I made a (wo)man of him

Malcolm was having one of his episodes again.  He violently hurled his newspaper at the cat, who expertly dodged it and ran upstairs.

"Bloody animal!" Malcolm snarled.  He shook his fist "Always getting in my way!"

I resisted the urge to tut.  It would only enrage him further.  "I have to go to work now" I told him, getting up and straightening my pencil skirt.  With the mood Malcolm was currently in, I was grateful for the refuge offered by work.  Unfortunately for Dandy, our aging cat, he did not have the same boon and he would have to put up with Malcolm until I got back home in the evening.

As I drove to work, I decided that the "Malcolm Problem" was need to be resolved.  We had been a real couple once upon a time.  We had met at university.  In those days, Malcolm had been cute and fun to be with.  We married shortly after leaving university and had two lovely and bright twin daughters.  We had been a happy family.  Then, the girls grew up and left and then Malcolm was made redundant from his job as a printer.

Malcolm had tried to find work but found that, at age 55, he was unemployable within his field and too proud to work elsewhere at a greatly reduced salary.  As he had few friends outside work and no interests that he might take up, Malcolm found himself marooned at home.  And he was not taking it well at all.  I watched as my calm, placid husband gradually became a bad-tempered monster.  He was increasingly becoming difficult to live with.

At work, whilst doing a multitude of other things, I pondered what I could do about him. I even briefly toyed with the idea of murder.  He was getting that bad.  Other ideas, I considered and rejected.  At the moment there seemed to be no answer.

The answer came by pure chance a couple of weeks later when Malcolm complained of having back pains.  He was scornful when I suggested going to the Doctor's.  He considered it an affront to his masculinity to admit to weakness, except to me.  I hit upon a solution and acted upon it.  I went upstairs and brought down one of my old girdles and handed it to him.

"Try this" I suggested.  Malcolm looked at the garment with suspicion.  With the floral panels and lacy trimmings, it was clearly female underwear. "I can't wear this!  It's a woman's girdle!"

"Give it a try.  No-one but me will know and I won't breathe a word to anyone, I promise" I assured him.  For once, the logic overrode Malcolm's objections.  He went upstairs and put it on.  He shortly came back down and commented that his back felt a lot better with the girdle on.  And that was not the only benefit.  Malcolm seemed calmer and more in control of his emotions.  For the first time in a long time, he didn't even swear at the cat.

At my suggestion, Malcolm wore the girdle under his PJ's when we went to bed.  Whilst I was reading a report for work. I couldn't help but notice that Malcolm seemed to like the feel of the girdle and its overall prettiness.

This was a very interesting development!

Malcolm did indeed appreciate the benefits of the girdle and continued to wear it the following day.  In the meantime, I had decided to take things a little further.  After work, I drove out to a lingerie store that I had found details of on the net during my lunch break.  It was an Aladdin's cave of feminine lingerie.  But, at this stage, I wasn't after a pair of outrageously frilly knickers or a see-through chemise.  I purchased a new girdle.  The new girdle was longer.  It would add more support to Malcolm's back.  Just as importantly, it was covered with white satin and I knew that Malcolm would enjoy the feel of it.

The assistant was puzzled as the size of girdle was too big for me, but the girl said nothing.  A wave of inspiration hit me and I decided to add some black silk stockings and a pair of white knickers to my purchase.   The girl assistant held up the copiously sized knickers, much too big for me, and gave me a strange look, but took my money and handed over the bag filled with my husband's underwear.

When I got home, I got Malcolm to try on the new girdle and he was very happy with it.  It made his back feel a lot better, he said.  I said nothing about the other underwear.  I knew that nothing in the world would induce Malcolm to wear stockings or knickers at my suggestion.  But if I left them lying around.....

It took only a couple of days for Malcolm to overcome his masculine instincts whilst I was at work and try on the silky stockings, and then the knickers.  He tried to hide the fact that he had worn them, but it was obvious that he had.  But he was hopelessly hooked on feminine lingerie and after a little show of resistance, he gave into my suggestion that as he liked the stockings and knickers so much, he should wear them all of the time.  I made another visit to the lingerie store and bought Malcolm a decent stock of women's underwear.

Including, I should add, that most womanly of things, a bra!

Malcolm was reluctant to wear it at first, but at the sight of the lacy, embroidered cups, his resistance crumbled and he allowed me to clap the bra onto him.  As Malcolm had let himself go physically, he had man-boobs that could use the extra support.

From that point onwards, Malcolm was putty in my hands and a willing accomplice to his own feminisation, and so the other changes that were to come, came rapidly.  Malcolm allowed me to depilate him and file, shape varnish and paint his finger and toe nails.  Malcolm began to use beauty products and creams, as well as cosmetics.

