“Larry, I know you don’t like shopping with me, but I really need you to come with me.”

  “Honestly Audrey, I can’t imagine any valid reason that you might need me to go shopping with you.”

  “I’m going to be buying things I absolutely need your opinion on. Now grab your jacket and let’s go.”

  “But…”

  “I won’t take no for an answer. Give in now and let’s go; there’s a lot to do.”

  I had things I’d rather be doing on a Friday evening, but there are times when my wife can get stubborn and this was apparently one of them. I had tried many times before to resist when she was in this kind of mood. Experience told me that even if I did manage to keep from giving in, it would come back to bite me. The last time was when I really didn’t want to go anyplace fancy for vacation. Actually, I would have happily made it a staycation, so I refused to participate in choosing a place. Two thousand dollars later, we came back from Hawaii. I’d done a one-year tour at Pearl when I was in the Navy, and really, I’d seen all of Hawaii I’d wanted to see.

  While this shopping trip wasn’t likely to cost two grand, if I didn’t go along, she’d no doubt shop at the most expensive shops she could find. Better to spend an afternoon traipsing around the mall with her than see several hundred dollars’ worth of clothes in her closet that she’d seldom wear.

  We went in her car, so she drove and as I was afraid of, she didn’t just go to the mall. The first stop was a strip mall near one of the major shopping centers, and of all places, a lingerie store; Ann’s Lingerie and More.

  “Welcome, would you like some assistance, or would you just like to browse?” a way too cheerful blonde asked as we came into the shop.

  “We’re looking to upgrade a certain someone’s underwear wardrobe. I’m told you carry some more fancy styles.”

  The blonde smiled widely and gave us a wink.

  “We certainly do,”

  I think she would have said more, but Audrey cut her off.

  “If you could point us in the right direction. I’ll let Larry pick out something nice.”

  “Yes, third aisle near the end. You’ll find the fancy items there. If you need any help finding anything else, just give me a holler.”

  Audrey led the way. This was sheer torture. Like most husbands, I really didn’t like to go shopping with my wife. Unlike most husbands, it wasn’t just because she dithered over choosing which dress to buy, traipsing in and out of multiple stores only to go back to the first shop and buy the first dress she looked at. It was that she tried on so many great dresses. And then watching her come out of the fitting room to stand in front of the three-way mirror wearing really great-looking clothes and then turn them down. If it had been me, I’d have bought any one or maybe all of them… therein lay the problem… it wasn’t me. I really wished it was me. Ever since I was a tween and began to really notice the difference between girls and boys, particularly the clothes they wore, I’d been interested in girls’, now women’s clothes. Not just how they looked on the fairer sex but in how they felt and what it was like to wear them.

  Yes, as much as I tried to deny it to myself, I was a cross-dresser. It was a secret that I carried with me from the time I tried on my cousin’s bathing suit when I was nine. My mind wandered and went over how I got started.

  All I knew at that point was I loved the feeling of the nylon lining. I didn’t get another opportunity to indulge until following year, when my sister, five years my senior, started high school. She didn’t go to our neighborhood high school. She went to an all-girls magnet school across town. It was kind of a tradition in our family. Our older sister had gone there and our brother had gone to the associated all-boys school. I ended up going to the all-boys school as well. My sister had to take a bus and transfer to get there, over an hour and a half. She also went out for cheerleader and got on the squad. So two nights a week, plus Friday nights when there were games, she was late getting home. Even on nights when she came straight home, I had an hour to myself at home. It didn’t take long for me to discover her panty drawer and, from there, the rest of her wardrobe.

  At first, it was just something cool to do. I’d come home to an empty house. Shuck my shoes and head for her bedroom. There I’d quickly strip from the waist down. I’d put on a pair of panties and marvel at how wonderful they felt and just how different they were from my tighty-whities. In the first few weeks, I only spent about fifteen or twenty minutes at the most. Then I would carefully refold the panties and place them back in the drawer as near where I got them from as I could.

  Then, one time, I noticed her bra. If her panties fit me, then her bra should as well. I knew the basics of how the bra should go on, but fastening the catch behind my back proved too much. I then wrapped it around my waist and fastened it in front where I could see what I was doing; pulled it back around and slid my arms into the straps. The cups just sagged. I mean, what else could they do? I had nothing to put in them. But not to be deterred, I went into the bathroom and wasted about twelve feet of toilet paper stuffing the cups ‘til they seemed full enough.

  I went back to her bedroom and looked at my reflection. If I concentrated on my chest, it looked pretty interesting, especially if I thought about it as being my chest. But overall, it needed more.

