Levirate Bride
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

“I am not telling you to do anything,” said Parviz. “I am just telling you what our traditions are. These traditions are designed to keep the family together.”

“I want that too, but I am not going to submit myself to mutilation.” I was upset, not just because the love of my life was barely a day buried, but because I faced trying to care for our son and daughter without him. And now this.

“It was his deathbed wish,” he said. “By our heritage I cannot refuse this request. The only thing that can prevent us being married according to our tradition, is that you are male. Otherwise I intend to abide by his wishes. But you can always refuse me.”

“But I am male,” I said. “I am a gay man. I could never be anything else. Not even to provide for my children. It is just impossible.”

“Change of sex is possible,” he said. “The mullahs have approved it. Ayatollah Khomeini himself approved of it.”

“For transsexuals, maybe, not homosexuals.”

“For homosexuals too,” insisted Parviz. “If one of such a relationship becomes a woman, Allah will look favourably upon the union. Without it …, well, in Islam, homosexual sex is punishable by death. And it is a crime against God. That is the law in Iran now.”

“We are not in Iran,” I snapped. “This is west you live in now.”

In another setting, I would be amused by my brother in law’s expressions of faith. He was not a great observer and was known to enjoy fine wines and good scotch whisky. But I knew that his faith was genuine. My wonderful late husband Manou, had never held the faith as his brother did.

“Listen to me, Lisle,” he said, placing his hands upon my shoulders. “I want to do this. I want you to move into my home. It is too big for us. My wife will accept you as a sister wife. Our children will welcome their cousins. And as my wife, you will want for nothing. But it must be a marriage. That means between a man and a woman.”

“I may not be the most manly of men,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean that I could be a woman, even for everything that you offer. You are a good man, Parviz, and a great brother.”

“Think of the children.” Now he was pushing where it hurt. “They are my brother’s blood, so they are my blood. I want them to have a home. Please forgive me for saying this, but you cannot bring them up as we would both like, as a solo parent, with very limited means.”

“I know Manu left us with nothing,” I admitted. “His illness took all that we had, and, to be honest, I was hoping that you could help a little…”.

“I am not sure what the future could hold for you as a gay man alone, with two young children. You know that I have always opposed my brother’s life with you. But I have never been other than a friend to you. Can you tell me this is not true? If you can be a woman, I can be a husband.”

“Can you?” I cried, with tears welling up. I had just lost my husband the week before, and only the day before all of this blew up, I had buried his body. I missed him. He was irreplaceable.

“I can only try,” said Parviz. “My promise to you is that I will try. But You know that I do not often fail”. That was true. He was a successful man. An achiever. Unlike my Manou.

***

“I didn’t even know that levirate marriage was a thing in Islam,” said my friend David. “It is an obscure Jewish tradition I know, because my family is Jewish. And it is a practice in some other cultures, as I understand it.”

“I think that it is peculiar to their part of Iran,” I said. “Anyway, by making it his dying charge on his brother, it seems Manou believed it. And I know Parviz does. He is insistent.”

“He is just trying to provide for you,” said David. “Parviz is an honourable man, and one of the best consulting engineers in the city. And he makes packets of money. Manou, bless him, was always short of a dollar.”

“So that it what is on the table,” I said, summing up. “Gay man on the loose – with a penis but two kids in tow. Or man without a penis – living as number two wife, but rich and comfortable.”

“I will say this to you darling,” said David. “As a single gay man approaching middle age, slightly promiscuous, no commitments – I would give up both arms before I would give up my cock. But I am not so young these days. And your arms never fall slack from your shoulders. My penis is no longer as important to me as it once was. Now all I want is a relationship which is not dependent on my erection. You are being offered one. And, well, you have commitments, which I don’t.”

“But live as a woman?” I said. “Okay, I can dress in drag for the Pride Parade, but live like that?”

“I remember you in last year’s parade,” said David wistfully. “You were gorgeous. To be honest, I could have sworn you were a well-dressed and rather elegant, lesbian.”

“This is serious,” I rebuked him.

“Darling, you have the looks. That’s all I am saying. You did look very fishy.”

He used the word that gay men or drag queens use when referring to dressing to pass as female. It was not the first time I had been so accused, although I had never been a habitual cross-dresser, when I did dress I had to go overboard if I did not want to be accused of being fishy.

I said: “It’s a huge thing to ask of me. I am only discussing it with you as a possibility because of the children. I so want for them to have the best life possible. Losing their father at such a young age is so difficult. And I love them so much, the truth is I would give up any part of my anatomy for them.”

And the truth is that it was the kids that swung the decision for me.

