an armed whack-job, gave me the same answer. The coven would have to be reassembled. I did get a few that told me the spell would eventually wear off, so until then I would have to learn to live with it.

Learning to live with it, I was, but I had started to avoid going out. I was spending time watching TV and surfing on the internet and redecorating my apartment. I was doing as much of the work I could, myself. It was rewarding to turn the place into a nice comfortable place to exist. The trouble was that I was feeling something I had never felt before, loneliness.

Work was still about the same. I was technically working for Phillip and he was doing even less than he had before. I was keeping records of everything I did that he should have, knowing that Karlsen would call Phillip’s doing nothing delegation, but I was keeping a record of my work because I knew when Phillip failed that he would blame someone else. I was ready to defend myself when that happened.

Mari and I would go out together at least once a month, but she was more and more unhappy in her marriage. She was sure her husband was sleeping around on her, and I would comfort her. The hard part for me was not telling her that from all that she was telling me he was doing that she was right. She was a good woman and a devoted wife and he should be ashamed of himself. What he was doing was something for himself. He would, like I would have, find a way to make his lack of faithfulness her fault when it was all his. Or there was the other old stand-by I had used with my fellow men, when I was one, that it was just something that happened and until the act was over, there was no realization of what happened. This was, of course, pure bullshit. I knew anytime I had cheated on a woman that I was cheating on her. At the moment of cheating, though, I did not care how it hurt her. It seemed ridiculous to me now, thinking back on the many times it had started a fight, that I could have made it sound almost the same as tripping over a rug. You did not accidentally screw someone. You choose it.

Now my best friend was being cheated on and I wanted to make it better for her but… I just did not know how.

I also found myself flirting more and more with poor Ralph. He was a crushingly shy man, I was finding out and also brilliant. He was sweet and nice and I liked him. He was safe to flirt with and seemed to enjoy it. I felt so very bad about how I had treated him before I was changed, but, like Mari, I could not tell him the whole of it. Neither of them would remember me as a man and I would loose them both as anchors in this new world of hooting workmen, honking cars, and leering stares. Being a woman was not at all how I had pictured it. I found that I was far more aware of a person’s tone of voice than I had ever been. I was more open to all my emotions now. The main draw backs were the things I had never thought of or had always looked for in a woman. My back was always achy at the end of a long day thanks to the added weight of my breasts and the monthly cycle was not at all how the commercials on TV made it seem. It was a pain, it was messy, and it was never ever convenient. Luckily I was regular with it, so I knew it was coming and had not been caught off guard like the first time.

Well, I had once, but not since then.

Chapter Nineteen: A Proving

As the days had turned into week and the weeks into months, I was settling down. It was nice to have Mari to talk to, but as things degenerated between her and her husband, we spent less and less time together. Over the last few days, she had barely even spoken to me at the office and I was getting worried. I had called her a few times to see if she wanted to go out and talk, but she usually kept the conversations very short and I did not want to press her.

So it came as quite a shock when, as I was painting my bedroom, she called me and asked if she could come over. I had told her it was fine and rushed to finish the paint treatment I had been doing.

I had gotten all of the painting stuff away but had not had time to change by the time Mari arrived. I had told Ralph she was coming and to let her right up as soon as she arrived. She rang the bell and I let her into my apartment, with the spare room closed due to the paint fumes. I took one look at her and my heart broke for her. Her eyes were pussy and red from crying and she was carrying a tapestry duffle. She came in and made straight for the liquor cabinet. 

“Don’t ever marry.” She poured herself a tumbler full of scotch and drank it all down. “They aren’t worth it and can’t keep a fucking vow.” She refilled her glass.

“Mari,” I was pleading a little, “come sit down.” I gestured to the new sofa that had replaced that awful black leather one I had bought to impress the ladies that came up to my apartment. She come and sit and I sat beside her, forgetting that I had wanted to shower to get eh paint sprinkles off my skin and to change from the overalls I was wearing. No, they were not sexy, but for painting and stuff like that, I could put them on and not worry about blouses or shirts or anything of the like. If the overalls got all paint covered, it didn’t matter. I sat with my side against the back of the sofa cushions. “He was cheating?”

“Bastard.” She took another slug of her scotch. 

“SO he told you?” I asked softly, not wanting to pry but she had come here for comfort and talking about it would make her feel better.

