Sandra and Josie smile down at me, each with a hand on the front of their short skirts. The floor beneath me is wet, enough to soak through my pants at the knees, and I try to ignore the smell. The air is thick with the stink of urea, and the sanitary napkin bins needed emptying weeks ago. The wetness under me, I think, is just water from the sink, but I do not permit much thought on the issue.

Not that a women's bathroom is worse than a men's, but I didn't kneel on the floor of the men's room, not if I could help it.

Had I never met these women, I wouldn't be kneeling in a women's room either.

Sandra, Josie, and I went to the same high school and took all the same classes, mostly because not many upper-level courses were offered. The school board didn't think Advanced Placement was a useful program, since so few people signed on for the classes, but then, there were only four, and only one of each: History, English Composition, Chemistry, and Physics. The best of the best students took these classes because those were the ones who wanted them. The teachers made these courses hard, harder than the college courses they replaced, to ensure the students who signed up were the ones who could make the program successful.

I was one of those students. I am a geek. Grades were important to me, more important than most other things, aside from girls and ... girls were the only thing more important than schoolwork, but since I did schoolwork every day and didn't stutter or blush when homework was assigned, that is where all my attention went. I watched the girls in my classes, analyzed them, their clothing, their behaviors, big and little. I could imitate most of these behaviors, but I did not intend to go that route—I didn't want to be a girl, I wanted to be with girls. I wanted to talk to them, joke with them, befriend them, and, when I was alone in my room and homework was done, I dreamed of touching them.

Dreamed, and nothing more.

Women are compared to a separate species, and I believe the metaphor accurate, to a point. Women are trained to be mysterious, hard to get, and so build a mythos around themselves. Women aspire to become goddesses—they dress in colorful, painful, constrictive, and provocative clothing, hide their acne with makeup, and keep boys at a distance for the first few years of interest. Doing so, they garner our admiration, our dedication, or at least, they gained mine.

Sandra, more than most of the other girls I knew, was closest to ascending into deity. I met her before our first AP class together, but since there are few special classes other than AP, she and I did not share many classes prior to our Junior year.

She wore fabulous clothes. I say this not to sound silly, just to reflect the effort she spent to find and coordinate her clothing. She spent hours, sometimes entire days, driving from second-hand stores to Goodwill to consignment sales and the Salvation Army, hunting for clothing. She dedicated as much time to her appearance as she did to her studies, an attempt to raise her self-esteem and overcome the trauma in her past.

I didn't know these things when I first spoke to Sandra. The first day of AP History, my second period class, she walked in wearing a pair of low heels, a light, flouncing yellow skirt, and a tight button-front blouse, the lacework pattern emphasizing her breasts. I saw this because she sat beside me.

"Ready for college, Tyler?"

I stuttered, of course, and gave some sort of answer.

"Too bad they don't grade these classes double, or something, you know? Like, an A in here counts four eight points instead of four? That way the valedictorian isn't somebody from non-AP."

"The valedictorian is always in AP," I countered, though I don't know how I managed not to stutter.

"Just the right kind of people, right? Are you shooting for it?"

I was. Not intentionally, not at first. My Freshman year, I was freaked out about making good grades. I thought high school would be substantially harder than middle school, and acted to ensure I'd get the same straight A's as I did before. When I found out things weren't as hard—harder, but not as much as I anticipated—I decided to aim for valedictorian. Even if I missed, I'd be in the Top Ten, and that was a good thing for college applications.

So, I stuttered an affirmative, and she smirked at me. "I just don't want to take these classes in college."

We spoke, every day, a little bit at a time. She seemed to understand any more than a little would scare me off, and so she focused on safe, short topics. At the time, I was overjoyed a girl would talk to me. I didn't know she had an ulterior motive.

Right before Christmas break, she introduced me to Josie. Josie sat on Sandra's other side, and they chatted when Sandra wasn't speaking to me. Unlike Sandra, Josie bothered less with the "fabulousness" of her clothing and focused on fit and form. She liked t-shirts that didn't quite reach her waist, and her coats hung a bit farther, so her bare skin touched the leather. Her skirts came in all lengths, but they were tight to her hips and flared at the legs unless they were mini, those exactly two inches above her knees, the dress code length. She wore jeans that displayed her butt perfectly, no matter how she stood or sat, and several of these dipped very far forward on her abdomen. I remember her getting sent home once when she stretched to write something on the board: Sandra said that the teacher must've noticed Josie didn't shave that morning.

