Tale of a big threesome 2.

“I could live with both of you,” she said. “I would. I even suggested it to Becky.”

Then she came forward and loomed over me. “I told you, I go both ways. And I do love you, sweetheart. I really do. Not the man in you, really, especially, but the you in you! I’d rather not leave you. I’d love to take you with me to live with Becky. Or stay here with you and Becky.”

I looked up at her hopefully, and started to say something. That was what I wanted, if it was the best I could get for now! But her next words killed off that hope.

“But Joey, honey, Beckie isn’t attracted to you. She never will be. She doesn’t want to live with you. You’re a nice man, she knows that, but you’re a man.”

I waited. She let the other shoe fall.

“Sweetheart, Beckie’s now a confirmed lesbian. No more nor less. That’s really why her marriage to Tim hasn’t worked. He kept trying to turn her, and she was willing to let him try. But he’s such an insensitive boor! He couldn’t imagine why any woman would ever prefer another woman to him! Talk about a square peg in her round hole? Becky tried to turn him, too, at least to make him a little more considerate of her feelings. No way. She finished her honeymoon absolutely persuaded beyond any doubt that she would never sleep with any man ever again! Not any other man was what Tim thought she was saying, but she meant any man at all!”

“After that honeymoon they hardly ever touched each other. Tim has tomcatted around with all sorts of women in all sorts of ways, I know, so he didn’t make an issue of it. He couldn’t admit defeat. Not until their last visit here.”

Ellie took a deep breath. Then, “Tim accidentally came on the two of us together in bed, late one night. We weren’t asleep. He says he stayed by the door and watched us for a while, and we were so wrapped up in each other we never noticed! God, I remember we were hot that night! I don’t remember that we ever slept at all, though we must have! Becky’s soft, smooth skin rubbing on mine, her pillowy breasts, our arms and legs twined all around, our mouths fused, sucking and sweet, our juices flowing all over each other, our bodies pulsing in one huge heartbeat! God, it was wonderful!”

That memory transported Ellie into a rapturous silence. I felt excluded but strangely stirred, I had no idea why. But I sat stone still, and after a moment Ellie resumed.

“Tim told her the next day that he’d seen us, that he was disgusted, that their marriage was over! It would be by now, too, but they still can’t agree on the terms of separation — their negotiations are endless. They take perverse pleasure wrangling and haggling with each other. When Tim heard about her job offer here he said ‘Go to her!’ and then raised some further impossible demands. I cried when I found out what they were, and Becky was crying when she told me. We had to talk a long time before she calmed down.”

I looked sorrowfully sympathetic and nodded, but at that moment Rebecca’s problems weren’t mine at all. My mind was preoccupied!

“Now he’s turned really spiteful. He’s tried to strip her of everything! Even little things I’ve given her over the years! And he’s not stopping at blackmail. He’s threatening to expose both of us.”

Her face turned grim. “Well, that would bring you into it as her lesbian lover’s duped husband, cuckolded by a queer, so we’ve had to talk a long time about sparing you that kind of embarrassment. Becky’s playing some wild cards of her own too, but at the moment it appears Tim will get pretty nearly everything! Except what matters most to Becky. Me!”

“I never knew,” I said. That sounded pretty lame, but I had to say something.

Elllie didn’t seem to hear. “Becky says that now she won’t share me with any man, not any longer. Once she had to, because I had to know what it was like, being married. But not now. Not even with you, and she sort of likes you in her peculiar way. She says she’ll allow me one-nighters now and then if I must wrap my legs around some stud, feel a cock stuffed deep into me. But not with you. With different men each time, no emotional involvements, that’s as far as she’ll let me go. Well, I can live with that. I’ve done it before.”

She waited to see what I’d say. Then considered whether to say something more. Then, as if to explain, she went on.

“We’ve done threesomes, honey, if that’s what you’re thinking. We enjoy being three in a bed. In New Orleans just a few months ago, you remember when Becky had her annual convention in New Orleans and I had mine? A friend of Becky’s was with us the whole time. God, it was sublime!”

“But the friend was a girl sweetheart! All of Becky’s other lovers are girls. It drives Tim crazy to know that! And even those girls have to be married with kids, so they won’t get ideas about moving in on us permanently. Or else they have to be free spirits who don’t want to get ideas about anyone. Becky doesn’t like rivals.”

