Keeper

KEEPER

By Katharine Sexkitten

Tell the truth.

It was a Wednesday, when my world changed.

Tell the truth.

You look around, see the same people, the same walls, the same pressures, the same routines, unaware that your presumptions, your plans, made and remade every day of your twenty-two years, staid and static and placid, were all little candles, fragile, waiting for that gust of wind you didn't expect, blown dead and leaving you in darkness.

Tell the truth.

A colder than usual winter was near over, the cliché of the rebirth of spring just around the corner. Every day was a new opportunity for wonderful things to happen. Each new sunrise was the chance for that moment to arrive, the one that flickered in the back of your mind, the one that was a promise, from the day you were born, the one that would finally bring you your release from the doldrums of life.

Every wake-up was the start of that moment, when existence would right itself, when the universe would make the last adjustment and all the elements of happiness and love would align and fall into place.

Every morning, the same promise.

Every evening, hopes dashed again.

Maybe tomorrow would be the day, and the paradise that's out there, that you just know is out there, more than you know anything, will finally reveal itself.

Don't lie to yourself.

The promise of a new day.

SEE ME, said the note, in the unmistakable handwriting of the boss, the station manager, sitting on the top of my tiny desk, at an odd angle, a single slip of paper obviously thrown down, not placed, the air underneath it as it fell shifting it, making it land askew. His executive assistant, who it was rumoured he was having an affair with, although I tried my darnedest to not get involved in such conversations, nodded sideways at the door, letting me know I was expected and he was waiting for me.

He was not alone.

From day one he'd told me to call him Sid, his first name, but I could never do that. To me, it felt wrong, it felt presumptive. He was a legend in the industry, and I was the most recently-hired junior staff member, with no experience and little reason to feel on the same level as him.

"You wanted to see me, Mr. M?" I asked, poking my head in the door.

Three heads turned to look, two of them unknown to me.

"C'mon in, Jeremy," he said, putting a smile on his face that felt manufactured, felt forced.

The other two men both rose out of their chairs, and turned to me. One was like Sid, same age more or less, late fifties or early sixties, with a haggard look, lots of lines on his forehead, made all the more obvious with a receding hairline, the standard shirt and tie combination, both of which looked dingy, as if he could use new clothes but just couldn't bother going out to buy them. Stranger number two looked younger, by decades, and wore crisp new clothes, the dollars spent on his suit jacket alone more than I made in a month. He had dark black hair, coiffed and styled and quite possibly dyed, and designer eyeglasses, with platinum screws holding the arms on, and when he smiled and extended his hand towards me I saw the whitest teeth I think I'd ever seen.

"Mitch Clark," he said, and I took his hand, and he shook mine with a firm grip, vigorously. The older disheveled gent nodded at me and said his name. Earl something or other.

Sid waved me at one of the chairs opposite his desk, with the high backs and the faux-leather material.

"Mitch here is from the network," he said, "in town for a visit, working on a special project, very hush hush, and that's why I asked you here this morning, to see if maybe you could lend us a hand."

I had literally no idea what he was talking about. How could I help with anything?

I'd been hired fresh out of school, just a few months before, and the only reason they'd taken me on was because they desperately needed a new copywriter, and I was willing to work for cheap, because I was newly out of college with a shiny crisp diploma in Communications, loans to pay off and desperate for a job.

My interview with the program director of the radio station was daunting, the rotund man with bad skin staring at me as I stood in front of him, before he demanded that I sit down and write five different thirty-second commercials, he called them spots, for an imaginary shoe store, and make them good. It was a test, his gruff exterior making me nervous, and I was visibly sweating as I sat there with a pen and paper, and after he scoffed at the first two I'd jotted down I assumed there was no hope, but he liked the third and the fourth tries, and seemed ambivalent about the fifth, and he made a show out of hemming and hawing until he finally made his paltry offer.

I took it.

It was a job, in show business.

Tell the truth.

How could I possibly say no, even with the meager salary?

Now, I sat and wondered. How I could help someone from 'the network'?

Sid began explaining to me.

"Naturally, everything we talk about today is to be kept quiet, agreed?" and I nodded along with the other two guys, "but of course you always act in the most professional of manners, so none of us have anything to worry about that way, do we?"

Mitch eyed me a little, but I guess he was prepared to take Sid's word for it.

"So," Sid continued, "the project. Well, it would appear that the big fella is getting ready to retire," and I knew enough to realize he was talking about a world-famous news anchor, a journalist who had been the face of the national network for years, a man who seemed no-nonsense and straight-forward and who had managed to conduct himself without the slightest hint of scandal, someone who'd interviewed presidents and kings and newsmakers, notorious or otherwise, and my first reaction was surprise, tinged with sadness, like another of the mainstays of normality and stability I took as rote was disappearing, throwing unnecessary chaos into an already-fragile world, "and the question becomes who might succeed him."

Mitch decided to take over.

"There are, of course, lots of candidates, all around the country, who are chomping at the bit to move up to the national level," and he smiled, like we were equals, sharing information that peers would share, "and one of them, for obvious reasons, is Keeper."

Matt Keeper.

A local legend.

A small-to-medium-sized market king. The undisputed number one. He'd been anchoring the six and eleven o'clock local newscasts for over twenty years, and despite other stations doing their best to topple him, no one ever had. He had it all, when it came to the job.

Perfect delivery. Serious news chops, seriously presented, with the occasional wry smile whenever the sports guy or the weather lady said something funny, when the subject wasn't news, which he obviously took seriously. Good looks, the kind that makes some men wish they had and makes some women want to hook up with. A full head of dark hair, with a few grey ones slipping in, quite natural in a man who was in his early fifties, a serious tan, big bright cool eyes, like the sun reflecting off of a blue iceberg, a square jaw and a jutting chin, full lips and perfect teeth, who was always impeccably dressed, who stood a couple of inches over six feet tall and sat behind the desk with a perfectly straight back, his chest proudly prominent. On rare occasions, during pre-taped interviews or the rarest of public appearances, usually emceeing a charity event for children, you could see all of him, and he stood out in every crowd, not just because of his height, but like any other person with a picture-perfect frame, someone hugely athletic amongst mere mortals, he always carried himself well. He'd been a star college sports player in his younger years, some thinking he'd be pro material, but his passion for journalism won out, and he looked in as peak shape now as he'd been all those years ago.

And like the big fella, as far as I'd ever heard, a celebrity with no personal scandals, and no unfortunate incidents. I remembered a small story about his divorce, a few years ago, he and his ex-wife quietly agreeing to a private resolution of things, and while I'm sure some people tried to gossip about it, or make it a deal of some sort, nothing came of it.

To my mind, he seemed like the perfect fit for a national television news show. Not hard to look at, by any means, with the aura of professionalism and a great communicator, someone who could read out the dictionary and make it interesting, which I'd heard from the radio guys as a barometer of quality.

None of which gave me any indication as to why I was there.

Mitch and Sid looked at each other, as if they were waiting for the other to say something, and after a few moments of awkward silence, Earl took over.

"Thing is," he said, his head down a little bit, staring at his own shoes, "Matt has some, uh, issues," and he waited, "like any person might, understand?"

Before I could respond, Sid cleared his throat and I looked at him.

"We'd like to offer you the position of Associate Producer on his show."

My mind went spinning, such was my shock. Associate Producer of an award-winning local t. v. news show? What was he talking about? I wrote radio commercials for car dealerships and fast-food places and florist shops, that's all. And I was barely a couple of months into the job! And they want me to produce something? On television?