At the time, I had no idea what that meant.

In February, I found the courage to ask. They laughed at me, then conferred for several minutes.

"Listen," Sandra said, leaning close, "you know that girl's bathroom on the far side of the vo-tech building? The one that no girls actually use because it's too far away?"

I nodded.

"Meet us there after school. If you aren't there by 2:50, we're leaving and you'll never know what we meant, comprende?"

"C-C-Comprende."

They asked a lot of me, sending me through a gauntlet of fellow students who thought I was a pussy and a faggot, and I knew, should I get beaten up and delayed, they wouldn't tell me what I wanted to know. We had an agreement. So, at the end of my last class, I ran across the campus, down the covered walkway between the teachers' parking lot and the vo-tech building, and through a crowd of people, guys mostly, and bigger than me. I was shoved, several times, knocked down and disparaged, but I kept on, my goal clear. I dashed down the stairs, turned right at the auto-repair bay, passed two pairs of bathrooms, then the metalworking area, and finally, at the end of a dim, grimy hallway, found the bathrooms.

The men's side was closed, the door locked and a sign on the door from the principal—several drug users and sellers had been busted inside since the start of the year—but the women's was open. Their door, too, had a sign, also from the principal, threatening suspension, expulsion, and sexual harassment charges to any male who entered. An ironic threat, since the closest coed or all-girls classroom was on the other side of the building, and so the only people who would use this bathroom are boys.

"You made it a minute early," Sandra said, stepping out of the solitary metalworking classroom, Josie behind her.

They intimidated me in normal circumstances, but right then, at the far side of school, everyone packed up and gone, I shivered with fear. These girls could do whatever they wanted to me and leave me handcuffed to the toilet for the janitor to find in the morning. Like what would've happened last time.

I regretted my curiosity more than anything else I've ever regretted. I cursed myself for being so stupid.

Their smiles terrified me. Nothing charitable came from a woman who smiled that way at a man.

"Inside," Sandra ordered, pointing at the bathroom. "Now."

I went into the women's room and they followed. I dripped sweat, and my hands shook. I checked the toilet stalls, wondering if should dash over and puke, or if that would make things worse. In my experience with male bullies, sudden movements prompt cruel beatings.

"Sit against the wall, under the last sink."

I did, leaning forward so not to touch my head to the porcelain. All the other bathrooms had been renovated since the school was built, so now they have counters for the sinks and one long mirror, but this bathroom was the old design, porcelain sinks bolted to the wall with individual mirrors mounted over them and pipes running into the wall. Feeling the pipe against my back, I knew what was coming.

Josie grabbed one hand, Sandra the other, and both wrenched my arms behind me, cuffing my wrists on the other side of the pipe. When the second click sounded, I bowed my head and relaxed, resigned to spending the night here, after what they would soon do to me.

Sandra squatted on one side of me, Josie on the other. "Okay," Josie said, "here's the deal. We don't trust guys. We have reasons, bad ones, so don't ask. You seem nice, and not at all like the other guys we know, so we figured to test you, find out if we can trust you."

"Y-You're leaving me overnight to see if I'll tell?"

Both stared at me with startled expressions, eyes wide and mouths open. "What gave you that idea?" Sandra asked.

"It happened before."

"A girl cuffed in a bathroom and left you?"

"No, a bully at my middle school. He beat me, handcuffed me to the toilet, and beat me more. He would've ... would've..." I started crying, tried to force myself to stop, but that made it worse, and I started gagging on my sobs. As soon as that started, I knew I was moments from puking, and couldn't get a breath to warn them to move. Bullies didn't like it when you threw up on them.

Things got confused for a few seconds, then I found myself being held over the nearest toilet, four hands supporting me while I choked out bologna sandwich and potato chips. When I was done, the hands pulled me back out and knelt me in the middle of the floor, my hands cuffed behind my back. Sandra wiped my mouth with a piece of toilet paper while Josie rubbed my back.