She stared at me meaningfully, then looked down at her drink. Then stood again and refilled her glass, and took a quick swallow without even waiting for the ice to cool it down. And added, once again with her back toward me, “You don’t qualify for that kind of threesome, hon. I’m sorry.” And she started back toward the kitchen.

I could feel it. This discussion was over as far as Ellie was concerned. She was in motion. Out of the room, out of my life. It was now or never! I reached to grasp at a straw! At anything! Out of nowhere came a desperate cry!

“But what if I did?”

She paused and began to turn back toward me. “Did what?” she asked. Her voice was casual. She’d said everything that could be said.

“Qualify! For a threesome!”

She turned the rest of the way and just stared at me, really pitying me now. I’d understood nothing apparently. I could read it in her eyes, and I raced on!

“No, I don’t mean as a man! What if I tried to be a girl when I was with you two? Just tried! What if I was gentle, and kept my penis out of the way? And wore that lacy nightgown you once wanted me to wear? And used my mouth, anywhere you want it! Could you take me in then? To make up a threesome?”

A new argument suddenly occurred to me. I added, “Then you wouldn’t have to leave here at all! We all three of us could live here together!”

I was playing for time! I needed time, more than anything else! What I was really willing to do, what I had to do, what I’d have to give up, what little deceptions might work, all those things I’d reconsider later! Decide about later, if I had to. I knew that as things were, once Ellie walked through that door and back into the kitchen, and once Rebecca walked through that front door, my marriage was over. Down the drain. I had to stop the flow! Somehow! To pretend I could be a girl with them was all that came to mind!

And now Ellie was looking at me with keen attention! “You really mean that?”

“Yes!” I’d thrown out my hook wildly, but I’d caught something! Now I had to set it past the barb so it wouldn’t shake loose! The words came tumbling out unconsidered. “I want to be a girl!”

She just stood there, staring at me.

“Make me a girl!” I said, more emphatically still.

“What?!”

“Make me a girl! I’m willing! I’ll be a girl for you! I want to! Ellie, please, I don’t want to lose you!” I was appalled by what I was saying! But it was a cry from the heart! At that moment I believed in my sincerity absolutely!

“You’re crazy!”

“I want you! I want you to love me! I want to live with you. No claims! If you can share me with Rebecca, and Rebecca will have me only if I’m a girl, then I want to be a girl! Make me a girl! Then Rebecca can have all of you and as much of me as she wants! And I can still have some of you! If Rebecca lets me!” Was I insane? No, not at all. But certainly anguished. And this was certainly the only idea I had, for now.

“You don’t know what you’re saying!”

“Yes, I do! Make me a girl!”

Ellie started back into the room and sat down on a chair by the door. I couldn’t believe it! It was happening!

She shook her head, thoughtfully! “If we were a threesome, even if we lived here you’d be a third party, a guest as it were. In your own house! You’d have to move into our guest room, Joey. Could you stand that?”

“Yes!”

“A girl? I know it can be done. With hormones and things. Becky knows how, she’s had patients who wanted to be girls. But you’d have so much to learn! You’d have to do so many things you’d certainly find unfamiliar, even embarrassing! You’d have to give up so much! You’re not a girl! Not even a transvestite!”

“Yes! I am! I can be!” What things? In the privacy of my relationships with them, I could handle it! In bed with them? Here in this house? How difficult could it be to wear a dress or a nightgown around the house now and then while I tried to woo and win back my own wife? No problem!

She paused. “That’s quite a notion! For my Joey to try to become a girl! It’s sort of romantic, I must say!” She looked at me admiringly, now. “I sort of like it! Greater love hath no man than to give up being a man for the woman he loves! I’ll certainly ask Becky how she feels about it when she gets here. She’s about due!”

Then Ellie turned and went back into the kitchen.

I sat there a moment. What have I done? I’ve saved my ass, that’s what I’ve done, I told myself! I’ve lived to fight another day! I stood up, triumphant!

“Yessssss!!!” I whispered aloud!

All was not lost!

And at that moment, the door chimes sounded.

ii.

Two days later I answered the door when the chimes sounded, and Rebecca swept past me, not condescending even to glance at me. “I see you’re still here? You like what we’re doing to you? Where’s your pride, girl? Is Miss Elaine home yet?”

