TRUST ME!
                               by Vickie Tern

       
                                      I.   

     "Andrew dear, why didn't you ever get your ears pierced?"

     I looked up, astonished.  My wife was perched comfortably in
our big easy chair, her nest most evenings when she wasn't out
selling a client some building, her legs curled up under her,
reading one of her magazines, all as usual.  She was gazing at me
casually with a mixture of curiosity and mild concern, as if the
question had just occurred to her, and the answer didn't much
matter, but it might, and she figured she'd ask before returning to
her story, or article, or whatever.

     "What?!" I asked.  I couldn't believe it.  She knew I'd wanted
to, in fantasy, but she knew that for me fantasy and fact were
separate, that I'd never have done it.  And in fact she hated the
pleasure I felt when decorating myself like a woman!  She never
allowed reference to it.  She didn't want to know!  My mind
replayed what I'd just heard, and tried to re-hear it.  'Airs,'
could that have been the word?  'Pursed?'  No, nothing else made
sense.  But what I'd heard didn't make sense either!

     "Your ears," she said patiently.  "Didn't you ever want to get
them pierced?"

     "Well, yes," I replied.  I wondered if I could tell her when
that was.  It was a few years ago, during those intoxicated, golden
afternoons when I couldn't help indulging my love of dressing up,
just before she came home early one afternoon to discover me dolled
up curls to heels in women's clothes, coiffed and jeweled,
strutting and posing in front of a mirror until I saw her in the
same mirror, standing there watching me, shocked!  At that time I
was besotted by the fantasy that I could magically become a
complete woman, and yet remain a man, no bodily alterations toward
femininity being too extreme nor too permanent.  Pierced ears were
the least of the things I wanted but would never have except in my
imagination.  Above all, I gloried in imagining that my Monica was
as delighted and entranced as I was when I was dressed to look like
a woman, even turned on by it.  Or at least mildly interested, and
perhaps helpful.

     But when she actually saw me cross dressed, reality replaced
fantasy.  Long months of resentment and grief followed while our
marriage foundered.  She made impossible demands I was too honest
to accept, that it was a filthy addiction like smoking I should
give up cold turkey, or taper off gradually, that a shrink could
cure me, that I should take up golf or tennis instead, that I
should settle for flashy men's clothes whenever I felt the urge. 
She had cross dressing confused with infidelity, as if by dating my
mirror image I was being intimate with another woman.  I argued in
turn that it was harmless, for me a source of great joy, nothing
more.  Finally she understood that it was a compulsion, delightful
to me if perverse to her, but a deep-rooted, powerful compulsion
nevertheless, dating maybe even from a prenatal time of life.  It
was how I was.  Finally we agreed that I could keep doing it, since
I'd keep doing it anyhow, but it should always be in ways and
places where she'd never know or be reminded.  

     Mostly I'd kept to that arrangement.  It was tricky, but
possible, and our happiness depended on it.  We have a good
marriage.  We're a little unconventionally matched, maybe, but
wonderfully compatible.  I do most of my work at home,
cost-estimating engineering projects, because home is where I can
think more clearly than anywhere else, juggle all the variables in
my head and watch them land right side up.  Then I pipe in the
results by fax or e-mail, and get other data back the same way.  I
don't much need to talk to anyone.  I just do it, and do it better
than anyone else.  It's not something I especially enjoy, but there
are compensations.

     I like the arrangement with my company because I'm a deep-dyed
homebody.  Always have been.  The thinking is intricate and
conceptual, and it's easy to get lost in your mind.  But I love
working out the problems while doing simple homey tasks in the real
world, like making the beds or fluffing the couch pillows, or
scrubbing the kitchen floor, or sewing on shirt buttons, or cooking
up intricate dishes for my beloved wife.  I know, this is all
women's work, but it helps keeps me sane.  Early in our marriage we
agreed that I would look after our household routines, shopping and
cooking and cleaning, and Monica would take charge of the
exceptional elements of our marriage, like our social lives or
vacations.  