What does a producer even do?

"There'd be a significant raise in salary, of course," he added.

Earl kept looking at his shoes, and when I turned to look at Mitch, he was staring at Sid.

"I don't..." and then I stopped, because I didn't know what to say.

"We need someone with your energy and your enthusiasm," Sid continued, "to help out, to uh, to assist Matt where needed, to, uh, make him, well, to make the show, uh, better. Give a hand managing his time, mostly. It'll make the ratings jump, help Mitch and the national team in their decision-making, about replacing the big fella."

I still couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"But I write boring PSA's, and commercials for radio."

A PSA is a Public Service Announcement, which every broadcaster had to do, just to keep their license. Freebies, that made them able to claim that they're all about the community.

Sid nodded.

"And you do a fine job of it, Jeremy. Everyone's been very impressed with your, uh, your, um, well, your work ethic."

I grasped for anything to say.

"I don't know anything about producing, or television, for that matter," I blurted out, defensively. "I've only ever been in the building to eat at the commissary." I thought about my trips across the parking lot. "I don't even know where the studio is in there."

Earl made a noise that sounded like a snort.

"Matt's the big draw, get it? Whether he gets the national job or not, he's the star around here. Number one, for years. Advertisers pay the biggest bucks to get a spot on his show. That's our bread and butter, right there. Whatever we need to do to keep him that way, here or not, we do it. Anybody can write copy for thirty second spots, don't kid yourself. You're being offered the opportunity of a lifetime, son. There's areas of the business you have no clue about that you could advance in, rapidly. Put some time in helping to produce Matt's show and who knows? You might get the chance to go with him, if he's ever offered the big chair. Think about that."

Tell the truth.

Wow. The big chair. As far up the showbiz ladder as it gets. And I could be a part of that? All the big-city action, the lights, the cameras, the fame, all the star power associated with prime-time? Travelling the world, for important events, with a first-class organization? And yeah, I know, there's no way that doesn't mess with your mind. It couldn't not.

"What would I have to do?" I asked, because I was bereft of any knowledge.

Sid smiled, like he was suddenly past a potential stumbling block.

"Do?" he asked. "Simple. Get Matt ready for both shows, every day. Whatever he needs. Keep him ready, keep him happy. Make sure he's where he needs to be, day and night, ready to go."

A modest fear rose up the back of my spine, all the way into my brain.

"Day and night?" I asked, incredulity obvious in my voice, "what kind of a job is this?"

Earl stood up, and paced behind me.

"I said. Matt's got some issues going on, right? You have no idea the pressure on the man, staying number one in the market, for this long, people wanting his time, pulling at him, all the hours it takes to be the award-winning broadcaster he is, award-winning news man. You don't just sit there and say stuff, you know. You don't garner a loyal audience for decades without knowing what you're talking about, knowing the stories, knowing the players. Some days, busy news days, there aren't enough hours in the day for him to stay abreast of the facts, what the reporters are finding. And it ain't no shame, none at all, even he'd admit it, that time management is not his best subject. So what we need is someone smart and hard-working to be with him, by his side, pushing him when it's necessary, doing whatever it takes to keep him focussed, keep him the elite television journalist he is."

It sounded to me like they were asking me to be his gofer, and I was in such shock that I didn't engage my usual proper filters.

"You want me to be his baby-sitter?"

"Associate producer!" Sid said, emphatically, letting me know he didn't appreciate my description. "With a healthy bump in salary."

Mitch was still staring at my boss, as if I might not exist.

Don't lie.

I'd never met him, but I'd seen him thousands of times, on the news. I thought about him, how I'd always admired him, the way he understood the importance of facts and how he broadcast them, giving them the respect they deserve. His gravitas. Even reporting horrible stories, painful and sometimes harrowing events, no matter the tragic outcomes, he was always able to be the rock of solidity amongst all the turmoil.

And yes, he was a very good-looking man, handsome, and had a warmth about him that made liking him easy.

For a moment I thought it so sad that someone who seemed to be so good and decent would have problems, or things dragging him down.

"What kinds of issues is he having?" I finally asked.

Earl moved to stand beside Sid, who was sitting, and he pushed the back of his chair, like a little signal that it was his turn to talk.

"Does that mean you're interested in the position?" Sid asked, and when I nodded, which to me meant that I was at least interested in hearing more, he pulled a piece of paper out of a file folder, turned it, and handed it to me.

"This is a non-disclosure agreement. It's a binding legal document, you understand? You can read it if you want, but it's all boilerplate stuff. Anything and everything you see and hear from this moment forward, if you sign it, is privileged information, totally secret, which you will keep secret, forever, or get your ass sued off by our parent corporation, and absolutely go to jail, even if you don't take the job."

All three of them stared at me.

Mitch leaned over in my direction.

"No shitting around here, Jeremy. You sign it, you never tell a soul a thing, you got it? Not your family, not your friends, not reporters from other networks, not a fucking soul, capiche?"

Tell the truth.

I suddenly felt a spike of fear, gnawing away at me.

My pause must have been noticeable.

"As I mentioned," Sid said, "a significant bump in salary."

Everybody stared at me.

"And," he continued, "think about it," and he kept going, "Matt's show is number one, the best. You're being offered a chance to play a vital role in it, top level broadcasting. A chance like this doesn't come along very often, Jeremy."

Mitch and Earl nodded their agreements, and Mitch smiled at me, his white teeth glaring, and then he winked, like we were sharing something special together.

And I had to decide. Stay where I was, trying to find new angles on boring radio commercials, or throw caution to the wind and move over to television.

I signed the non-disclosure agreement.

I took the job.

They led me across the parking lot to the television building, and took me through security, past the commissary, to my new world. I got the five-cent tour, Earl pointing his fingers in various directions, saying words like 'newsroom' and 'editing suite' and 'film library', as well as pointing out the studios, some of which were used to film shows that got syndicated across the country, including two different cooking shows and a daily talk show focussed on women.

I'd actually seen that show, more than a few times, and thought the host was a caring, thoughtful, lovely middle-aged lady who anybody would welcome into their kitchen to sit and gab with.

Earl casually mentioned I should stay out of her way, if I ever ran into her in the hall, because she was, in his words, a "first-class cunt".

That was a major hint that things, and people, are not always what they seem to be.

Two floors up were the offices of the News Hour, that the staff worked out of. Down the hall was an office door with two words in bold black letters painted on it.

Matt Keeper.

Earl knocked, politely, and upon hearing no answer he gently and deftly turned the handle and cracked the door, peering in discretely.

"Matt? It's Earl. Alright if we come in?"

There was no answer.

He slid the door open more, giving himself enough space to pop his head in and take a look. When his head came back out again, he looked right at Sid, and something passed between them I couldn't make out, not knowing either of them or their facial expressions, and there was the briefest of pauses, before Earl looked at me and nodded, like an agreement had been made, or a moment had been reached, and then he walked inside.

Sid and Mitch both wordlessly waved me to follow him.

Matt Keeper was face-down on a leather sofa. At least, it sure seemed like it was him, except I couldn't see his face. Certainly he was tall enough to fit the bill. His clothes were disheveled; he had one shoe on and one shoe off, and all around him, on the floor and on the giant double-pedestal desk, were bottles of alcohol.

Most of them were empty, or as near as made no difference.

The room smelled like a bar. There was a gigantic ashtray on the desk that was overflowing with stubbed out cigarettes and ashes, the pile bigger than the tray, scattered bits of grey flakes strewn everywhere, which threw me a little, since smoking inside buildings had been against the law for years.