"Are you all right now?"

I looked at Josie, who asked, and at Sandra, who tossed the tissue and flushed the toilet. "I'm sorry," I said, the thing I always say when I don't know what to say.

"Why are you sorry?" Sandra asked, sitting on her heels beside me. "You should've told us something, warned us you didn't want to be bound like that."

I didn't say anything, though I thought, You'd just do it anyway, and laugh as I barfed on myself.

Josie explained, "We just ... need a way to control you. You're not as strong as most guys, but you're still stronger than me, I bet. I'm puny. So ... is the gig up, Sandie?"

"What do you say to this, Tyler," Sandra offered, "you get to talk with two pretty girls about anything you want, and we'll answer most of your questions. You get to hang with us, but you have to wear handcuffs."

I was confused. More than confused, befuddled. "Wha—?"

Josie giggled, then, and stroked my cheek with her finger. "You're cute like that."

"We're straight, stock-solid hetero girls," Sandra stated, "but we don't trust men anymore. Lesbian relationships are not an option because we don't get off on that. We want a man, er, a male around, but one we can control. Think about it: a little concession on your part earns you two girlfriends!"

It was a joke, at the time. Men mistreated them, sorely mistreated them, and they wanted a bit of revenge. Sandra admitted, much, much later, that their treatment of me would've been worse if I hadn't told them my own history, but I knew my place in their lives.

Below.

"As a reward for accepting," Josie said, standing and unbuttoning her jeans, "here's what I got in trouble for."

As I watched, she opened the fly of her pants and showed me her abdomen down to her pubic bone, denuded except for a brown patch right at the top of her pubis. The sight was more than I'd seen, since my computer was porn-blocked, and the sudden stimulation caused a painful erection. Sandra cooed at me, mocking my lack of self-control, and grabbed me to adjust it. I ejaculated in my pants, and she felt it.

Things were quiet for a while, after that first time. A month went by, passing in casual conversation with them, and they didn't mention the event, even though doing so would cause me embarrassment and further exclusion from my schoolmates.

Spring break, according to the calendar, would last a week, beginning on a Monday and ending with Good Friday. After Easter, we'd all be back to class, refreshed and eager for state competency exams. The superintendent didn't expect a heavy snow three days before the break, eleven inches sticking to the roads at the end of March when nothing stuck during all of January and February.

So, Spring break lasted ten days instead of seven, and there was much rejoicing. The day after the snowstorm, the secondary roads were still impassable—by buses, anyway—but the main roads were salted and easily accessible. Especially for a girl who drove a Jeep.

Thursday morning, I was in the living room reading for English when someone knocked on the door. I checked, just to be sure one of my parents hadn't locked themselves out—they did that, once in a while—and saw Sandra and Josie on the front doorstep.

"Care if we come in?" Sandra asked when I opened the door, dangling the handcuffs from her forefinger. She pushed inside, dragging me by my collar to the middle of the living room. In less than a minute, I knelt in the center of the room, my hands restrained behind me. The girls removed their coats, hanging them from the tree by the door.

"Your parents won't be back 'till five, right?" Josie asked. She stretched her arms over her head, showing her flat stomach and inverted navel, then pushed her shoulders back, her breasts distending the shirt. I stared at her, my erection growing already.

"Five-thirty," I answered, the fear returning.

Sandra walked around me, a complete circuit, then stood with her crotch inches from my face. I tilted my head all the way back, trying to not offend her by looking there. As I understood things, if you looked at a girl without her inviting you to, you were molesting her. I've molested a lot of girls, by that understanding, but not that they noticed.

"You were telling us, last time, about being chained to a toilet. What would he have done to you, after the beating?"

"They charged him with attempted forcible sodomy."

"Butt-rape?"

Josie contradicted, "Not male on male. He means," then made a motion with her fist and head.

"Oh. He wanted a hummer?" Sandra took a step back and leaned her face close to mine. "Would you have given him one?"

"He said he'd kill me..."

Sandra grabbed my face and jerked my neck forward. "Let me tell you something, I had to do it and he didn't threaten to kill me. Don't think you're gonna get sympathy from me."

