(Army Private Richard Bromely risks his security clearance after a chance meeting with a transsexual in January 1968. Will it change his life?)

Struggles

A Weekend in San Francisco - Part Two of Two

Out on the street Rich no longer felt alone in the big city with Frannie on his arm. They hailed a cab with Rich getting in first. Before Frannie closed the cab door the driver recognized her.

"Where to, Frannie? Finocchio’s?” Frannie nudged Rich and told him to give the cabby a couple of bucks and off they went. On the drive up Market Street turning left onto Kenny and heading toward Broadway, Frannie sat close to Rich holding his hand. He liked this; it was comfortable, sweet. He looked closely at her, admiring the ringlets of her shoulder length hair, real hair and feeling her softness. He didn’t feel this was strange, or weird. He was with a woman; at least that is what it felt like to him. Frannie talked about Finocchio’s and how she tried it once, tried being on stage in drag; did it for a year or so.

“But that was before I started hormones.” She explained. Once I started changing, it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t one of them anymore; it wasn’t drag anymore. I just wanted to live as a woman, not pretend to be one on stage.” Rich squeezed her hand as if he understood. He didn’t but he was enjoying hearing about a world he never knew existed and wondering what was in store at Finocchio’s. He felt like he had broken into the side of San Francisco most visitors never knew or saw.

The cab pulled up to a large well-lit club with a marquee, “Finocchio’s” in lights. A man in a bright jacket and tight pants opened the door.

“Frannie!” He exclaimed. “Always great to see you, sweetie. You look fabulous.” He added as he hugged her and kissed her on each cheek. He turned to Rich and gave him a hug.

“This your date, Frannie? Found a cute one.” He told her as he looked at Rich who felt as uncomfortable as he could be. The man turned to Rich. “If Frannie doesn’t treat you right, I’ll be here waiting.”

“Enough Mark.” Frannie admonished the man. “This is Richard and he’s a very special friend so stay away from him.” Laughing to show it was all in jest.

“Is it ok if I call you Richard? It sounds so regal.” Frannie asked Rich as she took his arm and breezed through the door held open by the man who greeted them.

Inside they were again greeted by a young man wearing a suit with a white shirt and a bow tie. He had make-up on including eye shadow, mascara, blush and lipstick. Again Frannie was greeted with grace and familiarity.

“Frannie, welcome. I have a table for you. Up front as usual?” The man in the make-up took Frannie’s arm and guided her toward an empty table near the stage. The room was large with high ceilings and chandeliers. It was packed, mostly with men but also with many women, real women Rich was sure. Almost everyone was very well dressed, the real women in dressy dresses or well-tailored suits; the men almost all wore jackets, many with ties. Some though wore outlandish clothes, almost costumes. With his military haircut, basic shirt and pants Rich was not only underdressed he was a distinct minority.

Rich and Frannie ordered a drink and while they waited for the show to start they chatted often being interrupted by someone stopping to talk with Frannie.

"So Richard, what's your name?" Frannie asked as they waited for the first performer. Rich didn't understand.

"What? It's Rich, uh Richard!"

"No silly. Your fem name? What name did you give to the girl inside?"

Rich hadn't thought about things like that in a couple of years. ‘Girl inside?’ he didn’t think of it like that now. What with school, getting engaged, and the army, he had put all that behind him, mostly; all that crazy pretend girl stuff was in the past, locked tight in that box, except for the occasional indulgence, like the panties back in his room at the Y. But as a boy, and a teen, he had a name he used when he put on his sister' dresses.

"Uh, I don't..., I ..." he stuttered grappling with a way to avoid answering.

"Come on Richard. Out with it. Let me guess. Um, I know. Richelle, its Richelle." she guessed proudly, giggling.

"No, no. Gee Frannie you have a way of getting things out.” He said still trying to avoid answering.

“It’s my job.” Frannie answered while giving him a kiss on the cheek and pushing her breasts against his arm.

“Ok, it's Vickie, Victoria." he admitted blushing.

"Victoria. I love it. King Richard and Queen Victoria; Queen Victoria is like one of us. That’s funny but so regal, so proper. Why Victoria?" She asked getting serious again.

“Oh God. It was so long ago." he started trying to remember why he began calling himself Vickie. It certainly wasn’t after the famous Queen of England.

