TG New Hairdo 1/3 F/m M/m F/f femdom I know I looked especially nice as the Maitre d' seated us. I was wearing my black sleeveless shift with silver-threaded tracery, the one that glides past just a suggestion of my hips and flows to a flirty hem just above my knees. Simple silver jewelry, including the drop earrings April gave me for my last birthday. Elegant, restrained, perfect. I felt the quiet pride any girl feels who's confident she looks her best. On top of it all my brand new hairstyle. You know what they say, change your hairdo and change your life. Well, I liked my life, but even so, April had asked Joanne to cut it a lot shorter, so Joanne had shaped it radically in back and then fluffed it up into a cute flip. She'd promised me it would be a lot easier to care for than my old big-haired, down-to-the-shoulders layered cut. I'd never again need to set my hair with rollers when I want people to notice me, she'd said. Just blow-dry and go, and when you think of it, comb it with your fingers. It was the kind of cut women favor after their second or third baby, when their families demand all their time and they can't fuss, women who nevertheless want to look devastatingly feminine. And she'd given me bangs. I'd never before worn bangs, but they made my face smaller, more pixieish. Joanne told me my new look was fabulous. I wasn't so sure at first, turning my head from side to side in her salon mirror. It didn't seem to be me at all, but someone more pert and capable, cute but with her own mind, an independent woman with her own goals. It was all rather sudden. April had called my office only a few hours earlier and told me Joanne had just found an opening in her schedule, and I should leave work early and stop by her salon to get the sassy new hairstyling she'd wanted for me. "Then go home and make yourself beautiful, sweetie," she'd told me, "so I can admire the whole new you. When I get home I'll change too and we'll have an intimate little candlelight supper at Le Cirque. So change to something dressy. I've made the reservations already. I'm dying to see how you'll look. Also, I have something wonderful to tell you." I'd had to push a lot of appointments into next week to get to Joanne's in time for my appointment and then get home and get ready. I was thinking that whatever April had on her mind, it better be worth it. In fact I was still figuring out how to handle next week's schedule when April arrived home, called for an immediate display of the new me, told me I was gorgeous, and then told me to grab my purse, we had to leave for the restaurant right away. It was still early, the last traces of sunset visible behind the bank tower when I gave the car to the valet parking attendant and smiled at him to encourage him to be careful with it. He smiled back. I still hadn't gotten used to the notion that young men are eager to please any woman who looks well turned out. They're so impressionable. And the night was still young. I wondered what April had in mind for us afterward. She'd been getting me accustomed to flirting with men lately, taking me to bars with small combos playing dance music, showing me how to accept invitations from men and then laugh and accept their flattery while I danced in their arms, April watching us from our booth and sipping her one drink. She wanted me to feel comfortable with them, she said, though she herself always refused invitations when asked. She just didn't feel sociable, she'd say. But we'd giggle delightedly enough afterward, when I'd tell her what seductive line this man or that man had tried on me, and she gave me even more pointers about fending them off and yet still seeming attractive to them. It was harmless entertainment for both of us. She called it my "finishing school." I forgot about work when we entered Le Cirque's exquisite little waiting area, off the rather grand lobby of the our best hotel An hour's pampering at the beauty salon is supposed to be restorative, I know, but my mind had been so busy with rescheduling that I hadn't even bothered to watch as Joanne sculpted my new style, nor had I listened to her chatter about it, "coy but not too innocent, you'll see" I think she said. Nor had I heard anything at all about who'd gotten divorced or seduced since my last visit. I glanced again at April while we waited for the Maitre d' to find her name on his list. She was looking straight ahead with a strange look on her face, solemn yet exultant, like a cat preparing to pay a condolence call on a canary. Her mind was partly elsewhere, but she tried to seem attentive now and then. "That's a new design for your eye make-up too, isn't it, honey?" she asked. "That wide-eyed, little girl look? It does look fetching with your new hairdo. Contrasty. Joanne's idea?" "No, mine," I told her. "I thought with my new hair style I should change everything else too. Become altogether a new woman." I flourished both