Nice

by Vickie Tern

At first it seemed an utter disaster. I heard the door slam and

something glass smash in the hallway, and before I could call out

asking what it was there stood Helen in the doorway of my study, an

avenging angel, livid, her body one huge clenched fist, eyes glaring

out of her head.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

I already knew the answer. She had finally found out. Nearly a year

ago. I'd never altogether forgotten it, though I'd tried to bury it in

my mind with all those other lapses and indiscretions people mean to

make up but forget about after a while, because there's nothing to be

done about them, really, and anyhow noone knows about them. All those

debts never repaid, and promises not kept. But here it was. The big

one, now found out. For me the big one, anyhow, because I was never a

great sinner, just an average well-meaning kind of guy, brought up to

be decent enough, to keep my word no matter what, not to lie, or cheat,

or steal.

Well, anyhow, not to steal. A year earlier I had cheated on my wife,

and for a while I'd done a lot of lying to her to hide it. Understand

me, that was the only time I ever fell off the monogamy wagon into a

real torrid no-holds-barred affair. I've never been a great seducer,

just one more account executive worried about middle-aged flab though

still fairly thin, a nice guy, always polite to everybody. To get

along, go along, was always my motto. I never understood why Estrella

picked me out to be her sex partner while she was in town. I guessed

it was because she knew I'd be no problem for her. And I wasn't, not

at all.

One afternoon there she was, Estrella, this ripe, sultry Sales Manager

from downstate somewhere, sent up for a six-week training course she

said. She was related in some way to Dora, our across-the-street

neighbor and my wife's dearest friend, though it didn't appear they

ever spent any time together. Apparently it was Dora who suggested

that Estrella drop by my office to meet some people, and to ask me

about the available after-hours entertainment.

Which turned out to be me.

When Estrella stood over my desk to introduce herself I went weak in

the knees, even though I was sitting and it didn't matter. I couldn't

take my eyes off her.

"You're Dora's friend's husband?" she asked. "This is where you like

to play with yourself?"

I looked up and my mouth gaped open. Her lips were moist, red, and

curled all over themselves. Her eyes were sparkling black smudges,

looking down at me amused. Her slender red fingertips clicked lightly

on the top of my desk, and when I glanced at them I saw her crotch just

behind, sheathed in form-fitting spandex slacks tucked tightly into her

slit, rubbing and pressing against the corner of my desk. I looked

back up embarrassed, and saw that she had just reached some kind of

decision about me. She smiled to herself and leaned forward, and her

cascading brown hair tumbled down over me. My field of vision closed

over and became a fragrant tent filled with shadowy dark tips on the

peaks of the lacy bra I could see she wore under her transparent

chiffon blouse.

"I haven't even checked into my hotel yet," she was saying, "Do you

think you'll have time to show me around first?"

I suppose I was ripe for it. My sex life had gone quiescent, because I

didn't want to violate my wife's desires, and she didn't have too many.

Helen had never gone in for gratifying physical appetites, or even

encouraging them. No bingeing of any kind. She ate moderately, and

never indulged with junk food, chocolate, or second portions of

anything. Not that she was thin -- there were some curves there, but

she thought their purpose was to fill out the trim suits she favored

wearing. She was gentle, never stiff or prissy but never provocative

either, even by accident. Not exactly shy, but no way assertive. I

sensed early in our relationship that to ask her to do something she

didn't want to do would violate something within her she valued deeply,

her innate sense of tidyness, or neatness. It wouldn't have been nice.

She might have accommodated me, but it wouldn't have been fair. It

would have been taking advantage of her good nature.

So our sex life leveled down to what she liked, and that wasn't much.

It was pretty tame. She didn't care for oral sex, or anal sex, or most

of the time any sex at all. She liked to cuddle, and to kiss gently,

and she liked me to stroke her hair, and just hold her. After lights

out, when other couples turned to fulfill each others' desires, she

liked to settle down and just "make nice." I think she decided to marry

me because I was so considerate, never insisting we make love all the

way, settling most of the time for gentle caressing. She seemed to

want full scale sex with me only occasionally, to recharge some

moderate libidinous energy within herself perhaps. Some nights she'd

let me know it was all right, and I'd penetrate her, and she'd have a

small orgasm after a while, then she'd wait for me to finish, and then

she'd turn over without a word and go to sleep, and that was that for

another few weeks. Or longer. I can't say she was ever really

passionate. No. Then in the morning, when I began to renew my

affectionate stroking of her in the hope that it would lead to

something more, she'd wait me out, and after a while I'd get the

message and ease off. "That was nice," she'd say when I'd stopped

nuzzling and caressing her. Then she'd get up to dress for the day.

But she enjoyed hearing me talk about who at the office was doing whom,

and to hear any speculation about how they were doing it. In her

imagination she could deal with any kinds of sexual coupling, no matter

how raunchy, any numbers and combinations of matings. She liked sex at

one remove, I suppose because then it was safe and undemanding, and had

nothing to do with her. She's the only woman I've ever known who liked

not only Harlequin romances, where sex is a blurred fusion of stars and

floods and explosions and things, but also liked hard core sex novels,

the kind that inventory specific peculiar and perverse cravings and

body parts and then let rip. She kept a stack of them by the bed. I

suppose for her it was like reading science fiction or the National

Geographic, depictions of other people's strange folkways, novel and

interesting, maybe even educational. But it never touched her

behavior, or her attitudes. In her real world there was very little

physical desire.

Even when we were making love I always had the impression she would

rather be doing other things altogether, like planning menus or

vacations, or keeping the family finances at her little spindled desk.

She could be relentless following out and making sure that workmen

around the house did what they had said they would do. A deal was a

deal, and she expected that everything promised would be fulfilled.

Once when a house painter overbooked himself, as they like to do, and

started our job late and finished it much later still, she wanted to

sue him, to return what she conceived was injury with injury, to "get

even," to re-establish a balance in her moral universe. It was only

with great difficulty that I persuaded her to forget it, and I'm still

not sure she ever did.