  I opened her closet door and on a hook on the back was a slip. I put that on over the bra and panties. The reflection looked a lot better; only my head being out of place. None the less, I surveyed her clothes hanging in there. Picking out a dress, I unzipped it and pulled it over my head and struggled with the zipper. I couldn’t quite get it up from the bottom far enough to grab it from the top to get it all the way up. I looked around for a solution. On her vanity was a small dish that contained bobby pins. I tried to put it through the little hole in the zipper pull, but the rubber ball on the end made it too big. ‘Were they all like that?’ On close examination I saw the two or three had lost that bit of rubber. Using one of them, I hooked it to the pull. That made it much easier to get a hold of.

  With a little contorting, I used my left hand to pull the dress as far down in the back as I could and my right to push the zipper up. Then, using my left hand behind my head, I pulled the dress up as far as it would go. My right hand found the bobby pin, and managed to get a hold of it. Left hand again behind me, I held the bobby pin and pulled the dress back down. Once the zipper started moving, I was able to pull it up to the neck.

  Looking in the mirror, I was liking the reflection more and more. Now to do something with that pesky boy’s head on the girl’s body. In another drawer I found a scarf that I’d seen my sister wear on rainy days. Using her hairbrush, I brushed my hair forward over my forehead and swept it off to the side and then made the scarf a triangle and tied it over my head, leaving the hair on my forehead showing. It ended up looking like bangs.

  ‘Cool, with a capital C’

  Suddenly, her bedroom was too small. I wandered the house barefoot. It didn’t take long to decide that I needed shoes. Back in her bedroom, there were several pairs of shoes in her closet. I found a pair of open-toed slingbacks with a short squished heel. They nearly fit; it was only a little bit difficult to get the strap over my heel. I spent the better part of an hour just enjoying the whole experience.

  A few days later, when I noticed that my sister was wearing nylons, I asked why girls wore nylons. They were too thin to help keep their legs warm. She told me that it made her shoes feel better. Sure, she could wear them without anything and sometimes did, but if she was going out for a long time, it just felt good to have her feet and legs covered.

  That settled it. The next time I had some time alone, I learned how to put on nylons. That was a few decades ago when seamless nylons had only been around for a couple of years, and pantyhose had just come on the market. My sister had several pairs of seamed nylons, and I had observed her getting her seams straight. So I tried the seamed nylons with a garter belt, and my powers of observation gave me the ability to get straight seams. To my surprise, when I tried on the shoes again, my feet slipped right in, not only with the slingbacks but all the others as well. She had eight pairs, and I tried them all.

  Some days I would do a fashion show and model everything in her closet in front of the mirror and on others, I would choose an outfit and wander about the house. I looked a little silly with that scarf on. It didn’t really go with any of the outfits. But Halloween was coming and provided a solution.

  On a Saturday, I’d taken a bus downtown to meet a friend who had moved across town to go to a movie. After the movie, we had about half an hour before either of our buses came, so we spent some time wandering the shops looking at the Halloween things for sale. One of the stores had some lame costumes for sale and we cracked jokes about them.

  On one of the tables there were loose items that might go to enhance the costumes. My friend found a cheap wig that had a long braid down the back. He slipped it on and said, “Look, I’m a girl.” We both laughed and he put it back. A plot began to form in my mind. I carefully dawdled just too long and missed my bus, so my friend left before I did. Once he was on the bus, I hot-footed it back to the store and checked out that wig. It was a really cheap wig. It didn’t even go all the way to the front of the head. But the color was very near my hair color and best of all I had just enough money to buy it and still have bus fare.

  I had to sneak it into the house and quickly hide it in my closet. When I went to bed that night, I’d managed to come up with a shoe box and found a good place in my closet where the likelihood of it being found was slight.

  Come Monday, after school, I hurried home. The first thing I did after taking my school clothes off and putting on my robe was to figure out just how to make use of that wig. I discovered that if I parted my hair crosswise just in front of my ears, the wig would reach that spot, and then I could move the part forward an inch or so and comb that part back over the wig. But it wasn’t stable that way. I borrowed some bobby pins and got it stable, and then when I got dressed in my sister’s clothes I didn’t need that dumb scarf. I liked it a lot better. Later, I found that borrowing a hairband made it even better.

  That improved my time in girly clothes. The only thing that was a bummer was that there I was, all dressed up and had no place to go. That became the story of my life. But for the next four years, it was enough. I mean it was a hobby; something I did to avoid the boredom of being home alone for two to three hours.