hands with a little wrist flip, to signal a display completed and waiting for applause. "Yes, I suppose," April replied. I wasn't sure she'd heard me. Then, "Yes, that's what I had in mind for you too, dear." We were seated at an intimate little corner table, knees tucked under snowy tablecloths, napkins decorously draped on our laps, leaning toward each other, fingernails and silverware gleaming, our dinners ordered and our second cocktails just arrived, when April finally dropped her bomb. "Comfy?" she asked? "Yes, of course, honey. Why do you ask?" "Because I'd like you to be. I'm about to say something to you you won't like, but I have to say it, and I don't want you to feel any needless discomfort." She used words like "discomfort" to her patients when she knew the surgical procedures she was about to perform were painful. The word helped to minimize their suffering in her own mind. "Out with it!" That's what I'd say to clients when they waffled about something they didn't quite want to tell me. It sounds abrupt, but it shocks them into talking and saves time. I suppose April's professional language prompted me to reply in kind. She once told me that no woman would ever be that inconsiderate. A woman would always let a person say whatever needs saying in whatever time he or she -- usually she -- needs to say it. It's only men who are more direct. Dressed the way I was, looking the way I knew I looked, I knew immediately that the statement was rude and regretted it. April meant to be kind. "I'm sorry, April," I apologized, patting my lips with my napkin, thinking vaguely that I should have had Joanne re-do my nails for tonight, to use color rather than the clear polish I wore weekdays at the office. My mind still wasn't fully concentrated. "Don't be, for once. What I have to say is also harsh." "Must you say it, then?" "Yes." I waited. "Les, this will come as a shock to you. I know you've done everything you could to please me. Gone along with my every whim. So please understand that this isn't your fault. It isn't anybody's fault, I suppose. It's just the way it is." "The way what is?" I began to feel uneasy. She'd called me "Les." When I'm dressed and made up to look nice she always calls me "Leslie" or "darling girl," so I'll feel relaxed and reassured. But this was "Les." The name people called me at the office. My business identity. My male name. She hadn't used "Les" in a long time, several years, not since I'd agreed to live at home with her as a woman, not a man. To be a woman everywhere except my office. "Les, I'm divorcing you. I've already started the proceedings. You'll get your formal notice in another day or two." "What!!" She sat silent now. It was said. She watched my eyes, done up in that brand new baby-stare look. She knew how to look through them and read my real feelings. She also knew my "What!!" was filler, a stall for time while I felt for a suitable response. Of course I'd heard her. She also knew I knew that whenever she reached a point of decision, further argument was useless. That decisiveness was what made her a superb surgeon, one of her colleagues had once told me. She'd first consider every contingency, then decide what to do, and then do it and never look back! "Why? Why, April?" My heart sank down deep into my gut. My tummy, I corrected myself. I could scarcely breathe! "Why, Leslie? Why? My dear, just look at you!" I was bewildered. "Look at what?" I asked. She glanced around, and I realized I'd better lower my voice. That that was why she'd chosen this place, this time, to tell me. "Look at what, April?" I repeated, in a softer, more appropriate tone. "I'm beautiful. You said so yourself just now, with my new hairdo and all. And I am, I can feel it! I'm what you've wanted me to be!" She didn't respond. "April honey," I added, as if to attract her attention. I realized I was beginning to plead, and that pleading was pointless. "That's true, Leslie. And that's the problem. You're no longer a man!" She spoke as if to a child, explaining the obvious. "I married a man, and you're now something else. So it's time we went our separate ways." "I'm what you made me!" A desperate cry, also a little indignant. "You remember? Arguing and urging and pleading for me to consent to this almost as soon as we were married? For how long, over a year it was, until I agreed to the first step, I still remember it, lacy panties and clear lipstick, that was all you wanted, that I wear them until they were second nature! Then a bra, just to feel what that was like. Then hormones to help fill it out. Always, with each new step you were so happy, how could I deny you the next? And for the past two years living with you as a woman full time, exactly what you wanted all along, in a neighborhood where none of our neighbors think I'm anything else! So I'm a man now only at the office. Otherwise I'm what you've always wanted! You've said so hundreds of times!" "Well, yes, Les, sweet Leslie, but you're wrong about one thing. You're no longer a man even at your office. No more than when you're in bed with me. You haven't been for at least a year. Your secretaries all know about you. They're only waiting for you to say it, to tell them you're now a woman, not a man, so they can congratulate you and welcome you as one of their own kind, one of the girls, even if you are their boss." That was crushing news! "But how could they know?" I asked her, subdued. "I've been so careful! You told them?" "You know I'd never do that! It wasn't necessary to do that! There's no mystery -- just look at yourself! Your jaw and your nose trimmed by surgery to look diminutive, dainty! Your eyebrows raised, and your lips puffed just a bit. Even without make-up you look adorable. No hair anywhere apart from what was heaped up on your head until today. Your chest thrust way out -- you can't hide breasts as large as yours, you know. When your men's shirts pulled and strained I had to put you into women's shirts cut for a woman's figure. Did you think no one would notice those Peter Pan collars, and darts, and gores, let alone the flaps that button the wrong way? Or the lacy tracery of your bras and slips under the shirt material?" She leaned forward. "Especially your hairdo, that bouffant look you wore until today, the one you fancied when we first decided to go out in public? No, I'll be honest, I fancied it for you then. That was a dead giveaway. Do men put their hair up in large rollers every morning, then come in with it combed and curled and spritzed up to form an alluring halo framing their faces? Unmistakeable, honey!" "And the way you move now? Not that you swish, nothing so vulgar. But so neatly! So daintily! Always so ladylike! The way you drape your wrists when you're comfortable, or wave them in the air when you think you're you're being persuasive, forgetting altogether that your hands and nails now look more slender and attractive than any man's hands and nails ever could!" "Then you yourself decided that a touch of eyeliner at work would make your eyes seem more dramatic, remember, and you had to pencil in your eyebrows when you tweezed away too many hairs! And above all, when you decided you'd wear seed pearls or large danglers in your earlobes instead of small hoops, the kind men with pierced ears wear? In both earlobes? I didn't want to say anything when you lost perspective and began doing those things, but you did want to, and by then there was no mistaking what you'd become anyhow. Whatever did you think people would think?" She sat back again, her expression incredulous as she saw that it was all news to me! "I just wanted to look nice," I said lamely. Then, "April, has anyone ever mentioned any of this to you?" "Of course. Your secretary was concerned. She told me everyone at the office was concerned, because they all care about you. You're a very nice man. Or you once were, she said, but now you're more a very nice lady. I told her not to worry, that you'd explain yourself to everyone in your own good time." This was distressing. Also a little bit liberating. It was sometimes stressful, trying to maintain a normal appearance at the office. To no avail apparently. "Do you think my clients know?" I asked, worried? "Of course, honey. Your secretary told me the new ones all assume you're a woman. A little butch, with your voice, but they figure the woman you live with likes it. That I like it." There was nothing more to say about that. April sighed and returned to her core revelation. "I'm really sorry, Leslie sweetheart. I truly am. But the fact is, I no longer want to be married to a woman. I did want to, but not any more. So I'm leaving you. Tonight, as a matter of fact. When we're finished here, we'll leave here separately. You'll go home, and I've made other arrangements." This was utterly stunning! April had been my life for five years! Longer! We were always together, every spare moment, nearly. Especially as I became her "dearest girlfriend." We shared so many more interests than most married couples. Shopping, styles, getting our nails done, theater, gossiping about people at work, everything! And now, soon, nothing? I sat there with my wrists still draped. I wondered what I might conceivably say to change her mind, but I was sinking deeper and deeper into depression. I knew there was nothing to say. But at least I could try to understand it. What had gone so terribly wrong? At that moment the waiter brought our appetizers. Crab salad for April -- she loved sea food. Just a small chicory salad for me, no dressing. As always I was concerned to maintain a girlish figure. I'd fought to get down to a size twelve from my original eighteen, and as I got more svelte April had given away my old clothing, to box me in so there'd be no letting down or turning back. Thw waiter looked at me. I must have looked just terrible, because he asked, concerned, "Is something wrong, ma'am? Can I help you in some way?" That broke my spiral downward. I forced a smile and looked up at him. "No, dear, thank you, I'll be just fine! It's nice of you to ask, though." He left, reluctantly. "See?" April commented, a little amused by the exchange. "Spoken like a true woman. Gentle and considerate. You'll do just fine without me, honey." "I'm the way I am!" I said. My voice tightened, a little angry, though I tried to keep it low. "I'm what you wanted! The way you made me! In all these years, yours! Absolutely faithful to you!" "I know, dear. You're what I wanted. You indulged me, and worked very hard to achieve it, and gave up so much, and I'll always be grateful. You'll always be my dream girl!" "But if I'm now what you wanted, why don't you want me?" Near despair, but still in my hushed, ladylike voice. "That's a good question," April replied. She tasted her crab salad, then set the fork down and again looked gently but very firmly at me. "It's difficult to explain. Understand, sweetheart, I still do want you the way you are, as a friend. A good friend. My dearest friend. You're a far more fascinating woman than you were a man. And I think you're much happier now too. More serene and relaxed, even more playful." She smiled. "Certainly prettier." She smiled at me this time, inviting my assent. "And you know you love making yourself pretty! So I really don't have any regrets, leaving you now, and I don't think you should either." She settled back and looked serious again. "You see, honey, I've changed my mind about what I want from a marriage. That's the nearest explanation I can come up with. You were a wonderful man for agreeing to become my even more wonderful best girlfriend instead of merely my husband. You've been wonderful about all of it. But lately I've been thinking that there's something missing from my life. Male companionship. Being with a guy, living with the decisiveness, even the feistiness of a guy. Anticipating his moves, primping before a date so he'll find me attractive, special. Flirting with him, so there's no doubt in his mind at all that I also find him attractive, that I may have something in mind later for the two of us." She smiled to herself, and took another bite of crab. "And then there's that part too. What happens later. Feeling his strength embrace me even while it pushes deep into me. I miss that too! More and more, lately!" "April, we discussed that! Years ago now! When you started my hormones, those heavy doses you told me would grow titties in no time, but probably weaken my erections, and they did, and it did! When I couldn't penetrate you any more you remember you told me not to give it another thought, you preferred sex the way women have sex together. And you made such passionate love to my new body, kissing my nipples and rolling my breasts around in your hands. I was in heaven, but so were you! I remember how delighted you were that I'd responded so 'generously' you called it, that I'd gone to a C-cup inside of a year, and it was all me!" She nibbled at her crab, and said nothing. "How many times did you tell me you much preferred me kissing and licking you down there, so very sweetly you said, while your orgasms rose slowly, and exquisite feelings rose with them, and then finally overwhelmed you! You loved it that I couldn't invade you, that there was no threat of thrusting to ruin the mood. You said that so often!" I paused. April said nothing. She just looked at me sympathetically, and took another forkful and chewed it slowly. Obviously she knew I had to vent, and she was allowing me to vent. All I was doing was venting. There was nothing she intended to do. There was nothing to be done. I noticed that her lips were closed, as always when she chewed, except when she opened them to take in a teeny bite with a flash of teeny white teeth. I saw that her lips were made up perfectly, and with a stray thought I hoped mine were too. Lately I'd wanted to look more and more like April, and she'd encouraged it. Suave, poised, a woman with a mind of her own. Since I could no longer look like me, except at the office, I'd thought. But no, apparently not even there. "I learned how to make love to you those other ways," I went on, knowing that I was only reciting history, not arguing with any hope of persuading her. "Your ways. You said my face between your legs was heaven, that my tongue was magic when it was inside you. That you could never get enough of me down there. That's why I still sleep that way most of the time, with my head between your legs! I love feeling the strength of your thighs on my shoulders, and breathing close to the smell of your pussy." "That's true," was all she said. "And I still can't get enough of your tongue. But it's no longer enough, Leslie. I know that this isn't fair to you, that you've done everything I've asked you to do, that