Not all gay couples choose to raise a family, but it was important to Manou. It was only after they were born that I realized that it what I wanted too. They were both his biological children, with gorgeous dark features that I loved in my husband. Manou and I had initially decided that the surrogate would carry one of each of our sperm, but my count was so low that this was impossible. We had one surrogate, one pregnancy, twins, one of each. Caleb and Ayesha. At the time of his death aged only 7.

The whole thing was expensive. We paid for it with money we did not have. It seemed that we were blessed beyond all imagining, but then Manou got sick. The illness that dragged on for years, and all the alternative remedies that we would not pay for did not work. When he died I was under a mountain of debt.

I sat down with the kids and told them about what their uncle was proposing. I told them that we could live with him but I would have to be a mommy rather than their Poppa.

“I’ve always wanted a mom,” said Caleb. “It’s good to have two dads, but people think that it’s weird, and sometimes people are not nice to us. Everybody else has a mom, and we don’t.”

I had never thought of it before, but I could see that they had both found having gay parents difficult. The little sweethearts had never said anything to Manou and me about it. I teared up when I heard it.

“Please be a mom,” said Ayesha. “We can do mom and daughter things together.”

The huge smile of her face was enough for me to make the decision that would change my life.

***

Parviz arranged everything. All I had to do was say ‘yes’. It was the hardest decision of my life. I rationalized it as a commitment to my children. I was prepared to leave everything behind to commit myself to them. Including my manhood.

I know that there are many people, particularly gay men like I was, who will abuse me for doing this. All that I can say is that you have no understanding of the position I was in, and the man that Parviz was. Perhaps if you read on you will appreciate what I did and why.

Parviz settled our debts the day that I signed for the surgery. Just a stroke of his pen and they were gone. He made an oath before God that day. We sat there together, he and I and his lovely wife Soraya. He committed to marry me after the surgery, and we three committed ourselves to the welfare of our children and each other. It was quite beautiful. I choked back some tears, but Soraya said to me: “You are a woman now. You should cry out loud.”

She was there when I went under the anaesthetic and there when I came out. She was there when the pain started. I felt like my guts had been ripped out through a hole in my crotch. I felt like screaming: “What have I done?” but I could not even speak. There had been surgery done on my throat as well, and I was stuck in silence for weeks.

Caleb and Aiesha were moved to a new school near to our new home. We moved in on commitment day. They each had a room and I so did I. Parviz and Soraya had two children also, both boys, Ali and Feredon (Freddy), both teenagers and at a private boarding school during these events. But there was still a seventh bedroom spare.

When I came home from hospital Soraya took me in hand, not only to tell me the role of second wife, but to help me adjust to womanhood.

“There will be a wedding,” she said. “But before that you have much to learn about becoming feminine. Parviz will expect you to honour him by being womanly at all times. Your name will be Leila.” I only learned the significance of the name later.

People might have described me as being effeminate, but I never regarded myself as being that, when I was a man. I was gentle and soft spoken, that is true. I would always avoid a fight, or even heated debate, but I was not completely short of aggression. I was never a limp wristed queer, but I was never afraid to be queer either.

So for me, learning the movements and presentation of a woman was completely new. The good thing was that Soraya attacked the problem with such gusto and humor. During my silent phase in particular she would have me mimic her movements and would laugh at me a tease me for the slightest error. It became a game that we would play, just the two of us, for years afterwards.

My hair was not that long, but it was plentiful and long enough to anchor extensions. I had assumed that I might get away with a short style, but Soraya persuaded me to have expensive natural hair extensions put in.

“You can always cut your hair later,” she said. “But for now, nothing will help you understand womanhood better that having hair to look after and to style.”

She was right. From the moment that I came back from the salon with the long hair, and the plucked eyebrows, and the eyeliner tattoo, every glance in the mirror showed that I had left maleness far behind me. The truth is that I learned to love my hair, and now that it has grown out and the extensions are long gone, I would not dream of wearing it short.

I learned to love my body too. I had never been attracted to women sexually, and because I was not transgendered I never looked at women with envy either. The appearance of me just seemed odd. But I loved the softness and smoothness of it, and while the breasts which had been implanted were often inconvenient when exercising, I learned to love the way they looked.

I never thought that I would get used to my new genitals, but I did. I am not talking about sex (not yet, anyway) but about riding a bike, or peeing, or just sitting down with nothing there. But in truth a flaccid penis is an unattractive thing, and every time I pull up my panties over my perfect crotch, I feel that it seems right. The only inconvenience is needing a toilet to do what I have to do.

Soraya introduced me to women’s clothes. I had no interest in what women wore before, but it did not take me long to realise that when you have such choice, dressing is about how you feel or what you want to do on any particular day. Dressing as a woman is a statement. I liked it. I even came to love it. Parviz paid the bills but he liked what he got for it. When he went out with his well-dressed wives he was proud.

