Cruise 2/3 ii. I looked into her eyes. They were so very tender and loving and clear. That blue eye shadow went marvelously with her blonde hair, and I envied her that slyly knowing look. We'd all decided though that I should remain a brunette, my coloring and my naive expression went better with brunette hair, and it was better for both of us if I didn't resemble Maddie too closely, if I was more obviously a friend than a sister. "I love you Maddie," I said suddenly, out of a deep welling of my heart. "I do so love everything you've done to me." "I'm sure you do, my angel. And that love will never go away. Dr. Renfrew took that harmless transvestism in you and built on it, strengthened your desire to look like a woman into a need to live like one. It's deep, deep down in you now, and we've drawn heavily on it during these past two hectic weeks. Now it's part of you. You know you're not a woman, but it doesn't matter, because you love seeming to be one. You love persuading yourself and everyone else that's what you are. And living with me as my girlfriend is fabulous in itself, isn't it? A dream come true! Isn't that so?" "Yes!" I whispered. "Oh, yes!" "Leslie, remember everything!" Maddie said, almost chanting the words. Then twice more. "Remember everything! Remember everything!" Then she just sat there and watched. It was like waking up from a dream into a different dream. There I was on the couch in my own living room, wearing my lovely silk jersey print blouse with the pleated cotton skirt -- now how did I know that's what it was? -- and my taupe pantyhose, though with a light-days sanitary napkin in front to flatten my bulge. And a dainty silver pendant on a chain around my neck to match the dainty silver earrings swinging from my almost-healed pierced ears. And a curly halo of hair that really only needs combing, though it certainly benefits from a biweekly cut and set -- I'd just come from getting one for the trip. I then remembered the salon where Maureen had done my hair and Sarah my nails, all three of us chatting away, talking about how hard it is to keep your set in damp ocean air but how easily hair curls in that climate, and how far to let a ship-board romance go. Things like that, girl things. I'd been about to tell them about Evan when Maddie came to pick me up. Then while driving me home, Maddie had said words that returned me to an awareness of myself as I had been before visiting Dr. Renfrew. But not since. Now I remembered the rest of it. Visiting Evan at his house, Brett's house since he'd signed it over to her. How Evan and I had made love in his darling little bedroom, down the hall from Brett's large one. Evan now looked as feminine as I did, though Brett had kept him aware of the process the whole time because she enjoyed his humiliation, always telling us that it was he who enjoyed it. He told me what had been done to him, speaking in a low voice about how we both "have to get used to things, or else." We'd undressed each other. Then we'd sucked each other's erections and had taken turns -- Evan first, since he knew how and was teaching me how -- we took turns fucking each other royally. I remember Brett had wanted to videotape all of it so she could gloat afterward, but Maddie forbid it. "My Leslie does things for me because he loves me," she'd told Brett somewhat tartly. "Not because he's afraid I might tell everyone and embarrass him. I always want to know that's why he does anything, and I always want him to know that's why too. So no pictures. If I want him to, he'll tell the world all about how he's now a sissy girl and a cock sucker, and how much he loves it, and if I ever want to tell the world I know he'll give me permission. Videotapes and blackmail would threaten the perfect trust we now have in each other." She made that speech while Evan and I each had the other's elongated cocks in our mouths. I remember I was so grateful for it that I went crazy, sliding my lips up and down Evan's tube so furiously that it spurted its cream long before mine did. Then I remembered how strange it had felt, Evan's prick buried in my bum and sliding in and out of it as if greased -- it probably was. Full, then empty, then full. Different from Maddie's dildo, warmer and somehow more satisfying, and pulsing repeatedly -- I could feel it lurch over and over as he filled my guts with cum. Yet when I did him, he'd enjoyed it a lot more. He'd moaned and writhed and screeched under me until I couldn't wait any longer and came in buckets. His ass was much tighter than Maddie's. And though he'd been on hormones for six months and had small natural breasts, his body was nowhere near as comfortingly soft as Maddie's. I still preferred to embrace Maddie with my penis or her dildo joining us together as one. It almost didn't matter which. I remembered how, a few days later, Evan had came over to show me two dinner dresses he'd just bought, and an evening gown that was perfection! He lacked confidence in his own taste, the poor dear, so he knew nothing of the skill I'd developed putting together different looks and costumes for myself. He needed to see himself reflected in my delight at his appearance, so he came over hoping I'd approve his purchases. Of course I did. When I'd gushed over the last dress and he'd returned it to its hanger and he was wearing only his bra, panties, stockings, and heels, I led him to my bed and Maddie's, and there we sucked and fucked each other for over an hour, while I assured him that he was truly gorgeous, a dish, an absolutely lovely girl. He did so need compliments! Then when he gratefully packed his cock deep into me, I found genuine bliss for the first time. That thing inside me was heaven! Knowing it was Evan, part of a man's live body, apparently made a huge difference. Maddie was everything to me, but her dildo wasn't. I do remember that Maddie came up to see what all the noise was about just as Evan was pumping his sperm into me and I was squealing and screaming. She just stood watching. I remember I mouthed "Thank you" and other loving words at her while she beamed her pleasure back at me. At dinner that night, Maddie explained why she and Brett wanted us to feel truly intimate with each other. She and the other girls thought that since Evan and I would be sharing a cabin, we'd enjoy sharing our bodies too. So they wanted to encourage us to have sex more often. It would help persuade me that I was a woman, and as far as Brett was concerned it would humiliate Evan all the more, further consolidate her control over him. Now that we'd done it, we should feel free to do it again any time again during our two weeks on board ship, when we wouldn't anyhow be sleeping with our wives. That is, if we didn't happen to be sleeping with anyone else. "There's another reason too," Maddie told me, "You're getting to be quite a lovely girl. If some nice young man should get smitten with you, you wouldn't want to be altogether virginal when you show him how you appreciate his attentions, when you want to help him feel glad he's a man. I could if I wanted put passionate longings into your head that you could then direct toward any man or fetish object, even toward a candle or a soda bottle. Dr. Renfrew put a trigger in you for that kind of euphoric transfer of affect. But I'd rather not use it. Sincerity is so much nicer." I remembered spending hours in the salon, and the popping sound when my ears were pierced, and the dull ache in my breasts when I first came home with those balloons bulging from my chest, but then my pride when after three days the surgical bra came off and there they were, my beautiful soft globes, my own melons, lovely, just like any other woman's! And there were my nipples poking out from them, so gloriously erogenous when Maddie or Evan caressed them, or I did it myself! When I first saw them, if I weren't so weak I would have danced around the room, admiring and feeling myself up! Then in between all of these things, I remembered shopping with Maddie and with Ashley. That is, when Ashley wasn't teaching me phrasing and voice modulation and feminine movements and postures, and how to flirt, even how to fake orgasms if I can't manage the real thing but want to send a man home satisfied. Trying on all sorts of lingerie and slips and gowns and frocks and dresses, and pants and slacks. Trying out all sorts of shades of make-up at the make-up bar of our largest department store. Deciding how to apply it to look prim if that's what I wanted, or sultry, depending. A girl is always free to choose her mood. One of my loveliest memories was simply of lunching with my friends, Maddie's friends, all five of us women with Evan alongside unwillingly, though also a woman, during a pause in a shopping trip. Evan participated in the conversation hardly at all, because he didn't really enjoy girl things, but Maddie and Fay and Brett and Ashley and I had wonderful rapport. We complimented each other on the things we'd bought that were just right for us, and we gossiped about some of our neighbors, and we settled on a date to see together a wonderful romantic movie just coming to town. Ashley and Fay told us silly stories about men they'd dated, what fools they were in some ways even though admirable in others. It was a very ordinary luncheon, but I'll never forget it, the feeling of belonging, of being just one more girl among other girls. It was such a privilege! As women will, we took forever dividing up the check and the tip, even though we'd each had only soup and a sandwich. Men mock us for that, but I realized that women don't want to be efficient when they're together. We want to be sociable, and we seek out any excuse at all to interact and respond to each other. Divvying the check is only one more excuse. It isn't silliness. Men are silly for doing that kind of thing abruptly, dividing checks down the middle to be done with it. But women know what life is for, I loved being a woman for that too. That night my special girlfriend Maddie and I made the tenderest, most magical love two women have ever made. We held each others' breasts gently, and stroked and nibbled each other's nipples, forever it seemed, our bodies enraptured by erotic sensations, desire heaped on greater desire, yearning and reaching for satisfaction and then finding it. I sucked lovingly on her pussy and she on my clit, until we both languished beautifully, wrapped around each other, and came and came and were one. That night we needed no dildos. We were women in love. I remembered all