After Wife's Death - Becoming Her - Chapter 3

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I felt my irritation force a frown on my face even as my posture stiffened.

"I’m sorry, Tim," Lonna said quickly. "I’m not really trying to say that I could replace Trish, not in any way that mattered. I’m just trying to help you find a way to deal with your sorrow. 

I honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with play-acting her role yourself, if it helps you work through your grief, but since it seems to bother you, well, that’s about the only alternative I have to offer."

That explanation deflated my irritation as quickly as it had come. After all, if it was only play-acting, then why not have someone else do it? Was there some reason I had to do it myself? I wondered if that was a lot more important question than I was letting myself accept, but found myself speaking as though that could avoid the need for an answer.

"Um, thanks. I appreciate the offer. I really do," I said. "I don’t know. This is all, well, strange, isn’t it?"

Trish looked me directly in the eyes, and surprised me by saying, "Yes, it is."

Then she disarmed her answer with an explanation I hadn’t considered. "But it’s also strange to lose your wife in an accident that you yourself escaped. I imagine there are all sorts of guilt feelings from that, no matter how baseless. And I honestly don’t know of any couple who loved each other as much as you and Trish did. 

I knew that long before the accident. The way she talked about you made it clear that she thought you were the original knight in shining armor, her hero in more ways than she could ever count. And the way you felt about her, well, if it had been anyone but Trish, I’d have been so envious I’d probably have had to drop you as customers."

I just nodded, but the thought of that special closeness flooded my eyes with tears again, and I couldn’t speak. Lonna waited patiently for a few moments, then gently said, "Tell me what you’ve done, and what the problem is."

The problem is that Trish is gone! I wailed silently.

As though she had read my mind, Lonna said, "Sorry, I mean besides that Trish is gone. I know that’s what’s at the bottom of everything, but what have you done to try and deal with it, and what help do you need?"

I still didn’t speak for a while, staring off into nothing and trying to blink back my tears. This time, Lonna just waited. After a while, I looked at her, at her patient acceptance. 

I still felt stupid and wondered if what I was doing was sick in some way that would make it worse than doing nothing. But right then, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and I had been doing nothing for a month. That hadn’t helped.

"It started on the day you called about our appointments," I began. Lonna jerked a little as though she was somehow to blame, but I pushed on so that she would understand. At least, I hoped she would understand. She listened patiently as I went back over all the things I’d imagined in the last couple of days; the games I’d played with my own mind.

"The memories seemed so real, so alive," I concluded. "For the first time, I felt, well, good about something."

"Wow," Lonna said quietly, not really interrupting as much as filling the void when I stopped talking for a second. "I never thought of that, but I can see how it would work. Especially since it’s clear you really, really loved her. One of the signs of that is that you really paid attention to her, never took her for granted."

"No, I never did that," I agreed. We were interrupted by a waiter who took care of the necessary things to get our lunch on the way. It sort of broke the mood. Lonna filled in again, with easy chatter on favorite dishes and other restaurants. 

All it took from me were a few nods and I could hold up my end of the "conversation" while she babbled on and I realized I really appreciated the chance to, uh, catch my breath or something.

"Hey," she said. "Lighten up. It didn’t hurt anyone. You may not know this, but lots of guys have fooled around with dressing at one time or another, just like you did. 

For some guys, it’s enough fun that they try to do it very well. What’s wrong with trying to do something well, if you do it?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing," I said, on the defensive again. Just like with Katy. Did girls get taught how to do that by their mothers, or was it something in the genes?

"Frankly," Lonna continued. "I was flattered. Believe me, my old boyfriend understood more about women than most women, and he used the knowledge to make me feel pretty special sometimes."

"Sometimes?" I repeated. "What happened?"

"Oh, nothing bad. He just got a job in another city. We still call each other every now and then. He, or actually, she even visited me once for a, um, interesting weekend."

She winked so broadly at her statement that even I had to smile. But something she said bothered me. Was this sort of thing addictive?

"You said, ‘she’ came to visit you," I said. "Does he, um, she, I mean, well, do it all the time now?"