As we lay together in bed, we must have made a strange sight.  I wore a pair of ladies' silk PJ's, but my husband was clad in either a silk nightdress or negligee with his growing hair dyed and in rollers and his nails varnished.  Underneath the night attire, Malcolm's body was hairless and perfumed.  He felt and smelt a lot pleasanter than he used to, although it was becoming harder for me to believe that the feminised person who lay beside me every night was my husband.

Finally, inevitably, Malcolm's original wardrobe was replaced by one more appropriate for a lady.  Malcolm was as hooked on clothes, shoes and handbags as any real female and his wardrobe soon surpassed mine.  In spite of his size, for Malcolm was almost six feet tall and broad with it, he made a convincing looking woman and, not only that, using moisterisers and make up knocked years off him so that he looked more like a woman in her early forties than a man aged almost 60.

I was astonished by the transformation in Malcolm.  He had been born a male, raised as one, and had lived as a man for over forty years, yet in less than six months he had willingly adapted to feminine dress and habits as if he had been born and raised as a female.  In many ways, he was more feminine than I was, which I found a little disturbing.

Entirely comfortable with his new feminine persona, Malcolm gave up looking for work and dedicated himself to being a househusband.  He took on all of the chores and jobs that had once been mine.  He learned cookery and baking.  He had the sitting room redecorated in an style that I found overly feminine and which I did not particularly like but which I had to accept as my husband had assumed the same proprietal attitude towards the house as any housewife.

As Malcolm became more confident, he wanted to go out dressed en femme, and so we went out to restaurants and cinemas together with him wearing a dress and heels and waltzing around as if being a woman was entirely natural to him.  I looked and felt pretty dowdy beside my feminised peacock of a husband.

With Malcolm having assumed the feminine role in our relationship, I was becoming the more masculine element.  It was I who wore the trousers in every sense.  I stopped having my hair styled and had it cut short so that I looked boyish.  I stopped shaving my legs and armpits, using cosmetics and I even began wearing plain, unfeminine underwear.  I was becoming the "man" of the house with a "wife" to take care of me and my home.

Malcolm begged me to give up work so that we could spend more time together.  That wasn't altogether a bad idea.  I was almost 60 and I had been asked recently by my company if I would like to take early retirement.  With Malcolm's redundancy money and our pensions, we would be reasonably well off.  So I accepted and finished work.

Malcolm's 60th birthday was looming on the horizon and I decided that the best way to celebrate it would be for us to reaffirm our wedding vows with, of course, our traditional roles reversed.  Malcolm made a lovely woman and every woman should have the ultimate feminine experience of being a bride!  Having been the bride almost 40 years earlier, I was happy to be the bridegroom.  The clothes and preparations were a lot less work.  As the bride, Malcolm would have to fret about everything from his hair and nails, the dress, the flowers and the bridesmaids.  But it would be his day.

On the subject of bridesmaids, our daughters, Josie and Melinda consented to be their father's bridesmaids and very lovely they looked too.  They had no issues with our role reversal.  This was due to the fact that Josie's husband, Lance, had come out as a cross-dresser and wore dresses all of the time, and because Ray, Melinda's husband, had been cheating with a younger woman.  Melinda was a strong woman and knew how to deal with a erring husband.  After threatening to kick him out and take him to the cleaners through the divorce courts, Ray had to accept certain conditions to prevent himself becoming homeless and skint.  One of these was for Ray to be dressed in exactly the same way as his mistress, Sadie.  As Sadie wore skin-tight leggings, mini skirts, thongs, very high heels and far too much make up, Ray ended up looking ridiculous as well as being very uncomfortable.  As a result, none of us women or even the grandchildren, were fazed by the sight of a man in a cream bridal gown and lace veil.

So, almost 40 years after the original ceremony, the man who had once been the bridegroom glided down the aisle in a gorgeous and extremely feminine dress and I, once the bride and now wearing a man's morning suit, waited for him.  The ceremony went well and we went on to the reception.

Malcolm had given me his gift.  A chunky man's wristwatch which I now wore.  I thought of my gift to him, which he did not yet have but was going to receive once we were alone in the bridal suite.  A strap on dildo and two pairs of fluffy handcuffs. Malcolm would learn tonight that one of his wifely duties was to satisfy his husband in bed and I would also make a real woman of him.

After women won the vote.....

.....we decided to hold a dinner party.  Not the usual dinner party, of course, that would have been dull, but an alternative one.

The fact of women obtaining the vote had been known about well in advance, of course.  The prospect had fuelled much speculation in our household and beyond in what the "new world" would be once women became equal to men.  It was said, jokingly, that as the number of women was greater than the number of men, they could vote an all-female government into power and do exactly what they liked.

There was even talk of a complete reversal between the sexes, with the women working and wearing trousers and the men in skirts minding the house and children.

It was this last theme that gave me the brainwave to have a dinner party, just amongst the family, but with the diners dressed as members of the opposite gender to their own, just for a glimpse of what might have been.