She didn’t stay for an answer, but instead looked around for evidence. No one in the hallway or up the stairs. She turned toward me finally. “It’s arranged. You’re going away tomorrow morning with Ellie. To Miss Caroline’s, she has an opening and can fit you in right away. You’ll be there for three weeks. No need to pack anything. Ellie will take you there and leave you there. She’ll be there herself often as part of the treatment, but otherwise she’ll be working or else here with me. You’d better cooperate!”

I curtsied. “Yes, ma’am!”

“Not that it matters a whole lot! Miss Caroline has no problem getting people like you to cooperate. Then when you get back your boss tells me you’ll soon be off doing those out-of-town site visits he’s arranged. So Ellie and I will be rid of you either way. Become the best girl you can be, and maybe we’ll let you live with us. Any erections today?”

“No ma’am.”

“That’s good! I thought those injections would take care of that little problem. Nip it in the bud.” She smiled. “That’s apparently what you’re good at, I hear!”

“Ma’am?”

“Nipping buds! Clit nibbling! Miss Elaine told me this morning that last night you were quite satisfactory! I may want to wrap my legs around your head myself some time. Miss Elaine thinks you may have real talent that way! But don’t let it give you any ideas!”

“No ma’am.”

“I’ll have my white wine, now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I hurried to get it, pleased that Miss Rebecca was pleased, or at least not dissatisfied. I glanced at a mirror on my way back into the kitchen. My appearance was acceptable. Maybe that helped.

Two days earlier she’d been a lot less pleased, in fact she’d been downright antagonistic. When the doorbell rang, and Ellie turned to answer it, I waited in the living room to see if Rebecca would buy my hastily improvised notion, still holding my empty glass in my hand, the ice cubes now altogether melted. The whole trip down the hall to the front door, Ellie kept her head turned back toward me, watching to see if I was still serious, or if I was having second thoughts, or if I was already quailing at my own preposterous suggestion. Perhaps from sheer stubbornness, I wasn’t. Just before opening the door she asked me again, “You’re sure now! A girl!”

“Yes!” I said, loud and clear.

The two of them then stood by the front door talking in low voices for some time. I was delighted that I’d at least shaken them up

Then Rebecca came into the living room. I stood to meet her, and offered her my hand, a meaningless smile of hospitality fixed on my face. She just stood there in the middle of the room and looked at me. I put my hand down. Her expression approached a scowl.

“Well, Joseph, look what you’ve proposed,” she said finally. “And Ellie likes the idea. So we have to deal with it seriously. Even though I don’t believe for a moment that you’re serious.”

“Now Rebecca!” I tried to reassure her even though I myself still found the idea unsettling, absurd.

“No more until after we’ve eaten, and you’ve poured out some of that brandy of yours. Then we’ll talk, and we’ll find out if the brandy’s still yours or if it’s now Ellie’s and mine! Because that’s what you’re proposing, you know. Among other things.”

And she walked into the dining room, and sat down in my place at the table.

Conversation during dinner was spare, limited to trivial things, carefully evasive. Rebecca’s new position and the hospital’s policies, whether she’d want to stay when she’d reorganized them, the kinds of people she’d be working with, where the best supermarket in town was located, and the best wine store, and the best hairdresser. The small things that make up whole lives no one likes to think trivial. None of us dared hint at the topic on everyone’s mind. We were being civilized. Rebecca twice began talking about people and places only she and Ellie had once known, but Ellie to her credit answered perfunctorily and brought the topic back to time present.

Then when we were each of us settled back into the living room, each with a snifter in one hand overfilled with cognac, Family Court came into session. Ellie sat on the couch with Rebecca, the judges and prosecutors. I sat facing them. Rebecca launched into me with no preliminaries. Right on target, too!

“Ellie, we both know what his purpose is here. To gain time to work on you, to try to take you away from me again. I can’t have that! I won’t have that! We’re much more married than you and your ‘Joey’ here ever will be, much more closely bound together. Irreversibly! Forever! You know that, too. You can feel it too! And you’re asking me to admit someone else into this union of ours merely because you’re married to him? Out of pity?”

Rebecca seemed both furious and on the edge of tears. Ellie leaned forward and took both her hands and held them, and said not a word. She didn’t have to. They did understand each other so well! She just looked steadily into Rebecca’s eyes until Rebecca could recover herself. Only one sob escaped. Then a slight, grateful smile, through glistening eyes.