"Oh, no," Lonna laughed. "He has visited me a few times, too. He, hell, this is awkward, his name is Bill, okay? 

Anyway, Bill showed me this book that had some sort of research in it. 

The book said that most men who dress do so only occasionally, and by the way, they are very much heterosexual. It seems they like the clothes and get excited by them, but a big part of it is they love women so much that they want to look like one. 

I think the ones who dress full-time may be different. Or at least some of them."

"Say," she interrupted herself, "Bill had a girl’s name, too. Or, as he called it, a ‘femme’ name. His was Heather. I know, kind of cliché, but she liked it. Did you have a femme name?"

I’m sure the blush that lit my cheeks showed clearly across the restaurant. In any event, there didn’t seem to be much point in denying it, so I just nodded and said, "Tammy."

"Oh, I like that," Lonna said brightly, then continued. "Well, anyway. One of the things that Heather said was that you basically had two choices if you dressed. 

One choice was to do just a few things and never, ever look in a mirror. The other was to go for it, and do as good a job as you could. That meant perfume and things that wouldn’t show, except they did show, in the way you thought about yourself."

"I guess that must be what I’ve done. I mean, I never tried to, well, look at myself when I was wearing her things." I said. I didn’t tell her that right that moment I had on a pair of Trish’s panties. I mean, things that didn’t show didn’t count, did they? Almost in reflex, I squirmed a bit on the seat, feeling the smooth slickness between my jeans and skin.

"Do you think that would do what you need, as far as helping you to make your memories of Trish vivid?"

She must have been able to see the recognition on my face that it wouldn’t. Maybe nothing would, but I knew I had to do more than I had done the other day. If she hadn’t called, I might even have put on a skirt or something. I couldn’t just stay at some sort of superficial level. It seemed to me that without some sort of validation, I’d never be sure I hadn’t forgotten something important. 

About Trish, and how she moved, or the things that she would do. I had a lot of tape of Trish, most of which didn’t include any of our private games, of course. 

Somehow I knew I needed to understand every little gesture she would make, really understand by knowing how to make them, and when, and, well, just be able to do what she would do.

Lonna waited until I came back from my little mental fugue, and when I looked at her she said, "Okay, try this idea on for size. If you, uh, if we give it our best shot, and it still doesn’t work, then you can always avoid the mirrors later. 

But if it does work, if you’re able to get comfortable and passable and whatever else you want, well, then at least you’ll have that option. How about that?"

I guess it was more of that strange mental judo that women use, but it seemed so silly to refuse to develop an option that I forgot how strange the whole idea was. In any event, I found myself nodding at her suggestion.

"Okay," she said, then glanced at her watch. "I have to get back to work. Um, when do you want to start?"

"Huh? Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll let you know."

"Not good enough, buster," she said, smiling to show she wasn’t really insisting. "If you can’t pick a schedule, then I guess I’ll just have to pick one for you. Today is Tuesday. Unless you call and definitely cancel, I’ll be at your place after I get off work on Thursday. I should be able to get there by about 7:00. We’ll get you fixed up, and then we’ll eat something. You want me to bring takeout?"

"Uh, no, I’ll, um, get something."

"Good," she said, standing up. She interrupted her own bustle for a moment to look at me, a gentle expression softening her features. "Truly, Tim, I think this will be a good thing."

"Thanks," I said quietly, wishing I had her confidence.

The next couple of days seemed like the recovery period after an illness. When you are really sick, it doesn’t matter what is on TV or if there is a good book around. All you do is exist. It is a sign of recovery when you begin to realize how insipid daytime TV is (well, to be honest, prime time leaves a lot to be desired, too). I even tried to pick up the work on the latest book. 

Trish had laid out some ideas that I hadn’t implemented yet, so it’s not like there wasn’t something I could do. But the limbo period between truly sick and fully recovered doesn’t provide the drive to actually do anything, only the recognition that you are not.