"Y-You had to—"

She slapped me, then turned my whole body toward Josie so she could take a shot. "You can ask any question," Josie ordered, "except about that. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

They both wore skirts, a strange choice for the sudden winter weather, but I learned in moments why they chose them.

"So, forcible sodomy is when you're forced to give a blow job, right?" Sandra asked Josie.

"In this state, anyway. Believe me, I know."

"Does that mean all oral sex?"

She shrugged.

Together, they helped me stand. "Go get a bath towel," Josie requested. I went to the linen closet beside the laundry room, backing into the linens grab one off the shelf, and returned with it. As I completed this task, I knew what they were going to do to me, but it wasn't quite the same. I wanted to go down on a girl, and being forced to do so was not so objectionable as a hairy, liquor-stinking bully shoving his dick in my face.

Sandra snatched the towel from my hands and laid it across the middle seat of the couch. She pointed and I knelt in front of it, facing the couch. The girls conferred a moment, then played a quick game of paper-rock-scissors to decide who went first. Josie won the honor.

She hiked her skirt, dropped her underwear, and reclined on the towel, her legs wide, labia less than a foot from my face. Seeing her like that, two or three days of brunette stubble dotting her outer lips, my erection leapt in my pants, snagging the head against zipper. I doubled in pain and groaned.

"Uhn? What do you mean, uhn?" Josie screeched, grabbing me by the hair. "Lick my fucking cunt, you faggot!"

She tasted of salt, sweat-salt, and a sourness I figured for urine. The tastes were weaker near her canal, where she'd begun to lubricate from my first few licks. I took my time, imagined I was doing this for the first time with a girl who cared about me. I wanted to learn what turned her on, what got her going, so I spent some time with her lips, slipping my tongue between the folds. I lapped her opening, which she seemed to enjoy, and pressed my tongue inside, hoping she would like that more.

She burst out laughing. "He's trying to fuck me, Sandie! He's got his tongue stuck up in me. Bet your cock's that size, too, huh?"

She wrenched me by the hair, yanking my face from her pussy. Her juice and my drool dribbled down my neck, soaking into the collar of my shirt. I hoped, when I looked at her, she'd be aroused, excited. She just looked angry: flushed, but angry.

"What size is your dick, anyway? Help me get his pants off, Sandie."

She shoved me onto my side and they unbuttoned my jeans and yanked them down my legs. With a tug, my boxers joined my pants in a pile at the other end of the couch. The wood floor was cold on my bare skin, so I clenched, making my erection stand higher. That motion earned me a kick in the balls.

Hurting, trying not to puke, I curled into a ball and wept. "Go away, please, go away. I didn't hurt you. I didn't hurt you..."

Josie's anger lessened and Sandra, the kicker, seemed close to an apology. They sat me up and Sandra retrieve a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel. She held it against my aching scrotum, my flaccid dick laying across her arm. It didn't bother her, not that I could tell.

"You're right, Tyler. You didn't hurt us. I went too far." She sighed. "I owe you one request."

"One request?" My balls ached up into the pit of my stomach. I wanted nothing more than for them to leave me alone.

"Within reason."

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Is that your request?"

Tears were still dripping from my eyes and my chest was tight with sobs. "This isn't some game for you, is it? If you just wanted to play with me, it wouldn't be like this. What did I ever do to you? I like girls, I like them a lot. I'm not an asshole or a rapist. Please, go away, don't hurt me anymore."

They laid me on the couch, my arms still cuffed. While Sandra got me settled and slid my boxers on again, Josie removed her skirt and sat beside my head. With a little urging, I put my head on her naked lap, still fragrant from her arousal. She played with my hair, brushing it from my sweaty forehead.

"That wasn't the first time, was it?" she asked, her voice a calm, almost motherly. "The first time a bully got you?"

"No."

"It wasn't the first time for sexual violence, either?"

"No."

"Were you raped?"

"Yes."

She paused, then, "Me, too."

"Me, three," Sandra said, returning from the kitchen.

"You're not gay, are you?" Josie asked.

"Not in the least."

"So, the rumors..."

"Are from the rape."

"Did you turn him in? Get him arrested?"