Rich just didn't just come up with 'Vickie', he stole it. When he was eight and nine his only playmate, almost, was a girl a year older named Vickie. Rich spent a lot of time at his grandmother’s, at Gramma’s, while his mom helped in the store in town. Vickie, Rich's childhood friend, lived with her parents and baby brother in a little cottage behind Gramma’s rather large house, and her mother often worked cleaning and doing laundry at the big house, at Gramma’s. As a girl, Vickie could do anything Richie could, but of course, always did it in a dress; running, climbing trees, jumping rope, shooting marbles, having a tea party, or playing dolls. With few other kids the same age in the neighborhood, Richie and Vickie were inseparable for two summers until Vickie's father got a job at a steel mill in Pittsburgh and they moved.

"There was this girl I played with when I was, oh, probably eight. Her name was Vickie. She was great, so fun. She did everything I did, but always in a dress. I was so jealous and I think she knew it. Once we were playing and she said, and I remember this perfectly, 'I wish you were a girl. I don't have any girls to play with'. She got this look on her face and she told me to follow her into her room. Her mom was over at my Gramma's so it was just the two of us." Rich explained to Frannie who sat transfixed by the story.

The memory came back to Rich clearly and fully now; it was a wonderful and sweet thought. Vickie, the playmate, had lots of dresses in her little closet and she held up two against Richie, finally settling on a pink one with some lace. She ordered her friend, the boy, to take off his shirt, pants, and boy underpants, turning her back and covering her eyes. The boy was scared and resisted; the girl, the one little Richie always thought he was, wanted to wear the dress. Vickie, the real girl, must have realized she had missed something so she opened her dresser drawer, the one with the panties and slips, the one representing the basic difference between little boys and little girls, and took a pair of her best panties from her dresser handed them to the boy before turning her back.

"Put these on and then the dress." She told him. He did but the dress got stuck and he struggled. Vickie turned and helped him with the sleeves and buttoned it up in the back. She guided him to the mirror and showed him how cute they looked together; two little girls, two friends. The scared little boy was not in the reflection in the mirror. Rich still remembered what he saw; a happy girl inexplicably at peace.

For the rest of the afternoon the two girls, eight and nine, innocently played; mostly with dolls, as he remembered. They lost track of time until Vickie heard her mother come in the house and call to her. Both panicked and Vickie quickly unbuttoned the dress Rich was wearing but there was no time for little Richie to change the underwear. While he jumped back into his pants and shirt, Vickie hung up the dress and threw little Richie’s underpants in her drawer with all of the panties, closing it just as her mom came dramatically through the door.

Rich didn’t remember if Vickie’s mom suspected anything or said anything about what the two friends were doing behind the closed door all afternoon. All he remembers is he wore Vickie’s panties home and hid them. She never asked for them back and she never offered to return his boy’s underpants. He kept those panties until they became too small for even his skinny frame, often wearing them when he wore his sister’s dresses. The two little friends, the two girls, Richie and Vickie, never had a chance to play in their dresses together again.

“So I guess I just started calling myself Vickie sometime after my friend moved away.” Rich told Frannie finishing his story about his adventure into a girl’s world when he was little just as the lights dimmed and music began for the show.

Rich wondered why Frannie didn’t say anything and just hugged him so warmly and so lovingly until he saw the tear on her cute feminine cheek.

* * *

The car ride back to Frannie’s seemed longer than the one to Finocchio’s. A fog had rolled in and Rich was disoriented, not sure which direction the cab was headed. He assumed it was back toward the club where they met, near where Frannie had a small flat.

Frannie again sat close to Rich holding his hand, resting her head on his shoulder. They talked some mostly about likes and dislikes, favorites this or that, childhood memories, the good ones. Rich was still marveling at the show, female impersonators they were called. He found it hard to believe men could do that; make themselves look so completely like a woman, usually a known movie star or performer; the makeup, the gowns, the accentuated female figure, and amazingly the completely hidden male parts. They were a perfect caricature, so real but at the same time so outlandish. Rich wondered what was so alluring, so appealing about men pretending to be women; was it a statement about what our culture thought about the differences between men and women? Was it elevating women or devaluing them, mocking them? Was it a parody of life? Naïve Rich Bromely didn’t understand it.

The cab stopped in the middle of the block on the street adjacent to the club where Rich met Frannie. Frannie’s eyes were closed and Rich nudged her.

“Oh, we’re here.” Frannie paid the cabby and helped Rich out of the car, putting her arm around his waist.

