Cruise
                            
                                 1/3

                                   i.

"Honey, what's this?"  

I was fresh home from the bank, looking forward to putting my feet
up and stretching out, checking the day's mail.  As an Ivy MBA on
the executive fast track they expected great things of me, and they
worked me hard.  But I'd begun at the bottom, as everyone does at
Vanderbilt Trust.  I was  half way along in my first three month
assignment, a lowly teller in the branch bank near where I live,
though due to take over a desk in New Accounts there in another six
weeks, when I'd learned where the ends of the ropes were, and I was
slated for a vice presidency in six years.  And I was newly
married, living in a new house in a new suburb with my lovely wife
Maddie, also an MBA.  We'd met in graduate school and studied
together, but Maddie'd put her career on hold for a year or two
until she could rediscover and enjoy for the last time, as she put
it, what it's like to be just a girl and just have fun.  

Which, as far as I could tell, she was doing with her friends, a
few other high-achieving women who also lived in this same
subdivision and for the time being shared the same intentions.  One
was a doctor named Fay, and two others were lawyers, Brett and
Ashley.  Brett was the only other one of the four who was married,
though she always seemed somehow dissatisfied with the fact.   Like
Maddie they all had fine minds and promising careers, but for the
present, like Maddie they were recovering from the rigors of
getting to where they were despite being women.  They'd all learned
how to deal with assertive males and yet come out ahead, and they
knew they could.  But it was wearisome, so they were all taking a
break.  

Maddie would meet with them a few times a week.  What they did with
their time wasn't clear, but they seemed to love acting out with
others, trying new roles to play.  Pretending to be different
people.  They all once applied for jobs as clerks in Walmart's, for
example, even Maddie, and they held those jobs for weeks, long
enough to get to know well the other clerks' lives and quirks, who
slept with which floor supervisors, who did power trips, and whose
cunt or cock was always available in the stock room.  Just to see
if she could, Fay once got herself a job as a car repair mechanic
by pretending to be a guy, and she actually held it for a week
before another guy slapped her rear in fellowship and then figured
it out.  She talked cars knowledgeably with the other mechanics and
earned their respect.  But also about girls.  And the things they
didn't know about girls?  And the things they knew that no one knew
guys knew?  When I asked Maddie what sorts of things, she smiled
and told me she wouldn't say, she wanted me to preserve my
innocence for as long as possible.  

Though soon afterward she began to suggest we do things in bed
together I'd never dreamed of myself, and her bedside drawer began
to fill with cute sex toys I'd use on her or once in a while she'd
use on me.  If you'd told me a year ago that I'd sometimes go to
bed knowing my gorgeous wife wanted to push a thick vibrating jelly
dildo up my ... well I'd never have believed you.  Maddie wouldn't
have believed you either, a year ago.  But we were both young and
experimental, and we loved each other.  Maddie was far more
venturesome than me, and she proposed all sorts of kinky sex with
me.  I got so I not only didn't mind, but ... well, later.

Ashley, the other lawyer, was an adventurous spirit.  She
registered with a "Personal Escort" service I took to be a call
girl operation.  Maddie told me that I was wrong, that there were
plenty of call boys on their list, and gays and lezzes and bisexuals,
and even a few men and women of mixed or indeterminate sex and
gender.  Ashley could persuade clients to do all sorts of things by
employing legal language, ratiocination, and an absolutely gorgeous
body.  She won every case.

Ashley told her friends about her escapades, and Maddie, Fay, and
Brett gradually lost their faith in the world's proprieties.  Maybe
that was why the eternal malcontent Brett decided to humiliate her
husband Evan for fun, to punish him for some injury real or
imagined.  She arranged a date for him with one of the
indeterminate Escort Service girls, one with a dom/sub specialty,
and she instructed him to do whatever he was asked to do while she
watched.  