those things now. They had all happened during the past two weeks, ever since I had left Dr. Renfrew's office filled with wonderful new convictions but no memories of them. Now I remembered. They were now all a part of my past. I'd been a man. I was now a man seeking fulfillment as a woman. That was what I was. The next morning, Maddie helped me to understand more about this new commitment. "Leslie honey, you do know that while we're on this cruise, I am going to be socializing with other men, and there's a good chance I'll be sleeping with some of them, just as you will be. You do know that, don't you? I just want to make sure." I looked up at her from putting on my make-up for the day, and set down my blusher brush. I suppose I'd considered that this might happen, but not that it was probable. "That's why I've wanted you to become as beautiful and feminine and attractive as you could be, a charmer who'll attract men the way I always did before we were married. So you can sleep with as many men as you like too. Remember, on this cruise we're just good friends. We're not married. We agreed on that some time ago. So we can't either of us be unfaithful to each other. We're on vacation from our fidelity to each other. Isn't that so?" "Yes," I said reluctantly. "Listen to you. As if you and Evan haven't each of you ignored your marriage vows over and over, in the sight of God and of me too. I remember perfectly well the time I walked in on you when you were squealing like a stuck pig, and I saw what Evan had stuck you with. And you know I was pleased when I saw you having a good time with him, that I didn't feel the slightest bit injured or betrayed. Well, I haven't fucked anyone else yet. But I mean to, that's why I'm raising the subject now. So you can feel free to do the same, that's only fair. Then when we get home we can resume the way we were, if that's what we agree to do. Or we'll try new things together, if that's what we want. I do enjoy new things, as you well know." "Yes," I said. "I know." This was something I hadn't anticipated. Even my change of gender didn't seem as severe and wrenching as this upcoming change in the rules of our marriage. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. I told Maddie this. She seemed concerned. "My poor dear. This isn't about love or togetherness, sweetheart, it's about having fun. You should know that by now. If you can't enjoy this new freedom, or mine, I can help you enjoy it. Just look at me. No, really!" I did. Her eyes were quite serious. She held my head in the palms of both hands and stared into my eyes. "Sweetheart, just listen," she said. "Just listen. Just listen." I felt compelled. She let go of my head, and I waited eagerly, rapt to hear her next words "Honey, whenever you see me with a man, you'll feel so happy for me, and the more intimate we seem to be, the happier you'll feel. And you know I'll feel the same about you, and you want me to be happy about you. You love being with men too, they're a whole world of sex you've barely begun to explore. Because we both love each other, and we want each other to be happy, and right now, being with different men is what will make us happy. Isn't that so?" "Oh yes!" I breathed. "Remember that," she said. "Remember that. Remember that." "I will," I said, delighted with the gift of freedom she was offering me. "You know, Maddie, it does make so much better sense for us to take a vacation from our marriage while we're on this cruise. Who knows what adventures we'll have! And think of the fun we can have telling each other afterward!" "Exactly," Maddie said with a cryptic smile. I knew why she was smiling, and I didn't mind at all. It was sort of fun, feeling what Maddie wanted me to feel and never worrying about it. I trusted her. She was my dearest girlfriend, after all, and I was hers. That night while we were sharing a small salad -- we were still getting our figures in trim, tonight we'd pack and tomorrow we'd be flying to board the boat -- I asked her about those triggers Dr. Renfrew had installed in me. "Don't post-hypnotic suggestions fade over time?" I asked her. "How do you know that mine are still active, if you don't trigger them now and then?" Maddie looked over at me. "I thought you'd get around to asking that sooner or later, honey. You don't remember that I triggered some of them just today, only this afternoon?" "You did?" I was amazed! "Well, I think you can answer your own question. Look at you. You've completely and enthusiastically accepted living as a woman, and you've just agreed that we can both take a vacation from our marriage, because you want to get to know lots of men a lot better, just as I do. This is supposed to be for the next two weeks, and that's how you accept everything. It happens that your post-hypnotic suggestions last about a week and then gradually fade unless reinforced, that's what Dr. Renfrew arranged, because that's all we need for the cruise." "Yes," I know that," I said. "That's what I agreed to." "Yet notice what I'm really doing to you, baby. It's already two weeks, and your desires are as strong as ever. Your closets and bureaus are filled with clothes you'll be wearing long after this two-week cruise ends, and you haven't asked why. You've been on