Above all what she loved doing was lunching or shopping with Dora, whom

she saw all the time. Dora lived close by, was divorced and childless

and well-off, and had time on her hands. My wife managed the Art Shop

at our local museum, where Dora was a Docent and would often drop by to

chat. They had a lot in common. Dora also didn't seem much interested

in sex. She didn't date that I ever noticed, or talk about men other

than her ex-husband, whom she had left, as she said, for good and

sufficient reasons she didn't find interesting enough to share. We

were also childless. But then we'd only been married a few years, and

I can't say we'd worked frenziedly at making babies. As I've said,

when sex did happen between us, it was...well...nice. That's the word,

nice. Helen liked hugging and snuggling, and the other less messy ways

to be nice.

Not Estrella. Sex with Estrella was always frantic, and never merely

nice. I couldn't stop her from overwhelming me, and after a while I

didn't want to. She became an obsession. So far as my wife was

concerned, I spent the next six weeks working nights and weekends,

called out-of-town overnight repeatedly, with scarcely enough time to

stop at home to pick up fresh shirts and socks. It was glorious.

Estrella led the way, and I followed eagerly. We began by climbing all

over and into each other all night, night after night, juiced up and

overflowing and sucking from each other in a kind of wet frenzy. It

was madness. I couldn't get enough of her. She was a tease, always

testing how far she could go with me and then goading me further. By

the end of the first week she had me drinking any fluid she could

produce from between her legs, my own or hers, nursing at her crotch

like a baby for hours at a time, and by the second week she had me

begging to let me nibble at her rear no matter what. I wanted any part

of her around me and inside me.

By the end of the third week she was entertaining herself by looking

for something I wouldn't do for her. I never found out what that might

be. She had me jumping through hoops, once literally, in order to get

to her, to be allowed to kiss her, or lick her, or swallow her, or

express myself inside her. Whatever she asked me to do, soon I craved

it. Toward the end we were into some pretty kinky stuff. Once on a

whim she brought in a pair of cocker spaniels owned by a friend, she

said, and her delicately manicured fingertips stroked my penis while

touching my nipples, while she crooned into my ear what she wanted me

to do. To screw the female was what it came to, so I did, lying on my

back and working the little dog up and down my belly until she finally

admitted me and we both got hot. Then when I was myself unable to

stop, and the bitch was pumping my crotch like a vibrating piston,

yipping and whining, both dog and man out of control, when my head was

thrown back and my eyes were closed, and my mouth was wide open, she

set the other dog down on my face with his hind legs straddling my jaw

and his thin red penis extended into my mouth, and said "Suck!" In no

time at all that animal was turned on too, his forelegs wrapped tightly

around my ears and his hind quarters fucking my face in a fury. I

glimpsed Estrella watching with a wicked smile, sprawled in a chair and

slowly working a huge dildo into herself, sliding it in and out while

the dog was working his prick in and out of my mouth. A day or two

later she saw to it that I got to know that dildo very well, and I

learned to beg her for it.

Half out of my mind, toward the end of our affair I asked her why she

never brought in other women, or other men, to share our pleasures.

She never did answer me, but smiled broadly and patted me on the top of

my head, as if I had earned special approbation just by asking. "Yes,

you'll do very well," she said. "You'll see." That night she took some

special metal and leather contraptions out of a bag she kept in the

closet, and said, "This is to reward you for wanting to share with

others." Then what she did to me with those things, for two sleepless

days and nights, well, I'd better not talk about it now.

Part of the craziness was its danger. I lost all sense of caution as

well as dignity, and given Helen's instinct to get even whenever anyone

failed any obligation to her, this was doubly crazy. In between our

entanglements we went to clubs and restaurants and shows where friends

might see us, and some did. A male associate from work winked at me in

a gay bar she took me to once dressed in black stockings and hot pants

(that was the same night she lifted her breast out of her scoop-necked

top and again commanded, "Suck!", which I did blissfully, though we

were both perched at the bar in full view of everyone). At a concert

once some friends came over during intermission, and I introduced the

gorgeous girl on my arm in the green sequinned mini as my business

associate, and tried to remember where I had told Helen I was supposed

to be that night. Estrella admired a pendant on one of the wives, and

managed to touch a fingernail to the wife's nipples while lifting it to

look more closely. The men smirked, and the women made polite noises.

Then as it turned out, they did plenty of talking about me when they

got home, and later at each others' cocktail parties. Mostly they were

amused. Mostly they thought Estrella should put a leash on a ring in

my nose to make it even easier to lead me around. They didn't know the

half of it. Not even half.

Once in a restaurant I thought I saw Dora and Helen sitting at a table

across the room. Maybe not. Neither came over, and when they finished

eating they left without a glance back. The next day I stopped home

briefly, and Helen showed no sign of anything. I was relieved we had

gotten away with it, if we had.

Helen never did find out what we were doing while we were going at it

hot and heavy. Not then, anyhow. When Estrella's training ended --

and mine, she said jokingly -- she wound down and undulated her way

back home, and our great flame died down and went out. And that was

that. She never even wrote to me. I had closed out an incredible,

frantic fling, gone deranged and risked everything, found dark places

in myself I've never been near since then, but there was no harm done.

In a way I was glad, even relieved to return to hugging my little Helen

to sleep and doing very little else. If anything Helen seemed even

less interested than ever in sexual activity. She and Dora kept each

other company when I was really away on business, and talked about art

exhibitions evenings when they visited each other, and planned trips to

visit some gallery or other, and that seemed to fill her life. I was

usually inattentive as they chatted away over tea or coffee or dessert

or drinks, and often went into my study to catch up on unfinished work.

I once asked Dora if she had ever heard from Estrella, her cousin or

something, and Dora was puzzled. It seemed she hadn't known Estrella

was still in town, all that time we were crawling all over each other.