I could make out the feint scent of vomit too, and while I couldn't see any, it seemed to me there might have been some in the room recently.

Earl looked at me.

"He has to be in makeup exactly thirty minutes before show time, before six, you understand? You make sure he's dressed properly, and get him there. DO NOT BE LATE! The closet over there," and he pointed, "is full of new suits and shirts and ties and shoes. Pick one you like and get him ready. After the show, get him back here and keep him occupied until a half hour before eleven, then get him to makeup. DO NOT BE LATE! After the late show, put him in his car and drive him home. Tomorrow, pick him up and get him here in time to do the whole thing all over again."

I stood there, my mouth open, complete apoplectic shock leaving me unable to speak or move.

"Got it?" he asked.

I looked at Matt, and heard him snore a little bit, muffled as it was because his mouth was in the cushion, and we all heard him fart, a flappy sort of sound, that smelled really bad almost immediately, and then I snapped my head around and silently pleaded with Sid to nix the whole idea.

There was a certain amount of regret on his face, as if he was feeling a little low for having manipulated some young kid, eager to work in the high-profile world of television, into this bizarre mess of a situation.

"Good luck, Jeremy, I know you won't let us down," he said, his voice cold and lifeless, and then he and Mitch and Earl left the room, closing the door behind them.

I was in show business!

I stood and watched the man breathe and snore, afraid to move, not knowing what to do, or where to go. I saw a door in the corner of the suite; open enough to show a bathroom, next to the giant closet doors, where his suits and shoes were. On the walls were framed plaques and pictures, all sorts of awards and commendations from a plethora of organizations, all congratulating Matt Keeper of a variety of accomplishments, the photos showing his masculine, impeccably-dressed urbane self, shaking hands with dozens of different people, many of them household names or faces.

There were windows on one wall, none of them open, so I crept over and cracked a couple, trying to get fresh air in and the stale stinky air out.

Matt stirred, but didn't wake up.

I hemmed and hawed, and eventually decided that I couldn't stand the mess I saw, so I started cleaning. I dumped out the ashtray, and found a cloth in the bathroom to wipe the desk, top and sides, as well as his fancy expensive leather chair. Then I cleaned the bathroom counters, and the toilet, with supplies I found in one of the cupboards. The whole time, he never moved, only rarely making snuffling noises. I watched the clock, dreading what would happen when it came time to rouse him.

I didn't know how long it would take me to get him dressed, and he had to be in makeup at five-thirty, and most of my thinking was trying to plan getting old clothes off and then new clothes on a six-foot-two, two-hundred-plus pound man who would probably be uncooperative, and wondering how hard I'd have to plead with Sid to get my old job back.

Just after five p. m., as I was looking through his closet, amazed at the number of expensive suits hanging there, all with shirts and ties coordinated and matching shoes underneath, the door burst open, and a woman came in.

She was short, and squat, and had a mop of unruly curly dark hair, and thick glasses, and wore frumpy clothes that didn't do a thing to compliment her, and I instantly got the impression that she also didn't care about any of that, just from the way she moved and held herself. She was who she was, and probably wouldn't put up with any guff from anyone if they said something.

I found myself immediately admiring that point of view.

She looked up at me, surprised, and I realized I was unexpected.

"Oh, sorry," she said, and then she fixed her focus on me, and looked me up and down.

"Are you the new 'Associate'?" she asked.

I nodded, a little. Something in the back of my brain was trying to convey to her that I was, but I didn't want to be.

She looked me up and down again.

"Yeah, I guess you'll do," and then she looked around the room, and saw that I'd cleaned up some, and I watched a little smile come over her face.

Then she checked her wristwatch, and came to some sort of decision.

"Okay," she said, taking charge, "here's how it works," and then she started spieling off the list of tasks and how to do them. She told me he was so used to being manhandled, after years of it, that he'd be no problem. Roll him over, sit him up, get his shirt and tie and pants off, and get the new shirt and tie on him. Stand him up, let him lean against the desk, and get his pants on him. Sit him back down to do his shoes, and he's good to go. Makeup, a quick and short elevator ride away, had their own way of dealing with him, she advised me. Normally a job for one person, Matt required two. One to hold him steady in a chair, and the other to get him shaved and done. Then, when they were happy, get him down the hall to the studio. Sit him in the anchors chair, strap him in, and watch the magic.

"Watch the magic?" I asked, because I had no idea what she was talking about.

She smiled at me.

"You'll see."

And she was right. I didn't even know her name, but she stood in the doorway and watched me, as I followed her instructions, and Matt didn't present any problems or headaches. He was indeed used to being manhandled. I couldn't tell if he was only partially awake, or more, while I got his old shirt and tie off, exposing his upper body, tanned and muscular with just a little wisp of hair on his chest, between his pecs, and when I went to undo his belt and pants I nervously looked in his eyes, gauging his reaction, but there was none, so in just a few seconds I had him standing, leaning on his newly-cleaned desk, in his underwear and socks, long tanned legs with a touch of masculine hair here and there leading up to his groin. He had big feet, I noticed.

Despite the situation, and how uncomfortable it was for me, and doing it with a woman watching me do it, I couldn't help but realize that his big feet seemed to support an old saying I'd heard, about big feet and big hands indicating that a man would have a big basket as well, a big penis, because he did.

She watched me, and smiled, as I looked up at him, at his groin, as I tried to get his legs into the holes of the new suit pants I'd picked out. I know I turned red as can be, seeing how built he was, so much bigger than me, with my head so close to it, all the while wondering if this was his normal state, or if he was partially sexually excited for some reason.

I rationalized, after seeing it move a little bit, that he was indeed flaccid, in a natural unaroused shape, and my mind flashed to things guys had said in high school, about whether other men were 'grow-ers or show-ers'.

Either way, he was still so much more blessed than I was.

Getting his shirt on meant facing him, almost face to face, and at one point I placed his arms on my shoulders, so I could do up the buttons, and he sighed, what seemed to me to be a happy sound, and I did up his tie, which is a weird process when you're doing it from the front, instead of tying it normally, which is the only way I'd ever done a tie before, and I had to think about my movements, but I made a good knot and slid it up tight to his neck, and he hummed a sound in that deep voice of his, the one I'd heard thousands of times delivering the important information I'd need to be a successful contributing member of society, and a shiver of amazement ran through me, that this human I'd admired and looked up to for so many years could be so completely NOT who I thought he'd be.

To get him to makeup I had to walk with one of his arms around my shoulder, both of my arms supporting his body as best I could, and it was tough, since he outweighed me by at least forty pounds, but I got him in the chair, and two people took over and went to work, shaving his face and spraying goop in his hair and dabbing stuff all over any exposed skin, making his natural tan look orange, and then when they said he was ready, I got him down the hall and into the studio, a guy with a headset opening the door for me, expecting me, or someone like me, to be bringing in the star talent this way.

His chair, behind the desk that I'd seen countless times on t. v., had a seat belt system welded to it, which I immediately understood was to prevent him from falling out of the chair, or sliding out, and once I got him buckled and made sure his suit jacket wasn't all bunched up, I retreated from under all the hot glaring lights, and stood behind the cameras, and watched.

I'd never been in a television studio before, and took a second to look around, at the big green screen behind the desk, to the cameras, all remotely controlled and looking like robot creatures from a science fiction movie, with their big teleprompters appearing as oversized flat faces, to the crew of people behind the cameras, and looked up at the rigging and the lights.