Evan was a nice guy, and the "girl" knew how to push his buttons,
so he was soon under her thumb.  Unknown to him, Brett recorded the
proceedings, which included him dressing up as a whore and sucking
the call girl's cock, then getting fucked by it.  All this and more
was videotaped for Brett's later possible uses against him, she
said, should their marriage not work out.  Meanwhile she used the
tape to intimidate him into more humiliating situations and even
more videotaping.  There was a lot of giggling, Maddie told me,
when the girls met for lunch and Brett played some of the tapes,
and then for comparison's sake Ashley told them what different
clients sometimes wanted her to do, and what she did with them
instead.  Maddie's bed-time expectations got even kinkier.  But I
loved it all.  Life as a bank teller was boring, but with Maddie,
never!

Now, today's mail had brought us an envelope of expensive imitation
parchment from some place called "Vacations Afloat," addressed to
me as "Ms. Leslie Crimmins."  "What's this?" I asked Maddie.

"O yes, that.  Les, I need to talk to you before you open that
envelope."

"But why, Maddie?  I see you've already opened it."

"I couldn't wait to see what was in it.  It's wonderful news!"

"Can I see?"

"In a minute.  But first, listen.  Les, I have a confession to
make.  A month ago I entered both of us in a drawing for a prize. 
Something only girls can enter.  I thought I could double my
chances of winning if I entered your name too.  'Leslie' is a sort
of a girl's name, after all, so no one would know, and if you won
I figured you could give the prize to me.  That you'd want to give
it to me."

I heard her.  "And I won," I said.

"In a word, yes."  Maddie said.  

Amazing!  I never win prizes!  But now finally?  "I'd better sit
down," I said.  "So what did I win?"

"A Caribbean cruise for you and any five friends, all free!  Six
all-expenses-paid tickets." 

"A cruise?  Free?"  I could scarcely believe it!  "Maddie, that's
wonderful!"

"Wait, Les, there's more.  It's a singles cruise.  The drawing was
a promotion.  There are never enough women on board singles cruises
in proportion to men.  So they always give away some berths as
prizes.  That's what you've won."

Marvelous!  "Well, that's no problem, Maddie," I said.  "We're new
in town but thanks to you we know four other people well enough to
ask them to join us.  Your three friends, Fay and Brett and what's
her name, the lawyer who earns more money as a call girl than all
the rest of us together?  Ashley.  And Brett's husband makes four. 
So why are you looking so concerned?"

"Honey, you aren't listening.  The drawing was for girls.  The
berths are for girls.  The winner and her friends have to be
girls."

I listened now.  What a disappointment!  "So I don't qualify to
win," I said slowly.  "And Brett's husband doesn't qualify to go at
all."

There was a long pause.  "Honey, the cruise company doesn't know
that!"

There was another long pause.  "Maddie, what are you suggesting?"

"What do you think I'm suggesting?"  She sat there now with a look
of expectation, waiting for the light to dawn in my face.  

But it already had.  I decided to get serious.  "Maddie, no.  If
you want I'll transfer my winning ticket to you.  Then you can take
your friends, and I can buy a berth to accompany you, and if he
wants to so can Brett's husband, and there'll still be a berth left
over for whoever you want to invite."

"Honey, you still aren't listening.  It's a singles cruise.  You're
married.  They check up, they don't want philandering husbands
going on their singles cruises."  

"Oh!"

"And your winning ticket is non-transferable.  If you don't go, the
right to choose five friends to accompany the winner reverts to a
runner-up,  I understand she lives in Kansas somewhere.  That means
that none of us goes.  That would be very disappointing for all of
us.  Very."

"Very?  You've already told your friends about this?"

"Yes."

My heart was beginning to sink.  "And they want to go?  They see no
problem?"

"Yes, sweetie, they all want to go.  We all do.  And no, they see
no problem at all.  They're always telling me I married the
loveliest man they've ever met, the nicest, the most accommodating. 
Fay's often commented on your delicate features, that you're
potentially even more feminine than Evan.  And Evan's already been
gotten up as a girl, and a good-looking one too to judge by his
videotapes.   He made a really beautiful whore the night Brett sent
him out to learn what it's like on the street."

