© 2012, by Susan J. Charles. All rights reserved
Edited by Holly H. Hart

The following day, the Sea Gals practiced. The Division Playoff game was away, but if we won that and then the Conference Championship game, the team would take us to the Super Bowl. I issued a blanket invitation to everyone to come to the Football party on Sunday.

“If you can make it, come in uniform,” Terri added. “Jessica would love to have us show off for her friends. It’s really fun.”

After practice Terri reminded me and a couple of other girls that we had a couple of appearances on Saturday. First, we’d help open a new sports bar. Then, since it was nearby, we’d visit a hospital. We’d be wearing our shorts and sailor tops for the sports bar. For the hospital, we’d put on our more modest warm ups.

The sports bar was okay, if you like a lot of horny guys looking at you everywhere except your face. I even got a couple of pats on my rear end, which I really didn’t appreciate. But the pay for a couple of hours of being looked at was pretty good.

Then we went to the hospital. It was really heartwarming to visit the patients. Several of the patients and staff had seen us performing on TV during the last game. A couple even told me the TV broadcast had replayed my cartwheel and splits about five times after the game. I’d almost forgotten I’d pulled that off.

Then we went to the adjoining Children’s Hospital. The amount of unconditional love and attention these children showed us was overwhelming. I can’t recall when I have given so many hugs and signed so many autographs. One little girl even asked me if I could be her mommy. I almost came completely unglued and gave her the biggest hug I could. “Oh, honey, I’d be so proud to be your mommy, but I’m sure your real mommy would miss you,” I told her.

“She’s not here anymore,” she replied. “She was in the same wreck I was, but she went to be with God.”

I didn’t know what to say. She told me her name was Deanna. I gave her my e-mail address and told her to write to me any time she was feeling lonely.

On the way home, I couldn’t get little Deanna out of my head. The hospital staff had told me that she and her mother had been in a big pileup in heavy fog. Fortunately, if anything about a fatal wreck could be called fortunate, they were on their way to pick up the father and two sisters. As a result, with the exception of Deanna’s mother, the family was still intact. It was so sad.

Then I realized I had told Deanna the absolute truth. I would have been so proud to be Deanna’s mother. Not her parent. Her mother! For the first time in my life, I really thought about having children and being a parent. A mother. I wanted it and I couldn’t have it. I wanted to be able to give birth to a child and it wasn’t possible. Pulling to the side of the road, I wept. Sandy had frozen my sperm so that I could have children of my own, but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t be their birth mother, and I wanted to so badly.

At last, I pulled myself together to drive the rest of the way home. There was a lot to talk about the next time I saw Tina.

The football party Sunday started out great. To my surprise, most of the Sea Gals showed up, even Shaundra. Everyone mixed well and we all did a few of our routines. Then a lot of the enthusiasm deflated when the Bears scored three quick touchdowns in the first quarter, two of them on interceptions. With the score already 21-0 it was hard to pretend to be happy about the way the game was going. Coming back from that far down is very hard in the NFL. We did score a field goal just before half time. That was the only bright spot. There’d be no Super Bowl for us this year.

I was busy making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink and was in the kitchen a lot. Coming out with a tray of snacks, I noticed Shaundra was talking with Phil. I was a little miffed. She was spending more time with him than I’d been able to do. Of course, she didn’t have a party to keep going. It was just that I hadn’t spent much time at all with him for weeks. He was always gone these days. Yes, I knew the deal was important, and I supported that. But since J. B. had exiled me, all I knew was what I read in the information I reviewed for Steve. I had no idea what else was happening. I’d have liked to continue to support Phil by contributing, but all that I was able to do was indirect. And, to make matters worse, I couldn’t even tell Phil what I was doing for the project.

I never did find out exactly what it was about the football parties, but after each one, Phil was always hot-to-trot. We went upstairs as soon as I’d finished cleaning up everything. This night, Phil wanted to do me doggy-style. I crawled up on the bed completely naked on my hands and knees with my rear end sticking off the end of the mattress. I tried to spread myself as wide as possible and really had to brace myself as Phil slammed into me. Not for the first time I wished I had another opening better designed to take him in.