In a way, it was a kind of relief to have a goal that I didn’t really need to do anything about. The day I had met Lonna for lunch I had been considering dressing in some of Trish’s clothes to try and explore that feeling of closeness. After Lonna set the date for "really" doing that, I didn’t have the nagging guilt that said I had to do something myself too. . . what? To do something, anything, whatever it took to get my life back together. Shifting that responsibility to someone else "allowed" me to slip back into a more passive role. Which, in the convoluted way the mind has of tormenting itself, replaced the nagging feeling that I should be doing something with the nagging guilt that a "real" man wouldn’t need anyone else’s help to cope with life.

But then, this was hardly life, was it?

Eventually, the phone rang and it was Lonna making arrangements to come over. When she arrived, it was a sign of her commitment that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time that Lonna had spent quite a bit of money getting the things she knew I would need. If I’d have known ahead of time how much it would cost, I’d have called the whole thing off. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford to spend the money, but wasting that much on a whim seemed, well, wasteful. For Lonna to get all of that without any commitment on my part that I’d even consent to continue with this, um - ‘game’ didn’t seem adequate anymore - this ‘exercise’ said a lot about her desire to help me.

The boxes and bags and trays of things she brought in looked like I was in for a major surgical procedure, not some sort of external masquerade. Some of the boxes were even labeled as medical devices.

"What’s this?" I asked, pointing at one of the medical boxes.

"Um, I think it would be better to wait until later to tell you about that," she said.

That was not terribly comforting. "What’s the big mystery?"

Lonna stopped what she was doing and looked directly at me. "Tim, you’re going to have to trust me. What we’re trying to do is make the most convincing, the most complete transformation of you into a woman that we can do. You need a sense of beauty. When you look like a woman and can move like a woman, you’ll be able to experience Trish’s memories as vividly as possible. Everything I’m going to ask you to do is pointed toward that end."

I snorted and said, "I’ll hardly be beautiful. You may be skilled, but you’re not a magician."

She arched an eyebrow at me and said, "You may be surprised. But I wasn’t talking about what you look like in some way that will show in a photo. I was talking about what you feel like. You need a constant, almost subliminal reminder that you are sensuous and feminine. That’s what I mean by a sense of beauty."

I nodded thoughtfully, not so much agreeing as letting her know I thought I understood what she was trying to say. Even Trish hadn’t ever expressed things that way. But . . .

"I think Trish knew about that sort of thing," I mused. "She made me wear perfume and stockings instead of pantyhose. She told me I needed to feel more, um, sensual. I thought it was just as a prelude to, well, you know, but you’re saying it’s, like, all the time?"

"It should be," Lonna confirmed. "At least, all the time you’re being a lady. You don’t have to worry about it when you’re working in the yard or something, but, well, even when a woman exercises, she wears body-conscious clothes that remind her of her shape."

I flinched when she said that, but her head was down as she gathered up some of her things and I don’t think she noticed. She was right, even I had picked up on that aspect, but, well . . . 

Well, what? If what Lonna was saying was true, I was going to go so far beyond wearing a leotard that it hardly mattered if that happened before or after she worked on me.

"All I asked was what was in the medical box," I said, not really retreating, but downplaying my concern. Lonna smiled and nodded, accepting what we both knew was the fiction that she had been the one to overreact. But, that gentle fiction bound her, now, and so she opened the box to reveal two flesh-colored mounds of soft plastic.

I hadn’t expected that, but once I saw them it was obvious what they were. I blushed, sparking a twinkle in Lonna’s eyes, and nodded without saying anything. After that, I was almost afraid to ask what the other things were.

"I assume you haven’t shaved, right?" she asked.

I rubbed my chin and said, "Yes I did. Carefully, as a matter of fact."

She couldn’t contain a little giggle as she said, "No, I meant shaved your legs, and, well, the rest. I take it from your question that Trish never had you do that."

Then she got serious and made it seem even more like a medical procedure, though one that this time made her blush, "Uh, there’s another, um, issue, too. Some of the things that need to be done are not very, um, modest. I’ve been through this before, with Bill, and he already knew what to do. To show you, well, it’s gonna get pretty personal."

Her own embarrassment made it clear she wasn’t trying to take advantage of the situation, just recognizing it. I guess this was another opportunity to just forget the whole thing, but all the paraphernalia strewn around the room made that seem, I don’t know, ungrateful or something. So instead of asking her to leave, I just showed her that I could blush even brighter than she could, and shrugged my consent.

Lonna took advantage of the time I was shaving to watch the tape of Trish and Tammy. Apparently, Trish had told her about that, too. Sigh When I walked back out of the bedroom, wearing a towel and my seemingly-permanent blush, Lonna was actually studying the tape, not just laughing at the clumsiness shown there, and I even caught her nodding her head before she put a carefully neutral expression on her face.

"You really loved Trish," she said. I did, of course, but I didn’t realize what had prompted Lonna to say that. I figured it was just because I was willing to do something embarrassing if it helped me feel closer to my lost wife.

Lonna explained, though, that there was another element to her conclusion. "You really, really paid attention to her. I can see you copying things that she did, things that most men wouldn’t even notice. It was almost frightening how perfectly your conscious motions mimicked hers."

Before I could say anything, she burst any little bubble that might have been forming with a counterbalancing observation. "On the other hand, your unconscious motions are thoroughly masculine."

Was that good news? Did it make things better to know that in some deeper part of myself, I was inherently masculine? I know I clung to that thought as I stood there with a shaved-bare body.

"Bill showed me some things that I didn’t even know about. Like I said, a guy who can really pass as a woman knows more about women than they do themselves." She interrupted her own pensive tone with a smirk, "Well, at least about some things. Okay, let’s get started."

Despite her warnings, what lingered most in my mind about the actual transformation was that it was a study in contrasts. Pluck hair here and glue on false eyelashes there. Paint the face all one color then all sorts of different colors. And then we got to the body things. The first of those was a tangle of flesh-colored straps she called a ‘dancer’s belt’. Apparently, it was what male ballet dancers wore under their tights.

‘Tight’ was right, and Lonna’s earlier warning about some things she needed to show me being more than a little personal was right, too. When it was in place, she handed me a pair of Trish’s panties, then had me stand straight.

"You’re lucky Trish wasn’t too shapely," Lonna said casually.

"Hey, she was beautiful," I protested, as much at being called ‘lucky’ again as anything.

Lonna looked at me and nodded. "Yes, she was, but she was not particularly well endowed, and she was a bit too muscular for the Hollywood ideal."

"Well, sure, but that’s because she was so fit," I claimed.

"She was true," Lonna agreed again, "but not . . . Look, the point is, if you want to match her shape, it won’t be as hard as it might have been, okay?"

The medical devices, actually mastectomy forms, were literally glued into place on my chest. Once I had settled a bra into position (at least that was a little bit familiar, from my times with Trish, though the sensation of weight on my chest was very, um, distracting), she gave me a strange sort of girdle that was padded, of all things.

"Okay," Lonna said, "you’re lucky you don’t need . . . "

I interrupted her, "Please! Lonna, don’t tell me I’m lucky. Trish is gone. I’m not lucky. I don’t ever want to hear about being ‘lucky’ again. Okay?"

She pulled up abruptly with a hurt look in her eyes, but when she saw whatever mine were showing her expression changed instantly to sympathy. She nodded, and softly said, "Sorry. You’re right. That’s a bad expression."

I forced myself to calm down, then said, "No, it’s just me. I’m the one who should be sorry. It’s just that I’ve heard that so much lately, and it’s just so . . . wrong."

She opened her mouth to apologize again, I think, but before she said anything she caught herself and went on with what she had been saying. "You don’t need a real corset. I simple waist cincher should be enough, at least for now."

The rest of the transformation was almost familiar. It dealt with the sorts of clothes that Trish had wanted me to wear. In fact, Lonna had me get the same dark red sweater and slim skirt. The only shoes I had went with that outfit anyway, a black pair with just a bit of taper to comfortable low heels.

I thought we were done, but Lonna pulled out a wig.

"Trish usually just slicked my hair or something," I said, not so much in protest as, I don’t know, fatigue I guess.

"I know, but you said that you wanted to emulate Trish and that you wanted your hair to grow out. You might as well see just how close you can come."

So I resigned myself to enduring yet another slow, careful demonstration of Lonna’s skill. After she had finished arranging "my" hair, she stepped back and looked at me with a neutral but critical inspection I had also endured numerous times that long evening. She had been working her wiles in my living room which had more space to spread out than the bathroom. There weren’t any mirrors there, and as a result, I couldn’t really assess the effects. I found myself trying to break through her outward expression to find the secret code of success or failure.

"I think it’s time," she said. For what? What else could she be planning to do to me?

Lonna held out her hand in a surprisingly courtly gesture, and I found my own hand reaching for hers with a sort of graceful wrist motion I had seen so often from Trish. Lonna smiled at the gesture, the first sign of emotion that had broken her professional concentration for what seemed like a very long time. She led me into the bedroom to stand before the full-length mirror that so often reflected Trish.

Trish stood there, looking out at me.

"Not bad, huh?" Lonna said cheerfully, oblivious to the wailing in my mind and in my heart.

"Dear God, . . ."

I realized my heart had started pounding when I first looked in the mirror. At some level, some deep level where my most compelling desires lay buried, I had wanted to throw myself at the person in the mirror. My Trish returned to me. All the terror of the last month was banished into a bad dream. My hopes were made real. Yet, even as that developing sense that it was indeed me - not Trish - grew, my despair grew. It was . . . torture. It was taking the rips that had started to scar over in my heart and tearing them back apart.

"Tim, breathe," I heard Lonna’s voice say, as though from a distance. It seemed that she thought it was important, but all there was in my world was that image in the mirror. The pounding in my heart was echoed in my ears and . . .

I felt someone lightly shaking me, patting my cheeks. I opened my eyes to see that I was lying on the floor of the bedroom, with my clothes in disarray and the waist cincher unfastened.

"Oh, Tim, I’m so sorry," Lonna was saying.

"Uh, no . . need," I said or tried to say.

Lonna helped me to sit up, and my hand moved up to brush my hair out of my face. In the mirror, Trish did the same, except, it wasn’t really Trish. It was her motion, her hair, but not her.

"Tim, can you stand up? Let’s go back to the chair and I’ll help you out of all this."

"No!" I said, suddenly more terrified of losing Trish again than of the pain of almost having her.

It energized me to struggle against her hands and work my way to my feet.

I took a deep breath and said, "I’m sorry, Lonna. It was just a bit too much for me. Call it a tribute to your skill."

I fumbled with the hooks on the waist cincher, trying to get myself together. When it was obvious that I was trying to dress, not undress myself, Lonna lightly batted my hands away and took over. When she was done, I smoothed my sweater down and then once again brushed my hair into place.

This time when I looked in the mirror, I forced myself to be calm. That’s a lot easier said than done, but by closing my eyes whenever I felt my heart start to pound, I managed to get back in control. After a while - I never knew how long - I was able to look at the reflection, at my reflection, with an analytical perception rather than an emotional one.

I suppose the impact of the first impression could have been excused by the fact the reflected image wore her clothes and had her hair. The body-shaper things that Lonna had inflicted on me had indeed made my shape much the same as Trish’s had been. I was only a few inches taller, and the net effect of my slightly larger frame was lost in a sort of scaling up of the whole image, itself lost when there was no real scale to compare against.

There was something more, though. When I had stopped moving, I had settled into a posture that was so exactly like Trish that in the mirror there was something more than mere clothes that said she had returned. In the same way that you can recognize someone from behind regardless of whether you can see her face, I could "see" Trish in that image.

The face added to the impression rather than detracting from it. It took a second look, and then a third before the differences that made it some strange variant of my face instead of Trish’s overwhelmed the rest of the impression. My self-image took another hit that evening as I realized my real face must never have been very masculine if it could be made to look so feminine. In the way impressions have gradually become clearer, like a photograph in developing fluid, I saw more and more ways in which the face in the mirror was different than Trish's, but that first impression of unnatural similarity still screamed in the back of my mind.