This was troublesome.  "I remember you told me about Evan," I said. 
"There was that time you wanted me to suck on your dildo the way
you saw he'd sucked on that ... translady's cock."

"And you did, honey, even though you didn't want to, and I loved
it.  You were very girlish!  Even though you were wearing pajamas,
not at all dressed like a slut in a bustier and net stockings like
Evan.  And you did a very fine job on that dildo.  Remember?  That
was your very first, long before I took to wearing it as a strap-on
so you had to kneel down before me in order to suck me off."

She was reminding me that I'd bent my gender a few times already,
pretending to be a lady who gave blow jobs in order to please her. 
And that for over a month now, whenever she felt like it she'd been
fucking me with that thing, making me her "bitch."  So how much
inviolable masculinity could I insist I still had?  Why shouldn't
I go on this cruise pretending I was a girl?

I tried a last resort.  "What about Evan?  What if he doesn't want
to go on this cruise under these ... circumstances?"  

"Evan's willing.  Brett's been improving him.  A week or so after
the first videotape, Brett showed it to him and then suggested he
should call up that transsexual girl he'd sucked off and ask her
advice about getting his beard removed, and hormones to smooth out
his skin, things like that.  She likes men with smooth skin, she
told him.  Now he's quite presentable, she says, and the breasts
he's grown look real because they are real.  Brett says Evan's not
the problem.  You're probably the problem, she says.  Husbands
usually are, she says." 

"Do you think so?" I asked.

"No, sweetheart.  I told her you never have been a problem for me
and you never will be.  That we'd do anything for each other."

I couldn't respond to that.  Then, "What's involved?" I asked.

"You'll take a month's leave from work, or better, the full six
weeks they promised you when you signed on.  It's a twelve day
cruise, leaving from Miami in two weeks.  Fay says you'll need the
full two weeks to get you up to speed and passable physically --she
has the connections.  And Ashley thinks she can teach you what
girls on cruises need to know in that much time, especially because
she knows a therapist who can speed your learning curve enormously. 
I'll give you all the help I can.  Brett will have her hands full
getting Evan ready, but she's confident she can manage.  We all
think you'll do fine.  Really, honey, don't look so depressed. 
It'll be fun!  We all think so!  You'll see!"

"This is all reversible?  I mean, when the cruise is over, I can
get back to being who I am?"

"Fay says the implants can be removed.  You'll have no beard or
body hair and probably by then you'll have swollen nipples from the
hormones you'll be force-fed, but you'll probably want to keep them
-- you'll love how they feel when I kiss them.  No one but me will
ever see.  And not too much else will change.  Ashley's therapist
uses hypnotherapy to convince people they are whoever they want to
be -- some of her clients from the escort service use her
sometimes.  You'll visit her right off, to get started with the
right beliefs and attitudes.  I don't see why whatever you learn
that way can't be unlearned.  But honey, it doesn't matter!  I'll
always love you the way I love you now.  Maybe even more!  In more
ways, certainly!

Could I say no?  "All right," I said.  "I'll do it.  Now can I look
at what's in the envelope?"

Maddie leaped up and clapped her hands in sheer delight!  She was
so happy!  "I'll phone the girls right away," she said.  "They're
all waiting to hear."

So I took out the embossed invitation.  "Dear Ms. Leslie Crimmins,"
it said.  "I am delighted to inform you that you are a very lucky
girl, the winner of our "Cruise for Singles" contest!  Romance and
excitement await you, and you'll love every moment!  We are sure
this award will change your life."  