But now, a year later, came what I correctly surmised was the

aftershock. The day of reckoning. Helen had obviously finally found

out that last year her nice little hubby had been another woman's sex

fiend.

"Did something made you angry?" I asked Helen as she stood glaring at

me in the doorway. Mistake, I thought immediately. Much too

ingenuous. She knows I know the answer to that question. If I were

innocent I'd be bewildered and concerned, because just look what she

looks like right now, her body twisted and her face knotted up. I'd be

getting up and going over to try to console her. But here I am sitting

here asking questions, and the moment when I could have convinced her

it never happened has already passed. Damn!

"You!" she said in a loud, shrill voice, as if she needed to get my

attention. "Dora told me!" Then she hissed "About you and that ...

woman! I can't believe it!" She believed it all right. "You worm!

You snake! Bastard! You sneaking, two-timing bastard! "

"Helen, that was a year ago," I said, trying to put the best face on it

I could. "It was nothing. Not really. There was nothing before and

there's been nothing since! Not ever!"

"Oh?" she said. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? You've been

MOSTLY faithful to me? You've NEARLY kept your marriage vows? You're

ALMOST my husband?" She suddenly burst into tears and stomped away. I

could hear her upstairs in our bedroom, where she threw herself on our

bed and screamed, then started to sob aloud, piteously.

I felt terrible for her, and not so good for myself. But I knew better

than to go up and try to say anything. These things have to follow

their course. I spent that night in my study, stretched out on the

floor. The hard surface reminded me of a time when Estrella tied

me...well, never mind. Once or twice the phone rang, and I guess Helen

answered it upstairs, because it stopped ringing almost immediately.

The next morning I avoided Helen, and she went to work without saying a

word. I got a glimpse of her eyes, red, heavily made up as if to cover

deep circles, and her mouth was clamped as tight as a purse someone had

squeezed shut. I didn't dare try to speak to her, though my heart went

out for what she was suffering. I was bitterly sorry to have caused my

gentle wife such misery. But what could I do? I spent all day trying

to think of ways to make it up to her, and the more I thought about her

anguish the more desperate I got. It was torture.

That night she stayed out late, and just when I was starting to worry

that she'd done something serious to herself she came in and went

straight to bed. I guessed she'd gone to Dora, or to another of her

friends, for advice what to do now. I heard more sobbing, then

silence.

The same thing the next morning, and the next night.

The next day was Saturday, and I was distraught. I couldn't take it

any longer. "Please!" I said when she came down to breakfast, and I

handed her a cup of coffee. "I know how you feel! But tell me what I

can do! I can't stand to see you so miserable! I'll do anything to

make it up to you! Anything! Just tell me what to do! Please! You

can't know how very very sorry I am!" I went down on my knees, and

tried to put my head in her lap. But that's where she had the cup of

coffee.

She just looked at me, and her face began to break up into tears again,

but her mind went somewhere else instead. She looked away, then she

looked back at me again, and didn't say a word. Good, I thought, she's

already feeling more sorry for herself than outraged by me. She even

pities her hubby a little. I've got a chance!

I pressed what advantage I had. "Believe me, there's been nothing

since then! Nothing! And there never will be! Ever! I never really

wanted to in the first place! It just started up, and then it was over

in only a few weeks!" Bad move. She might know it was longer than

that. But she picked up on another word.

"Oh?" she said. "Only a few weeks? ONLY a few weeks! ONLY? You

wanted more time to spend screwing that bitch, cheating me, making a

mockery of our marriage, betraying and lying to me, you miserable macho

fraud? You dare to tell me you wish it had lasted longer? I hate you!

I hate you! ONLY a few weeks?"

Better. A mistake the way I had phrased it, but better. If she can

express her anger, then as the marriage counsellors say, she can

dissipate it. "Please," I said again. "I beg you! How can I make it

up to you! Just tell me what to do. I'll do anything."

"Everyone knew but me!" Helen began to sob again. "I'm so humiliated!"

Thank God! It was out! The worst of it wasn't rage that I had

betrayed her, or sexual jealousy, or insecurity that she might lose me,

or the knowledge that I had granted intimate favors to another (in

fact, noone ever granted Estrella anything -- she took whatever she

wanted, and it was never enough!). There had never been a strong

physical relationship between Helen and me, nothing Estrella could

alienate from Helen and appropriate for herself. Again, that may be

why Estrella saw I was so easy. I never felt I was depriving my wife

of anything.

But here it was. Helen had suffered a loss of respectability. The

worst of it was shame! Loss of the respect due her by the supposedly

respectable people in her circle, because she had been credulous, and

trusting, and other things wives should be, and had been deceived,

duped, and other things wives should never be if they were to remain

respectable.

"How can I humiliate you the way you've humiliated me?" she asked.

"How can I get even with you, you bastard." And she started to cry

again.

"Helen, please," I said, still on my knees at the kitchen table,

wondering if we should adjourn to the living room, where there were

rugs and soft chairs. "I want to help you. If you want to get even,

that's what I want too. I want us to be the way we were. Tell me how

I can help." Even to myself I sounded oily, and I decided I had to be

more sincere. Really sincere.

"You can't! I can't!" Tears started to brighten her eyes again.

I reached down into myself and offered a real sacrifice. "Helen," I

said, "Now don't be shocked at what I'm about to say." I was a little

shocked myself, but it was the only thing I could think of. "You want

to get even. You want to hurt me the way I hurt you. Suppose you were

to have an affair too? Suppose I didn't know about it? Or suppose I

did know, but promised not to interfere? Would you want that?" I took

a deep breath. "If that's what you want, then that's what I want for

you."

Talk about kinky? Estrella really had activated some weird places in

me. Would I end up advising her to avenge herself for the Cocker

Spaniels by taking up with a Great Dane? But I plowed on. "What if

you were to disgrace me the way I've disgraced you, the way I've

disgraced myself?" I asked her. I was sounding pretentious again, but

I really did want to offer her some kind of retribution. I knew it

would be important to her.