“I live up there.” She said pointing to a window on the second floor above a book store.

“Do you want to come up?” She asked leaning against him.

Frannie guided Rich through a door next to the store, down a dark hallway and up a flight of stairs. At the top she unlocked the door to the left and pushed it open.

“Excuse the mess but its home.” She said as she pulled Rich into a small apartment. She didn’t turn on a light but Rich could see that there was really just one large room with a small area to the right serving as the kitchen and living area combined, and a bedroom, really just a sleeping area partitioned by a curtain hanging from the ceiling. There was a small separate bathroom.

Frannie closed and locked the door turning toward Rich. She put her arms up around his neck and kissed him, gently on the lips whispering in his ear.

“In here you’re not Richard. Here you can be Victoria. Here you don’t have to hide.”

Rich did feel safe, almost like when he was with his friend Vickie when he was eight. But those feelings were also threatening and he was scared, not of Frannie but of himself, of that girl inside Frannie talked about. Frannie kissed him again and he relaxed, pulled her close and held her tighter. He buried his face in her hair and felt her softness against him. Frannie guided him to the bed and pushed him down.

“Wait here.” She commanded. She went to the small closet next to the bathroom and returned with a nightgown and sat down next to Rich still sitting on the bed. She unbuttoned his shirt and helped him take it off, unbuckled his belt and pants, and stood up pulling him to a standing position next to her. Rich felt his pants fall to his ankles. Frannie put the nightgown over his head and helped him fit his arms through the sleeves. Before she let the silky material fall around him she grabbed the band of his men’s cotton briefs and squatting, pulled them off. Rich felt her hair brush his half erect penis and thought she might touch him but instead she stood up and let the gown flow over him down to his ankles.

She stood up again putting her arms around his neck and whispering in his ear.

"Does that feel good, Victoria?"

As he answered with a soft 'yes' she pushed him back onto the bed.

"Wait. I'll be right back." She told him as she stepped away from the bed and unzipped her dress. In the dim light, softly seeping in from the city around them, Rich watched as she pulled her arms from the loose dress and let it fall to the floor. Rich could see the silhouette of a woman, not a girl, standing in bra, panties, garter and stockings. It was not something he had watched before, not in person; a woman preparing for bed, for bed with him. Frannie unhooked her stockings from the garter, sat on a chair next to a small dressing table and unrolled each from her legs. She then stood and unhooked her bra, removed it and hung it on the back of the chair.

"Still awake, Victoria?" she asked aware he was watching her every move.

"You're beautiful, Frannie." He confessed. Frannie wasn’t gorgeous but showed no resemblance to the boy she once was.

Frannie's parents were both Polish immigrants but came to this country as children during the war, the first big one. While not beautiful she was cute enough but suffered from her inherited large frame. Except for her breasts she had no real figure. That didn't matter to Rich; she was otherwise female, soft smooth hairless skin. She stood up and unhooked the garter and let it drop; opened a drawer in the small dresser and took out a nightgown, silky, lacy in a pale green. She pulled the gown over her head, let it fall and went into the bathroom sat and peed. She brushed her teeth.

"You need to use the potty, sweetie? I have a new toothbrush if you want to use it."

Rich rolled out of bed and met Frannie coming back to the bed. She stopped and put her arms around him holding him close. Rich felt her soft body through their nightgowns; under the nightgown she was naked except for the tight panties. Rich felt nothing that said she was anything but woman. They parted and in the bathroom he found the toilet seat down. He raised the seat and tried to pull up his nightgown to pee but could not easily hold the gown up and hold his penis to guide the stream at the same time. He gave up, lowered the seat, pulled his nightgown up and sat down. He felt the nightgown cover his legs while he pushed his penis down so he could pee, like a woman. He wondered what it would be like never to have to pee standing at a urinal again. He concluded that it would be inconvenient at times but the thought was otherwise appealing. He finished, stood up enjoying the feel of the nightgown falling back around his legs. He brushed his teeth and washed his hands.

Frannie was waiting for him as he laid down beside her. She pulled him to her and kissed him.

“I'm so glad I found you tonight Victoria. You're very special. You know I don't just pick up any ol' G.I. I haven't done this for so long. I don't do tricks anymore." She explained guiding his hand to her breasts.

Rich was lost to the moment. This 23 year old man, not much more than a boy really, had never been in bed with a girl before, or even a woman, not for sex or for love. He loved feeling her, touching her. They kissed as he played with her breasts, feeling her nipples harden through the nightgown. Rich forgot about everything he had already experienced that night, the cross-dressing gay guys in the bar, the female impersonators. He even forgot what Frannie had told him; about being born a boy, about hormones and even about looking forward to surgery so she could become a complete woman.

Rich now felt Frannie’s hand between his legs, through his nightgown. He was now ready, so ready and so lost in the moment. Rich tried to put his hand between Frannie’s legs but she stopped him.

“Slow down, Victoria.” Frannie ordered as she pulled his hand away. She pulled his nightgown up exposing his erection and shifted herself down until he felt her breath on him. Soon he felt himself in her mouth but when he was about to come, she stopped and came back to him, back to where they were face to face again. She kissed him fully, pushing her tongue into his open mouth.

“You are special Victoria. Tonight’s for you, sweetie.” She then moved back down and took him again into her mouth, this time so very gently and softly. He was lost and let himself go, feeling sex like he never had before. Frannie held him in her long after he came, keeping him warm, making it last, making him safe. She was still there long after he had lost his erection. Rich finally pulled on her, trying to get her to come back to him. He wanted to hold her; he wanted to give her what she gave him. In this moment Rich had lost any inhibition he had about giving oral sex to a man; to Rich Frannie wasn’t a man and Rich just wanted to make love to this wonderful sweet soft woman. It didn’t matter if what she had between her legs was a penis or a vagina; he just wanted to touch it, kiss it, taste it.

Frannie stopped her gentle sucking and returned to face Rich. He again tried to touch her, grabbling hold of the band of her tight confining panties, trying to pull them down. He was above her now pulling on the panties, hoping to release whatever was beneath them. Again she stopped him.

“No Victoria. I can’t let you do that. You don’t like men like I do and I have vowed not to have sex until after, after the surgery. I want a man to come inside me, not the other way around.”

Rich stopped pulling on her panties. He was not just surprised but also disappointed. He wanted to see her there, wanted to make her feel as good as she did him.

“Please Victoria.” Frannie pleaded. “Just lay on top of me. Let me feel your weight. Let me imagine what it will be like, after the operation.” She begged.

Rich repositioned himself, like he would if having sex with a girl, not that he had missionary sex with a girl before; he had not. He lay down on top of her and felt her breasts. Frannie held him tightly but then moved her hips as if they were really having sex like a man and a woman.

“Fuck me, Richard. Fuck me hard.” She commanded switching to the male name. He did. Rich pretended he was penetrating her, pretended he was moving in and out of her. As he did, he became erect again.

“Oh Richard, I feel that. Oh I love that.” She almost yelled. Rich wondered if Frannie really was sexually aroused. How could she be in that confined state? Soon she was making noises as if her passion was increasing and finally she let out a squeal like she had climaxed. Rich stopped his faux fuck and laid quietly on top of her. She kissed him gently.

“You are so wonderful, Victoria. I’m sorry I called you Richard, but, uh, well, I got a little carried away.” She said smiling. “That hasn’t happened before. Vickie, I had an orgasm.” She kissed him again. “You’re different, wonderfully different. You make me feel so, so, God, I don't know, so real.”

“To me Frannie, you are real.” He said but then teased. “I was just starting to enjoy the Victoria thing and then you want me to do you like a Richard.” He tickled her. They wrestled and tickled and played and laughed until they finally just quietly held each other, locked like two young lovers, and drifted asleep.

Rich woke up in the still dark feeling the sweet wet warmth of Frannie’s mouth again engulfing his penis. It was wonderful but strange. Strange because he was not erect. He was soft and feeling something so different; the beautiful feeling of excitement but without the hard demanding need to ejaculate. Maybe it was because he had been asleep, or was just so relaxed. Whatever it was it was a whole new and phenomenal experience. He tried not to think about it, tried to think about all that had happened in a few short hours. Then he thought about his secret, the one that was now at least partially exposed. Was he different like Frannie claimed, he wondered? Was there really a girl inside? What was Frannie going through and was it real, or was she just crazy, destined to a life of casual relationships and ultimate disappointment?

For Rich there was another more critical consideration. Was what happened to him in the last few hours just a coincidence, something that just happed, or was there some energy behind it, either Rich’s own secluded desire to seek out his other self, or something in the universe that placed him with this, what did she call herself, transsexual. Was what happened this night based on some religious energy like his grandmother preached so often, good versus evil? Was Frannie the epitome of the devil, sent to lure Rich into sin?