It went on to describe the cruise, and its ports of call, and the
luxurious accommodations, and the many opportunities I'd have to
wear my prettiest dresses and dance with the most attractive of
men.  It then asked me to fill out and mail in the enclosed card
certifying that I am indeed unmarried and otherwise eligible, and
so on, and it asked me to declare what I prefer of all kinds of
things -- food, recreation, dress, partying, and men, so my every
desire can be anticipated and gratified.  Lots of exciting events
are scheduled simultaneously on large ships like this one, it said,
something to appeal to every taste.

"I don't see the enclosed card anywhere," I said, peering into the
empty envelope and at the floor near where I sat.

"I filled it out for you and mailed it in already," Maddie said. 
"I was so excited!  And I've already phoned for our cabin
reservations.  We aren't all on the same deck or close to each
other, but we'll all be on the same boat, so we'll all see as much
as we want of each other.  You'll room with Evan and I'll be with
Ashley in a different stateroom.  Brett and Fay will be together
too.  They like that idea, they've seen a lot of each other since
Brett first brought Evan to Fay for shots to get him shaped up as
more feminine and less aggressive..

"You and I won't share the same cabin?" I asked, a little appalled. 

"No, sweetie.  It'd be too easy for them to trace back our names and
addresses and find that we're married.  From now until the cruise
ends we're not married.  We're single girls who happen to know each
other."

"Girls," I said.  It was slowly sinking in, the enormity of what
I'd committed to.  "Not married."

"Single girls," Maddie repeated.  "Let's skip dinner and go to bed. 
I want to begin living in sin with you right now."

We did.  When I fucked Maddie this time it was a little like when
we'd made out with each other the first time -- she gasped as she
shifted her positions to accommodate my thrusts, as if she were
practicing getting accustomed to a brand new lover.  When she then
fucked me with her dildo, she was much rougher than usual, really
pounding it into me.  Afterward, when I asked her why, she
shrugged.  "Lots of men are like that," she said.  "You have to
take them as they come."

"Maddie honey," I said, a little shocked.  "I don't intend to take
them at all!  I'm not gay!"

"Leslie honey," Maddie replied, equally formally.  "You agreed to
this!  I signed the form for you and sent it in!  This is a singles
cruise, and you're going as a girl.  There're dances every night,
and all sorts of matching and pairing games, boys' choice, girls'
choice,  wheel of fortune choices, by zodiac signs or by your time
of month, all to make sure that no girl is ever without a fella or
vice versa.  When I signed you on, you agreed to dance with whoever
asks you and to take moonlight strolls with whoever asks you.  The
rest is up to you, of course, but you never know." 

"You too, Maddie?  Do you know?" I asked, my heart now sunk down
between my knees.

"Of course, baby!  Of course I know.  It's you I love, and only
you.  You're the only man who matters to me or ever will matter. 
As far as I'm concerned, all the other men in the whole world are
walking dildos and no more than that."  She cuddled into me.  "Now
do you feel better about all this?"

Somehow, I didn't.

But I phoned my head office the next morning, and they put me on
leave for six weeks "without prejudice," as they said, and Maddie
and I then went to see Dr. Renfrew, the shrink Ashley had
recommended.  She listened to my story and asked me some questions,
especially about gendered attitudes and cross dressing and the like. 
Reluctantly, I told her that I'd tried on my girlfriend's bra and
panties and lipstick when I was sixteen, at her insistence, and
that it had made me both tingly and hard, that our sex when I
dressed like that was incredible, and she'd wanted more of it.  So
I had a considerable wardrobe of girls' clothes by the time we
broke up.  But I hadn't done anything like that since.

"Transvestism and sex are a potent combination," she commented. 
"Once bound together, they never separate altogether.  Have you
played at being a woman in other ways since then?"

Haltingly, I told her about Maddie's jelly dildo, how I like her to
fuck me with it because she loves to fuck me with it.  

"And also because it feels good, I have to assume.  You love the
way it feels."

"Yes," I admitted.  I'd thought that wild horses could never draw
that confession from me.

She asked a few more questions and then sent me out so she could
have a private conversation with Maddie.  After a long while she
called me back in.  "I'm putting you in your wife's hands," she
told me.  "She thinks this will bring you much closer together, and
I agree.  Will that be all right?"