"I can't! I tried!"

I was shocked. I listened attentively.

"Those nights after Dora told me about you and that...that whore, that

Estrella, I tried. I tried to get even. I went to a bar where people

pick up other people. Dora told me where. And I met some men. But I

just couldn't bring myself to do it. They wanted to, and I tried to

make myself, but I just couldn't! They started to act like animals

with me, each of them. It wasn't at all nice! So both times I ran

away. Then there's this man in our office, an impossible man,

propositions everyone all the time, tries to get into everyone's pants,

thinks he's God's gift, and I thought about him, and about starting up

something with him. But even the thought of him disgusted me! I

couldn't do it!" And she started to cry again, this time loudly,

beginning to wail.

I stood up, and stood her up, and wrapped my arms around her and

nuzzled into her hair, and said "There, there, Helen!" over and over,

and she clutched me and cried all the harder, her shoulders wracked.

When she had calmed down she continued, while I still held her.

"And the worst of it," she said between sobs, "is that everyone has

been feeling sorry for me, or gloating over me, or feels contempt for

me because everyone knew about it, and I didn't know. You made me a

laughingstock. For a year now!" She buried her face in my shoulder,

and for some reason she clung to me as though she were drowning.

"Oh my dear," I said, hugging her. "That's not true." But it was, of

course. "Just tell me how I can make it up to you. I want to make it

up to you." I returned to that theme, now that it seemed perfectly

safe.

There was nothing I could do to make it up to her. She was prim,

sexually timid, unventuresome except in her reading, and that was that.

In fact I was feeling enormously relieved. A burden of guilt had been

lifted from me. Now she knew. At last I had no more secrets from her,

about the past or the present. A year after that torrid time I was

again being honest with my wife, in the clear. "I owe you," I said

sincerely. "I'll make it up to you. Breakfast in bed for life!

Anything! Just name it!"

She knew I barely knew how fix instant coffee, much less prepare

breakfast. But the intention was there. She could respect that. I

hoped. I felt generous. I was out of the woods.

Or so I thought. For a week afterward we seemed altogether reconciled,

Helen and me. She returned to her regular life. She no longer hated

me, and I returned to our bedroom to sleep, and she scarcely seemed to

notice. I reached for her one night, and she said "Please, not yet!"

and turned away with a nearly regretful look, as if to say, "I'd like

to, but you know how it is." I pretended I knew.

Then one night after dinner, she said to me, "Come into the living

room. I want you to know how things are."

Not especially concerned, I went in and sat down.

"Do you love me?" she asked.

"Yes, of course," I said, wondering where this was going. "I told you

that."

"And you said you'd do anything for me to make up for that affair of

yours? Anything? Anything at all?"

"Yes," I said. "I told you that too."

"Well," says my quiet little wife, "Would you be willing to go into a

singles bar and seduce someone for me?"

I was astonished! I knew that some men get off on that kind of thing,

setting their wives up, getting them into bed with other men, watching

them fuck away. Not me. Not my thing. Not Helen's thing either, from

what I knew about her. She just didn't have enough sexual drive to

carry out a night in bed with another man, even one I set up for her,

with or without me helping her, much less with me watching. But

obviously she was still thinking about some way to even the score. Her

notion now seemed to be, if she couldn't bring herself to pick up a man

and get him into her bed, maybe I could arrange something so that all

she had to do was make love to a man who was already there. That

seemed a lot to ask of me, I thought, though for some reason a corner

of me felt a little stirred. No matter. I had promised to help her,

in effect to help her revenge herself on me, so I just nodded

cautiously, signalling understanding but not necessarily agreement.

And I waited.

"The problem is this," she said. "You had an affair. You went at it

hot and heavy for more than a few weeks, from all I hear. For more

than a month. For six weeks you made love to her."

The phrase sounded quaintly old-fashioned. For six weeks Estrella used

me as a novelty sex-object. She did things to me, and with me. But I

didn't try to correct Helen.

"Then it ended, she moved away, and I never knew. You've deceived me

for the past year, when everyone else seems to have known. They've

pitied me. I've been duped. I've been playing the fool, the trusting

innocent. A week ago or so I made a harmless comment to Dora about how

we don't entertain people as much as we did, because you're so busy

with your affairs. And Dora says, 'Oh, he's having another affair?'

So I ask her what she means by that, and the whole thing comes out.

Six weeks! And then a year more when I still didn't know! I trusted

you! You were my husband! You should have been protecting me, and

defending my reputation. Instead, you made me everybody's joke!"

I guess I couldn't disagree. Again, I felt just terrible. But I had

done this to her. It was awful. I couldn't speak.

"So now our relationship is tainted by two things. One is, I resent

you. You deceived me. You violated my trust. I don't really hate

you, you know that. I love you. But I have to get even. I need to

get even, to clear my feelings for you. You owe that to me."

I looked down, mortified. And then tried to look mortified.

"The other thing is that you embarrassed me in front of our friends.

You played me for an idiot while they watched. You conspired with them

to keep me looking like an idiot. They shared with each other an

intimate secret about my own husband, for a whole year, while I

remained ignorant. That's unforgiveable. I have to get even for that

too."

It all sounded forgiveable enough to me. Even forgettable. But not to

her. Not at all. And that was what mattered.

"Well," I said, returning to the old theme. "Let's consider this. You

could have an affair for a few weeks, and go at it hot and heavy, and

let everyone know about it but not me. That would even the score.

Maybe you've already done that?"

I felt safe enough suggesting it, now. The idea of my dull wife in

some passionate man's arms now seemed ludicrous. Helen was no

temptress. No. Not Helen. But if she thought I thought maybe she HAD

had an affair, she could be consoled that I felt helplessly jealous and

demeaned, and disgraced, if only because I didn't know for sure. That

would be a kind of revenge for her.

But she didn't pick up on that cue.

"No, I can't," Helen replied. "I told you I tried, and I just can't

take up with another man. I'm just not that kind of person. I'm just

not made that way."