“All right, out of love too. He’s a sweet man! He’s a dear man! You say so, and I can believe it, though all I see is a wimp! But remember, he’s a man! He has no obligations to me, or feelings for me. He can pretend to be a girl, I’m sure, and learn how to swish around the house in heels, and learn how to look halfway respectable wearing makeup, and try to persuade you that he’s serious! He can even do some permanent things to his body, make some small gestures toward femininity in token of his sincerity, like get his ears pierced, and adjust his hormones to grow his own breasts and improve his figure and his disposition, things like that. Because he knows it would take things like that to begin to persuade me he’s serious. He knows that whenever I look at him, nothing should ever remind me that I’ve somehow gotten myself involved with another man.”

“But I’d still see him as a man, unless he was very, very good at his little deceptions! And I’d always feel insecure, always anxious that I was living with you on borrowed time. He’d be the snake in our little garden. He can say anything at all right now, but we all three know he can always back out of this thing he’s proposing. At any time. No matter how skillful he becomes at persuading us, maybe even persuading himself that he’s serious. He can always take up living like a man again any time. And I’d always worry that when he left he’d take you with him!”

“He wouldn’t do that. Would you, Joey honey?”

Of course I would. That was exactly my intention. But they needed more persuasion. Rebecca did, anyhow. She was already boxing me in with more “gestures” and “tokens,” than I wanted to deal with, and Ellie was going right along with her. It made me uneasy. Pierced ears, well, OK, no problem, holes grow in and leave only a dimple, and my hair covers my ears, anyhow. But hormones? That dyke wants me to grow breasts like hers, and maybe also fatten up my ass like hers? And Ellie has no objection to any of it? Well, OK, even hormones. I could stall, and anyhow, if I had to start taking their pills or whatever, they would take time to work. Months. Longer. And if it took me a year to wean Ellie away I supposed even breasts are removable with surgery, if I found I couldn’t handle having them hang off me. I grinned, realizing that if I’d had breasts when we were married Ellie might have found me even more attractive than now, a man and a woman all wrapped up in one, the best of both of her worlds. Breasts might be an advantage to me, wooing Ellie back.

“Would you?” Ellie asked again. “Try to come between me and Becky?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “I’d never want to do that!” Take Ellie back to be my lawful wedded wife again! Unthinkable! I tried to think of more clinchers, more reassurances I could offer them in addition to those Rebecca’d mentioned. What else? Flattery, certainly. “I’d be living with two beautiful women, one of them my wife. Why should I ever want to back out of an arrangement like that?”

Even Ellie wasn’t persuaded by that, and she wanted to believe in my sincerity. It was a lecher’s argument, not a nascent girl’s. “Becky,” she said hastily. “You know I’ll never want to leave you again. But there are other ways we can discourage him from changing his mind. We can get his voice changed to a high register, so it sounds attractive as a woman’s but silly as a man’s. We can get him breast implants right off, not wait for his hormones to grow them. And while we’re at it we could give him a really cute girly nose and chin — I’d love that, and the chances are that then he’d never want to show his face to his friends again, looking like that. With a pretty face and pouty lips, the first thing those guys would think of whenever they saw him would be getting him on his knees and filling his mouth with their …things. So it wouldn’t do him any good to carry me off somewhere else! His old life would be over. He couldn’t be my husband any more. We’d be two girls together!”

She looked at me, and then she let go of Rebecca’s hands and took up mine. And pressed them into my lap. My crotch. Almost as if she wanted me to stroke myself! The weight of our hands together certainly caused a stirring. I tried to think of other things. This was not the right moment for a boner! I realized that in her sweet, conciliatory way, Ellie had just made it impossible for me to back out of this situation and still save face. Not my face the way it was. If the two of them arranged for every change Ellie had just offered up, we really would look like two girls together. Or very nearly. This was not too good!

“How about we castrate him?” Rebecca asked.

I lurched.

Rebecca noticed but went on. “That’s irreversible. That would prove his sincerity, and reassure me. Then afterward, he’d have to take whatever kind of sex he could get from us. He’d be grateful we still wanted him! If we did.” She grinned quickly, then said in a pointed, level voice, “I like that idea. We don’t need his income. He could be our live-in eunuch! Take care of our house, and help dress you for your dates with those studs you’ll want to bed down now and then! He could even be happy for you when you brought one home for the weekend! With no balls of his own he couldn’t possibly be jealous of them! Could he?”

I knew I’d flinched visibly. Ellie’s hands were holding mine firm in my lap, but she’d felt me instinctively clutch at my jewels. I sat very still, hoping that this latest proposal would evaporate into the air. No such luck.

“Becky, I wouldn’t want my darling hurt, just because he loves me,” Ellie said. She could feel my fright. “Aren’t we asking enough from him? For now?”

Rebecca seemed to back down a little. Or maybe not. “We both love the same woman,” she said. “I’m willing to try to like him, as long as he doesn’t flaunt his male privilege in my face the way that bastard husband of mine did.”

She paused and thought a moment, and a slow smile began to light up her face. For the first time, she scrutinized me seriously. Then she continued, “Well, we’ll discuss it later, just the two of us. As long as Joseph really will become a woman like us! Nearly all the way may be far enough, we’ll have to see! I can wait to cut his balls off, if he’ll do whatever’s otherwise necessary! I’ve got to say though, if he must compete with me for you, I’d rather have a level playing field, with no special jollies for you hanging down between his legs!”

She turned directly to Ellie and spoke from the heart. “Ellie, my darling Ellie. All I want is simple assurance that he isn’t faking it. Is that too much to ask? To know that he’s a man of his word. That he really means to become a woman of her word. That she really means it. That she’s making an irreversible commitment to her new life with us. Is that too much to ask?”

Not so much her words, but her tone of voice unsettled me. She had my number all right. And Ellie knew it!

Now Rebecca leaned forward, and spoke quietly and rapidly to Ellie, all the while not once taking her eyes off me. Ellie glanced at me a few times as she listened and now and then nodded assent, anxiously, amusedly, reassuringly.

“I tell you what, Ellie. I’ll set three conditions. First, we send your Joey here to Miss Caroline’s Girls’ School for three weeks of behavior modification. Just as soon as there’s an opening. I’ll phone her and see if maybe she can take him this weekend. Hypno-therapy, deep-reflex conditioning, and careful instruction in how to be a woman, how to dress and walk and so on so he won’t disgrace us every time anyone looks at him. Caroline’s very good with husbands who get volunteered to her establishment by their wives. I’ve seen some of them — they come out more feminine than the women who sent them there, and then they stay that way! I’ll pay for the treatments myself. Because if your husband is sincere, sweetheart, your happiness will be well worth the price. And if he isn’t, well, he will be when Caroline finishes with him.”

I tried to look at this woman with mild curiosity, as if I had understood nothing of what she had just said. But it was getting more and more frightening. Behavior modification? Did that mean I’d learn to be more gentle, less aggressive, more nurturing? That would be all right, I supposed. What more? Learn how to swing my hips when I walk ? No problem, I could do that! I’m sure Rebecca saw me still attempting not to understand, and failing. She smiled and kept looking straight at me.

“The second thing I want is his signature on a sheaf of blank surgical permissions. And a proxy. So he knows starting right now we’re serious. So that as his wife you can approve whatever surgical procedures we think necessary, whatever he may think of them. Cut off his balls if he acts up, cut off his head too if he thinks he’s getting away with anything. Caroline will need written consents anyway — she doesn’t like backlash when her clients finally wake up and realize what’s been done to them. And we’ll want it for the other things we’ve already mentioned, because he’ll surely want to look pretty, with a pretty face and figure to flaunt at us. He can have such fun seducing his former buddies!” Now she glared at me. “I’m sure he’ll want to do that!” she said.

It was a challenge. I ignored it. She saw, and for some reason that fact amused her. Her lips compressed satisfied, then she continued.

“Maybe he won’t need a surgical castration. The hormones I’d use to wipe out his sperm and grow his tits would fry his balls anyhow, sooner than he might imagine. I do want him to know though that starting right now his balls are ours, not his. Mine, really, since you’re probably feeling partial toward them. That his balls dangle where they are now or dangle from my rear-view mirror any time I want them to, at my whim. That he keeps them only if I’m persuaded that he doesn’t want them, that they don’t matter, that he doesn’t care, they’re a birth defect he’d just as soon see removed. If I’m persuaded that he’s submitting to us for your benefit, not for his. If he knows that you’re mine, not his, and that he’s ours!”