He seemed to have an urgent need tonight and was soon into a rhythm that involved almost completely withdrawing and then pushing back in as far as he could do. It wasn’t doing a whole lot for me, but I wanted Phil to be happy. Soon, I could feel him tensing up and his warm fluid began spurting inside me.

“Oh...oh...oh Lisa!” he gasped.

Lisa? I’d heard that guys sometimes said other girl’s names in the heat of passion. But Lisa was just the transgendered girl Phil helped transition in high school, wasn’t she? Obviously, they’d done a little more than Phil had led me to believe.

Phil wasn’t even aware of what he’d said and I decided to not say anything. After all, a lot of guys have slipped up at climax, haven’t they?

Phil soon went limp. He quickly slid out of me, fell on the bed and was soon snoring, leaving me to finish off myself and go clean up.

As I settled back into bed, I found it did bother me that Phil hadn’t remembered my name. I mean, a lot of rear ends look the same, but we’d been together for months. I began to wonder about Phil and Lisa’s relationship. He said they had drifted apart. But, why?

The next day, I decided to visit Deanna at the hospital. When I arrived, she was looking at her reflection in the mirror. “Why so glum?” I asked.

Deanna turned and reached out for a big hug.

“Jessica, I can’t believe you came back.”

“Well, I said, I’d keep in touch.”

“But lots of celebrities say that and don’t mean it,” she said.

“Me, a celebrity? Not me. But tell me, why the long face a minute ago?”

“I was just looking at this huge bandage on my head and ...”

“… wondering when it will come off?” I guessed.

“More like wondering how I’d look.”

“Probably like you did before.”

“But all my hair is gone,” she wailed. “I used to have long, pretty red hair like yours. They had to shave it off to fix me after the accident. What am I going to look like?”

This was a major female crisis for a girl of any age. I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I was proud of my hair and wore it down and curled back from my face most of the time. I did put it up for various formal occasions. It was fun to experiment with it to see what I looked like with different styles. Maybe that was the answer!

“Deanna, you’ve got a great opportunity ahead. Your hair is going to grow back. But as it does, you can play around with it. You can have lots of different looks.”

“I guess I could,” she said, tentatively.

“Of course you can. Do you know that actress who was in the Star Wars movies? Natalie Somebody? She got all her hair cut off for a role in another movie later on and then appeared in several other movies while it was growing back. She looked different in each one, but she was also cute in each one.”

“Oh,” Deanna looked like she was brightening up.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ve got an idea. If I can take your picture, I’ll put it on my computer and show you kind of what you might look like with lots of different hairstyles.”

She was now eager to do it, so I pulled out my cell phone and took her picture from the front, both sides and her back. “Now,” I thought, ’if I can just pull this off …’

We talked for a while and I told her more about what it was like to be a Sea Gal. I told her it was a lot more work than it looked, and I explained how the girls came from all sorts of backgrounds and jobs. “It’s not just looks. Everyone has to have talent and work hard.”

Finally Deanna’s father came in. I shook his hand and expressed my condolences on the loss of his wife, told him what a fine girl Deanna was, and left. I wasn’t sure how to act around someone in his situation.

I thought more about my promise to Deanna as I drove home. What I had in mind was a program that would take her pictures and combine them into a 3 dimensional head. Then I could take pictures of various hairstyles and move them onto her head so she could see how she looked. I would do my own hair in various poses. But I didn’t want to cut my hair for the short hair look that Deanna would have in the near future. I’d have to get pictures of other hairstyles. Some of the Sea Gals would probably let me take pictures of their hair. And a couple of the girls in Phil’s office had short hair. Maybe they’d help.

The programming would be fairly simple. There were already photo altering programs available. My task would be introducing the 3-D aspect and then the hairstyles. It could be an application of an existing program.

I made a few calls and found several willing women. Karen came over a couple of evenings and we had fun fixing up each other’s hair into various styles and photographing the results from several angles. We developed a routine I could use with the rest of our hair models.