"No, you're not," I said smugly, trying to sound sorrowful.

"But you're exactly that kind of person," she said. "You've proven

that. You're like those horny men in the books I sometimes read, who

can sleep with anyone, anytime."

"I guess so," I said, beginning to lose her drift. Had she lost it?

"So you could have the affair for me."

"What?"

"Just what I said. You said you'd do anything to make it up to me.

Anything. You said 'Anything!' You begged me to tell you what to do.

So now you'll do whatever I tell you to do to even things out between

us, won't you."

"Yes, of course," I said. I started to worry about her sanity. "A

promise is a promise, and that's that," I said. I looked at her

closely. "But I can't have an affair with some woman to make up with

you for my little...uh...fling of a year ago. How would that even

things out? It wouldn't make sense."

"No, dear." Helen leaned forward. "Not for you to have another affair

with some woman. Only for me to have an affair with some man. Only

that would even things out, right?"

"Right," I said. I didn't dare say anything else.

"But I'm incapable of having an affair with some man, as I've already

told you. It just isn't in me to do something like that, right?" She

seemed now to be talking patiently to a small child who was slow to

understand. Was that small child herself? Me? I was getting more

uneasy about her.

"Right."

"But you could have an affair with some man for me, couldn't you?"

I looked at her narrowly. She had gone off the deep end. She waited

for my response.

"Let me understand you," I said. "You mean, my punishment would be

that I find some gay man and er...be intimate with him, to make up for

my affair last year? Helen, come to your senses. I'm not queer.

Besides, that would only be another act of infidelity on my part, going

to bed with some man, the same as a year ago I went to bed with a

woman."

I tried to pull her back to reality, and myself too. "I do regret what

I did, Helen. I really do. And you know it'll never happen again."

Helen looked at me with perfect composure. I began to get a strange

feeling.

"You're not listening," she said. "I don't mean that you should have

another affair as yourself, even to punish yourself. I mean, you could

have an affair for me. As me. Pretending to be me. As my surrogate.

My proxy. My representative. As me by mutual consent. You like

bedding down with strangers. I don't. But you can pretend to be me

bedding down with a stranger. That would fix things."

I stared at her. She was off the wall, but she thought she was making

sense.

"Think about it. You can be my hero, my knight in shining armor, and

avenge the injustice you did me, by dressing up like me, even wearing

my clothes, and taking up with some man while pretending to be me. You

could right the wrong you did me. You could have the affair I can't

bring myself to have. You could be your own wife fucking the ears off

some man the way you fucked Estrella, screwing him the way Estrella

screwed you, only this time doing it to get even with your unfaithful

husband. But I'd know all about it this time. Each night you would

come home and tell me what new things you did together, you and your

lover, you being me. Each night you'd be unfaithful to my husband in

some new way, and loving it. Each night you would humiliate yourself

watching me fuck someone else, as you, and then again humiliate

yourself as my husband by listening to yourself tell me how much you

enjoyed it. And when you told me about it and I saw what you had done

in my own mind, that would be my revenge. My vicarious revenge!. Like

those novels I like to read. Only real! The wilder and more

passionate you got, the greater would be my revenge on you! And the

more you'd suffer as my husband, because you'd know all about it, even

while it was happening. And then, afterward, you'd deserve all the

more to be forgiven."

Understanding seemed to dawn. "Helen, I can't do that!"

Now Helen leaned way forward, staring straight at me. I flinched.

"Look at me," she said. I did. "You thought you'd get off easy.

Promise her the world, since you don't own it anyhow, and since you

have no intention to deliver it."

I nodded, my throat choked up, staring at her.

"Well, you promised to do anything for me. Anything. Remember? And

this is what I want you to do. And you will do it. You have no

choice. I want you to dress up like me, make yourself look like me,

become the most attractive woman you can, and then have an affair with

some man as if you were me. At least one man. Maybe more. I want it

to be hot and heavy and horny, like yours was, and to go on for a long

time. If being unfaithful to your marriage vows violates you in some

fundamental way, then good, because your affair with Estrella violated

me in a fundamental way. And if you feel humiliated to have sex with a

man, if your manhood feels demeaned, then good, because you humiliated

and demeaned me. You, my dear husband, will be my champion, and with

your body you will avenge the injury done to me by my dear husband.

Then we can talk about resuming our marriage."

"Helen," I began. "Now let's be sensible."

"From my point of view there's nothing more sensible. You've already

given me your word, and pledged to do anything to make up for the

injury you did me. Anything. And this is the only way we can make up

for that injury. So there's nothing more to say."

She paused, and then spoke very slowly. "I see I had better emphasize

what's at stake here, so I don't have to keep reminding you over and

over. This is going to cost you, and cost you dear, over a long period

of time. For the six weeks you betrayed me, I want you to suffer. The

way I would have suffered if I'd known. Then for the year that

everyone knew but me, I want you to do anything I ask you to do,

anything, to make it up to me."

Now Helen looked directly at me, unblinking. "Say it. Tell me again

now that you'll do anything I want you to do to make it up to me."

I said it.

Then she asked me to repeat "Anything," so I did.

She asked me if it was necessary for us to put my promise into writing,

in case there was some question later on what we were agreeing to. I

told her no.

And she said, "Now come over here."

I did, uneasily.

And she kissed me.