I put my idea to my family and, with one exception, they agreed that it might be a jolly wheeze to try it.  The date was selected and all preparations made.  Unlike a "normal" dinner party, this one would need a lot of extra work and attention to detail.

Finally, the evening of the dinner party came and the diners came in to take their places.  What a sight we made!

Mama and Papa were the first to make their entrance.  Mama was wearing men's evening dress - including trousers - for the first time in her life.  She immediately appeared more masculine and commanding.  Papa wore a burgundy silk evening gown that left his shoulders bare.  The gown was puffed out by voluminous layers of petticoats and it was obvious that he was wearing a corset.

Next to appear were me - Penelope - and my darling fiance, Algernon.  I was dressed in exactly the same way as Mama and with my bobbed hair I made a very boyish looking gentleman.  Algy, who topped six feet and had a very masculine physique, was wearing a filmy and clingy red flapper dress, silk evening gloves, silk stockings and high heels.

Last to appear were my younger brother, Henry, and Harriet, my youngest sister, and the baby of the family, and it was with these youngsters that the change in dress was most startling.  Harriet strode in confidently in boys' knickerbockers, a smart velvet jacket and boys' boots.  Henry hung back, reluctant to enter, dressed as he was in a girl's white frock with a very sweet pink ribbon at the waist that ended in a large bow at the back, and frilled ankle socks.

I should add that as well as wearing the outer garments of the opposite gender, everyone also had to wear appropriate underwear.  For instance, I wore a pair of Algy's cotton underpants whilst he wore a pair of silk knickers and a chemise.

Also, although they had not been asked to, the servants also switched clothes, so that our footmen became maids and our maids became footmen.  It was jolly nice of them to oblige us in this way and added to the spirit of it all.

As we took our places, I looked at each of the participants and judged that they all looked exquisite.  Although the diners were dressed appropriately, other aspects of their appearance jarred against their clothes.  Mama was wearing a ladies' wig to conceal her greying hair, Papa still had his beard and whiskers, I had rather large breasts, which had been impossible to conceal, Algy just looked like a Guard's Officer who had been stuffed into a dress, Harriet had golden ringlets and was constantly giggling, whilst Henry had short hair.

In short, rather than everyone looking like a man or a woman, we all looked like curious amalgams of both sexes.  But as the whole point was not to turn men into women (and vice versa) but to give an image of a possible alternative world where women were dominant, it all worked fabulously.

Whilst the rest of us found it all a scream, it was clear that Henry was not at all happy.  He was sullen and resentful.  In babyhood and infancy, he had been a sweet little boy, but now that he was nine he had become insufferably full of himself and contemptuous of girls.  He had taken to teasing Harriet mercilessly as she was a "soppy girl and a baby".  To now find himself dressed as a "soppy girl" whilst his little sister wore trousers was the biggest humiliation he could imagine, and he was not taking it well.

To make things worse for him still, Harriet was getting her own back on him, referring to him as "Baby Henrietta" and suggesting that as he was so pretty, he ought to wear hair ribbons.  It did not help.

Henry refused to enter into the spirit of the thing and his mood did put a dampener on the gathering, in spite of our efforts to make a joke out of the whole thing.  The final straw for Henry came after dinner, for, whilst the gentlemen retired to allow the ladies to enjoy a smoke and a glass of port, and Harriet was given a ball to play with, Henry was given one of Harriet's dolls.  At this, he threw the mother of all tantrums.  He threw the doll away violently and began feverishly tearing off his clothes, demanding his usual ones back.

We ladies decided that this babyish tantrum demanded appropriate punishment.  If Henry insisted on acting like a baby, he would be treated like one.  Henry was put into nappies and made to wear a girls' baby frock and bonnet and confined to a high chair.  Henry soon learned that there were greater humiliations than being dressed as a girl.  Harriet teased her "baby sister".  Henry so hated the reversal that had taken place between himself and Harriet that he soon begged for mercy!

We ladies deliberated and decided to be merciful, but only on condition that Henry behaved himself.  Henry was relieved of his baby frock and allowed to don his girls' frock.  To our astonishment and great satisfaction, Henry became contrite and submissive.  He willingly accepted his sister's doll and began playing with it, just like any other girl.  As the evening wore on, Henry even became more confident in girls' clothes (although he would have died if any of his chums had seen him) walking through the house with more confidence, as if his new clothes had become natural to him.

The evening was a great success and it had been a scream to see everybody cross-dressed, but it was a one-off.  By the morning, everything was back to normal.  The insight I gained into everyone's behaviour was valuable. Everyone, even Henry, eventually accepted their new mode of dress and the behaviours that went with them.

If this is possible in 1918, when the world is still a man's world, could this glimpse of the future became reality in the future?  Only time will tell.