"No. I ... he'd hurt me, really bad. The one who was arrested, he was caught in the act."

Sandra reached behind me and unlocked the cuffs, shifted my hands in front of my body, and locked them again. "You understand our concern, right? To keep you restrained?"

"I do."

"Are you in counseling?" Josie asked, her hands now roving my chest. "If you're not, I know a good one."

"I'm seeing one. He's nice. He ... he's gay, but he knows how I feel."

"Mine's ... he's not Eric, is he?" Sandra inquired.

"No, but in the same office."

"When was this?"

"I was thirteen. Eighth grade."

"Same as me," Sandra admitted. "Well, that's when it started."

"Tyler, if I asked you, would you go down on me?"

What a stupid question. "Yes."

"So, from earlier, you'd have consented, even though we didn't ask."

"I guess."

"Do you want me to lay back, like before, or sit on your face?"

"I still hurt."

Sandra cleared her throat, a guilty expression on her face. "If, uh, if you do her, I'll do you."

"Okay."

So, with a little rearranging, I sucked Josie's pussy at one end of the couch while Sandra sucked my dick at the other. When I managed to give Josie a climax, they traded places, tagging hands even, and I did the same for Sandra.

Sandra didn't shave, though her cocoa-colored hair was trimmed. She had very pink lips and tasted stronger of musk. Her clitoris was bigger, too, large enough that I didn't have to include the hood when I sucked. When she orgasmed, a little bit of moisture hit my lips, a bitter-sweet fluid thicker than urine and far less salty.

After Sandra dismounted, Josie finished me off, her rough, jerking hand-job dulling my orgasm and flicking semen onto my shirt and boxers. She didn't care about the embarrassment of my mother discovering spunk-stained clothes, or even the questions raised when I did my own laundry.

Wiping her hand on my shirt, she grinned at me. "Bet you didn't think you'd get a happy ending, did you?"

The girls dressed, removed the handcuffs, and kissed me on the cheek. "See you later," Sandra said. She waved as she pulled the door closed, a little motion of her fingers.

They left me alone, two kinds of cum drying on my clothes and an ache in my lower abdomen. I thought, in that moment, This must be what it's like when a girl loses her virginity.

I didn't laugh about it then.

I expected them to return during Spring break, but they didn't. After the break ended, everyone in my classes buckled down, studying for AP exams and state competency tests, the first of which beginning in two weeks. Sandra and Josie talked to me in English, and we spent more time than usual with each other in a series of after-school study sessions the teacher arranged.

As before, they never mentioned what we did, or what they did, but once, near the end of a study session, Sandra exhaled in frustration before reaching into her bag for something. She whispered to get my attention, then flashed the cuffs and smiled, as if she was inviting. Scared someone would notice, I ignored her, careful to keep my attention on the practice essay I wrote. She didn't do it again, though I couldn't understand why she did it in the first place: people would ask questions of her first.

By the end of April, I felt ready to ace the AP exams and confident of my performance on the competency tests. Sandra and Josie expressed similar confidence, when we spoke of it, though they were far less sure about the four-hour stricture of our upcoming exams.

I suppose it was stress that brought them to my house on the last Friday of April. My mother, to my unending shame, answered the door when they knocked. Their presence confused her, since I had not mentioned any females in my life, and she knew me to be deathly shy, especially after what happened to me. That two girls showed up on a weekend night to collect her son was a welcome development, and she happily rushed me upstairs to change clothes and "freshen up" so I could go out with them.

That evening was the first time I offered my wrists to them. Josie climbed in the back of Sandra's Jeep with me, handcuffs at the ready, and I presented my hands. My willingness made her pause, but she clapped them on me anyway, then snuggled close, like a girlfriend.

"Where are we going?"

"Thought we'd take you shopping," Josie supplied. "I need some new lingerie and Sandra, well, Sandra is always looking for stuff."

"Okay."

"How's your therapy coming? Any breakthroughs?"

"I-I ... my therapist let me cut back to once every two months. I'm doing okay, that he can tell."

"Was it bad? After it happened?" She rubbed her hands, as if she was cold.

"Yes. I ... uh, I had to be hospitalized for ... injuries. They didn't regulate my morphine supply, didn't think I'd abuse the privilege, but the shift nurse checked on me, caught me..."

