Aunt Frances is Dad’s aunt and according to him, she runs a tight ship at her house. She has some rules that need to be obeyed and won’t hesitate to enforce them. What’s more no matter how long it’s been, whatever conditions she decides to enforce them with will be in effect going forward forever.

   What kind of rules??? And just how does she enforce them? And how long is forever? Surely not forever, forever.

  Larry has a secret. He’s been keeping a secret since he was 9. He’s been very successful at keeping it. In all those years not one person has ever been aware of this one thing about him that no one can ever know. Not his parents, not his friends growing up, not his fellow students when he was in college, not his buddies when he was in the Navy, not his coworkers at his job and especially not his wife.

  He particularly careful to keep his wife from knowing. No doubt she’s kick his rear to the curb, if she found out. Oh he’d read all the horror stories of wives who’d found out this kind of thing about their husbands. It never ended well. What’s more as often as not once the wives found out and made a stink, the poor saps employer would find out and they would lose their job as well. No, not pretty at all.

  He must keep his wife in the dark at all costs. He always puts back in the precise spot anything of hers he borrows. She’ll never, can never know.

If It Was Your Husband 17 and 18 of 20

By Patricia Marie Allen

17 and 18
Outfitting Mike and Helping Mike
In this penultimate posting, Mike is introduced to Ann at Ann’s Lingerie and More. He’s fitted for a bra, though not confident enough in Lisa’s change of heart to go ahead and order them. He does however, buy the lingerie so he can underdress. He comes back to Alex and Carrie’s with his purchases to find that Lisa has become overwhelmed and gone home. This is of some concern so he cools things for a while.

We see in the later chapter that Alex had become completely sanguine with anything and everything being revealed to Mike and Lisa. In response to Lisa wanting to see him when he’s fully underdressed he says, “Look away. It’s not like I’ve got to hide anything from you.”

And that’s true. It was a foregone conclusion from the beginning that his cross-dressing would be fully disclosed to Mike and Lisa. Look for some drastic changes in Lisa.

13 and 14
Moving On and Highland Games

Time is marching on. Spring has slipped away and summer is fully come. Time to get ready for the 4th of July. Since Alex and Carrie hosted the Memorial Day barbeque Mike and Lisa are hosting for the Fourth. It makes sense since their backyard overlooks a great fireworks display at Oaks Park. Alex wears a new pair of Crocs sporting blue camo motif that kind of pushes his outfit toward the feminine side of butch. With careful thought, that is used to soften Lisa’s attitude hopefully to, in some way, make it easier to accept that Carrie really is OK with all that will be revealed at a later date.

Carrie reminds them that last year they had planned to attend the Highland Game with the two guys expressing their Scottish ancestry by wearing kilts. To no one’s surprise, Lisa flatly states that Mike won’t be wearing a kilt.

Alex and Carrie hold fast to the commitment made the year before and assemble suitable Scots themed outfits for the two of them. To spite Lisa’s ongoing hardline handling of Mike’s indiscretion the Games are attended and the day goes well. Alex notices that Lisa can appreciate the kilt wearing physique of the competitors in the caber toss.

9 & 10

Gaining a better look & More exposure

Alex snaps back at Carrie when she suggests that he let his hair grow longer and that he should go to her hair dresser to manage it while it does.

“You really need to let your hair grow out some more, but in the meantime, I think we should get it styled. You know different parts of your hair grow at different rates and for it to look right as it grows out, someone who knows about such things should take care of it. Just a little trim about every two weeks, to keep things growing even.”

“What!? Are you suggesting we tell someone else about our experiment? …Or did you already talk to your hairdresser?”

“No, but I was thinking I could tell her that you wanted to recapture your youth and grow your hair out, but that I put my foot down on you looking scraggly like some kind of 70’s hippy. Then I could ask her if she’d oversee your journey into the past.”

“I just don’t want to deal with another of your cronies knowing that I’m letting you feminize me.”

“Oh Alex, I’m not feminizing you. I’m guiding you as you discover your feminine side. You know all men have a feminine side, just as all women have a masculine side.”

“Yeah, yeah, we went through that before. Call it what you will, but all I know is I’m discovering a lot more of my feminine side than I could have even imagined was there.”

Alex gets the special order bras and loves the experience of wearing them and even enhances the look.

He also goes to the salon to have his hair styled and finds Janet, the hair tech, to be a really professional and friendly woman that is going to be capable managing his quest for longer hair. He comes away feeling assured that this time Carrie hasn’t betrayed his trust.