  My sister went off to college the same year I was in eighth grade. She left a fair amount of clothes behind. But her lingerie mostly went with her. I began raiding other people’s Goodwill bags with mixed results. I did manage two pairs of panties that kind of fit and a skirt and a dress. I had considerably more free time and an allowance to spend. So I discovered thrift shops and used Halloween again to solve many of my problems. At each shop, I would go in and tell the clerk that I was putting together a costume and that, for some made-up reason, it had to be a girl’s costume. I tried every lame excuse I could think of, but no matter how dumb it sounded, all but one of them helped me buy cheap dresses, skirts and blouses. I even found a couple of slips and bras. I didn’t find any panties. I later found out that they couldn’t sell used panties.

  But one day, I stopped by a neighborhood market to buy a bottle of pop and noticed that they sold panties in a three-pack. I knew what size my sister wore, and after much deliberation, I just marched up to the counter with my pop and a pack of panties and put down the correct change. The woman looked at me and shook her head. But she rang up the panties and my pop and put the panties in a bag. My ears were burning as I walked out of the store, but I’d done it. I was the proud owner of three brand-new nylon panties. They would join my wig in the shoe box.

  From then until I went off to college, I maintained a collection of panties, slips and even, for a time, a silky nightgown I had purloined from one source or another. They remained hidden. No one, not my parents and especially not my friends, could ever know that I wore them. Nor did they know that whenever I got the chance, I’d borrow a dress from someone. I had only abstained while in the Navy and college. I lived at home with my parents after, and as an adult, I had more freedom to indulge, but that was to change.

  When I got married to Audrey, I left my stash hidden in the overhead in our garage and hadn’t been back to it since. I was sure that as a married man, I’d not need to indulge, and I made it nearly two years before I first borrowed a pair of my wife’s panties. At first, it was a few quick minutes in the bathroom. Then, one day, I helped with the laundry, and somehow, a pair of her panties ended up in my drawer. I found them way back in the corner of the drawer. I don’t know how they got there… Yeah sure. If you believe that one, I’ve got a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. Anyway, a couple of times a month, I indulged myself wearing them all day, being sure they ended up in the laundry, where they somehow found their way back into my drawer.

  Everything was OK so long as I kept it infrequent. But that wasn’t enough it went to weekly. Audrey commented on how nice it was that I helped with the laundry. “I don’t do that much really,” I told her. “I just fold them and put them away. You do the hard part; separating them and seeing that they are washed and dried on the correct cycle.” How else would that pair of panties keep ending up in my drawer? But she never knew or even suspected.

  At the end of the aisle, the racks were full of the most exotic unmentionables you could imagine. Soft satin finish lacy beyond belief in every color of the rainbow and many the rainbow didn’t have room for. Everything from thong to full-cut to what the English call French knickers. They were all there looking gorgeous and tempting.

  Audrey had picked up a basket when she entered the store.

  “I don’t have anything but utilitarian styles. I want you to pick out the kinds that you like; after all, this shopping trip is for your benefit,” she told me. “Just go hog wild and fill up this basket with the panties you like.”

  “Me? You want me to pick out the panties?”

  “Certainly. As I said, this is for your benefit. I should think you would be delighted.”

  Delighted? Yes, if it was for me. But she meant that she thought I’d be delighted to see her in this exotic, erotic lingerie. What I couldn’t let her know was that I would truly be delighted to see myself in this underwear.

  “Go on now, just fill up the basket. I think at least a dozen.”

  She was killing me, but resisting was getting me nowhere. ‘I just hope I don’t give myself away. Maybe if I think of drinking pickle juice while I do it, I can keep my face from showing what’s going on in my head? Oh crud. It’s not going to work. All I’m thinking is how much I’m going to like sneaking some of this to wear myself.’

  “Alright already… I don’t know why I have to do it, but if it’ll get us out of here.” I called up some anger at the injustice of this happening.

  I tried to be dispassionate as I handled the oh-so-sexy undies. I worked real hard at keeping my breathing even and I turned away from her as much as possible. I really didn’t spend any time choosing. I just picked them like bunches of grapes and dropped them into the basket, taking time only to count. Pretty quickly, I had the requested amount.

  “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  She stepped two aisles over to the bra displays.

  “New panties call for new bras to match.” Here, she took the lead. Referencing the panties, she picked out half a dozen bras. In all, I’d only managed six different colors. She hung the bras, one at a time, on the edge of the basket. When she had all of them, she held them up for me one at a time and asked, “Do you like this one?” for each selection. I answered, “Yes.” Again, working against my urge to hyperventilate.