     This freed Monica for her work, which is selling real estate. 
She dearly loves it, and is a whiz at it.  She's good with people
-- she has the right combination of charm, persuasiveness, and
persistence, and she does her homework too, her endless research on
her clients and their needs and the properties she thinks right for
them.  She can be devious setting up intricate arrangements for a
client to walk in, see advantages, and then think he's deciding for
himself that this or that building and its financing are perfect
for him.  It's commonplace for Monica, about to close on an office
building, to schedule the closing in another more expensive but
more suitable building, lead the client in, and then let him
discover that fact for himself.  This especially amuses her boss,
a smooth operator named Ben who has himself pulled off some very
big deals in town.  Sometimes he can't believe some scheme she's
conceived will work, and they bet her commission on the outcome,
double or nothing.  He's right just often enough to want to keep
betting and losing, and I've sometimes thought Monica schemes even
that arrangement.  Her job is demanding -- it gives her irregular
hours additional to the regular work week she spends in her office. 
Sometimes she's out of the house all day and many evenings, and
sometimes whole weekends.  But she's hard-driving, and she enjoys
it, and she enjoys the payoff.
                                     
     This was convenient.  I was too frightened of discovery, too
embarrassed by my own desire, to dress feminine anywhere but in my
own home with the shades drawn.  So I did the housework dressed
suitably, in a house dress, and if there were no deadlines then I
could lounge through the afternoons fixing my hair to look pretty,
or even pretend I was out on the town wearing my one
figure-clinging evening gown.  After we arrived at our truce I
couldn't keep the evidence entirely away from her.  A few times
panties or a bra unknown to her found their way from my separate
laundry into her drawers, and then I'd find them on my bureau to be
stowed in my own panty drawer, no comment ever made.  It was
embarrassing once when we had Ben over for dinner, and Ben
commented that with all my domestic talents I'd make someone a fine
wife some day.  I flushed, maybe too quickly, but Monica leaped in
to snap "No, he won't, he's already married to me," and that was
that.  

     Once or twice I'd forget myself, and ask her an idle question
about women's styles, what do you call a high waistline, gathered
under the breast and falling to a full skirt for example.  She'd
just bought such a dress.  On such occasions she'd only reply
sharply, "I told you, I'm not going to discuss such things with
you.  It would only encourage your sick habit."  I didn't dare
protest that my question was disinterested and innocent.  I didn't
dare say anything.  It would only have seemed to her to be a
deliberate extending of discussion of a forbidden topic, a flouting
of our agreement.  Where my transvestism was even distantly
implied, she was not interested.  Period.  Until now. 

     "Then why didn't you get them pierced?  Every girl does. 
Didn't you want to be a girl?"

     Why didn't I do the nearly unthinkable, get my ears pierced
and become one of the odd men who shared decorated ear lobes with
most of the women on the planet?  The ten thousand reasons why not
flooded at me -- shame, fear of exposure, of jeopardizing my
manhood, of gibes from my associates, of offending and appalling my
wife when she saw the holes.  Even fear of my own desires.  It
seemed dangerous for me to alter my body to match my fantasy
desires, even in trivial ways -- who knew where that might end?

     "Oh, I don't know," I replied evasively.  That was too
evasive, obviously, so I added, "I didn't want to offend you, I
suppose, in part."  Then I risked her wrath by asking her an
obvious question, and thereby actually extending the discussion,
our first since those hideous months before we'd agreed never ever
to mention anything about it again.  "Why do you ask?" I asked,
delicately.    

     She scarcely noticed.  Her turn to be evasive.  "Different
reasons," she said with a dismissive shrug.  Then she realized that
sounded too unforthcoming, too secretive, so she volunteered, "I
found one of your clip earrings on the kitchen counter a few days
ago, so I just wondered.  It must have fallen off when you were
fixing dinner, and you never noticed.  It told me you're still
dressing up day times.  Though I didn't need to be reminded of
that, of course."

     I took another chance.  "No?" I asked.  Then waited for the
storm.  None came.