I nodded.

"She'll know what to do from now on.  I've given her a few cues,
trigger words for states of mind I intend to install in you now, to
put you at your ease and help you enjoy this interesting situation
from now until the cruise ends, to reinforce certain feminine
habits and attitudes you'll find handy.  Again, do you agree? 
You'll need to agree to this treatment sincerely and
wholeheartedly." 

"I've committed myself," I said.  "I've given my word.  And Maddie
wants this.  So I do agree.  I'll really be grateful for all the
help you can give me."

"Oh, I don't think so," Dr. Renfrew smiled.  "Even from the little
you've told me, I suspect I could turn you into a ridiculous,
flouncing pansy if you wanted all the help I can give you.  But
then you'd spend this whole cruise as a living scum bag for all the
gay men on board, no fit companion for your wife and her friends at
all.  No, I don't think it'll even be necessary for you to believe
you're actually a woman, though that'll be one of the triggers your
wife can use to help you through any really difficult situations. 
Maybe to speed things while you're in training, that's up to her. 
What I'll do is, I'll help bring out a few latent desires common to
most men but rarely acknowledged, already partially developed in
you.  You'll know you're a man of course, but at certain times when
you're enjoying yourself it won't much matter.  You'll be what you
were with your teenage girlfriend, but much mores, a man who's
fond of feminine things, who loves to pretend he's a woman, and
adores it when others accept him as a woman.  That will be quite
sufficient.  Now, sit back, and make yourself comfortable, and if
you'll look at that spiral shaped spot on the ceiling?  And listen
to my voice?"

I did just that.  Her voice was reassuring, and it soon became a
relaxing drone.

The next thing I knew I was in our car.  Maddie was driving.  I
felt wonderfully relaxed and at peace with myself.  "Oh, my," I
said to her.  "When did we leave Dr. Renfrew's office?  How long
have I been under?"

Maddie looked at me with a cheery smile.  "A long time, sweetheart. 
Do you feel all right?"

"Wonderful!" I replied.  "Thank you.  Just lovely!  But the last I
remember it was mid-morning, and now it's late afternoon!  Where
did the day go?"

Maddie didn't reply.  She seemed a bit amused as she pulled into
our driveway.  "I'd like for you to be seated in our living room
before I tell you where the day went," she said.  "Preferably with
a drink in your hand.  You aren't fully awake yet.  But I'll bring
you out of your trance the rest of the way just as soon as you're
in familiar surroundings.  Because there have been some changes in
things, and some of them might be surprising.  Not shocking,
because you've appreciated what we've been doing, you've absolutely
adored lots of it.  We've had such a good time, Les honey!  But now
it's time for you to remember all of it, so you'll know who you
are."

That sounded portentous.  I glanced at Maddie indulgently.  "I know
who I am, honey!  I'm Leslie Crimmins, your husband."

She glanced at me sideways as she undid her seat belt, opened the
door, and turned to get out.  "No you're not, sweetie.  Not
exactly.  Not any more.  You're Leslie Crimmins, my transvestite
girlfriend, and I love you as dearly as I ever did my husband.  In
some ways more.  Come into the house and I'll explain everything,
and help you remember everything."

This was puzzling, but I trusted Maddie and knew she'd soon tell me
whatever I needed to know.  As I unlatched my own seat belt I
noticed that my breasts were no longer sore where the shoulder belt
crossed over them -- I vaguely remembered a few difficult days, but
apparently they were now done with.  Even so, I felt a little
confused as I swung my legs out of the car, planted them on the
driveway, stood up and smoothed out my dress, and then reflexively
checked my hair in the car's side view mirror.  Quite presentable. 
I followed Maddie up the front steps and into the house, then sat
down carefully on the sofa, kicked off my heels, tucked my legs
comfortably under me, and rearranged my skirt.  Maddie handed me a
double straight scotch on the rocks.

