Chapter 2

That's right, in triplicate to meet the code requirements, then just leave them on my desk. Hello? Madge! No, I wasn't talking to you, just my secretary. Nothing to it, get everyone working, keep after them, and when they're done make sure they've done it right. Do that, and there isn't much else you have to do. Certainly we can talk now. Yesterday around this time I left the office and went shopping. Had to remind myself to buy Bill some tampons and some new panties, so I did. He's so helpless sometimes. I pay no attention to the laundry for a few weeks, and then I find all the panties I've bought him are stained, that from now on he needs to use tampons when he's having "those days". No of course not, Madge, where would he get menstrual blood? They're stained with semen! Yes, I suppose it's his own semen, some of it, how can I tell? Well, never mind, I'll get there, and then you'll understand.

So anyhow, I slip the pills into Bill's coffee the next night, and the following morning he's feverish and headachy, just as Beth said, terrible cramps, and he calls in to put off his morning appointments, no, he says, better to reschedule everything for the next day. Around ten Beth stops by, she's already been to see Lorie and Helene, so Charlie and Tommy have been fixed, and she did her Joe first thing that morning of course. So she goes in to look at Bill, and takes his temperature, and taps him here and there, and takes her blood samples to keep an eye on him, and looks real worried. She starts whispering to me so Bill can see. Then Bill looks even more worried.

I nod, and Beth explains to him there's this new Virus X, very, very serious, there's no publicity about it or there'd be public panic, he's got it for sure, and there's no fast cure. It affects only men, feeds on testosterone or chromosomes or something, I don't remember, Beth was pouring out gibberish. First it shrivels their balls, then it kills them. But there are precautions you can take, and also there's this antibody to keep it from killing you while the disease is running its course, six months maybe. Pretty clever story, because in fact his balls will go down in size once they're drowning in estrogen, and he'll go impotent too. "This is very serious," she says, and she's going to send a doctor who specializes in this disease. Isolation and bed-rest until symptoms ease off, and follow every prescribed instruction precisely. He needs to sign a waiver for the antibody, and of course Bill signs without reading it, his head's killing him. I witness it, and we've got him for anything we do to him, in case he finds out and threatens to sue everyone in sight, Beth in particular.

Then she gives him the antibody, and Bill realizes this has got to be serious. It's four little slow-release hormone rods she slips under the skin of each arm. Then the butt plug. That's right, Madge, an expanding butt plug! Once he's loaded with his first full-month supply of triple-potency girl-juice, she slips a mineral oil suppository into his butt and then a tranquillizer, and then the butt plug, and it's all firmly in place before Bill even knows what's hit him. His eyes go sort of round and his face goes real worried, like a beagle's, and she tellt a side effect of the drugs that're keeping him alive, to keep his asshole from closing up, so he won't die from being full of shit. I have to leave the room at that one, and then I can't stop laughing! She told me later she thought of the butt plug when she stopped by the hospital to pick up supplies for her morning rounds. It'll hold in different suppository medications until he's absorbed them, expecially the tranquillizers he'll need to stay mellowed out, not thinking too hard about his fatal disease. And it'll keep him dependent on me, she says, because I'm the only one permitted to remove it, so he'll have to ask permission when he goes to the john. And it'll reminded him he's still sick, especially once he's out and about again. And we're both thinking, it can have other uses.

Poor Bill's never had anything like it in his ass before, and I tell you, Madge, he's plenty aware of it from then on, all the time. Every week I turn the knob and make it a teeny bit wider, and he knows it's there all right all over again. He gets used to it by the time his anus is stretched out full, of course, but by then I've got him practicing walking in high heels, and I can see how it forces his hips to sway like a pendulum. It turns out to be a terrific idea all around. With that thing in his rear, he decides, he must be real sick. It's like being nailed to a cross, sort of. And it's handy, because then he never questions any of the things I push into his backside each morning, before I close it up again. From then on, he does what he's told. Well, I moved the timetable up and that afternoon I let him sort of waddle out of bed to visit the bathroom, and to show me how to open the safe where he keeps important papers for the offit then, because Beth tells him he's in for some real bad days before he starts recovering. That's when I started taking over the company, and really making it pay.