Frannie was still latched onto him as his thoughts turned back to how on some level he too wanted to let the girl inside him live. He returned to that day with Vickie, his childhood friend, playing dolls in their dresses. He thought of Barb Hundley, the teen friend who tried on the dress in front of him. Then he thought about actually being a woman, not having a penis but having a vagina instead. What would that be like? The more he thought about that the more he felt the sweet warmth of Frannie still gently holding him in her mouth, now almost making no overt movement around him. And then it happened; still not erect, but not completely soft either, he felt a soft long exceptional climax. He didn’t even know if he ejaculated; Frannie gave no hint continuing to take him through a long slow ride that left him tingly as he fell back into a joyful sleep.

Rich didn’t know how long Frannie stayed with him that night. He remembers waking again, and she was still there bringing him to a soft climax a second time, half awake, half asleep.

Rich awoke, finally, to bright daylight streaming through the window and the smell of coffee and toast.

“What time is it?” He called after realizing where he was and that he slept with Frannie, slept so sweetly.

“It’s time to get up girl.” Frannie answered. Rich liked being called girl but it surprised him. It was a giant shift that troubled him; no it didn’t just trouble him it terrified him. In the dark of night Rich could contemplate the other gender; it was safe. But now in daylight, wearing a night gown with another person in the room. He pulled the sheet up over him, almost embarrassed.

“Want some coffee and toast?” She asked sounding just a little like a housewife.

Rich looked at this person he spent the night in bed with and wondered who she really was. He knew some things about her; where she was from, her age, and that she was born a boy, but what made her so certain when she actually was a boy, a teenager, that she was really a girl, or should have been? Rich understood it to some degree but what he couldn’t comprehend was what compelled the teenage boy to just leave his family, run away from everything that was safe, leave the reality of being born a boy and go headlong into the crazy, somewhat insane and obviously dangerous world of homosexuals and that new term, transsexuals. Couldn’t she just be what she was supposed to be and find some way to indulge it privately?
Frannie didn’t tell Rich, or Victoria as she called him now, the whole story. She wanted to but there wasn’t time. She hoped they would have more time later that day, or maybe ‘Victoria’ would come back for another weekend. A girl has to have hope. Frannie wanted to talk about what she went through, as a little boy who insisted on wearing a dress even before he started school, but was severely punished by her father, spanked sometimes until his bare bottom almost bled. Frannie wanted to tell how the spanking, and later as a teen, the beatings he endured from his father, did not change how he felt inside.

* * *

Frank Koloski grew up in a small town on the Ohio River just north of Huntington West Virginia. He was born just a few months after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. His father immediately joined the Navy leaving a pregnant wife and was gone for most of the first four years of the little boy’s life.

Shortly after his father came home in late 1945 from the war he caught his son for the first time, but not the last, in his older sister’s dress, and the punishment began. Frank’s father blamed his wife for indulging his only son while he was gone and vowed to fix it. Fixing little Frankie would turn out to be an uphill battle for the determined father. It didn’t help that his wife was a hairdresser and took her little boy to work every day during the war while the father fought his way through the pacific, and after until the boy started school. Little Frankie had more love and attention than most babies and toddlers do; his world as an infant and boy was a total emersion in the inner sanctum everything womanly; hair, makeup, perfume and dresses, those wonderful dresses of the 1940’s, with the garters and seamed stockings. Frank’s father was convinced his son was indoctrinated with so much female mumbo-jumbo that by the time the little boy was five he was literally brainwashed and needed reprogrammed, much like he himself needed to readjust to a normal life from the horrors of war. It would take time, he acknowledged but he had to save his boy, and while he hated to get rough, hated spanking the kid, it was necessary, much like it was necessary to shoot Japs.

After Frankie began school, with both parents working, he walked the two blocks after school to the beauty shop and hung out where his mom worked until closing. He had lots of help with his homework, from older ladies in dark matronly high neck dresses and younger wives, homemakers, mothers, in their house dresses often more than a little revealing. It was just women together after all, and Frankie, the little boy in grade school, learned a lot about what women wore and how they wore it, and he also became familiar with the female anatomy unlike any other boy his age. And then there were the girls, not the ones his age so much, but the teen age girls. Frankie’s mom was the one hairdresser who knew what the teen girls liked. She developed a special bond with them, giving advice, not just about hair but about what to wear on a date, or to the dance. Frankie’s mom started doing makeup and even took a correspondence course. So all the teen girls came to her, for hair and makeup, especially on prom night, and often for a wedding.