That much felt good. I agreed to her terms, and she forgave me. I

couldn't get out of it, now. So I had better look at what I've gotten

myself into. As I thought more about what she wanted, I found myself

thinking, this isn't too bad. It could be a lot worse. It seems a

little kinky, but I can go along with it. Heck, it's a lot kinky, but

not worse than some of the things Estrella had me do. Her notion that

I should dress up and pass as a woman, and have an affair with some man

somewhere, isn't altogether far-fetched. I'm not a large man, and my

featureas are regular, though no one would ever call them pretty. Not

without makeup, anyhow. She wants me to dress up and go out on dates

and get laid, to act as if I were bisexual and enjoying myself. OK,

not too bad I guess. She wants me to prepare for these dates by

spending a certain amount of time trying on makeup and costumes for the

part. Well, actors do it all the time -- I can manage it. She wants

me to pick up some hapless dope who can't tell a woman from a man, and

to deal with him somehow, maybe all night, and then to tell Helen

different juicy stories about my night's true romances. That's the

kind of sex she likes, and that's what she really wants. It could be a

lot worse. This revenge of hers will kill my weekends for a while, but

I wasn't doing much with my weekends anyhow. And in six weeks it's

over.

But I was wrong. Helen had a different sense of the timeline from mine

"No," she said, when I described what I thought she had in mind, "It'll

be closer to the full year you owe me. And then some. You'll be

living like a woman the whole time. You have to become a woman to do

this."

She drew a deep breath, again as if she were talking to a slow-witted

child, and went on. "Just think about it a moment. We aren't talking

about dressing you up like some crossdresser to take a sashay down the

street, or through the Mall, or over to Burger King. We're talking

about sex. We're talking about real bodies, close up. For example,

just think about breasts. What did you do with Estrella's?"

I remembered. "Felt them. Caressed them. Lifted and kissed them.

Squeezed myself against them." I remembered, but didn't say, titfucked

them. And I remembered that every night Estrella had me go to sleep

suckling on them, and then wake up still suckling, so my waking and my

sleeping were as surrounded and filled by them as any nursing baby's.

I didn't tell her I had become addicted to those gorgeous soft mounds,

with their delicate pink stubs of nipples I couldn't take from my lips

once I had closed on them, so Estrella had to gently tug me away when

she wanted my mouth and tongue for other purposes. I didn't tell her

how all Estrella had to do was deny me her breast while she was teasing

my cock, and I'd do anything for her. Anything. That word again.

That was how she had gotten me going with those dogs, and that night

when I was already licking and sucking on her asshole, when she...well,

never mind. I didn't tell Helen most of it.

But Helen already knew the essentials. "That's right. Squeeze and

lift and kiss them. And more. There are no bras with prosthetics that

let a man do that. You'll need real breasts. What you did with

Estrella, I want some man to do to you. And some man will. So you can

tell me all about it, how it felt, and then he'll be doing it to me, to

my breasts, in my imagination. That's how I'll be unfaithful to you.

I'll also want to know how it feels for a husband to watch another man

fondling and kissing what are understood to be his own wife's breasts,

even though they're his own breasts. No. You'll need your own boobs,

dear, if you're to be me. Now, we'll start you on hormones, but

hormones are slow and unpredictable, so we'll need to get you an

operation for implants. There's no way you can argue yourself out of

having real tits for other men to feel, and caress, and lift, and

kiss.."

I reached for an argument, but I couldn't find one.

Then came the zinger. "And then, of course, for the main event you'll

need a vagina, and that means getting rid of those things you've got

dangling now between your legs. You did stick them into Estrella's

pussy once or twice during those six weeks, didn't you. And then do

other things with her pussy? Well, for this you'll need the same

equipment. And your genitals are in the way, so they'll have to go."

She sat back, having patiently stated the obvious, and waited for me to

understand there was no argument here either..

I was horrified! But all I said was, "But how can I carry real breasts

around in the office? And how can I get my genitals back again?"

"Oh, you'll be transitioning, as they say, my dear. You'll have to

become a woman for keeps. Till death do you part, like with our

marriage, remember? Kiss your penis and your testicles goodbye, if you

can reach them. But don't worry, there'll be lots of other pricks

trying out your crotch for size."

"Here's how it'll be. You'll work at the office as if you were still a

man for as long as you can, and your breasts won't be much visible

under your shirts and vests. You'll have had all the other operations

by then anyhow, except maybe some cosmetic enhancement of your lips and

your jawline -- I love a woman with pouty lips and a small chin. The

main operations will be the difficult part for you, the six weeks of

pain you owe me. But when your testicles are gone your female hormones

will have their own way free and clear, without having to overcome

opposition from your male hormones. So will your female attitudes

toward things, once you no longer see any reason to think masculine."

"But don't worry, dear. The doctors'll turn your penis inside out to

make your vagina, and leave all the nerves intact, so it'll still feel

good when someone's making love to you. You'll love getting fucked."

She smiled to herself. "And anyhow, within a few months there'll be no

more need to keep secrets. If anyone at the office wants to know

what's happening, you'll explain that you always wanted to become a

woman like me, out of some deep-seated need, and that's what you're

doing. That's what you will be doing, dear. Hundreds of men become

women every year, maybe thousands. There won't be any problem that

way. Maybe you'll keep your job, and maybe you'll find another. "

I was still speechless.

"I'll start you off. You'll need lots of lessons, as well as the

hormones and the operations. You know nothing about being a girl, much

less a woman." She began to look determined, now. "You'll need a lot

of help, and if you're going to be me you'd better understand that I'm

going to decide how you look, and how you behave. Maybe even who

you'll let kiss you, and who you'll kiss back, and whose cock will be

the first one you'll suck, and whose will be the first live meat to be

buried between those rosy cheeks you only use now for sitting down, and

finally, who gets to take your cherry when your vagina is open for

business. Tomorrow we begin equipping you to carry on my affair with

my lover, my love. My proxy affair. Tomorrow begins my betrayal of

you by you. Tomorrow I am going to begin fixing you good."

She was perfectly sane. I was shocked. "You seem to have thought all

this through," I said. I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Oh, we've had plenty of time to think this through," she said.

I started to ask her what she meant by that, but she suddenly started

speaking much more rapidly.

"I want your affair, our affair, to be glorious, delirious, passionate,

all of the things I would want it to be if I were the woman. And

you'll tell me everything, and do everything my heart tells you to do.

I know that once you're in the right state of mind you can be made to

do anything. I've heard all about that. Estrella's told me about you,

my love. That's why I know you'll do this. It'll be marvelous. And

in your own twisted way I'm sure you'll love it."

"And that's how you'll make it up to me for your wretched infidelity,

your betrayal of our marriage. You asked me what you could do?

There's your answer. You'll do it. I will get even with you by proxy!

You're mine for a year! You're me for a year! And you know something,

my Knight in Shining Armor, willing to endure any embarrassment to

rescue your Damsel in Distress? You'll do this, and I'll really love

you for it. I really will, darling!"

She leaned over and kissed me passionately on the lips. This was

something she had never done before, even in bed. But somehow

something felt wrong with that kiss. As if I were already a woman

being kissed by another woman, or as if she were some man I would have

to sleep with if I were her. Or as if she was kissing herself.

"Helen," I tried one last time. But she simply got up and left the

room. There was nothing more to say.

She went upstairs and I heard her pick up the phone and dial someone.

I went to the foot of the stairs and listened. She didn't bother to

lower her voice. It no longer mattered.

"Dora?" I heard her say. "You were right! It worked! He agreed to

everything! Tell Estrella I didn't even need to mention those

disgusting pictures she took. But she should keep them handy, just in

case. All of them. No. All right. I think Estrella was right, deep

down he really does want this and doesn't even know it. Not

necessarily to become a woman, but to do anything any woman wants him

to do, no matter how humiliating."

She began to make plans. "It was worth waiting out the year before we

started this phase -- the year he owes us will give us plenty of time

to get him straightened out. I'll bet it won't take six months.

Tomorrow we'll get started on him, first thing. His operations first,

right away, this week, I should think. Will you set them up? All of

the essential ones. So there'll be no turning back, or thinking things

through differently afterward. And then we can feminize him much more

rapidly.

"Yes, certainly I'm looking forward to it. Tell everybody who should

know. And make sure all the husbands know -- it'll keep them from

straying for the rest of their lives, I'll bet. They can always enjoy

some good laughs among themselves while they watch it all happen, you

know, all that macho bonding they enjoy so much when they're ridiculing

other people. When he's finally a woman, he won't care what these men

think of him any more anyhow."

She listened a moment. "I love you too, honey. Of course you'll move

in here while he's in the hospital. And stay afterward, when he's

recovering, and there'll be just us three girls. He'll need all the

help he can get, I'm sure. Oh, wonderful! It'll be like last year,

when Estrella was keeping him busy so you could come over every night

and show me how much nicer women are in bed than men, and we got around

to talking about how much nicer my loving husband would be if he were a

woman. And now it's really happening! Oh, Dora, I'm so happy!

'Night, lover. Tomorrow."

When I got up to bed, she was already asleep. For the first time since

she had supposedly found out about me and Estrella, she was smiling. I

suppose that was worth something.

* *

Six months later I was standing on the front steps of our house, right

by the door, and Helen was kissing me goodbye, tenderly, devotedly,

with more affection than she had ever shown me in our years together.

Even more fervently than she had kissed Dora that next morning, when

Dora came over to help Helen begin feminizing me, and there was no

longer any need for them to keep their relationship a secret. Even

more passionately than Dora had kissed me that same morning, as she

said, to welcome a new lesbian into the world.

It was a little embarrassing now, though. Not because I was wearing

heels and my little black cocktail dress, and the diamond drop earrings

Helen had bought for me after my voice operation, when I was hurting

and feeling a little blue. I had on a precious little rhinestone

necklace, and my face was beautifully made up, and my hair was perfect.

That wasn't embarrassing any more at all. In fact I was quite pleased

with the way I looked. I was now finally a passable woman. No one on

the street ever noticed me any more, except to smile at someone pretty

passing by. I had gotten used to that.

But I realized that if anyone was watching us, what they were seeing

was my wife kissing another woman in an unmistakeably amorous and

sensual way. It wasn't right. They might think we were lesbians.

"Helen," I said. "The neighbors can see." I was not the best

spokesperson for this kind of domestic propriety, but still, someone

had to maintain decency. This whole thing had made Helen very strange!

"Let them watch!," she said, her arms tight around my neck. "The

neighbors already know all about you. That neighborhood cookout last

month, when you tried to get away with wearing just a T-Shirt and no

bra, and your C-Cup jugs were bouncing around in front of you? Five

minutes after you showed up even the children knew everything there was

to know about you."

"I feel like kissing you! I feel very good!" she said. "Tonight is so

special!" Her voice took on a certain ferocity. "Tonight is finally

the night we fuck our brains out with a real man, my dear husband.

After all the preliminaries, tonight I really do get even with you, my

love! Tonight you'll deny your Tommy nothing! No more talk of

periods, and tampons. Your pussy is fully healed and well-dilated, and

the doctor wants you to use it. Tonight, I want you to give it to

Tommy on a platter! You can tease him a little, of course. Girls

don't just lie down and spread when they want to get laid, you know

that. But when you lose your real virginity tonight, I want it to be

as beautiful for you as when Estrella took your asshole's virginity

last year with her dildo, while you whined that it hurt and begged her

for more. Oh, she told us all about it. After tonight I want Tommy to

know from repeated experience that your pussy is as free and eager as

your ass and your mouth have been!"

"Tonight, I want you to do everything with him you ever wanted to do

with Estrella, or Estrella ever did with you. I want him to want to do

it to you. Make him crazy! Tonight I want you to prove how much you

love me by tumbling into bed with Tommy and fucking and sucking his

cock off, and doting all over him, and doing anything else he wants,

too. Do anything even for his friends, if he wants you to. For me!

The way I would want to do it myself, if I were really able to cheat on

you myself, to even the score. I can't, so you will. And I want us to

enjoy it! After tonight I want you to have "slut" written all over

you, for everyone to see. So you'll know it whenever you look in the

mirror. Then we'll arrange for everyone to see this new you, often.