Someone put a stack of papers on the desk in front of him, and both his hands slid out and grabbed them, like he'd done every day for years, and then things got quiet in the studio, and a guy with a headset started talking.

"Alright everybody! Places! We're going live... in ten, nine, eight, seven..."

When the guy spoke out the word 'six', Matt, who was slumped in the chair, leaning to his left, suddenly sat up straight, his back erect, his chest prominent in front of him, and he shook his head a little, as if he was clearing it, and suddenly his glassy eyes became focussed, and blinding, and he waited while the guy counted the last few seconds silently, with hand signals, until he pointed at Matt.

"Good evening," he said, reading from the teleprompter, his voice smooth and deep and so familiar to me, "and we begin with breaking news, as a three-alarm fire broke out just moments ago in..."

It was the most amazing and remarkable thing I'd ever seen.

For an hour, I watched the magic. He read the words, as if he'd written them himself, his diction perfect, his tones caring and worldly and confident, and he did the hand-offs to the reporters and the weather lady and the sports guy smoothly, professionally, never stumbling on his words, all of them acting like he was the undisputed leader of the group, and they were just following his Emmy-winning lead, and after the last story, the cutesy human interest story that's supposed to somehow restore everyone's faith in the goodness of people, he gazed into the camera, as if he was peering into the very soul of the nation, and wished everyone a good evening.

When the guy with the headset yelled, "we're out", Matt slumped in his chair again, to the right this time, and the other people on set ignored him, the weather lady, who I'd always thought of as a beautiful sexy woman, who'd always worn expensive-looking very feminine clothes, sneered at him as she took off her microphone clip, which made her look strangely ugly to me, and she shook her head, as if he had offended her somehow, and I realized it was my turn to work again, and I got him off the set and up the elevator and back into his office, his entire weight on me the whole way.

Closing the door, I turned around to see he'd opened one of his desk drawers, and he'd cracked a bottle of something dark and alcoholic, and he was already chugging some of it down.

I made some sort of noise, some sort of sound that I guess I'd hoped would make him realize he wasn't alone in the room, and he still had the eleven o'clock half-hour show to do, and all it did was make him stop guzzling for a second or two, and he looked over at me, and I could see that he didn't know who I was, but that it didn't matter to him, and he slugged another huge mouthful back, and swallowed it down, his whole face grimacing from the harshness of the hit.

Then he looked at me again.

"What? What's your fucking problem?" he asked, and took another drink.

A feeling of sadness washed over me, the kind you get when you see somebody, anybody, who seemed beyond help, or beyond fixing. I had an cousin, years ago, who was like Matt, completely a slave to some drug or other, who wasted his talents and his life and ended up on skid row, living in a tent on the street, fighting for scraps of food and his next fix, until eventually he was found one morning unresponsive and not breathing, and I remember at the funeral one of my other relatives saying quietly that at least now the guy wasn't suffering anymore.

It made me wonder what had hurt Matt so much, that he chose to live like this.

"Who the fuck are you, anyway?" he asked, between chugs of booze.

"I'm Jeremy," I said, quietly, "and I'm..."

"Jenny?" he asked, seemingly confused.

"No," I said, "Jeremy."

He took another big swig of booze.

"Well, Jenny," he said, and laid down on his back on the sofa, "get the fuck out of my office, and leave me alone."

He closed his eyes, and rested the now half-empty bottle on his chest, holding it with one hand, and I just knew that as soon as he passed out or went to sleep the bottle would fall and spill all over him, all over the new shirt and pants and tie that I'd put on him, and that I'd have to go through the whole process again near eleven, so I moved like I was getting ready to leave, and he breathed out a huge lungful of air, and closed his eyes, and started making snoring noises almost immediately.

I managed to slip the bottle out of his hand and onto the desk nearby without a drop being spilled.

Practically sprinting across the parking lot, I ran into the radio station building and bounded up the stairs, not even asking Sid's executive assistant for permission before bursting into his office.

He looked up at me, and nodded, as if he was expecting me.

"No, you can't have your old job back, we've already replaced you."

For the first time, it didn't matter that he was legend in the biz.

"Sid," I said, my voice strong and angry, "I can't do this, I can't be his 'associate producer', whatever the hell that means, I can't."

Before he could say anything, I interrupted him.

"No shit, seriously," and I flopped myself down in one of his fancy faux-leather chairs, "this guy is pathetic! This guy needs help, like serious help, like professional mental health help, addiction help, something, anything!"

Sid shook his head.

"You ever been on the air, kid?" he asked, a trace of contempt in his voice.

I shook my head.

"You ever had an audience watching you? Ever had the weight of an entire broadcasting institution sitting on your shoulders? You ever been in the public eye like that?"

I shook my head again.

Sid sat forward.

"They you haven't got a clue what kind of pressure he's under, day in and day out. You understand? You don't know diddly about what makes him tick, about what it takes to be him, what it takes to carry around the success or failure of hundreds of people. You don't know shit."

And I realized that Sid was right, in that respect.

"He needs help," was all I could manage to say.

"Then help him," was his response.

The woman who'd helped me earlier was named Betty. She met me in the hallway, back in the t. v. building, as I was wandering around, waiting for ten-thirty, when I'd have to get Matt back in the makeup room.

"The news at eleven is only half an hour," she explained, "and he can wear the same suit, as long as he hasn't puked all over it. If he has, then change him, otherwise, just get him to the studio and he'll do his magic again, and then after the show get him home. You have a drivers' license?"

I nodded, and she smiled, a little ruefully, and nodded.

"But I don't have a car," I admitted, and she made a face like I was an idiot.

"Matt has one, a Bentley, in the parking lot, the only Bentley in the parking lot, since he's the only one that makes enough money to afford one," she told me, "the keys are on his desk probably, or in his pants pocket."

I searched around for something to say.

"I don't know where he lives."

She told me to pull his wallet out of his pocket and find his ID, that it'd tell me where his place was.

"But once I get him home," I said, "how do I get home?"

Betty shook her head, as if I was annoying her.

"Take his car, and come back for him tomorrow in the early afternoon."

"Take his car?" I asked incredulously, "Steal his car? But what if he needs it?"

She looked at me again like I was an idiot.

"Are you crazy? You're not stealing anything. You're his Associate Producer! Look," she said, and her voice got quieter, "he doesn't drive, he hasn't driven in years! He's a fucking drunk! Do you think the station would allow him to drive? Can you imagine the liabilities they'd be assuming? Jesus! Driving him is part of your job. Back in the day, he had so many little crashes and accidents, all of them that the station was forced to cover up, so they got him a driver, full time. It's part of his contract. That's you, now."

I looked around, hoping someone or something would come to my rescue.

"What happened to the last driver?" I asked.

"He got married," she said, and smiled, a smirky discomforting look, "and his new husband took him away from all this glitter!"

As she got ready to leave, she pointed at the desk, to a cell phone laying there.

"That's yours now, so he can get ahold of you if he needs to."

I picked it up and hit the screen and it came awake.

"Can he remember the number?" I asked.

She 'tsked' out loud and shrugged her eyes.

"There's only one pre-set number in his phone, on speed dial, which is the phone you're now holding. Unless he's totally passed out, he can usually figure out how to work it."

The eleven o'clock show went the same as the earlier one. He was slumped over until the word 'six', and then he snapped to attention, like someone had flicked a switch, and he went from pathetic to brilliant in a heartbeat, and read the words on the teleprompter as if he'd known them his entire life, even though someone else had written them for him, and his elocution was perfect, and his delivery was perfect, and the smile he gave to the audience as he wished them all a "good night and a better tomorrow" could have warmed the most frigid heart.