“No.” She said with a rueful chuckle. “I got proof and he still denies it.”

“Even after you showed him the proof?”

“What’s the point in showing it to him, Jamie?” More and more that name was coming up and I was fighting it less and less. “I asked him flat out if he was cheating on me and he said absolutely not. I know he and he knows that he is. If I toss the pictures out in front of him, what does it accomplish?”

“You have pictures of him with her?” I asked incredulously.

“The private investigator I hired got the pictures.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “I just don’t know exactly how to feel about them.”

“I think you do, Mari.” I stroked her hair, feeling sorry for her and wondering why I had never seen just how pretty she was before now. I had wondered that a few times. Sure, she was older than me by a decade or so, but she was a lovely woman with a very coltish frame and lovely skin. She had a few gray hairs that most likely bothered her but I thought they were not so bad. “I think you are already feeling it.”

“You do?” She cracked one eye open and looked up at me. “Think you need to look at the pictures before you say that, hon.”

“Okay.” I agreed

“In that big envelope.” She pointed to a manila envelope sticking out of her bag and I stopped stroking her hair to get it and open and dump the contents of it into my lap. I went back to stroking her hair. It was, I suspected, as calming for her as it was for me, so why not do it. The first picture was of her husband, Mike, having lunch with a couple. The two men and woman seemed to be having a good time. There were a few pictures of them leaving the restaurant then a few of the three of them entering a hotel. The next picture was from a much poorer quality camera but it was Mike and the couple all close in a hotel room, then one of Mike kissing the woman and the other man undressed her, the of mike kissing the man as the woman undressed Mike. I went through the next few photos in utter shock. Mike was not having an affair with just another woman, he was having an affair with another couple and from the looks of it, was the lowest on this sexual food chain. There were pictures of him orally servicing both the man and the woman as which ever one did not have their genitals at his mouth spanked him with paddles and crops. There were picture of him licking where the man and the woman joined as one. The last few photographs was of Mike stroking himself to orgasm into a cup that the man’s semen had dripped from the woman into and then drinking from that cup. Through all of the pictures, Mike had been subservient and never allowed to enter either of the other two. I put the pictures back in the envelope.

“Wow.” It was such a stroke of brilliance, but it was all I could manage to say.

“Mmmmm hmmmm.” Mari agreed and handed me her glass of scotch, which I was happy to take a drink from as I collected my thoughts on what to do for my best friend.

Chapter Twenty: An Intimate Moment

We talked for several hours, sharing another couple of glasses of scotch. We commiserated, we complained, we shared and we cried. I could not believe how great this was! I mean I was not happy for Mari, but to be able to just share your feelings and not have to find a solution was liberating. I could not even understand why as a man I could not do this, just sit and share. Even when men did talk about our feelings, it ended up in a contest. It was starting to strike me now that as a man, like other men, I had mistaken the quantity of competition for the quality. Mari and I might compete for promotions or accounts from time to time but that was about doing the job and we did not carry that competition into who had a better car or personal life. Sure we were catty that night about the women we didn’t like in the office, and sometimes we were catty to them in the office but this level of sharing, this deep connection was very nice. Mari knew what she needed to do and we talked about all the other things around the affair her macho husband was having. It would mean he would give her anything she wanted if he had to risk the truth coming out.

In all the talk and worry over Mari and her situation, I had forgotten about the other reason I liked the coveralls. I usually used to hide the fact that I was not wearing a bra. It was not the most comfortable thing to go without a bra, but it was so much better than wearing one. Normally, I wore a tee shirt of some sort to cover additionally, but tonight I had been painting and had not wanted to ruin, yet another tee shirt. We were both getting tired and talking softly now and I was once more stroking Mari’s hair. I should have done more things like that when I was a man, but all I had been concerned with were the things I had to do to get a woman, naked, wet, and ready for sex. Now that I knew how good it felt, it did me no good. Some of what kept my hopes up for getting back to myself was that I still found myself admiring women, not quite leering anymore, but being close to Mari like this was comforting and nice and touching her to soothe her made me feel an old tingle of attraction. It was no burning thing, no all consuming need but it was nice to finally have someone to share an intimate moment with. We fell into silence and Mari closed her eyes. I thought she was going to sleep until she spoke.