     "Of course not.  You're always leaving lipsticked kleenex in
the bathroom. And often I can smell your perfume when we're in bed,
when you don't shower first.  Always the same perfume, *Enjoli,*
which is fortunate for you, or I'd suspect you'd been with some
other woman.  But I found the bottle once, hidden in your toilet
kit on the closet shelf, when you left it a little bit open and the
smell had spread all over our bedroom.  You're lucky I like the
scent -- I even borrow a dab now and then.  Then there are other
things too, of course, like when you're careless about keeping our
bras and slips separate, or when you kick off your heels under the
bed and then forget they're there.  Anyhow, when I found the
earring I began wondering what kind of a woman you make.  Still
strange looking, I suppose, because you don't shave your legs, or
fix your eyebrows, and any girl needs to attend to things like that
if she means to look pretty.  Or even presentable."

     "Yes," I said, still too afraid to say anything else.  Despite
my bewilderment, I was in heaven!  '*Our* bras and slips' she'd
said, talking about them as if we were equally feminine!  *Any*
girl, as if I was one of them.  And she'd borrowed my perfume!  She
seemed untroubled to be talking about it.  Perfectly easy in fact. 
And she even seemed to be implying that I should try harder to look
pretty.  If only I dared! 

     But there was more.  "When I found your earring, dear -- those
faux seed pearls set in silver? -- it's really lovely -- you do
have good taste, I've got to grant that -- I realized it would go
perfectly with my gray suit, the one with the cinched-in waist and
flared peplum and short, straight skirt, you know it? You couldn't
wear that suit now, but it would be quite becoming on you if you'd
lose ten or fifteen pounds, I should think.   Anyhow, I can't
borrow your clip earrings, because my lobes are much too small for
clip-ons.  I'd only lose them.  So I wondered why you don't have
pierced ears, is all.  Most women do.  Then we could at least
borrow each others' jewelry.  We'd be like sisters."

     My heart swelled to bursting!  This conversation was my
fondest dream!  "Oh, Monica," I began ecstatically....

     Then I interrupted myself, and came fully alert.  I sat up,
and looked at her.  Why, after years of detesting my habit, or
ignoring it and hoping it would go away, why was it she was now
chatting with me like a girlfriend, or -- what was it she'd just
said? -- like another woman, like a sister.  There was something
wrong here. This was my dearest fantasy come to life.  I was
overjoyed, and my suspicions wanted to dissolve into tears of joy. 
But there was still something wrong.

     "Why do you ask, Monica?" I asked her again.  "I mean, why
now?"

     My voice rose into falsetto, then cracked on the word "now"
despite myself.  I tried to swallow, and couldn't.  I saw she was
looking at me intently and that she had seen and heard my
excitement, and I saw the slightest of smiles play across the
corners of her mouth before she stretched her arms out and yawned,
then began to settle her eyes back onto the magazine in her lap. 

     "Oh, I don't know," she said.  "But I think I should help you
with things like that.  You have so much to learn."

     And she settled back into her reading as if fascinated by
whatever had just caught her eye there, closed off to further
discussion. 

     A revolution had just occurred, and she seemed no more
concerned than if she had asked me why I had tossed parmesan into
tonight's salad.  She had given me the most glorious gift!  Not
only had she calmly accepted my dressing up, and chatted about it,
she'd offered to participate!  No, she'd said she felt she should
participate.  My throat was still choked, and I tried to wipe away
the tears in my eyes without being too obvious about it.  Maybe it
was just that love had finally brought her to acceptance of me as
I am?  All of me?  She knew I was a loving and caring husband, and
apart from my transvestism we were well matched.  Maybe it was mean
and ungenerous for me to question her further.  

     That night we made tender, passionate love more devotedly than
since the early days of our marriage, and she seemed serenely
pleased as I held and caressed her, and hugged her close to me, and
stroked my penis in and out of her pussy until her arms tightened
on my neck and I knew she'd come.  Then when we were done, and I
was kissing her face gently over and over in sheer gratitude, she
whispered "Yes, dear, I know how you feel."  She kissed me once in
return, then rolled over and instantly fell asleep.