Then he slumped in his chair again, when the red light on the cameras were off.

I found his keys, and poured him into the backseat of his car, which was expensive and luxurious inside and smelled like he'd had a few accidents in the back, the unmistakable odors of vomit and urine fighting for prominence, and I drove him to his house, in a gated community, a rancher, wide and long, with a good sized property around it, and got him into the front door, hoping like hell there wasn't an alarm, because I didn't know the code and I was sure he was too out of it to remember, and I managed to lug his big body into the living room, where he collapsed onto his side on his expensive leather sofa, and just before he passed out he found the energy to speak.

"Jenny," he said, that deep attractive voice slurred a little bit, "Jenny..."

And then he was gone.

His house was a mess. There were empty bottles littered here and there, strewn about haphazardly, to match the various pieces of clothing and other assorted household goods willy-nilly on the floors. Cupboard doors were open, or ajar, when they shouldn't be. In a closet I could see two different vacuum cleaners, but looking around the floor I realized that they didn't get much use.

On the mantle, above the fireplace in the den, were his awards. Two of them were Emmys. Presented to Matt Keeper, for outstanding performance in the field of local news broadcasting. The gold glistened, sharp in the lights above them, making them almost glow, as if they were mystical in some way.

Hanging on one of them, from the wings of the woman holding the globe above her head, was a pair of panties, white as snow, barely-there pieces of fabric joined by thin little straps, as if they'd been flung there some time ago and then forgotten. Maybe, I thought, they belonged to his ex-wife, although I remembered that split happening more than a couple of years ago, so perhaps they belonged to some woman he'd had over since then.

Massive parts of my brain were telling me to clean up, to straighten up, to begin trying to make some order out of the chaos that was all around me, but it was after midnight, and I just wanted to get some sleep, so I left him on the couch, already passed out, and after locking the front door with the only key on the chain besides his car fob, I drove myself home, to my crappy little apartment, in his expensive Bentley, and after carefully backing it into my slot, which was always empty because I didn't own a car, I literally closed my own front door and flopped into my bed five seconds later, not even bothering to take my clothes off or put pajamas on, and I was gone.

A banging on my door woke me up, just after seven in the morning. Rousting myself awake, I stumbled out and opened it, finding the building manager standing there.

"Did you rent your parking space out?" he asked, in a demanding tone.

"No. Why?" I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

He grunted, as if I should know the answer.

"Some asshole's parked a car in your spot. A Bentley! It's probably stolen!"

Then I remembered.

"No, no," I said, stammering, "I put it there. It's a..." and then I paused, trying to explain without giving away details, "it's a friend of mine's car, and he loaned it to me for the night."

Mr. Cabazes looked at me like I was insane, like I'd just told him the most made-up nonsensical thing he'd ever heard.

"You know someone who owns a Bentley?" he asked, the disbelief dripping from his words.

I nodded, and yawned, and remembered I was still dressed in my clothes from yesterday, which were now all rumpled and creased.

"Yes, I do," I said, "and sorry, but I gotta get ready for work, so if you'll excuse me," and I swung the door shut, while he just stood there, looking at me as if I was suddenly changed, like an alien had taken over me or something.

A shower and a shave and new clothes later, I pulled into Matt's driveway. I knocked on the door, respectfully, with quiet raps from a knuckle, and got no answer, so I made a fist and hit the door harder, making bigger noises, and still got nothing, so I slid the key into the lock and let myself in, wondering if he'd moved at all from where I'd left him.

My answer was both yes and no.

He was still on the couch, passed out.

But he'd moved, at least once during the night.

The last time I'd seen him, he was more or less face-down on the cushions, in the suit he'd broadcast the news in, snoring away. Now, he was sitting up, leaning back on the sofa, his head fallen backwards and laying on the top of the back. His big athletic legs were spread out, spread wide, his arms by his sides. Eyes closed, his mouth open, he was gone to the world.

Matt was completely naked, except for one sock.

I gasped when I saw him.

For a man in his early fifties, he was in amazing shape. His body was thick, and toned, everywhere. The slightest hint of curve to his belly was the only thing that gave away his age, the creep of a 'dad bod' beginning to take hold on him. His legs, which of course I'd seen last night, looked powerful, like free-standing pillars in an ancient archaeological site, the athlete in him obvious.

What made me gasp, though, was his full nudity. His body was like a textbook example of what masculinity looks like. You could see his strength, his musculature, and his solidity.

Don't lie to yourself.

And yes. Oh yes.

His groin.

He was a man, an impressive-looking man, handsome and rugged and had a body that was enviable.

Tell the truth.

Enviable. Especially his equipment. His junk, as the guys I grew up with often called it.

His penis was flaccid, and laying on his left thigh. It was bigger soft than mine is erect, longer and thicker, and while I was uncircumcised, he was cut, his shaft leading to a prominent head, what looked like a helmet of some sort, a different color than the rest of him, more purple. His testicles were large too, which made sense considering his overall size, and I was impressed by his lack of hair, as if he was either a very non-swarthy human, or he man-scaped, as they call it.

Then I thought, there's no way a guy who is always drunk should be wielding a razor of any kind, especially on himself.

What made me gasp a second time was when I took one more step towards him, and realized I could see and smell a staggering sight.

His lower belly was covered in dried or drying semen.

I knew enough about that sort of thing to recognize it. It'd happened to me in my life too, more than a few times. I mean, c'mon. I was no stranger to masturbation. Probably even the guys who were popular and got lots of girls in bed still masturbated, I'd bet money on it. And in my case, a guy who wasn't successful all that much with the ladies, historically, well, of course I knew about it. On a daily basis. And I knew exactly what Matt had gone through, because I'd done it myself.

You edge and edge and then you explode, so hard you almost pass out.

Sometimes you actually do.

It was obvious that at some point during my absence he'd been masturbating.

And either he made huge loads as a rule, or he'd done it more than once.

A light from my side distracted me, and I realized that it was his huge flat-screen HDTV, which was showing the bright blue DVD logo that happens when there's not been anything playing for a while, which made me look back at him, and all around him, where there were a couple of newer bottles I hadn't seen when I'd left hours ago, both of them more or less empty, and a stack of DVD cases on the coffee table, one of them open and empty.

Softly creeping up towards him, I picked up the case, and saw a title on the thin fold.

CD LOVERS.

My first thought was, they made a movie about people who like compact discs?

Then I flipped the cover over, and felt like my heart had stopped beating in my chest.

CD didn't stand for compact disc.

It stood for Cross-Dresser.

The picture shook me to my core. There was a tall thick almost-chunky white man, totally bald, his head shaved, completely naked, with a huge erection, which was being held by a shorter, smaller white man, who was made up and dressed up to look like a woman, with a long flowing blonde wig, and makeup applied, if a little crudely, including ridiculously-long false eyelashes, wearing a bra and panties that didn't match in color, his own erection sticking out of the front panel of his panties, his erection much shorter and thinner than the bigger man, with smooth pale legs and a pair of daffodil-yellow high-heeled shoes on.

A juxtaposition of everything. Masculine against feminine. Hard against soft. Rugged against beauty. And each of these differences made all the more stark and all the more compelling because they were between two people of the same gender.

My heart raced, I started breathing faster, and deeper, and my blood pressure changed, I could feel it bursting through my veins. The hand that was holding the DVD case started quivering, as my hands reflected my mood. I was shook up, staggered, and reeling.