“You ever think about…” her head shifted as she seemed to hesitate to say what she was wondering about.

“Being with two men?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Watching two men together?”

“Ewww, no.” She giggled a little. “Well, maybe a little just to see, you know?

“Well you are going to have to just say it, Mare.”

“Being with another woman.” Oh I had thought about it, more often than I cared to admit. The fact was, I was feeling more than a little randy a lot. I could get some relief from the toys I had ordered discretely on the internet, but my only sexual encounter involving another human being had been with Kaitlyn. It was hard, I could kind of scratch that sexual itch but the feel of someone else’s hands on my skin still haunted me. I suppose one should expect me, given my situation, to be all kinds of a lesbian. The trouble was, I had started noticing men. Oh sure they did not have the graceful elegance of a woman’s body, but there were other things to admire about them. I was more and more of a sucker to height and broad shoulders. The height thing was not too hard, I was a short thing now, but the shoulders…. Mmmm.

Mari turned and looked me and smiled. “I interrupted you working, didn’t I?”

“I was done, hon.” I smiled back to her. She smiled at me and started to turn away. I sat watching her, no longer stroking her hair but with my right side against the back of the couch, my right leg curled underneath me and my right arm up on the couch with my head resting on my closed fist.  Mari was lounging with the back of her head resting against the top of the back cushion. Her head stopped in mid shift and her eyes quickly went up to mine. She had an odd look on her face. “What?” I asked with a little half chuckle.

“You know I always wondered why men were so fascinated by big breasts.” Her statement came out of the blue for me.

“You think I know?” I asked a little defensively. I felt a tickle on my right breast when she moved her left hand. It took me a second to realize she was touching me.

“You would have a better way of knowing than me.” Her hand cupped around me and gently moved me back under the overalls. I had to wonder if she felt the same tension in the air I did.

Chapter Twenty-One: A Sort of Remembering 

I didn’t sleep much that night. I kept thinking about Mari’s touch. I wondered what it meant. I could not sleep did it mean she was attracted to me? How should I feel about it if she was? I would like to say this was a result of the change in gender I had been subjected to, but even as big a player as I had been early on in my life, I had lain awake before trying desperately to determine what a small gesture of kindness might mean really. The truth was I could not find out how Mari felt until I talked to her about it. I finally fell into a restless sleep and in the morning we talked about what we were going to be doing that evening, as it was a weekend. Somewhere between the restless sleep and the pleasant company of a morning conversation, I forgot to ask her until I was in my office for the day. I could not talk to her about it at work, so I decided to leave it for now and we could talk later on.

The problem I was having with it all was a mix of my mind. On the one hand, I was more than a little surprised that Mari had done that and the old mind was aroused that she had. As a man, it did not take much to get me aroused, but there were a few areas that it was more likely to get me in that state. I was discovering that the female body had many more of those areas than I was aware of. While as a man, more or less from head to toe was one erogenous zone, these areas, as a woman, provided a far more intense sensation and a deeper response. I could feel the tingle brought by Mari’s touch for hours after. While as a woman I loved the intimate relationship we had, being able to talk about anything, the still male mind inside me wanted hot sweaty moaning sex with her. It put me in a a dichotomous state leaving me horny for her and completely unwilling to act for fear I would loose her as a companion.

I think I was starting to understand how it was not always a brush of for a woman to prefer to be friends with man. I sure did not want to loose someone I had been counting on for support lately, even if I had been trying to screw her over before. There was certainly a part of me that now wanted to try being with her in a physical relationship, but I could not risk losing the friendship with her. 

To say it weighed on me at the time would have been an understatement, but there was something else in the turmoil in my mind as well. I wanted to tell her the whole truth now, I had before but now I wanted to more than ever. Now the thought of telling her my secret was more troubling than telling her that her brief touch, gentle and sweet, had aroused me. Most likely she had not intended to get me heated up only to save me embarrassment, at least a little. Telling her I had been a man just a few days before, when clearly everyone believed I had always been a woman, was certain to make her avoid me.

I just did not know what to do about any of it.

Oddly, I had the feeling that Mari was avoiding me at the office. It all just seemed to leave me chasing rabbits around my head and work was a decent distraction until I could actually talk to her and see where we stood.

Chapter Twenty- Two: