28: On Becoming a Woman

THAT TAKES ME BACK to a couple of thousand years ago, which was the whole point of my story with Liz. This was back a few years—maybe a hundred or two—after I’d parted ways with Issa. I’d been in India for quite some time, enjoying the sites and the people. I’d even taken time—with several of my women—to study Buddhism. I could see Issa’s hand in that easily. He told me he had been here before and studied the ancient and peaceful religion.

That was a funny thing to me. Buddhism is such a peaceful religion, and yet it honors its god of war, Skanda. Skanda is the protector of the people and—I shuddered—the slayer of demons. Well, I’d killed one myself once. I determined to simply avoid contact with him.

Given an Indian makeover and some silent observation of customs, I blended in well with the populace and did not try to join the wealthiest or most powerful people. I was a trader. I used my boat to travel from island to mainland with goods needed by one or the other. And sometimes, I journeyed across the subcontinent on foot with a caravan bringing rare items from the coast to the people farther inland. It was a good life and I genuinely like the people of India.

Occasionally, I would find a woman in a household who felt it was her duty and privilege to provide sex for the guest (me). Mostly, though, the natives of India were respectful of and possessive of their women, so I contented myself with slipping into the infinity room where there were dozens of women eagerly waiting for me to bed them.

“Buy me, Bob,” my lover said. I had gone to bed in the home of my client, Ravi. Not long after, his wife had joined me there.

“I don’t trade in people,” I said.

“Then buy me and set me free. I will still serve you forever.”

“Forever, Lakshmi, is a very long time. Why do you wish to escape from your husband?” I asked.

“He does not care for me. He took my dowry and gambled it away. Then he went to the temple Devadasi and spent the rest there to attract good luck. Since then, he has been a successful trader but prefers the Devadasi to his own wife. I languish in unfulfillment. Only when a guest arrives does he send me to be filled. And you fill me like no other. Buy me and take me away from here.”

It was not unheard of. In fact, I’d often purchased slave women I felt were being abused and set them free. Nor did they all immediately submit to me. Some came to me to ‘pay me’ for freeing them. Those I refused. Some ran away as soon as they were free. And some few had joined my harem when they discovered what a life of freedom in my world could truly be like. I wasn’t sure which category Lakshmi would fall into, but it didn’t make a difference to me. I negotiated with her husband.

“I can tell you are not satisfied with my offer,” Ravi said. “This is beautiful silk, but to trade, I must see a profit. If I pay more, I cannot afford to feed my household.”

I noted that he did not say family. Lakshmi told me there were no children in the house and she was the only wife. But he kept a dozen female servants, whom I could only guess served him in the ways Lakshmi was denied.

“I am a lone traveler,” I said. Not exactly true since I had arrived with a caravan. “My rugs have no company waiting for me when I set up my tent. I would give you this fine measure of silk as well as five tetradrachmas of silver if you will give me your wife, Lakshmi.”

“Bob, Bob, Bob. I would like to take you up on your offer, but other traders in the area would soon hail me as a dishonest man and I would lose all my trade. If you would have my wife in exchange for the silk, that I can give you. But no coins must transfer between us when a person is involved. I am not a slaver and would not be known as one,” Ravi said.

“I honor your commitment to honesty,” I said. “In honor of that and the fair trade you have offered me, I will donate five silver tetradrachma to the temple of Yellamma in your name. May the goddess grant you your heart’s desire.”

The deal was done. The temple gladly accepted my donation and I was nearly dragged inside to make a prayer while being drained of my semen, but I passed that privilege on to Ravi who happily spent the next month getting his heart’s desire.

“Bob, was I worth so much?” Lakshmi said as she waited naked in my tent.

“Lakshmi, your value has no price. Your freedom was assured as soon as I dropped the coins at the temple. Now you may dress and determine what the course of your life will be from this point forward,” I said.

“You do not want me?” she asked near tears. “Am I nothing to a man so wealthy as you?”

“Lakshmi, my desire is to dwell between your thighs. But you do not owe me for the gift of your freedom. You will not be forced into a marriage or a bed. You may travel or find a new husband or even establish your own household. But I will not take you only because you believe you owe me for your freedom. It would no longer be freedom.”

She sat on my sleeping rug for a long time as she contemplated what I had said. She made no move to dress, which I found rather distracting. She was a very attractive woman of about eighteen, and for all her claims of abuse in the household, it was obvious she had not been subject to hard labor or to beatings. I chalked it up to emotional abuse of not being valued for herself in his household. I promised myself that would never be the case in my household, with me or with any of my women.