The two men were kissing.

As the feminine one held the masculine one's erection in her hand, like she was holding a baseball bat, or a tennis racket, their lips were joined, slightly open, and both of them had their eyes almost closed, his more than hers, both of them looking as if they were enveloped in the sweetest joy ever attained by humanity. Her pink lips, glossy from lipstick, had a slight gap in them from his lips, a sliver-shaped gap, and I could see the edge of his tongue, dipping into her mouth.

Be honest.

For a moment, I felt light-headed, and weak. I felt like I might faint. I felt disjointed, knocked for a loop, out of my comfort zone.

I had the biggest hard-on of my life, so pumped full of blood that it was straining at the tightness of my pants, making my whole groin uncomfortable.

I realized I was about two seconds away from exploding. To my utter shock, I realized that I was as turned on as I could ever remember. All of my years of watching porn, nothing like what Matt had been watching, mind you, but watching porn and pleasuring myself, none of those memories seemed as strong or as overwhelming as seeing this handsome man completely naked, his sex organ so big, so impressive, the movie he'd been masturbating to showing homosexual love, and featuring men who dressed up like women, all of it bombarding my 'normal' sensibilities and pushing me to the brink of release.

Be fair. Be fair with yourself, and be fair to him.

I mean, I knew enough to know that different people had different likes, different turn-ons, and different kinks. So what if this is what got him off? It was none of my business, and who am I to judge anyway?

It didn't take much analysis. My porn-watching was almost always straight sex, men with women, and while I have certainly seen a lot of different styles, I`m honest enough to admit that the romantic porn always got the best of me. Vids of just pure fucking really didn't do much for me, especially with their fake scripted words, badly delivered by people who couldn`t actually act very well, loud voices screaming things like, 'fuck me!'or fake 'oohs', that kind of stuff. If I was being honest, the ones I remember the most, the ones I cherish, and the ones that produced the biggest bang for my buck were the ones where there seemed to be genuine emotion between the performers, genuine tenderness. And yes, I'm not naïve, I know it was all a show, just acting, but those are the vids that really get me going.

My only deviation from straight porn was lesbian movies, and again, I knew in a flash that the ones I most delighted in watching were the ones with lots of tender kisses, gentle touches, and what seemed like honest and real emotion between the ladies.

Tell the truth.

And yes, any movie where the woman is wearing sexy lingerie is more than okay by me. I don't know why, and I'd never really examined it before, to be honest, but standing there looking at the DVD cover, I had to be frank with myself, and admit that those kinds of garments did something to me, affected me, changed how I looked at who was wearing them, remembering that there were women I'd seen both naked and wearing lingerie, and I ALWAYS preferred them not nude.

The lingerie, and the sexy dresses and other clothes they wore, it all hit me on a level that was hard to define, and yet a level that superseded all the other porn I'd ever seen.

I had to re-examine the cover again. Seeing the smaller effeminate man dressed in bra and panties, even though they didn`t match, made me imagine that all men would look sexy in lingerie too.

No, be honest.

Well, okay, not every man.

My eyes went back to him, examining his body again, his shape, the details of his physique. I took in every little curve, every little bend in his flesh, from his head down to his toes and back again, each trip stopping at his groin, transfixed by him, by his genitals, marvelling at his size, so different than my own, admiring his robust masculinity, and re-confirmed my earlier thought.

Not every man would look good in lingerie. I doubt very much Matt Keeper would look sexy in a bra, no matter who manufactured it or what color it was. He was a man, a rugged man, a man`s man, and that idea of feminine clothes looking good on any man disappeared from my brain.

Then I looked at the DVD cover again, and realized that that man, that actor, whoever he was, he did look good in lingerie. And yes, he had makeup and a wig and high heels on, which helped in creating the whole feminine mystique of things, but that guy, who, to be honest, looked to be about the same height and weight and size as me, he was rocking the clothes.

Or they were rocking him.

I gazed at his eyes, almost closed, and the dreamy look on his face, as he let the bigger more masculine man kiss him, as he accepted the other man`s lips and tongue, as he played the part of the woman, the smaller and softer of the two genders, and the dichotomy of it all stunned me, staggered me.

Time to be real. Admit your truths.

I flashed on a made-up image of me, wearing the same bra and panties the actor was wearing, and the wig, and the makeup, and the stilettos, shockingly yellow, standing exactly where I was, in Matt Keeper`s house, doing exactly what that young man was doing on the cover, holding a large erect penis in my hand, and kissing the man it belonged to.

Kissing Matt.

The beautiful prelude to making love.

He snorted some sounds, and looked like he might be waking up, so I put the empty plastic box back down on the coffee table and quietly slipped out of the room. I didn`t want him to come around and see me standing there, admiring his body, seeing him this way, after his self-love session, which is a private thing. I wanted to show some respect.

Be honest.

I really didn`t want him to see the bulge in my pants, either, to see that seeing him naked had affected me so.

And it did.

I took another quiet walk around his house, once I realized he wasn`t coming back to consciousness. I walked off my erection. The kitchen was huge, and needed a good scrubbing, dirty dishes in the sink and on the counters. The den, or family room, with his Emmy`s, was messy, but looked like a really comfortable place to hang out, with the designer sectional couch that looked very expensive and very luxurious. There was a small office, down the hall, the desktop covered in papers in what couldn`t be an organized way, and a second bedroom that functioned as his junk room, the floor littered with golf clubs and tennis rackets and a couple of guitar cases and more clothes and pictures and knick-knacks strewn about.

The master bedroom was massive, with a vaulted ceiling, with its own attached bathroom that was bigger than my apartment, tile and glass everywhere, as well as a private deck with a four-person hot tub on it, and access to the big backyard, with the well-trimmed gardens and grass and the in-ground swimming pool.

For some inexplicable reason, my mind wondered to what he would look like, coming out of the water, dripping wet, wearing big trunks.

Be honest.

Okay. Wearing the tightest speedo imaginable. I mean, if you're going to fantasize, you might as well go big, right?

My soul filled with the image of Matt, his endowment obvious in a tight, barely-there red piece of lycra, and how the average everyday television news viewer might be staggered by his shape and size.

I know I was.

On the opposite side of the suite was a walk-in closet that rivalled a small-sized clothing store. A quick glance told me there had to be tens of thousands of dollars in men`s suits in there, all neatly pressed and hanging on expensive wooden hangars. Drawer after drawer of shirts and ties and belts and socks and shoes kept running the total dollar value up.

What was really interesting, though, was the other side of the closet. The rods were full of women`s clothes, dresses and skirts and gowns and blouses and so much femininity that I almost swooned, and the accompanying drawers were chock-a-block full of underwear, bras and panties and stockings and slips and camisoles and even some bustiers or corsets, I can`t tell the difference between them, in every color of the rainbow. Shoes, some with wickedly tall heels, were strewn on the floor, as if they`d been scattered there in a fit of passion, the wearer of them too busy to be neat and tidy.

His ex-wife`s image popped into my brain, from the press reports of their divorce. She was not in the business at all, and had remained a private person during their relationship, but the papers did show a few different pictures of her from time to time, over the years. She`d seemed to me like a very lovely woman, with reddish hair and a modern sense of style.

Looking at her clothes, I gained an appreciation for her taste in fashion.

Then my mind came back to the present, and things that needed to get done.

But could I do them?

He needs to be cleaned up, I realized, before I even try to wrestle him into an actual shower. There was so much cum, blobs of it all over his skin, that I knew just moving him to stand upright and he'd drip all over me, and the house, and everything.