you don't deserve this, and so on. I began by saying that, didn't I? Right from the outset? So now I won't repeat myself, and it's no use your repeating it. The loving we've shared has been beautiful, memorable, sublime. But it's no longer enough. I now want a real man who can take care of a real woman's needs." She hesitated, then came out with it. "You're neither. You're neither a man nor a woman. Not any more. Not yet." I sat quietly. The waiter came again and glanced at me while taking away our appetizer plates. I hadn't touched my salad. "April," I said gravely. "Yes, Leslie," she replied. Was her tone now a touch mocking? She'd known all along that I had to arrive at my next question. She stalled it, maybe for her own amusement. "Or 'Les', if you prefer," she went on. "But you're not much of a 'Les' any more, are you. Even back then, you were less of a 'Les" than you thought you were." She smiled at her accidental pun, then smiled to console me. "I think you kind of like what I've done to you. You didn't at first, I grant you. But now? Don't you? Don't tell me you don't!" I ignored that question. It disturbed me, because she wasn't wrong. But I had to know. I tried to be indirect, at first. "April," I said. "How do you know you'd rather be with a real man than with another woman." I paused. "A woman like me, I mean." She looked seriously at me again, indulgent but no way apologetic. Her banter had failed to distract. So she began the preliminaries of an answer. "I don't want to hurt you any more than is necessary, Leslie. You're my dearest girlfriend, and I love you. We've shared so many desires and secrets. I've wanted to share this with you for so long. It's the kind of thing real girlfriends share all the time. But I just couldn't. Not because it's wrong. Not because I thought you wouldn't understand, or that you might take it the wrong way. My best girlfriend would be happy for me, I knew that. But my husband would not be happy, not at all. Not Les! He'd be terribly jealous, and he'd feel so inadequate, he'd feel like such a failure. And then I'd feel sorry for him, poor man, I just know it. What little there is left of him, I mean. And where's the point of that?" "Tell me," I said. I took a deep breath. She was stalling. Then on impulse I took up my purse, and opened it, and took out my compact and lipstick, and looked at my reflection. My face was smooth, nearly inexpressive. No need to touch up anything, not even my lipstick. Perfect. I replaced all that female paraphernalia and snapped my purse shut and smiled conspiratorially. "I'm your best girlfriend, honey. You can tell me!" It worked! After a moment April leaned back relaxed and asked me playfully, "How does a woman know she'd rather make love with a man than with another woman? You answer that for me, Leslie love!" "We learn by doing," I said rather vaguely. I didn't want to put words into her mouth. "Exactly!" April said. She propped her elbows on the table, and her chin on her hands, and she looked at me mischievously. Her eyes were dancing. Maybe also gleaming. "Leslie honey, it's been wonderful! Really marvelous! You'll be so happy for me when I tell you! I'm so glad I can tell someone, finally!" Just then the waiter brought us our main courses. Curry for her, and a small roulade for me. My figure, you know. I sat very still, hoping her new mood wouldn't be dispelled. It wasn't. I took a small bite, and as she did the same, I forced another smile. "Tell me, honey," I said. "How you met, what he's like, what you two do, how you feel about it, everything." I leaned forward as if eager for her to dish the dirt. I noticed irrelevantly that her hairdo was a lot like mine. My new one. Curlier, because her hair was naturally curly. But I knew I could get the same effect with a tighter perm. "This is so exciting," I tried to add. But only a squeak came out. April hesitated only a moment, then spoke. "His name is Scott. He came to the hospital about a year ago, and we began talking almost immediately about revising our surgical procedures with children -- he's a pediatrician. His idea was, gather them all together in a big room and throw them a big party, then the next day do as many as possible all at once. So they could be miserable together and then gradually get well together. And keep each other cheerful when their parents couldn't visit them. It was such an imaginative plan, so considerate, so very sweet. But that's how he is." I cocked one eye at her. My arched eyebrow went way up. "No, I don't suppose you want to know that sort of thing. Well, we got on beautifully from day one. We'd smile at each other at staff meetings, and we began to have lunch together. After a while he started telling me things. Personal things. We began to feel a certain ... attraction. But we never touched each other. Other people thought we had a thing going and made jokes about it, but we didn't. Not then."