The photos were finished quickly, since Phil wasn’t home most evenings. That gave me more time to work on the program. It went faster than I’d thought. I was tempted to tell Deanna how it was coming, but decided to keep it as a surprise. Most evenings, after visiting hours were over, we’d talk on the phone. She was lonely and most of the television programs at that time of night were too adult for her to be interested. I told her about my classes and promised to cook her something special I’d learned in my gourmet cooking class.

Phil was home the next weekend. No one was up for a football party after the playoff loss, so we went to a UW basketball game. Since the Sonics had left, UW was about the only game in town.

Phil was kind of distant, even when we were together. Finally, I decided to take the bull by the horns and ask him what was the matter. It turned out that almost all of what I’d tried to warn Phil’s bank about had been right on the money, (if you’ll pardon the pun!), The Chinese had pulled a fast one and J.B.’s experience hadn’t helped with the negotiations.

“Of course not,” I said. “Just because they look somewhat the same to Western eyes, doesn’t mean the Japanese and Chinese are the same. They are two different cultures. That’s what I was trying to say.”

“And you were right,” Phil said. “So now J.B. is even more pissed than he had been.”

I shook my head. ‘Men! I’d been smarter than J.B. and he didn’t like it one bit.’

“I do have some suggestions ...” I began.

“No!” Phil yelled. “Our team will figure this out.”

“Well, excuse me for thinking a mere woman might be able to help,” I said. “If that’s the way it is, I’ve got better things to do.”

We were in the same bed that night, but we slept apart.

The next day, I had lunch with Karen downtown. I’d brought my laptop to show her how the hair program was coming, but she waved me off. “I can’t know anything you are doing with computers right now,” she said. “Not until Fred gets everything straightened out. I’m happy to help you with pictures, but I can’t know anything beyond that.”

Hurt, I retreated to the ladies room. I sat there thinking about how much of my life was up in the air. Exiting the stall. I looked at myself in the mirror and sighed. At that moment, there was a flush from another stall and Cindy walked out.

“Jessica!” she cried. “What is it about us and restrooms?”

I smiled at her.

“That was you that just made that deep sigh?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

I couldn’t very well tell her that she was the cause of most of my problems.

“Just a lot on my mind,” I replied. “My boyfriend is so wrapped up in his work that we hardly talk anymore. I’ve offered to help, but he turned me down flat. Some sort of a guy-pride thing.”

“God, I know exactly what you mean,” Cindy replied. “My ex was like that. So wrapped up in his work that we hardly ever talked. He got so distant, that I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed some attention, and I couldn’t get it from him. We finally broke up.”

I almost staggered in shock. She’d just described my situation with Phil, and yet it was my situation with her. Suddenly, it all came crashing in. I really ... really understood what had happened and why Cindy had felt as she did.

“I’m so sorry!” I said.

“Don’t be,” she misinterpreted my response. “Everything worked out for the best, and I’m sure it will for you too.”

She patted my shoulder and turned and walked out the door. I was in shock. All the pieces had come together. With Phil, I was now living what had happened between Mark and Cindy. No wonder she had left me.

‘But,’ I thought, ‘she could leave. She had a successful business that would provide her with an income.’ At this point, I was trapped. With little income of my own, I had to live with Phil. Don’t get me wrong, I had chosen this. But, I’d had little choice. I had to settle for the best deal I could get. It was what a lot of women had to do every day, take what life gave us and make the most of it.

If I hadn’t realized it before, it now really sunk in that I was a woman in a woman’s situation.

“You could look at it that way, and a lot of women do,” Karen said when I returned to our table.. “But today women have a lot more choices than our grandmothers and mothers did. We can go out and make something more of ourselves, rather than just being an appendage of some man.”

“You do,” I replied. “But right now, I haven’t any access to the things which could help me even get a start. Until this mess with Cindy is fixed, I almost don’t exist.”

“You’ve got a lot more going for yourself than you think, Jessica. All you need to do is look around.”

I drove home with a lot to think about.

Tina took the latest round of homework she’d assigned me and promised to discuss the results of what I’d put down at our next session. “But next time, I want to meet Mark. I want you to come as him.”