I found a linen closet in the hall, and I wetted two washcloths with warm water, and brought along a big fluffy towel, and went back to the living room, where Matt was still passed out, his head lolled back, his thick muscular legs still spread. Kneeling down beside him, I listened to his breathing as he slept, and began readying myself to gently wipe all the dried or drying cum off his belly.

My hand was shaking as I reached for him. I`d never touched another man this way, so intimately, nor had I ever been so close to another man`s body, naked or otherwise. I tried to not look at his penis, nor gaze at his thickness and his length, each so different than me, each so much more than me, more than I can ever hope to achieve. He seemed more naturally blessed than many of the actors I`d seen in all my porn viewing.

At the first touch of the washcloth to his skin, he made a noise, like a moan combined with surprise, and I stopped, and looked at his face, waiting in nervous anticipation of him waking up, and any possible reaction he might have, including the slim chance he might react negatively, yelling or screaming, or even lashing out at me physically, ready to jump back and away if he turned violent.

But his eyes were closed.

The smell of his seed was pungent. It was musky, and earthy, and hit me as similar to mine, but more of it, both in the amount of it and in the olfactory punch of it. He smelled like I imagined what a man smells like when he`s just spent an entire night having sex, multiple times, over and over again.

Be honest.

More than I`d ever achieved, in my four sexual relationships with women.

Carefully and lightly dabbing, I began cleaning him. I knew I`d have to get him to a shower at some point, but if he walked there now he`d stain the floors, and since there was already some dried spots on the couch, I figured this place could use less stains, not more. Over and over again, I touched him with the cloth, a daub her, a daub there, constantly adjusting the cloth in my hand to use as fresh a spot as possible. And as I cleaned, and as the cloth began to absorb more and more of his ejaculation, the smell of it began to permeate my nose, and it made me shiver, making me pause for a second, and as I did, his penis moved, upwards, just a touch, enough to show that his system was moving blood into his shaft, the beginnings of an erection starting.

It pulsed.

It throbbed.

I`d never been this close to anybody`s penis in my life, never having thought it a possibility.

But here I was, on my knees, next to his left leg, his manhood on the rise, even just a little, and it was aimed directly at me. My face was just barely a foot above it, so close I could almost feel the heat it was generating.

I went back to cleaning him, lightly.

The smell of him was intoxicating. It was cloying, in an amazing way. For some reason, I kept thinking it smelled more natural and real than all the other smells in the world.

I had to stop in shock when he snuffled, his breath catching, his eyes still closed shut, and I watched his mouth open, just a little, and he whispered out one word.

"Mel."

More blood flowed, and his manhood became an erection, and pulled upwards, and almost touched my face on its rise, and landed on his lower belly with a slapping sound, and he snuffled out a couple of unintelligible syllables.

He was so long, and so thick.

I had to do something else. Anything else.

My hands were in the kitchen sink, up to my elbows in soap suds, as I washed dishes. Figuring I had time before I had to get him roused, showered and driven to the studio, cleaning up seemed like something I could do to while away a couple of hours, and let him sleep it off.

Almost done, I heard him shuffling around, but I couldn`t move until I dried my hands and arms, and then I heard him walk unsteadily down the hall towards his own bedroom, the door slamming shut, and after a couple of waits with baited breath I heard the faint sounds of water running.

Tell the truth.

Part of me was glad he was cleaning himself. Most of me was.

But yes, I can`t deny feeling a little disappointed, which was a weird thing to think about; not getting to manhandle another man into his shower, not getting to help if he needed it, scrubbing his back, or even just holding him up so he didn`t fall.

What if he fell?

OH MY GOD!

What if the star of the station fell and smashed through the glass shower walls and hurt himself?

Barely drying myself, I ran down the hall, and threw open the door to his master suite, and stopped.

He'd left the door to the bathroom open, and there was a floor-to-ceiling mirror on one wall, perfectly positioned at an angle that let me see him, in the shower, partially covered in soap suds, shampoo in his hair, a light cloud of steam hanging in the spacious glassed-in expensive roomy shower.

His left hand was rubbing his own right pectoral muscle, his big thumb and forefinger pinching his right nipple.

His right hand was wrapped around his erection, which was bigger than I'd imagined it could be, long and thick and straight as a lance, and covered in suds of some sort, as his long thick fingers stroked up and down and up and down, and my breath left me, all of it, and I had to reach backwards to the doorframe to steady myself, and I watched him.

More rapt than at any event I'd ever seen, my eyes focussed on watching this man masturbate. Never having seen someone else do it, other than in videos, I was awestruck by it. Mesmerized.

Was there anything more beautiful?

Was there anything more staggering, more moving?

When Matt built up to his crescendo, his release, his hand moved faster, and my breathing matched it, and I felt tingling in my underwear, my entire nether region excited like never before, and when he finally erupted, his moans bouncing off all the tile and filling the room, his blast slapping against the glass of the shower in pulses, instantly running down in creamy streaks, my knees tried to buckle, but I caught myself, and ran out of his room and through the house to the den, where I`d seen a small ensuite bathroom earlier, and without even closing the door I pulled my pants down just in time to explode in orgasm.

But I hadn't had enough time to lift up the lid of the toilet.

I covered it in cum, three giant splorpy kinds of pushes from my abdomen, more cum than I'd managed in the past, at any one time, and I moaned out loud, for at least fifteen seconds, like someone on their deathbed.

Tell the truth.

Or someone who just experienced the most profound physical experience of their life.

When Matt finally came out of his room, he barely looked at me. I got a nod, and then he stopped in surprise and looked through the doorway to the kitchen, seeing how different it looked after my work. I gave him as much space as I could, and I heard him making some noises in the living room, and when he finally spoke, it was just to say one word, which was 'Ready', which I took as my cue, and we left.

Walking by the door to the living room, in my peripheral vision, I could see that he'd cleaned up the video cases. They weren`t on the table anymore, and the giant t. v. screen was off.

The whole ride to the studio, he sat and stared out the window, wordlessly. I got the car parked, and then I walked with him into the building and to the elevator and up to his office, which he walked into and closed the door, telling me in no uncertain terms that he wanted to be alone.

There was almost two hours until makeup time.

I made a beeline for Sid's office, but he wasn`t there.

Mitch, the network guy, was.

He just smiled at me.

"Having fun?" he asked.

For a second or two, or actually closer to three, I couldn't figure out how to answer him. Something snarky immediately came to mind, and then something more conciliatory, and then I had to ask myself a question.

Was I?

"How's our boy?" he asked, changing the subject.

"He's fine," I answered, "he's in his office."

Mitch nodded his pleasure.

"So I guess you turned out to be the right man for the job, just like Sid said you would."

I shrugged.

"I don't know about that."

"No, no," he said, "take the compliment. Sid told me you were smart, and a hard worker, and being, you know, the way you are, you'd make a perfect fit for Keeper. Turns out, from what I hear, he was right."

"What do you mean, the way I am?" I asked.

Mitch waved his hand at me, like someone trying to make a point.

"The way you are. As you are perfectly entitled to be. Totally. Full support, from me and the network, always. Equal rights."

I was addled.

"What are you talking about?"

"You," he said, his voice raised a little bit, defensively, "being gay, Sid said you'd have a greater understanding of what Keeper needs."

I had no idea what it actually feels like to be shot, thankfully, but his words hit me hard, like bullets, more or less rocking me.

"I'm not gay," I said, in reflex.