Well, we all met that night, and everyone's story is the same: husbands afraid they'll die or lose their balls, and they don't know which is worse. Tommy's really terrified Helene says, and cries and whimpers until his tranquillizer kicks in -- Beth tells her to double the dose, and to add another kind of hormone she's got, a kind they once used to make nursing mothers into contented cows. All four of them are plugged up the ass, and docile, stuck in bed, calling out to us for relief from their headaches and tummy aches, and arranging for long stretches of time off from work.

Well, it turned out Charlie and Tommy work together, and were about to go on six months' paid furlough anyhow, you wouldn't believe it, because their main office is relocating in another city and they'd already decided they didn't want to go. Didn't even think to tell their wives, their life-partners, or even ask Lorie or Helene for an opinion. So they're home for a while, no mistake about it! Beth's Joe is a writer of some kind, works at home and e-mails his copy to whoever's paying him for it. So he's home all the time anyhow. I'm taking over Bill's office. So the really big problem, where does the money come from while we keep our men home and re-educate them, that's solved! Beth says the boys will be really miserable, feverish, aching, very unhappy, for maybe about a week, then they'll pick up. But by then her doctor friend with the throat treatment will come by, and she'll scare them some more so they'll want to start looking like women right off.

Well, Lorie's really getting into it. She wants the doctor to come right away. When she comes in to see Charlie, she says, he still bellows at her. It would do him good, and her too, if he couldn't use his voice for a few days. Then if he's going to lie in bed and yell, she says, she wants to be yelled at by a man with a high-pitched voice wearing full lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow, blush, and if she had her way -- we restrained her a little -- even that cute blonde upsweep she'd mentioned already, topped by piles of curls. Fair enough, considering the abuse she'd taken from him in the past. So we decide to go ahead with makeup, so they'd learn how to put it on properly by themselves while they're still bedridden and can't do much else.

Helene thinks Tommy'll look a little more loveable if he's wearing a frilly nightgown, when she has to bring him his meals in bed. So we all agree on that too. Beth's story makes anything easy -- to keep their balls they'll do whatever crazy thing they're told is necessary. We vote frilly nightgowns and makeup, and decide to leave it to Beth's doctor friend to explain it, and leave it to the tranquillizers to cover any doubts. We agreed to meet again in a week.

Sure, honey, call our lawyer and let him handle it. No, Madge, only to my secretary -- he just came in with some Accounts Receivable over a year old. Can you believe Bill carried some of these sons of bitches forever, at no interest, firms perfectly able to pay us? He thinks he's a businessman? Well, I'm being unfair, Madge, he thought he was a businessman, but he doesn't any more.

So, the hormones begin to get to Bill, with a bellyache Beth tells me is really in his liver while it accommodates to his new body chemistry, and he's fine, his blood counts are excellent, and he's scheduled for his voice operation the next day, Beth assisting. This Dr. Teague, Beth's friend, shows up the next morning. I'm expecting a Dyke, a man-hater, but in comes this short, pleasant, middle-aged lady, well-turned out, with a firm handshake and a steady gaze. And no makeup. She walks in on Bill, and if there was any hesitation or doubt in his mind, it ends immediately. She says right off, "I see no makeup. Why is there no makeup on this patient? Is he in tertiary, that you figure why bother, he's dead already?"

"No," I explain. "He's my husband, and I knew he'd think it was an odd treatment, so if I suggested it he'd think it's silly, so I'd wait until you could..."

"Well, my dear, what's silly is none of his business. You shouldn't have waited. He's a man, isn't he? And this virus is specifically fatal for men. Look at his skin color already. Look at it. The virus lodges in hair roots especially, and the eutrophication is phototropic -- that much we know. So full facial makeup! And you'd better begin his electrolysis at once. No hair roots on that face. And his skin covered at all times if you want him to come through this alive and unscarred. No daylight on facial skin anywhere. Exposure to air and daylight can kill him during this active phase, the next several months. Women's makeup, exactly the way you'd use it on yourself. We know women's makeup contains some form of protection and doesn't cause allergies, and we don't know why, and we don't know what else might. Lipstick day and night! And get him into a nylon nightie at once, his skin is abrading already. Do you have satin sheets for him, too? Now I'll attend to his throat. Those tonsil roots are a core area where the virus lodges. I see he's had no tonsillectomy. I'll attend to that too."