"Take a deep swig first, baby."

I did.  Finally, I noted in passing, I was wearing a lipstick that
didn't smudge, didn't leave a stain on the glass, unlike all the
others I'd been using!  "Colorstay" actually did what was
advertised and stayed where it belonged.  It actually was
kiss-proof!  The shadow of a man's face with a lipstick smear on
his cheek entered my mind's eye, then disappeared again.  Had I
done that?

"I do like that skirt, honey," Maddie said.  "Wear it well!"

My skirt?  It's a pretty cotton print, pleated, rather ordinary. 
What was notable about it?  Something was odd, though.  Lipstick? 
Kiss-proof?  Again I was confused.  I looked up to Maddie for help.

She sat down beside me and took my beautifully manicured hands into
her own, and just held them gently for a moment.  Then looked into
my eyes.

"Sweetheart, you've had so many things to do, and learn, and have
done to you, that Dr. Renfrew and the girls and I all agreed it
would be better if you weren't altogether yourself while they were
happening.  So even though you've been with us from moment to
moment and time to time, and you've retained all the memories of it
for future use, you haven't been recalling many of them for very
long at all.  You've been such a darling ditz!  I had to put your
long-term memory to sleep too, so you'd learn everything as if it
were all brand new, as if you were an altogether brand new person
uncluttered by the old person's ideas and feelings.  A brand new
woman.  Especially during your breast augmentation surgery, and
your liposuction, and while the teeny tucks in your face were
healing, the ones the surgeon recommended so you'd have the cute,
wide-eyed look you've got now.  Men love girls with that vulnerable
look, its very attractive.  All those things gave you considerable
discomfort, and I felt so sorry for you.  But you recall none of it
now, I'm sure, so it's as if it never happened.  Isn't that so?"  

Of course it was so.  I squeezed Maddie's hand encouragingly.

"Well, I want to return all of your memories now.  Make you whole
again.  So you'll know where you've been and what you've become,
and how.  So your happiness when you saw the result of your
surgery, how beautiful you now are, that joy can be a permanent
part of you.  And my happiness when I saw you too!  You look so
darling, so very precious now that your face is more feminine,
sweetheart!"

"It is?"  I touched it.  I wondered where the nearest mirror was. 
In my purse?  I'd left it on the hall table, as always.  But
Maddie'd begun again.

"And you've learned so much in the past two weeks!  A lifetime's
worth of what a girl needs to know!  So I want you to remember
everything now, the training sessions and all the shopping we've
been doing, the trips to the beauty salon to make yourself as
attractive as you can be for the cruise.  Even your stay in the
hospital.  Everything.  Do you remember any of those things now?"

I struggled to recall something of what she'd said.  It all sounded
familiar, but ....

"You've been under for nearly two weeks, baby.  The whole time
learning how to be a lady and getting ready for our trip.  We fly
to Miami to board the cruise ship tomorrow.  Do you understand me?"

I began to understand that I'd been sort of asleep for two weeks,
and that I was not the person I'd been when I walked into Dr.
Renfrew's office.  Not now.  But that had been the intention,
hadn't it?  I'd wanted to feel that I'm a woman, not a man, even
though I'm not, and I needed help learning how to do it, how to
fulfill that desire, and that's why I had gone to see Dr. Renfrew
to begin with.  For the cruise.  And for another reason too.  As a
man, I'd never felt quite right, though I didn't know it until this
minute, practically.  But now as a woman I felt ... complete.  Being
a woman completed me.  It was deeply satisfying.  I'd become myself!

"Yes, dear," I said.  "I do understand.  I appreciate it, that
you've been so attentive and considerate, and the other girls too. 
I love what you've done, but it would be nice to have my memories
back.  I'm sure I'll enjoy myself even more when I know what's been
happening."

"I'm sure that's true, baby,"  Maddie said.  "That's how we
arranged for you to feel.  Now look at me."