female hormones for two weeks now, changing your body, and you take your pills daily and you have a six month supply. You have lovely tits, and a pretty face, and liposuction has given you hips and a cute ass, and those things don't go away by themselves after two weeks. Yet you don't question any of this, it all seems natural to you. That easy acceptance of everything, that's what fades unless I reinforce it. And these things never occur to you, because I don't want you to bother your pretty head thinking about them. So the answer to your question is, of course I reinforce your conditioning now and then. Whenever you seem troubled by anything." "I guess you do, then," I said grinning, getting up to clear the table and stack the dishes. "But not long ago, when you took me out of that two-week amnesia, didn't you tell me to remember everything?" "I did, honey. And so you do," she said. "With Dr. Renfrew's help, you admitted to yourself that you want to live the rest of your life like a woman, and you love it now that I'm willing to help you. That's what you remember. And you remember to take your pills, and fix your hair to look presentable first thing every day, and choose your outfits to mix and match well. You remember that kind of thing now because I told you to remember them, just as earlier I told you not to remember. You still don't remember everything though, honey, no one does. And there are still lots of things in your life that you simply don't notice these days because I see no reason for you to notice them." I had no idea what she meant. She stood up. "Well, I'm glad we had this talk, but we still need to get ready for our trip tomorrow. Honey, I'll have my coffee black, served this time in the living room. No need to curtsy when you serve it, even though I know you love to show me that mark of respect. It wouldn't look right when we're with others who think we're just friends. And don't pack your maid's uniforms -- the ship's crew will be serving both of us. Awww, don't look so disappointed. Remember, when we're all on that cruise shop you'll be the sprightliest girl among us. The life of the party! The life of the party! The life of the party! That's you. I think you can begin being that now." "I certainly can, honey," I said, looking over my shoulder as I marched into the kitchen with plates in hand. "Coffee in a jiff! Oh, just wait till I tell you the latest thing Evan says Brett makes him do when he's naughty! Eeuww! You may not want to drink coffee or anything else ever afterward!" That night while packing my bags for the voyage I noticed that my chosen style was slightly slutty. My dresses and skirts were way short, and my gowns were decollete way down -- one of them all the way to the waist. And my heels were strappy and very high, and my bras were skimpy lace that barely covered my boobs much less supported them, and my lipsticks and nail lacquers were deep, dark red. Well, I shrugged, if that's what I like, if that's the kind of girl I am, I suppose I should do it up right and enjoy it. And I've got to say, I did. I loved that cruise. From the moment we got on board and were shown to our staterooms! Everything was perfect! Clean decks and corridors, sparkling railings, and the neat, elegant decor of every cabin or stateroom I was in -- and during the next twelve days and nights I was invited into a lot of them -- all these gave me a wonderful feeling of pampered luxury. Evan and I were assigned a huge stateroom on the starboard side of B deck, near the bow and the shuffleboard courts, where all the gay men and lesbian women congregated -- there was a transgendered couple in the area too, they told us, but we never saw them. Maddie and Fay and Brett and Ashley all had cabins together but far from us, on the port side of C deck, way toward the stern. That, I noticed, was where the body builders seemed to be located, near the Nautilus and Weight Rooms and the outdoor swimming pool. That was what Maddie'd arranged when she first filled in my acceptance card and listed our preferences, and then phoned to confirm. That's how we'd respect each other's privacy, she explained to me. She reminded me how we'd agreed to take a vacation from our marriage. I felt a little deprived of her company, but saw how it made sense. Soon enough it didn't matter. Because there was a cute guy named Roy in the stateroom next to ours, with curly hair like mine, only blonde, loads of fun, and as I soon found out, well, you wouldn't believe the dong he had on him! His roommate was a lawyer named Davis, a closeted gay man who only shacked up on cruise ships to protect his reputation as a tough litigator back home. Davis was instantly smitten with Evan. and though Evan wasn't happy about it at first, they disappeared into the stateroom Davis shared with Ron, and Ron moved in with me, and Davis and Evan practically weren't seen again for the entire two weeks. God did Evan get fucked! I saw him a few times, limping, haggard, hardly getting any sleep. It seems Davis hadn't had any sex at all for six months, it was too risky to his reputation, and now he was making up for it. Evan smiled wanly when he told me how he now felt like a life-sized re-usable condom. But, he added, it wasn't too bad. By the end of the cruise