Bill commented that this was... er... unusual treatment. Dr. Teague just said, and talk about icy contempt, "Oh? You know about these things? Have you seen any women with this disease? That was our first clue, it attacks only males past puberty, so we thought it was in some kind of symbiotic parasitism with testosterone. Now we think it's also triggered by secondary sex characteristics, male skin especially. Above all with male testicles. You see what it does to the testicles, and how the patient agonizes while it's doing it, well, it's a welcome death, if it gets that far. We've thought of recommending that testicles be removed at the first sign of the disease, it's so bad. Women are somehow immune. Believe me, you don't want to look like a man. We can treat these symptoms in the early stages, and save lives, if we have the patient's full cooperation. Do we have yours?"

Bill nodded vigorously, and said "Yes! Yes, doctor!" and pulled his covers up to his neck. Dr. Teague then called in Beth, and told me I could leave the room.

Three hours later there was my poor dear Bill, his face badly swollen but looking peculiarly well-groomed, feeling utterly miserable. He had insisted even before Dr. Teague put him under on having everything she prescribed. So I had put foundation, blush, lipstick, eye-shadow, eye-limer, mascara, and one of my prettier full nighties on him, one with puffed sleeves. Then a lot of it came off once he was out. To take advantage of the anesthetic, the electrolysist I called managed to burn out over half of his facial hair follicles, and the other half went during the next few weeks. His throat was raw for a few days, and so was his face. But sure enough, when his voice returned it was no longer that usual deep resonant tone but a high-pitched sound like Minnie Mouse's. He sounded so silly, Madge! I had to try real hard not to laugh. But he did his exercises, and in time he brought it down to a pleasant woman's voice. I must say, I found it charming, once he could speak up without squeaking. I'd close my eyes and imagine that I had a new girlfriend already, and we'd talk about all kinds of things, and he began to adopt some of my other mannerisms too. But he realized he couldn't make phone calls to his office any more, so he had me make them, and then he began sending me instead.

We compared notes every Tuesday. Of the four men, only Tommy kept a kind of flute-like Bimbo falsetto, and Helene said she loved hearing it come out of him. She taught him to do his own make-up, and she especially treasured a moment she came into his bedroom and found him fluffing up the shoulder ruffles on his nightie, so they'd look prettier for her. He was really beginning to get into it. She said that was when she began thinking she might rent him out as a call girl for perverts when we were through with his re-education. Beth told us Joe had done electrolysis years before, because shaving annoyed him. But Charlie had a thick black beard that took the whole six months, three times a week, to make disappear.

Charlie gave Lorie a problem over the nightgown. It made no sense to wear a sexy nightie, he said, when he could wear men's nylon pyjamas. So she used up one of our reserve tricks on him. Friday morning she gave him sedatives enough with his morning orange juice so he dozed off and slept until Saturday morning. Then on Saturday morning she brought him Friday's paper and made a bet with him about a Friday night basketball game, who would win the game "that night" with what point spread. After he made the bet she drugged him again, and on Sunday she told him he'd slept all through Saturday, now it was Sunday, and she'd won the bet. She proved it by showing him the Saturday and Sunday newspapers. The bet was that for six months he'd wear anything she wanted him to wear, anywhere, anytime, and would give her no further trouble. Or if she lost, she'd wear anything he wanted, even the slutwear she hated but he always made her wear when they went out. How could he refuse a bet like that, especially when he knew she knew nothing about basketball?

Anyhow, in the end, all of our husbands' cheeks were as smooth as ours, and their voices were even more mellifluous, and their nighties were soft and their skin was getting softer, and when we snuggled up to them at night they felt smooth as silk.

And after Dr. Teague frightened them about their skin corroding or something, they all used used makeup to cover their faces completely. Bill tried a shortcult with suntan lotion once, but I just kept repeating 'Doctor's orders!' After a while he took pride that he could put his face on every morning neatly, even elegantly, in under a half hour. When he began feeling better during the second month or so, and showed up for breakfast, he was always beautifully made up. I was proud of him, because he really seemed to care about looking nice.