As she sat contemplating her future, I opened a portal into the infinity room and my wives and concubines hurried into the tent with food and drink for us. Of course, they were all as naked as Lakshmi and the woman watched them intently as they went about their tasks, each pausing for a moment of loving kisses and touches with me before she returned to the infinity room.

“Bob, you are a great ojha,” Lakshmi said, using the local word for shaman or perhaps sorcerer. “I know that you must be pure of heart to work such magic as I have seen. My heart cries out to be the lover of such a man and to bring him joy all his days. I see you have many women who feel the same as I do. I would become one of them. Will you take me to your room beyond this door and install me as the least of all your women?” She prostrated herself in obeisance.

“Rise up, Lakshmi. Let us sit and dine and talk about what may be. Do you not wish to be free to choose any life you might want?”

“Would it not be my prerogative as a free woman to choose a life as a wife to the man I love?”

“Hmm,” I said, contemplating the life of a free woman. “In other words, freedom as you understand it includes the freedom to not be free?”

“Is anyone truly free in any other sense? I have thought about this all my life, as I listened to the teachings of a local Brahmin. At one point or another, we choose what we will be bound to or we are forced into bondage. No person is ever free without thought or responsibility except blessed Buddha. To imagine we are, merely points us to a deeper bondage.”

“Lakshmi, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I accept you and will take you as my wife.”

That was a word that brought her great joy and she expressed her joy by pushing aside our table of food and planting herself on my staff of pleasure repeatedly.

For all my sojourn in India, Lakshmi was my wife when I was with people or needed an assistant. Like the other women, she stayed in the infinity room the rest of the time and, as a result, did not age.

Which brings me to the point of this story—I think. I was preparing to go out in the bazaar of a large city near the southern tip of the continent. I would be loading my boat with goods to trade up the east coast of India over the next few years. Of course, my little boat held much more than it appeared to, as I could put all my goods in the infinity room and then board the little craft.

Lakshmi was with me and just before I opened the tent, she grabbed my arm.

“Bob! You can’t go out there. Your horns are showing!” she cried.

“Oh! How long have I had this body? I seem to have lost track. I’ll have to put on a new look. Hold the flap open just a bit so I can see out from the back of the tent and I will choose a new body to model mine after.”

I had worked the transformation spell so many times over the past centuries that I had only to fix an image in my mind and with a few words, I could transform to it. I watched out the little gap Lakshmi made in the tent and watched the people outside. I finally spotted a man I thought would be good to replicate. He was obviously a merchant and I always made a few little adjustments on the fly. I began the spell, focusing on the image I wanted to portray.

Just at that moment, a woman passed between me and the man. Normally, that would make no difference because the image was burned into my mind. But this woman was the most beautiful woman I had ... Okay, I know you won’t believe she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, since I had lain with some of the world’s finest women—including the goddess of love and lust herself. But she was so beautiful that it completely stopped my train of thought. She filled my vision with her beauty and as I finished the spell, I felt myself transform. Lakshmi turned to me and suddenly let the tent flap close as she gasped.

“Bob! Ah ... What should I call you now?”

“What? Why not Bob like always?” I cleared my throat trying to get used to the treble tones of my new voice. I might need to adjust that.

“But ... You’re a woman!”

“What?” I looked down at myself, past the very nice tits I had on display to the vacancy between my legs. “What?” I repeated. Caught as I’d been by the charms of the woman outside, I must have muttered the feminine form of the transform verb instead of the masculine. There was no mistake that I was, in every detail, a woman.

“What am I going to do now?” I asked myself as I sank onto the rug. My boobs bounced. Oh, blessed Aphrodite. Is this what they feel like to you?

“Bob, stop touching yourself. You need to dress appropriately or our shopping day will be wasted.”

“Dress. Clothing.” I opened the door to the infinity room and my concubines immediately started giggling. They filed through the tent, touching me. I was quite embarrassed and kept making futile gestures to ward them off. Eventually, they got the message and brought me fine clothes. I was nearly ready to go out.

“Bob, we need a man. It is not wise for two women to go through the bazaar unescorted. We could find ourselves on an auction block. Especially, looking as hot as you do. Did you have to become so beautiful?” Lakshmi asked.

“Send me out a man willing to escort two beautiful women through the bazaar,” I called into the infinity room. Really, it was ridiculous to think that I, Bob, needed an escort. I was sure I could handle myself.