I noticed that Evan was much more affectionate with Davis. They held hands and snuggled, and there was this unmistakeable, deeply peaceful expression on Evan's face that told me he'd at last come around. He was in love with a man! He'd actually become what Brett had taunted him he was becoming. I heard all about it the night of the Captain's ball, our final night at sea. Evan looked gorgeous at dinner that evening -- he wore a cerise gown that clung to his every curve and actually allowed his enlarged nipples to peek out at the world. His figure was even more willowy than I'd remembered, and now he was clinging devotedly to his Davis. He told me that Davis and he were both one man men. He added that Davis specialized in divorces and was sure he could handle Brett without even taking off his kid gloves. She'd get no property settlement, Evan said, and she deserved none. "Because I'm not going back to Brett," Evan told me that last night on board, when we were finally in bed together for the last time, hugging each other, feeling serene and relaxed because we'd just sucked each other off for the last time, sadly enough but for old time's sake. "Davis loves me. And I love him too -- he's so nice, and he's so very much in charge! I need that, now that Brett's put me down so thoroughly. He wants me to come live with him, and work for him, and then to marry him just as soon as I can get sex reassignment surgery to make it legal. And that's just what I intend to do." Davis had given him a huge engagement ring he showed me proudly, diamonds and topazes, an incredibly valuable array that had once belonged to Davis's grandmother, certain testimony that Davis was altogether sincere. I cried and hugged Evan for joy. Brett never noticed that Evan's supposed one-night affair had progressed to a romance, to an attachment that blossomed into love. I suppose she assumed I was keeping Evan busy, out of trouble, out of her sight and out of mind. She, Fay, Ashley, and Maddie had set up a round robin of stacked guys who filed in and out of their cabins and staterooms, and it never ended. I saw one or another of the girlfriends in the dining room a few times, each time with a different man, and I felt a little hurt, because I'd originally thought I was one of their gang. I'd often see them dancing intimately, romantically, plastered to someone, in quite a few of the ship's Cabarets and Discos. I heard that Brett took several men back to her cabin with her every evening, sometimes in sequence, sometimes all at once. Obviously she couldn't care less about her husband. I had a wife, of course, and I was pleased that Maddie was well attended in my absence. I was happy to see that she felt close to whoever she was with and didn't miss me at all. She stopped by my table once to compliment me on my singing -- I'd just won a prize in an amateur contest by singing "My Man" in a husky voice while climbing seductively all over the guy I was with. And she told me how delighted she was that I felt as uninhibited as she did. I smiled and told her the same thing. After all, we were on vacation from our marriage. We had no problem. Once, when I was strolling around the deck at midnight with a new beau, and we were stopping often to kiss each other softly, just as his hand finally reached under my blouse and grasped one of my breasts affectionately I saw Maddie in a deck chair in the shadows, under a colossal bruiser. Her long gown was bunched around her waist and her legs were wrapped tight around him while he pumped her repeatedly, and with each thrust her throat issued a primal satisfied grunt. When we returned on our second turn of the deck, me walking much more slowly because I'd just stuffed a tampon into my ass to keep my admirer's semen from staining my dress, they were still at it. By then I wondered whether he'd fucked her brains out altogether, because though her arms and legs were still tight-clenched around him as far as they could go, and her face was still mashed to his, she was uttering not one sound. Was she unconscious? Was she breathing? I watched closely, and finally was reassured to see her body tighten and release in yet one more unmistakeable orgasm, while he kept at it and she began to build toward another. I loved it that she loved getting fucked. I loved my Maddie for what she'd done to me, too. She'd told me to be delighted with everything, to be sprightly, cheery, scintillating, buoyant, to enjoy everything. And that's what I was doing. With wonderful guys, me in and out of their staterooms, them in and out of me! I'd had no idea my tits and my asshole could be such marvelously rich sources of pleasure, and I wondered how I could ever go back to Maddie's jelly dildo now that I'd known the real thing! I'd give blow jobs from sheer gratitude for the way guys fucked me! Whether dancing to different shipboard orchestras or telling lies to each other as we sat over drink after drink, party followed party, one man after another, and it was all perfect! Each time the ship paused at a port -- Antigua or Barbados, who knew? -- the women would pour off the ship to shop, and the men would feel free to see if my mouth or my rear also happened to be free. I loved them all. And I loved both of my body's openings. Life was good.