Frankie the boy watched, listened and learned in that shop, and then he went home and closed himself in his room and practiced. He built up quite a collection of things, confiscating a dress or two of his sister’s his mom had boxed to send to the church; stealing a pair of his sister’s panties; finding a bra and girdle with garters in the trash, and, as a good little helper at his mother’s shop, taking the leftover discarded makeup, lipstick, eye pencil, foundation, blush and mascara from the bag he was asked to take and throw away. Invariably his father would catch him, sometimes with makeup on, sometimes with a dress too. And invariably Frankie would get a beating, some worse than others. His father would search for all Frankie had hidden, and what he found was demonstratively destroyed while Frankie had to watch, usually bruised and bleeding from the recent beating. But Frankie was good at hiding what he had acquired, often right where his father would least expect, in the closet his mom and dad shared. It was risky but the father never found most of what Frankie had.

* * *

Rich got up and took the few steps to the kitchen and stood behind Frannie, putting his arms around her and clutching her breasts, as if to see if she was real. He kissed her on the back of the neck, released his hold and went into the bathroom. He pulled up the nightgown, sat and peed like he did the night before, this time without attempting to stand first. He brushed his teeth and washed his hands and face, staring at himself in the mirror wearing a nightgown. He liked the way it felt but thought the image in the mirror looked stupid, silly even. He wanted to take it off, wanted to put his clothes back on. Not since that day over fourteen years before had he worn anything female in front of another person and he felt strange. He returned to the kitchen and sat at the little table instinctively crossing his legs and fixing the night gown over them. He watched Frannie butter the toast.

“Can you stay today?” Frannie asked without turning around. “It would be fun. I don’t have anything you could wear, nothing that would look good. I have a friend who has a shop. She sells a mixture of trendy new things and basics. She even has some things on consignment.” Frannie now turned to face man she thought she might be falling in love with. “Let me go get you something, a bra, a dress. I want to see how cute you could be, teach you some things, let you feel that girl again.”

Rich didn’t answer at first. That was so appealing. Why not, he asked himself? He knew the last bus south didn’t leave until seven in the evening. More than anything he wanted to have a few more hours with Frannie, as Victoria. But daylight was so different than darkness and a bra and dress so much more complicating than just a night gown. Finally he answered, feeling the pull of his weakness.

“Sounds fun. Sure I’ll stay but have to get my stuff from the Y.”

“Victoria?” Frannie then said with her back turned again.

“You’re different, you know.” She continued, phrasing it as a given. Rich did know he was different but always, up until this weekend, different in a very negative way; different as in sick, or weird or yes, perverted. Now he was fighting the exhilarating wonderful and affirming feelings that were so counter to what he had thought of himself before.

“Not really.” He protested. “I’m just a guy who likes feeling good now and then, who likes to pretend.” He argued. “And besides I’m engaged.”

“I know.” Frannie acknowledged.

“And I love her.” He confessed to the still incomplete woman who made love to him all night. Frannie was used to being the plaything, the quick sex release, the whore. But hearing that from Rich, from her Victoria, hurt her. She more than liked this one.

“I’m sure.” She managed trying to hide her emotion as she poured the coffee and handed Rich a plate with two slices of toast. “And you’re going to get married, finish school, have two kids and sell insurance for forty years.” She said forcing a laugh. “And you’ll have a cute little house in the suburbs with a white picket fence; a perfect little family in a perfect little house.” Rich laughed too at how absurd Frannie made his future seem.

“But.” She continued. “You will always have that girl inside you wanting to get out. I know that, I see that. I just hope that doesn’t ruin the happy ending but …” she hesitated searching for the right way to put what she was thinking. “But if you stayed here, you could be that girl, you could be Victoria. I could show you how it’s done, and protect you. The Army wouldn’t be looking for a girl. Here they would never find Richard.” Frannie knew how completely unreal that possibility was but had to say it. She felt she at least had to let him know it was an option, even if it was wildly risky and remote. She had to tempt him, had to challenge him.