"You tried to overdose?"

I nodded.

"Ouch. I hate being on suicide watch. No privacy."

"A detective came by, every day, asking for me to say who did it. Told me the rapist wouldn't get me, even if the prosecution failed. I didn't believe him."

"You should've," Sandra said. "It'd be easier for you to prove you didn't want it than I could."

"I guess."

"The gay rumor, Sandie."

"Oh ... that ... yeah, forget it."

"Why is it like this?"

"Like what?"

"Why do we have to prove we didn't want to be raped?"

"Years of shithead misogynists in power who believe women are permanently consenting to sex. And weaker men, for that matter."

Sandra took the turnpike around the city, exiting for the mall on this side. It didn't bode well that they wanted to go to this mall, a place where we weren't likely to see anyone from school. I wouldn't pass as a woman if they decided to dress me up as one, or hoped I wouldn't: That would be too much for my sanity.

"You can behave if we uncuff you, right?" Josie asked, dangling the keys in my face.

"Yes. You know I will."

"All right, then."

To prove I would be a "good little boy," I stuffed my hands in my pockets and pretended they were still cuffed. They led, I followed, as we entered the mall, headed directly to Victoria's Secret. Once inside the store, the girls picked through piles of panties, more than I'd ever seen in one place before. My mother preferred I not enter a "women's store," for fear I might become a pervert, maybe, so I had little experience with all this. When they asked my opinion, I demurred in a positive way.

"What is your size now, anyway?" Sandra asked Josie as they sorted through a rack of frilly bras.

"I don't know, but I'm smaller. My mom insisted that weight-training would make me a little bigger, you know? Fill my chest wall with muscle and push them out, but I just lost the fat. Here, 36B," she said, passing a lipstick-pink bra to Sandra.

"Thanks." She held it up to herself, for some reason, then looked at me. "What size are you, anyway?"

"I don't know, like I said," Josie replied.

"Not you. Tyler."

"Please don't," I whimpered.

They watched me for a few moments, no doubt tracking the flow of blood from my face and the green hue that replaced it.

"Anyway," Sandra said, like nothing had happened.

After picking several models of bras and complimentary bottoms, they drug me to the changing room and made me stand beside the entrance, facing out until prompted to look. The store was sparsely populated, though a steady stream of women came and went, browsing or refilling necessities. Behind me, the girls chatted over the stall dividers, quiet murmuring I couldn't distinguish with the crowd noise outside.

"Tyler, you can look now."

I turned to see them both shirtless. Sandra's bra lifted her breasts, mounds of jiggling cleavage pushed high on her chest, while Josie's seemed too small, her cleavage squeezed out of her bra in an unappealing way. The effect made me think of clenching a water balloon in the center. I commented on the ill fit, and she gave me a pleased grin.

"Turn back around."

Facing the store again, I tried my best to adjust my erection without it being obvious, and by not being "obvious," my squirming drew a few disgusted glares from shoppers. They didn't report me to the staff, so I must have just been no more than an temporary annoyance.

"What do you think?"

This time, they wore only underwear. Sandra wore matching green, a smooth-cup bra and panties cut high, higher than her hip bones. Josie's lingerie was pastel pink, the bra fitting this time, the band of her panties lower than Sandra's but the front made of translucent material, her patch of hair visible. At the same time, they turned, showing that their panties were thongs, and my dick jumped in my pants, the head bumping painfully against my belt.

"You seem to have a problem," Sandra said, eyes on my pants.

"Think we should do something about that?" She darted a step into the store proper, glanced around to be sure no one was watching, and yanked me into her stall, Sandra on her heels.

The cuffs were on me and my pants pooled around my ankles. The girls conferred in frantic whispers, stripping and putting on their own underwear—didn't want to soil un-bought clothes, I suppose—and forgot for a moment that I was in the stall with them. I saw them naked, Josie's tiny brown nipples crinkled, standing out from heavy breasts, Sandra's large, ruddy areolas capping almost the entire tips of her small ones. Since our last meeting, Sandra had shaved, her pubic hair consisting of a long strip of hair ending at the top of her puffy lips.