Oh darling, It'll be so marvelous!" Helen hugged me again, so tightly

our breasts were mashed together, and I could feel her pelvic mound

pressing hard against mine. It was getting very embarrassing.

"And make sure we both know that Tommy's the better man!." she went on.

"Better than you were! You already know it from the way you've learned

to make love to his cock with your mouth and your tongue. Now I'll

want you to know it from the moment he stuffs himself into you, and

I'll want to know it from the stars in your eyes when you tell me about

it. You already know that his cock is far more satisfying in your rear

end than yours ever was in my vagina. Now we need you to know that

your proxy wife is enjoying him up front far more than she ever enjoyed

you. And more than that. I want you to know that you're yourself

watching your own wife with another better man and getting off on it!"

"But most of all, darling, my dearest love, I want you to know that

you're yourself, a man who cheated on his wife and then felt guilty

enough to let her cut off his balls and make him into a whore for a

year and a woman for life, someone who spends every night dressed in

women's clothes and getting fucked in the ass, cunt, and mouth by other

men, all for his wife's vicarious pleasure. I want you to know what an

utter disgrace to yourself you are, to feel utterly humiliated by what

you're doing. That's my revenge, sweetheart! I want it all! And

tonight I get it all! Tonight you give me all of it! I just adore

you!"

And she plastered herself against me and pushed her tongue so deep into

my mouth I couldn't breath, and squeezed my neck so tightly I couldn't

move my head, until finally she eased off a little, and finally with a

few more kisses let me go. I made a mental note that I had better fix

my makeup before anyone saw me.

What could I say? She was right. I was also looking forward to this

special night with Tommy, with the same deliciously fearful

anticipation in the pit of my stomach that Estrella put there night

after night, when she was planning some new game to stretch my sexual

endurance and desires way past my own imagining. "Yes, dear," is what

I said.

I tripped down the walk in my four inch heels, then opened the car

door, perched my well-rounded taffeta-clad bottom onto the driver's

seat, and swung my pretty, hosiery-clad legs into the car, in a single

pert, dainty motion, my thighs snuggled up tight against each other now

that there was nothing between to separate them. I closed the door and

started the car, checked the mirror, waved at my wife, and started

backing out of our driveway toward her planned climactic tryst with my

lover, the first of many to come it would seem.

Now that she didn't have to perform sex herself, Helen had become

insatiable. For her I was a heroine out of her best sex novels,

beautiful, but unlike her fictional heroines also live, interactive,

improvisationally adept, and fully responsive to her desires. She

couldn't hear enough about the men I went with, and how they had liked

doing some of the nastier things she thought of. She had been sending

me out every night, to meet Tommy if Tommy had arranged a date, or to

pick up a stud in a singles bar if Tommy was busy somewhere else. She

was always disappointed if I wasn't walking stiffly when I came home at

dawn, with my jaw aching, my lips bruised, my hair simply a mess, and

my rear end still leaking cum into my panties. Then we would get into

bed and get cozy together, and fondle each other while I told her what

had happened, what I had done and what had been done to me, and she

would get more and more excited. There was no humping her any more, of

course. But there was a lot of deep breathing while Helen brought

herself off with her hand, or asked me to do it.

It was deeply gratifying and it was also terribly humiliating. But it

was exactly what Dora and Helen had planned for me over a year earlier,

when they had first set me up with Estrella. When Dora had first moved

into the neighborhood and seduced Helen, and their affair was blooming

while I had no idea of it, Helen like a good wife had felt uneasy that

I was being left out of the fun. It wasn't nice, she thought. Dora

had then proposed to Helen a way to prepare me to join in with them.

It was a little intricate, but Helen had agreed to it, and it had

worked.

It was only last week that Dora told me about that original scheme,

while we were lying in each others' arms in the little apartment we

shared together that Helen knew nothing about. I went there each

morning instead of going downtown, and Dora paid me a stipend in lieu

of a salary, and Helen thought I was still an account executive, only a

woman executive now. I cleaned and bathed and perfumed myself and made

myself beautiful for Dora when she came to visit me, and by the time

she arrived I was usually beside myself with eagerness to see her. Our

lovemaking was as wild and passionate and obsessive as it had been with

Estrella. Dora had ways to make me feel so voluptuously feminine I

thought I would burst through my skin.

Then recently, while we were coming down from one of our magnificent

orgasms together, I told her I regretted that Helen was being left out

of our fun, and in fact didn't even know about it. Dora answered

truthfully enough that Helen had always preferred hearing about sex to

performing it, and that some day one of us should tell her how we were

in fact spending our afternoons. I thought that was a nice idea, and

that was when I began to think about writing this story.

Dora then paid me a supreme compliment, one that brings tears of

happiness to me even now, as I remember it! She said that she had

always wanted to get my head between her legs, ever since she first saw

me soon after she moved into the neighborhood, even before she had met

Helen, and even though I was then still a man and utterly faithful to

Helen, with no thought of ever being anything else. There was

something so passive and female and graceful in the way I carried

myself, she said, and something so delicate and pleasing in the way I

had shaken her hand and told her my name, she said, that her panties

had become moist and she'd needed to rush back to her house for a

session with her dildo. I told her that was marvelous, and then I

couldn't stop hugging her. We moved into our favorite lovemaking

position, each head dipped between the her partner's legs, and arms

embracing each other's waists. Dora added, "I thought it was rather

clever of me, the way I used Helen to get you into my bed completely

reshaped, now become my very own darling girl, looking just the way

I've always wanted my lovers to look, looking the way I wanted you to

look from that first day. That's what really took some doing."

"So we've each gotten what we each wanted most," she went on. "And

there's still more to come. Ohhhh, that marvelous tongue! Oh, my

precious! That's nice! That's so nice. Don't stop! Not ever!"

And she closed her thighs over my both my ears and began writhing her

sweet clitoris into my mouth, and she began licking the slit of my

lovely pussy, and there was nothing more we needed to say to each

other.

End

Copyright reserved by the author

Vickie Tern@AOL.COM