I remember the first time that I went out in a dress. It was a summer day and my legs were bare – freshly shaved and moisturized. I was still getting used to heels, so I wore something no too high. But the click of the heels on the pavement and the way that the skirt of the dress moved, made me feel like a runway model. Soraya and I walked through the mall together looking at store window displays. It felt great to be a woman. I remember that I looked at all the men around me, and they all looked serious or sad, where all the women seemed to be full of joy – in a shopping environment with so much to choose from. I remember thinking how pitiful men were, and how lucky I was to now be a woman.

From my description it will be clear that neither Soraya nor myself dressed as traditional Muslim women. We lived in America and we dressed as fashionable American women. I learned about the chador, the traditional Persian scarf, but in modern use this is an accessory, not a concealing garment. It should cover part of the head, and is large enough to conceal bare shoulders and sometimes even short skirts. We would only carry this garment among others of the Iranian and Shia Islam community, and wear is as modesty required.

It was also understood by the community that I was not a born Muslim woman, but that I had converted for my husband. They had no idea that I had also had an even more drastic conversion, because Manou had severed all connection with these people for obvious reasons, and all they knew was that Parviz had honored an old custom. I was expected to present as a convert. I had recited the creed but I had never come to believe any of it. In truth I was agnostic, or more precisely, it was not that I did not believe - I simply did not care. But I understood the importance of the faith to my new husband.

I did the cooking at home with Manou, but from Soraya I learnt about traditional Persian food. Again, her skill and philosophy in the kitchen was refreshing and fun. She believed that food was an expression of love, and that the more effort and love that went into a meal the more love would come out of it. Overtime, I learned that this was absolutely true.

My children loved the new me. I think mainly it was because they felt good about their new home (which was very nice) and their new school (which included others of a similar appearance to them) and, most of all, the sadness seemed to terminate. I no longer carried a burden and they could see it. The fact that their father now wore skirts and regularly attended to hair and makeup, was of no particular concern. Caleb announced that they had decided to call me “Mommy”. I was very happy, because Manou had always been “Daddy” and I was “Poppa” which was a name I had never warmed to. It was not long before they started to call Parviz “Daddy”.

He was my husband, but he was not my sexual partner. The surgery had given me a working vagina. After the operation the packing had been removed at the hospital and a stent inserted. But it was explained to me that I would need to exercise the new passage with dildos to keep it open. I was no stranger to these as I already had a passage that I had dilated in the past to be a passive partner for Manou. But the first time I inserted something into this new opening and watched it disappear up inside me, I almost fainted. I think that it was just the idea that there was this huge void inside me.

I only persevered with it because Soraya insisted that to be a woman I should have a vagina. There was pain when I moved up a dilator size, and then up again, but it was made easier with her help. It was, if you think about, the first time I had any kind of sexual experience with a woman. She was helping me to learn about my vagina by pushing and pulling, and rotating. The first time I achieved a female orgasm she was so excited I had to laugh. Partly it was the joy that I could still enjoy sex, but also her joy that I could.

She was also excited in planning the wedding, something I found a little confusing. She told me that she would also be there to make her own vow, to accept me as a sister wife and to reaffirm her vows to Parviz made many years before.

I asked him whether I could invite some of my gay friends. He told me that he had no problem with any of my friends. In fact, he liked David. He told me that all Islam preaches love and respect for the Jews. It is just Zionism they have a problem with.

When the day came I was prepared as a true bride. My hair, which had been lightened from my natural light brown, was pinned up with an elaborate hair arrangement on top. I was in white, a dress that I had already tried on. It presented my bosom with the assistance of a lacy bustier which left no doubt that I was all woman.

I entered the room where Parviz and Soraya waited next to the arrangement that it traditional in all Persian weddings. I remember that it had a bowl of apples, a bowl of honey, a bowl of coins and a bowl of salt. There were other things to, all with some special meaning.

The ceremony was conducted in Arabic and Farsi, so It was a mystery to me. But it was beautiful. I said the right words that I had learned when I needed to say them, and I became Parviz’s wife. He looked happy. I looked happy.

I understand why this is a special day that women and girls, or boys who want to be girls, might dream about. But I had never had that dream. My civil ceremony with Manou was not like this. It was about a commitment, and celebrating that with friends. But being a bride is something so very special. The ceremony is really just about you. The bride is the focus. She must be beautiful, and graceful, and an expression of love. I was all those things on that day. Still it had its effect on me. I still carry the memory and I am reminded every time I look into Parviz’s eyes.