I didn’t want to, but decided I could do it. Now I had a little money from my Sea Gal appearances and the money the bank had paid, so I went shopping for a man’s suit. I couldn’t spend a great deal, but I decided I wanted Mark to look as nice as possible. I got him an inexpensive, but nice looking navy blue pinstripe suit with matching shirt and tie. I picked up a package of briefs, black socks and black wing tip shoes at one of the local big box stores. While I didn’t spend as much as I would have on a female outfit for me, outfitting a guy takes money too. That made me feel better about the progress I’d made since I’d found out I didn’t have access to Mark’s clothing or money. I’d done the best I could at the time.

I put Mark’s clothes in the back of my closet in my mostly unused bedroom. I’d not only need them for my meeting with the therapist, but I was sure Mark would have to be present a few times when Fred was settling things with Cindy.

I wanted to do something really special for Super Bowl Sunday. It was the last football party of the season, so I powered up my kitchen laptop and chose several party food recipes. I printed out the shopping list for them and ran my plans past Phil. He almost didn’t notice what I’d planned, but nodded when I told him I wanted to have a party worthy of the Super Bowl.

It took two days to get everything fixed. Thank Heavens for the industrial sized refrigerator. Instead of the usual cans and bottles, I ordered some kegs of beer and found out they would have been less expensive than cans and bottles all along. I made a note in my laptop about that.

It was our biggest party yet. I thought back to the first party I’d attended way back during the preseason and marveled at how far we’d come in entertaining. Lots of people complimented me on the party and the spread I’d put out. Many of the Sea Gals were able to come, which got me a lot of appreciation from the guys. I, of course, was in my Sea Gal's uniform, reminding myself of how much I enjoyed showing myself off.

We started the party way early. There were lots of pre-game shows on television. We’d moved a couple of the upstairs TVs down into the living room and dining room so everyone could see the whole spectacle.

Shaundra and her friends showed up too. At the height of the party, I was coming into the kitchen with a tray to refill when I caught sight of her and Phil heading for the stairs. ‘What’s with that?’ I wondered I started to move in that direction when one of Shaundra’s friends stopped me to ask a question. When we’d finished talking, there was no sight of either Shaundra or Phil. But I had a tray to refill, so I proceeded to keep my guests entertained.

I was in the pantry about a half-hour later when Shaundra came into the kitchen. She didn’t see me, but I could hear her talking to her friends. “Boy was that a disappointment. All he wanted to do was go in the back door. It didn’t do a thing for me.”

I dropped a can. When I backed out of the pantry carrying a big can of nacho cheese, I saw Shaundra’s friends pointing to the pantry door. Shaundra looked at me and at least had the decency to blush a little.

“Oh, hi Jessica. I didn’t see you there. Nice party.”

“Well, I hope you’re having fun,” I replied, ever the hostess.

“Well, things are going as I’d expected. See you.”

With that, she left the kitchen. A few minutes later, I notice she and her friends going out the door. I waited a few minutes and found an excuse to go upstairs. The comforter on our bed, which I had taken pains to get really smooth that morning, was slightly rumpled. I checked the waste can. At least the bastard had used a condom.

I was livid. Clearly Shaundra had planned a little tryst to get back at me. And Phil, that stupid man, had fallen right into her trap. At least she had told her friends she didn’t enjoy it!

But Phil, with a real vagina to play with, had still preferred the anal route, like he did with me. ‘What does that mean?’ I was getting confused.

Just then, someone called from downstairs. I grabbed a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom and carried it to the downstairs bathroom to keep up appearances.

That night after everyone had left, Phil wasn’t his usual post-party horny self. But I was not about to be denied. I pulled his thing out of his briefs and ran my hand up and down it as I cupped his testicles with my other hand. I pumped him up until it was standing at attention, then pushed him down on the bed. I mounted him and shoved it in me, moving until it was rubbing my prostate with every stroke. Reclaiming what was mine, I went for all the pleasure I could get from it.

It was the most pleasure I’d gotten out of our lovemaking in some time. But it still didn’t fill the empty place somewhere in me that realized that Phil had cheated on me.