Something Had To Change

This was not going the way Diane had thought it would or should.

Basically nothing, and yet everything, had changed in their marriage in the last six months. She watched him now, sitting on the sofa, drinking a beer, unshaven, and between picking his nose and scratching his ass, she wasn't sure what his biggest pleasure was.

At least he was fit. There was no beer gut yet, but he was only thirty-one, lots of time for that development if he continued his ways. She studied him. Handsome in an androgynous way, short by male standards at five feet six inches, a weight that would be featherweight if he boxed; he was finely chiseled, with a narrow chin that would also break if he boxed. Distantly and at this moment she wondered why she had been attracted to him in the first place. Was it his light footed athleticism which earned him accolades as a soccer player, or was it his impossibly blue eyes which ejected X-rays when he looked at her? It was all of him, she decided, not one part, but all of him, his cheek bones, his long fingers which touched her just so, his lips which danced across her body at night. It was all of those things.

But this just would not do. They had made compromises, rules, and promises, all of which she kept, none of which he kept. She was a pressure cooker and the lid was about to fly.

A little over six months ago in April, Diane had come home early from work after finishing a long project, and not wanting to start on a new one the same day. Rick's car was in the garage. Strange, she thought, and as she was removing her coat at the front door she heard rustling and bumping sounds in the bedroom, sounds similar to those of a person in a hurry.

"Rick?" she called out. No response.

Puzzled, she walked tentatively toward their bedroom and opened the bedroom door. The sounds stopped. "Rick?"

Silence for a long while and then Rick's voice from the walk-in closet, "Don't come in here."

Suspicious now, "What are you doing? What the hell is going on? Why can't I go in there?" As she entered the closet she instantly understood why. Rick was cowering (there was no other word to describe it) in the corner, his cheeks as red as she had ever seen them, and she had tried to embarrass him for amusement for years, a fun pastime that he seemed to relish as well. This time it was more than embarrassment, it was make-up, and he was in a state of partial undress, no shirt to cover his bra, and no pants to cover his panties and pantyhose.

"Oh, Jesus!" and she turned away quickly, leaving the closet to sit on the edge of the bath tub in the en suite bathroom. She was breathing quickly, trying to make sense of this. Meanwhile the rustling resumed and she heard the snap of hurried lycra slipping from his fingers. What the hell?

Her thoughts raced like random electrons. Her husband was wearing women's clothes! And, she just realized, they were HER clothes. She shuddered. Then she had another realization: he was gay. She should have known, his androgynous looks, delicate features, his general sensitivity. Again she shuddered because these were all things that had made him attractive to her in the first place.

She wanted gay men as lovers? What the hell was wrong with her?

Minutes passed and the rustling stopped. Silence snapped and crackled out of the closet like cut power lines whipping in a hurricane, at least that's how it felt to her.

Rick's hands were trembling. He had removed the bra and hose as well as the panties and he stood in the closet like a stick of petrified wood, unable to do or say anything. He could hear Diane outside in the bathroom muttering to her self. There was no choice. He had to man-up to this. Bad choice of words, he thought.

"Honey?" he poked his head around the door frame, "We obviously need to talk." He knew the make-up was still visible, as in the closet he had no way to remove it. "I'm sorry you had to see me this way, but maybe it's a good thing in the long run---I don't know. Umm, let me clean up okay? I'll meet you in the kitchen." He watched her look at him and quickly turn her head away. Shame was crushing him as he said, "Are you okay? Jesus! I'm so sorry Di!" He waited until she wordlessly got up and left the room, clearly in shock. He retrieved the lingerie, putting it all in the clothes basket, and then he washed the makeup off his face. Satisfied that he had discarded all his en femme accoutrements, he wrapped himself in his bath robe, took two deep breaths, and walked to the kitchen.

Diane sat at the stools at the kitchen island, a bottle of Chenin Blanc by her left hand, a glass of the same in her right hand. Her shoulders were slumped but dark eyes watched him approach. Her short skirt revealed legs that went forever, and the skirt shaped to her hips like, well---like a girdle. Her lips were pouty and her mascara had run with tears. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"What? That I'm a cross dresser?" She was so beautiful, he thought. Her brown bob cut of hair swirled and bounced whenever she turned her head, but right now it didn't turn often. She stared at him.