I had hoped that my gay friends would share the moment with me. They air kissed me and enjoyed themselves, in particular because Parviz allowed and supplied wine after the ceremony. I danced with some of them as well as my husband, both my nephews (now stepsons) and others. The music started Middle Eastern but later moved to modern dance music. To my surprise, Parviz and Soraya proved themselves very capable.

It was not until some days after the wedding that I learned that my number of friends had been drastically reduced. I discovered that I had committed the ultimate sin for a gay man – I had crossed over. I had betrayed my kind by agreeing to the amputation of the organs that are a gay man’s pride, no matter how insignificant they might be. Those of them who met the bride realised that she was no longer one of them. Only David and one other friend Leigh, remained close to me. David because he was a true friend; Leigh because (as it later turned out) he was transgender all along.

I had always thought that friends love the person no matter what the body might be. If that is true then I thought that me the person, had not changed with the changes to my body. I might no longer be sexually attractive to my friends, but I did not want to be. But I was deeply upset that the friendships of many seemed to have faded and died, as if they were not really of value. It left me relying even more on family.

But the truth is that as a person I had changed. Perhaps the body or the new hormonal chemistry had changed me, but I was not the same person - especially after my wedding day, or rather the evening of that day.

We were exhausted when we got home, but Soraya told me that during the wedding she had made changes to the sleeping arrangements. She said: “All my things have been taken to your room, and all your things are now in the master bedroom.”

“But I do not want to come between you and Parviz,” I said. “I know how much he loves you and how much you love him. That was so obvious today. This is the last thing I would want.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “I am going through menopause. I love my husband and will always love him, but sex is difficult for me these days. It has been for some time. Your body is ready for sex. You are young and you can give him the joy he needs. Because I love him I am begging you to sleep with him. I am begging you to make him happy. For both of us.”

Over the time since the death of my first husband, Manouchehir, I had learned to respect his brother, Parviz, above all men. I knew him to be a man of honour, generosity, understanding. He loved his children and mine, and he could offer them his wise counsel, his rich knowledge of culture, and his faith, but only if they chose it. But this was not love. I had fallen in love with his brother, a gay man, because that was my nature. It seemed impossible that I could ever love Parviz, who was not gay.

What I could do on his wedding night was give him my body. Of course, I could do that. I had sucked penises and been penetrated by them, more times that I could count. I could lie or bend over and satisfy him. And he had paid for this body, these tits, this pussy. He had bought the toys, so he could play with them. That seemed only right.

He came to me as I lay there naked under the sheets, and kissed me on the forehead. He said: “You must be very tired. If you do not want to, then I …”.

“I want to,” I lied. I pulled back the sheets so that he could see my body.

It was a long way from the body that I had been mine only months before. My body was smooth and soft, with breasts and hips, and the vagina beneath the trimmed diamond of hair, lubricated in advance. It was a body that I would have found uninteresting. But his interest was obvious. His pyjamas tented and were quickly dropped to the floor.

I have seen a few penises in my time but this was impressive. I assumed that he would sink it in without further delay, but despite the organ itself appearing to scream for that, he took the time to kiss my mouth and neck, finger my well-constructed clitoris and lick my nipples. I found that it was me begging to be driven into.

When he finally did enter me, it was as if I had never been fucked before. The first orgasm that I had experienced with the dilator happened again at that moment, when his pubic hair meshed with mine. I could not believe it. It was hard to imagine that it could get any better. But it did. So completely different. Slow rhythmical strokes gradually quicken. A passageway with nerves all the way up to capture the warmth and shape of him. I found myself involuntarily grunting or screaming, or something. I had imagined that I might urge him on with: “Give it to me, Big Boy!” But in truth I was not in control. Then when I heard him whisper “Allahu Akbar”. I knew something special was going to happen. His sperm filled me. The earth moved. A lighting bolt passed through me. I fell in love.

It was a world changing moment. We lay in the afterglow, me fingering the hairs on his chest and thinking only about the next time we would make love. I realised that nothing would ever been the same. I had fallen for another, the brother of the other. There was no surprise that I was in love with a man, only that the man was not gay, and neither was I, not now.

Love is a kind of madness. Soraya told me later the Persian fable of Laila Majnoon. A lover literally goes mad with his love for Leila. He follows her, but because his madness, his family will not let him be with her. But he cannot control it. For me love is like that. I loved Manou, and I thought that I could not love again. But I did. I do.

The true madness is that Parviz loves me. Soraya said that it was Parviz’s duty, but that somewhere along the way, he had fallen for the woman I was becoming, well before I fell in love with the man he is. And she was happy for it. He sees me only as a woman. So that is what I am.

Soraya loves me too. And I love her. Polygamy may seem like a strange thing. Levirate marriage too. But sometimes, these old traditions really do work.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2019