I began to realize that the resemblance in the face was not all that close to hers, really - a sister maybe, but not a twin. It was more that it was feminine, even quite pretty, than identical to Trish. I didn’t know enough about the differences between a typical man’s face and a typical woman’s face to decide what had moved my own over the line, but I knew that no one who saw that image would have doubted they could correctly identify the sex of the person they saw. They’d have been wrong, but not in doubt. Maybe it was the femininity, coupled with deliberately similar coloring and makeup style, that had made us seem so much alike.

"Are you okay?" Lonna asked, still worried.

I tried to reassure her with a smile and a joke, neither one of which worked at all well, even if they were signs of life. I put one hand on my hip and waved the other around with the motions Trish had used when she played bimbo in our games. "Well, puh-leeze. I’m a LOT better than just okay. Ask, like, anyone!"

Lonna didn’t laugh. Well, it wasn’t that funny anyway. But she did smile a little, the worried frown smoothing from her forehead. She started to help me to the chair I had been sitting in, holding my arm like I was an ancient near-invalid, but I gently made her let me go. I walked normally, well, as normally as I could walk in that snug skirt, and passed right by the chair on the way to the kitchen.

"Would you like some tea, dear? You’ve been working so very hard."

"Um, yes, thank you," Lonna said, amusement warring with surprise on her face.

While I was putting the kettle on to boil and setting out the other things, Lonna set up our camcorder. I didn’t realize she was taping me until I turned back with a tray in my hand. I froze, but after a second I started up again. If this was going to work I had a feeling I’d be spending a lot of time in front of the camcorder.

When I tried to pour the tea, though, my hands were shaking so badly that I was afraid I’d spill everything, so I set the teapot down. Lonna reached over and poured for us both.

"You need to take it easy," she said. "You’re trying to just force your way past what you’re feeling, but that won’t really work in the long run."

She was right, of course. As I settled back into my chair I felt exhausted, as though I had been pushing with all my might at some invisible obstacle until every muscle in my body was crying out for relief. Despite my intellectual understanding that Trish had always sat with excellent posture, my own body collapsed against the cushions in a graceless slouch.

"I . . . " I started to try and say something, but nothing seemed to fit.

After a long moment, while Lonna quietly sipped her tea, I finally managed to ask, "Where do we go from here?"

"Where do you want to go?" she asked. That was a lot of help.

"I don’t know," I said, not much more help.

"I take it from your earlier reaction that you are satisfied you can do a pretty good job of emulating Trish," she offered.

"That I can do the job?" I repeated. "Hardly. I don’t know where I missed the magic wand, but this is not something I could have brought about."

"Oh, in time you could," she promised. "If you really want to."

There was the kicker, all right. Did I really want to?

"I don’t know," I said. "This seems, um, this is, well, so much more than simply acting a bit like Trish to remember her better."

"Well," Lonna said, "you certainly turned out better than I had honestly expected. You’re a lot prettier than Bill, um, Heather ever was. And a lot closer to Trish than I had expected, too."

A lot closer to Trish, I silently agreed. But that reminded me of the whole purpose of this, this, whatever. I was doing it to feel closer to Trish as a way to deal with her loss. Was it working?

"Um, I don’t want you to feel bad, but, well, I don’t think this is working," I reported to Lonna.

"Why not?" she asked. "You look fabulous!"

"Yes, well, maybe that’s the problem," I said, trying to understand myself. "I look way too good to make this an intellectual thing. Instead of looking a little more like Trish so I can do a little better job of feeling like she felt, I feel, um, overwhelmed differently."

"A different way?" Lonna prodded.

"Yes," I said. "It’s, um, not something that feels like a game.

It’s all too real."

Lonna nodded, not so much agreeing with my conclusion as with the possibility that it could be a problem.

"I can understand that," she began, then said, "but I don’t think you should jump to any conclusions. You don’t need to do this, of course, but the success that is bothering you so much means it has a lot of potential, too."

Now it was my turn to nod. Potential for what, though?