  I couldn’t help but notice that the bra band size was two inches larger than she currently wore. I couldn’t keep from smiling. Whenever I’d borrowed her current bras, the band cut into my chest badly until I was able to come up with an extender surreptitiously. It was easy enough to hide. I’d just slipped it under the edge of my high school yearbooks that were on the shelf in our closet. We never had any call to move them, so I knew she’d never find it. But with the larger band size, I likely wouldn’t need it. There was a rack with pantyhose on it and she picked out three packages and dropped them in the basket as well.

  We went to the register to pay and the ever-so-cheerful blonde was there smiling so big it was a wonder she didn’t crack her head in two.

  “Did you find everything OK?”

  “Yes, Larry was very decisive once he got into it.”

  She began ringing up our purchases. Checking the label on one of the bras, she asked. “Just to be sure, you are Audrey, the one who called earlier.”

  “Yes, that’s me. This is my husband, Larry.”

  “Nice to meet you; I’m Ann. Did you want those other items we talked about today as well?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “That was my impression. I have them right here.” She brought a plastic shopping bag out from behind the counter. Reaching inside, she brought out a slip of paper and keyed in something on the register.

  Audrey gave her a credit card while I stared dumbfounded at the total: “$620.79.”

  When we got home, Audrey led the way into our bedroom.

  “You can put those bags on the bed. I’ll need to move some things around to make room for them.”

  I would hope so. She bought enough that you’d have thought she was totally replacing her lingerie. I dropped the bags and headed back to the family room to watch some television. She banged around in our bedroom for some time and then came out and started on dinner.

  At bedtime that night, after we had both changed into our nightwear, she went to her closet.

  “Come here; I want to show you something.” I wondered what she needed to show me in her closet. “You see this ribbon?” she said, pointing out a red ribbon on the closet rod a foot or so to the right of center.

  “Yeah?”

  “The things on the right, I wouldn’t lend to anyone for any reason, but the things on the left I’d happily loan them out so long as the person was careful with them.”

  “OK.” ‘… and I need to know that because?’ I only thought that, I really didn’t care.

  We went to bed as usual. In the morning I was in for a rude awakening. After my shower, I opened my underwear drawer. All of my tighty-whities were scrunched to the right side and the rest was filled with the panties and bras we’d bought last night. And in my sock drawer were the three packs of pantyhose.

  “Audrey, what’s going on here?”

  She stepped out of the bathroom and looked at my open drawers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All that lingerie we got last night ended up in my drawer. I hardly have room for my underwear. And the pantyhose are in my sock drawer. Couldn’t you find room in your own drawer for this stuff?”

  “Why would I want to put your lingerie in my drawers?”

  “My lingerie?”

  “Well yes. Didn’t you understand that we were buying for you? That’s why you had to come along to pick out what you wanted.”

  I stared dumbfounded at the lingerie.

  “You’ll find the breast forms in your miscellaneous drawer.”

  “Breast forms? Why would you buy me lingerie and breast forms?”

  “Because I got tired of you borrowing mine. Your waist is bigger than mine and when you wear mine, it stretches them and, well the pantyhose gets stretched out all over. Not to mention the band on my bras. That stuff is all your size. And we got the forms because what’s the sense of having a bra if you don’t have anything to put in it?”

  “My size?”

  “Yes, now when you get the urge to wear panties and whatever, you don’t need to borrow mine. You have your own. Just remember, I don’t want to loan things to the right of the ribbon. You can borrow whatever you want from the left. Do you remember last week when I wanted your opinion on those shoes I was looking at? Well, in your closet, you’ll find two shoe boxes with the two you liked in your size as well.

  “And you don’t have to wait until I’m out of the house. You can play dress-up anytime you want,” she said as she walked over to me and gave me a quick kiss before turning on her heel to go back to the bathroom for her shower. “Enjoy,” she called over her shoulder as she closed the door.

  I stood there staring at her exit, mouth working, trying to think of something to say.

  ‘And here I thought she didn’t; couldn’t know.’

  I thought she’d kick my rear to the curb the moment she found out. I’d been careful… I really had. I always carefully put things back exactly as I found them. Well, except for the occasional panty that happened to find its way into my drawer. But even then, it went right back into the wash. I was sure that she just thought it was one of those things that sometimes happen where something doesn’t actually make it into the wash but turns up on the next wash day. It’s not like she could really tell one panty from the other. Hers were all white full-cut briefs… the same kind my sister wore all those years ago.

  I plunged my hand into the sea of luscious nylon, reveling in the tactile ecstasy. ‘Enjoy, she said. Could I? I mean, right here, right now, while she was home taking her shower? Could I bring myself to leave it on all day?’

  Good questions. I’m damned well going to try.