5 & 6

Happy New Year and Putting it to the test

Christmas has come and gone. Alex spent four glorious days wearing the soft luxurious fabric and deliciously feeling lingerie. Getting ready for work he almost doesn’t think about it as he reaches in the lingerie drawer. As a result, he has to admit to himself that this thing is growing on him. He tries to fight it and finds that he regrets his decision to abstain.

Authors Note: This story is complete and sitting on my hard drive. The novel is 49,188 words long in twenty chapters. I will be posting two chapters per week, roughly 5,000 words per post, on Fridays.

Alex comes home one day and his wife, Carrie, tells him of a problem in Mike and Lisa's marriage. Mike is his best friend since middle school. It seems that Lisa caught Mike cross-dressing and came unglued. She had come to Carrie looking for solace and support for divorcing Mike. But Carrie told her about a Phil Donahue show she'd seen as a teenager featuring married cross-dressers and said that cross-dressing really was no big deal.

Lisa was offended that Carrie wouldn't back her up and said, "If it was your husband, you wouldn’t think it was so cool," and left in a snit; part of her anger now directed at Carrie.

Carrie, on the fly, hatches a plan to help Lisa see that if it was her husband, she'd still think it was no big deal. Alex somewhat reluctantly goes along with it and discovers things about himself that he never knew existed.

When you consider the circumstances in my life, it’s easy to see how things turned out the way they did. My dad was killed in action in Afghanistan when I was eight. He was through with his active duty time and had joined the National Guard and his unit was called up when the Taliban launched a major offensive. There are no male relatives that I know of so I haven’t really had any male influence in my life since then.

Ron is a twenty something cross-dresser. As he grew up he witnessed the birth of the Al Gore’s “Information Super Highway”. And was an early participant in such groups as alt.fashion.crossdress and alt.support.crossdress. From the information garnered there, he’s convinced that if he’s ever to have a successful marriage he needs to tell his intended before he proposes. He’s tried three times and each time has resulted in each of them walking, if not running away.

Is there any hope? Can an understanding wife be found?

Graphic created by Patricia Marie Allen from pictures on pixabay.com

Authors note: This story first appeared in the “One Dozen Roses” anthology and has been edited to be read as a standalone.
You can read it in the anthology here.

This story was originally written by Julie, sometime in the 90s and posted elsewhere. I read it and liked the premise, but the ending didn't suit me. So for my own enjoyment, I rewrote the ending. Julie's end had Chrissy transitioning, mine is more like my life. When I was finished modifying the ending, I liked it so much that I couldn’t resist posting it, so…

"What have we here?" my mother asked as I stood admiring my legs in the heels my sister had offered to let me try walking in.

“I don’t know why you can’t dress like a girl. I mean, I’ve never seen you in a dress and you’ve lived next door for five years,” I told Susie, the tomboy that lived next door. She was my sister’s age, two years older than me, and I was starting to notice girls and she was one I noticed. Under her jeans (boys) and loose shirt, there was a good looking body. The only time you could tell was when she put on a swimsuit. “And you should do something with your hair and maybe wear some nail polish or somethin’,” I continued.

“Leave her alone Frank. She can dress how ever she wants. I don’t blame her. I like to wear jeans and sweatshirts too,” my sister defended.

“Yeah, you’re nearly as bad as she is. You only wear dresses sometimes, when there’s some kind of special occasion. You’ve got a drawer full of nice nighties and all you ever wear to bed is flannel pajamas. The only difference between you and Susie is you polish your nails. Susie never wears dresses,” I complained.

“I don’t always wear flannel pajamas.”

“Oh yeah; I forgot. During the summer, you wear Dad’s old T-shirt and Boxers. Real girlie. I’ll bet Susie wears that kind of thing year round.”

Susie whispered something to Karen, who nodded. “I’ll tell you what,” Susie said. “Let’s have a contest. I’ll bet that I can do everything you do and that you can’t do everything I can do. If you win, I’ll wear whatever you say for a whole week and fix my hair all girlie. I’ll even let you go first.”

“What if I lose?”

“Well then,” she grinned, “you’ll have to wear whatever I say all week.”

“What ever we say… I’ll even do it too. And you’ll have to do something with the sorry mop you call hair to make it look better. I don’t know where you get off talking about Susie’s hair. At least she washes hers,” my sister Karen insisted.