The clock that I had somehow been ignoring all evening struck yet again and I realized it was 11:00. I straightened up in my chair and took a quick sip of tea. Then I stood, straightening my skirt in another of Trish’s gestures that I didn’t even think about until my hands were already busy.

"What do you think I should do?" I asked Lonna.

"That’s hard to say," she said noncommittally. "For now, maybe do something limited until your mind catches up with what your options are. Let’s get you undressed and think about it."

At least the undressing portion of the job took a lot less time than getting all made up in the first place. We were mostly silent during my return to "normal", whatever that meant in my life just then. As we were finishing up, Lonna finally made a suggestion.

"I don’t think you should try the whole thing again for a few days. Let yourself get used to the idea. I’ll be glad to help you whenever you want, but I think you should take it easy for a while."

Then another idea came to her, and there was a lot more enthusiasm in her voice when she said, "I’ll tell you what. You look great, but except for the things you do deliberately as Trish did them, you just don’t move right. It takes a lot of practice for that. How about this? I’ll bring you some shoes with high heels. They’ll force you to exaggerate your movements. If you do that, plus wear the body shaper things and that skirt or another like it, you can practice here in your home without the pressure of a full transformation."

"Okay, I guess," I said, rolling the idea around in my mind.

Lonna pointed out a possible flaw in her own plan, "Um, well, in that case, maybe you should leave the breast forms attached. They’ll help you hold your body right. If you wear a loose sweater, you could still go out."

"Oh," I said. "I, um, guess so. I, uh, well, I can see that would make a difference."

"Every day of my life," Lonna said, smiling.

So that’s how I came to have breasts, artificial or otherwise. 

For the next week, I had softly-heavy weights hanging from the front of my chest. After a while, when my back started hurting, I found myself standing straighter, with better posture. The pains in my back were nothing next to the pains in my feet after Lonna brought the higher-heeled shoes. 

I don’t know where she got them, but if her thought was that practice with an extreme pair would make other shoes easy by comparison, she apparently didn’t want me to feel limited in my later choices.

Altogether it was definitely one of the strangest weeks I think anyone had ever experienced. I wore my body shapers most of the time, even when I went out. I had a couple of baggy sweatshirts and loose sweatpants that hid all that pretty effectively. Under them, though, I had on stockings, and girdle, and cincher, and a well-filled bra. And when I was home, I wore heels and a skirt.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to make another tape. Above the waist, or, um, maybe that should be above the neck I knew I looked badly out of synch with what was below, but I did study Trish’s tapes, looking at how she had moved in her heels. Some of our tapes were call-girl/client games, so she even had some with the tall spikes that Lonna provided me. 

I studied her motions and tried to copy them with an almost hypnotic fascination. Sometimes, I would feel that sense of being with Trish, or even of being Trish, but a lot of the time it was just, I don’t know, trying to do a good job at something instead of drifting. At least it was something to do.

Katy and Bud came by to visit after a couple of days, thankfully calling ahead first. I was frantically taking off my cincher and girdle when I realized I’d still need to wear a bra. I got out one of Trish’s sports bras and wore a loose top. Somehow, I couldn’t really talk about what it had been like to do the whole transformation thing and after a few gentle questions, we talked about other things.

As they were leaving though, Katy said, "You’re, um, more active now than you have been. Whatever you’re doing, it seems to be working."

"That’s right, Tim," Bud agreed. "I don’t care what you’re doing, just keep it up. You seem more alive than you’ve been in a, well, in a while."

"Thanks," I said. "I’m not sure it’s helping me deal with Trish, but, well, it’s something."

They both nodded and then Bud stepped through the door to start their car. Katy hung back just a second to give me a quick hug. 

Her arm fell across one of the straps on the sports bra and when she pulled me close, I knew she could feel the shapes on my chest. God knows I could feel the ones on her chest. 

When she pulled back, she had a very quizzical expression on her face and I knew she wanted to ask me about it, but she just nodded silently and smiled. It was a truly friendly smile, all respect for my own decision with no ridicule at all.

I smiled at her in return and said, "Thanks for your patience.

I’ll tell you about it one of these days.