Rich stood up and faced the window looking out on the city. He had never been on his own; it was either living at home, with his parents, or in the Army, with all of the rigid rules and managed life. He couldn’t survive even if he wanted to, he reasoned, and he really didn’t want to. The city would swallow him and trying to be a girl, something he couldn’t fathom, that was just crazy, ludicrous. He turned back to Frannie.

“I admit I love this, love the girl stuff. But I’m not like that, like you, am I? Maybe I have whatever it is you have but not like that, not that bad. I don’t want to have…..” Rich stopped before he said what he hadn’t considered.

“Have what?” She asked quickly allowing just a hint of a pause before continuing. “Your dick cut off?” Frannie paused watching the shock wash over Rich’s face. "Victoria they don’t cut it off, not like you think. They save all the good part, the skin and nerves and make a vagina with it. I would be surprised if you’ve never thought about looking like a girl down there, if you never wondered what it would be like not to have a penis and testicles.” Frannie declared with confidence.

Rich didn’t want to tell Frannie that he had thought that; he had but that was before puberty, before the confusion set in. He didn’t want to tell her he thought about it again in bed with her just a few hours before when he climaxed beautifully without a full erection and probably without ejaculating. Rich was Rich, the man who was going to be married to a very beautiful woman. Rich couldn’t consider, couldn’t think about having something different between his legs. He needed what was there, needed it in order to travel the path that was before him; his penis and testicles were essential to his future, to who he was.

“I haven’t dwelled on it.” He admitted and then continued. “Frannie, I’ve never felt anything like I did with you last night.” He said still thinking about the flaccid climax and trying to change the subject. “It was, well, I can’t explain it. Wearing this, touching you, and what you did. It was so wonderful.” He told her looking into her eyes.

“But?” Frannie questioned.

“God, Frannie. But nothing. I’m this close to being shipped to Viet Nam and I’m wearing a nightgown and can’t wait to get dressed up. I have to be careful. I need a security clearance and if they knew I was here, like this, with you, I would be in Nam in a week.”

“I know, I know. I can’t imagine being in the Army. Let’s not think about that. I just want to make you happy today. Get dressed and go get your things. I’ll go shopping. Meet you back here, 11:30.”

Frannie left Rich alone in her apartment. She did go shopping. She found a skirt that was just so cute. It would be perfect for a tall thin Victoria, a size 8 would probably by right for his skinny hips. And she found a great blouse, a loose pull over in a silky print. Frannie was sure Vickie would just love wearing it with the padded bra she bought for her. She also knew where to get a perfect panty girdle for Vickie. Frannie would show Vickie how to hide his penis.

As she was almost back to her apartment she thought she saw Rich turning the corner and disappearing in the block ahead of her. She worried. He should have been back from the Y by now, not just going. Her heart fell and she was so scared he would not be there when she got home.

Frannie climbed the stairs, unlocked the door to her flat and called out.

“Victoria. Are you here? I have a surprise for you.” There was no answer. Just a note on the bed.

Dear Frannie,

Queen Victoria

* * *

The bus ride back to Monterey seemed much longer than the one he took to San Francisco on Friday. Rich tried to sleep but couldn’t get Frannie out of his mind. For Rich the bus ride was like a trip back from the ludicrous, the absurd and the dark. Rich was certain he did the right thing; leaving without telling Frannie, getting the hell out of there. Staying, even just for a few more hours was risky; he had to finish Monterey, get married and have a life. Any thought of living a life like the one Frannie was living was not just silly and insane; it was impossible. Rich felt so relieved to be getting away from it. He almost laughed out loud thinking of himself living like Frannie lived, trying to be a girl. How could anyone do that; live a completely different life? Well Frannie could, he knew but what kind of life did she have?

He did allow himself, however, to think about what this chance meeting with Frannie meant. He kept asking if it was just chance or was he somehow attracted to that club because of his own past feelings, attracted like a moth to a candle. Was there some force, a greater unknown power, larger than his own small inclinations, that guided him to Frannie and the cross-dressing underground of San Francisco. Rich finally decided on the time worn explanation that it was just simple happenstance coupled with the pull of sin and evil. Given his situation, he could still not reject the theory that he had long ago accepted; his proclivity for cross-dressing and his early desires to be a girl were just wrong and dangerous, and had to be resisted at all costs.

By the time Rich got off the bus in Monterey and was walking up the hill to the barracks, to B4, he was smiling, elated that he had flirted with his ultimate weakness, had prevailed and had a hell of a time doing it.