"No. That you were gay. All this time you've been thinking about, about other things while you were making love. Why didn't you tell me?"

Rick furrowed his brow. "Gay? I'm not gay. I like to wear women's clothes. I get off on it."

"Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Must be a duck," she said, a bit too coldly for Rick's liking. It crushed him. He went to the pantry and got out his favorite, a Shiraz, and poured himself a rather undignified milk glass full of it. She scowled.

Silence reigned. They both swished the wine around in their glasses as if they were doing taste tests.

"I have a cross dressing fetish. Always have. I would have told you about it years ago, but I was afraid you'd leave me. Don't make my fears come true. I love you."

Diane looked him in the eye now and said, "I love you too Rick. But Jesus, you're gay for Christ's sake! How am I supposed to deal with that?"

Rick gave a heavy sigh, "I AM NOT GAY. If I got a sex change, I'd be a lesbian, okay?" He was always exasperated with the general public's incorrect perception of cross dressers.

She misunderstood him, "Oh great! You want a sex change. I married a man, not a woman. If I wanted a lesbian as a lover, I would have found myself a lesbian. What does this all mean? Where the hell do we go from here?"

He decided not to correct her on her misinterpretation. He was mentally exhausted already. "I've been getting help you know, a psychologist."

"Really. What does he tell you?"

"It's a she actually. She told me that it can't be cured as if it's a disease. Instead, I have to learn to deal with it and even embrace it as part of my being. It's a guilt and shame thing." He sipped some more wine and then he started to babble. "I've always loved the feel of tight female clothing, ever since I was a young teenager, even before actually. Then I masturbated while dressed and it became imprinted sexually. "Curing" me would be akin to removing my sex drive. The guilt and shame has resulted in a myriad of other related fetishes too. I might as well lay it all out. I like bondage, and I like female domination. I didn't know why until the psychologist explained it. She says that I feel so guilty about my cross dressing fantasies that if a woman "forces" me to cross dress, then it's not my own free will and therefore okay. Same with the bondage part. If I'm tied up while dressed up and I have an orgasm, it's not my fault. And note that both of these fantasy scenarios have at the forefront a female. I'm not gay."

Rick watched Diane as she became interested and rational. "Look---," he said, "I'm still the same person, even though you see my baggage now. I'm still the one that loves you, and I know you love me. Can't we figure something out here?"

The wine had two effects; one was relaxation, the other communication. Diane watched him spill his guts now and he had her attention. She really did love him, and the epiphany was the realization that this activity was not a gay act. This intrigued her and she wasn't sure why.

"What do you want Rick? How DO we make this work?" She sighed with fatigue.

It should have been a warning to her as she saw his face light up after her question.

"You really want to talk about this?" he asked.

"Yes, I do," she answered, "What other options are there? Divorce?"

Such a heavy word, divorce, weighted with so many things, loneliness, despair, love lost, loneliness again. It was clear in the silence that they both thought deeply about that.

Rick took a deep breath, exhaled and said, "Okay, here is what I would really like to happen. It would make me the happiest man in the world if you would accept my cross dressing as a part of me, and also as a part of our relationship. Perhaps some of the bondage and female domination aspects as well. But I understand the burden that places on you, so now you have to tell me what you can accept, and what you want. Then we negotiate."

"Well, I want as a starting position, no cross dressing at all, but I can see that's a non-starter, so how about you stop dressing in MY clothes for a start? You tell me what you want and I'll go buy it. You wear the clothes at certain times and I'll see how I do. And no sex while you're dressed up. You have to be naked."

This was way further along than Rick had ever dreamed and he suppressed his excitement as much as he could while asking for even more, "Okay, I accept that, but I don't want to be limited to dressing up when you say so. Would you be upset if I dressed when I wanted to?"

Briefly, Diane wondered if this conversation had turned into a drunken slur of words and sentences, forgotten the day after, but it was clear they were both sober despite the wine. The content was too heavy, too immediate to their well being as a couple.

"I'm not sure," she said, "Tell you what, let's throw something non-sexual in the mix. You can dress up any time, but you have to do the housework. But listen---if I find that your dressing up really grosses me out, then we have to go to Plan B, and I have no freaking idea what Plan B is. Let's just get through today and move on. I'm tired."

Rick was ecstatic and he left his stool to hug her, lifting her off the stool and swinging her around like a rag doll. He stopped, out of breath, and set her down once again, "How about right now, can I dress right now?"

"NO! I don't want you dressing in my clothes for God's sake. That's just gross. Wait till you get your own. It's what, Thursday today? Surely you can wait until Saturday to go shopping?" She was a bit miffed, and seriously worried about her decision. What can of worms was this anyway?

Put in his place, he now agreed with her. It was gross. The conversation about it all just ended at that point, as they both needed "soak time". They carried on as if nothing happened and yet there was a certain atmosphere, crackling like high voltage wires in the rain. She resolved to do some googling after supper, the key word, cross-dressing.

What she found out was astounding. The vast majority of cross dressers were not gay, as Rick had said. Also, her response to his exposure as a transvestite was similar to a lot of women. Many wondered if they had been attracted to their mates BECAUSE the men had an affinity for feminine things, and thus the wives were lesbian in some way. Although that could be the case in some instances, the real reason people fell in love was for the emotional feedback, the love of who they were, even regardless of what they were hiding.

Diane looked at her watch and was shocked at the time. It was 10:30. She went to the door of the media room and watched her husband lying there watching sports like any other male. Okay, he scratched his butt when it was itchy. So what? As she secretly watched, she tried to picture him dressed en femme and made up to look like a woman. It was possible. He had the features, he actually did. He could actually look the part. She stared for a long time. She should have understood her own thoughts, but she didn't, and when she finally walked in to take him to bed she was astonished to find that she was wet.

Unfettered now by untold secrets, they explored each others' bodies like new planets, the hills and valleys, the rivers and seas, and the nature that bound it all. Diane, for the first time in ages, was interested and also interesting. Rick let his sensitivity flow like champagne over her, unchecked by illusions of, or allusions to, his masculinity. The encounter was purely sexual and spiritual, more like a melding of minds.

He served her orally and endlessly until she cried for him to enter her. The penetration was gentle and teasing at first and gradually built a rhythm suited more to him than to her, so she pushed him off and mounted him to get it just so. While she rode him she gently teased him about his fetish confessions.

"So, you like my panties baby? You want to wear them baby? Oh yes, that's right. Just wait till you see what I buy for you baby! You just wait. Ohh, ohh, yes, that's it, yes that's right. Me on top, yes, that's it baby, oh yes---"

Rick was a little taken aback at her teasing at first, confusing it with mocking. But she always mocked, that was her way of having fun, even in nonsexual matters, so he relaxed and wanted her to say more, and more, and more. They changed positions numerous times, but each time he was on top the duration became less, until finally when he wanted to be on top once again, she pushed him down.

"I stay on top baby. A panty boy stays on---oh---oh." She came in mid sentence and her contractions pulled his semen from him in rivers of lust. They thrashed and screamed and moaned until she finally fell onto his chest with her mouth to his ear, where she finished her sentence, "—bottom."

Moments later, cool with sweat and with breaths caught, they rolled away from each other wordlessly and without guilt, pulled up the blankets and went to sleep.

But now it was six months later and she watched him be a man, a typical man, but with one main difference, he was dressed as a woman, and had been almost every night and every weekend of late. She looked around the house. The housework wasn't done. Then she looked back at Rick watching a hockey game in his pink blouse and black skirt and he lifted his bum and farted. He actually farted.

Diane retreated into the kitchen, tight as a mandolin string, and paced back and forth. This would not do. It definitely would not do. She had to change her approach, but most of all she had to demand that he change his attitude as well. Promises were promises. If he wanted to play HIS game with HIS rules, he had another think coming. She had accepted his cross dressing, now he had to accept some new rules. No negotiation this time. It was time she stated HER desires and needs. Oh, he was going to get an earful. Something had to change.

As she marched back to the media room where her husband lounged like a pig in mud, she was again surprised and puzzled as to why she was wet.