A shocked look came over Mitch's face.

"C'mon," he said, and then paused, "seriously, c'mon," and then he gazed hard at me, examining me, and then his face got softer somehow, disbelief mixing with political correctness, perhaps, and he looked away and then he said, "okay, good. That's good too."

One empty bottle was perilously close to the edge of his desk when I went to rouse him. We went through the same routine as yesterday, except Betty wasn't watching this time, and I got him undressed and redressed.

As I was tucking in his shirt, before I could zip his pants up, the tip of my middle finger touched his bulge, just for a second, overtop of his underwear, and I moved it, punching it just slightly, and then it rebounded up and touched my finger, and I pulled my hand out as Matt made a lovely soft moaning sound, his eyes closed, his arms out in front of him, his hands resting on the desk so he didn't fall over.

Be honest.

I felt a sizzle pulse through my whole body, my nervous system alive and alert.

I'd touched him!

I had to do the other side of his shirt front, so I slowly pushed the silk cloth down and slowly flattened it, inside his open pants, and as I did, after seriously thinking that I shouldn't, the idea of it stunning me like discovering a new sense, I went farther than I had to, and, on purpose, let the middle finger of my other hand touch him as well.

I made it last. I did it slowly.

He moaned again, quietly, and honestly.

I'd never made anybody make a noise like that, in my twenty-two years.

On 'six' he jolted upright, and focussed, and when the guy in the headset pointed at him Matt began broadcasting, in that exquisitely smooth professional way of his, and the show beamed out to houses all over the greater metropolitan area. When the show was over, and all the red lights were off, he slumped a little, but not near as much as he had done the night before, which I tried not to read too much into, and got him to his office. He sat, on his little sofa, and just stared at the ceiling for a while, as I stood by the door, waiting for him to go to sleep.

Writing commercials had taught me how to measure time. Most people have no idea what it actually means to talk for thirty seconds, let alone longer. You tell the average person to talk about something for that long, which is actually quite little, and most of them give up after ten seconds, or less, thinking it thirty. So I'm a much better judge of how long things last than I used to be.

I watched him sit there and stare for close to ten minutes, the only sounds in the room being the both of us breathing.

Finally, he sighed, a long one that took four seconds, and then he leaned forward and reached over to his desk, pulling a drawer open, and pulling out a bottle of something dark brown and a pack of cigarettes.

He cracked the top, and took a swig.

Lighting a smoke, he briefly sought out his ashtray, surprised for a second that it wasn't a mountain anymore, and then he took two big pulls and blew out a cloud.

Then he looked over at me, with a look I couldn't tell anything about.

"Jenny," he said, his voice quiet, "thanks."

His next swig was longer, and I watched his Adam's Apple go up and down twice, and then he put the bottle on the desk and stubbed out his cigarette, barely a quarter smoked, leaned back and over, laying down, and he closed his eyes.

"Now leave me alone."

It took eighteen seconds until I heard the first little unmistakable sounds of a mini-snore.

He was out.

I found Betty in the newsroom, and begged her to join me for a coffee. She made it appear like I was a huge bother, but she did it anyway.

"What?" she asked, when we were by the machine, away from prying ears.

"Who is Mel?"

She looked at me funnily.

"Mel? That's his old driver, Melvin. Why?"

I shook my head, as if it didn't make sense to me.

"A name. He mentioned it in his sleep."

Betty smiled.

"You watched him sleeping? That's kinda cute."

I shot her some stink eye.

"He's always asleep, or passed out, or whatever you want to call it," I answered, defensively.

She smiled even more.

"Uh huh."

"Did him and his wife ever have kids?" I asked.

She shook her head. No.

"Why'd they get a divorce?"

Betty laughed, which sounded like a snort.

"Are you kidding?" she asked, her voice dripping with something, "would you want to stay married to an alcoholic like that?"

Before I could answer, she continued.

"Never mind the whole 'gay' thing, right?" She used two fingers of both hands to emphasize the word 'gay', the accepted international signal meaning a quote.

I thought about his ex, and what it must have been like for her.

"Did she know? About that?"

Betty took a big swig of her coffee and shrugged.

"I don't know for sure," she said, quietly, "I only talked to her a couple of times, maybe three." I watched her eyes move a little, as she accessed memories in her brain. "Jane was always very private, you know? Very private. She didn't even come to the Christmas parties, which she could have. I mean, the rest of us aren't allowed to bring spouses or significant others, but Matt would get away with it, of course. He's the star."

I nodded like that made sense, even though I'd only been around for a couple of months.

"She seemed nice, though," Betty continued, "as I recall. Pretty, without being rude about it. Quiet, but polite. She has a nice smile, I remember that. And the old-timers here tell me that when they first got married, he was happy, and more or less normal, not a falling-down drunk, you know? Then, I guess, that changed, over the years."

I watched her eyes go away, even further, bringing up memories.

"Like I said, she was nice. I remember one time wondering..." and then she stopped talking.

"Wondering? Wondering what?" I asked.

Betty looked at me, and I could tell she was measuring me for something.

"Look, I'll let you in on a not-so-little secret," she said, and her voice got quieter, conspiratorial, "since you're on the same team, sort of," and then she leaned towards me, "and you'll probably hear it from one of these assholes, anyway," and she nodded her head towards all the guys working in the newsroom, "so I'll beat them to the punch and spoil their childish games. I'm gay. I'm lesbian. And what I was wondering about, with Jane, back then, was whether she might play for our team as well."

I just stared at her.

"You know," she said, as if she was explaining something I already understood, "I got some vibes from her, that's all, but nothing concrete. Nothing that I could confirm. Like, well hell, you are of course aware, our gaydar doesn't always work out, amirite?"

I just stared at her.

"What are you talking about?" I finally asked.

Her head moved to one side, as if she was struck curious by what I'd said.

"Our gaydar."

I looked at her like she was a crazy person.

"I'm not gay."

Betty laughed out loud.

"You're the second person tonight that's told me I'm gay," I said, off-handedly. "Do I look gay, or something?"

She stifled another laugh.

"You're trying to tell me you're not gay?" she asked, complete disbelief in her voice.

I shook my head.

"I'm not!"

She stared at me. Neither of us spoke for almost a full minute, which is a long time.

"Wow," she finally said, with one shake of her head, "could have fooled me."

Matt was easier to rouse for the eleven o'clock show than last night, and only half the bottle was gone when I went in to wake him. As I walked him to the elevator he put his big left arm around my shoulders, and pulled me tight up against him.

I assumed it was for support. So he didn't walk into anything, or fall down.

After the show, I drove him home. He didn't really need my help getting him inside, but I did it anyway. Landing with a thud on his sofa, he saw one of the bottles that had been there last night, almost empty, with just a little drizzle of liquid left in it, and he brought it up to his lips and tilted the bottle and drained it.

It struck me, there and then, that I hadn't seen him eat any food, at all, in the short time I'd been around him.

"Can I make you some dinner?" I asked, remembering that there had been lots of cans in his pantry, a few of them mass-produced soups and a couple containing chilli, that could be quickly heated up.

He shook his head and lay back, on the sofa, the same position he had been in when I'd returned earlier today, and sighed out, "no, Jenny, thanks. You should go home now."

Closing his eyes, he held onto the now-empty bottle and sighed a big sigh, and spread his legs, getting comfortable.

The exact same position as this morning.

Except.

Tell the truth, about your real feelings.

Now he wasn't naked. Now he wasn't covered in his own ejaculate, his own cum.

Now, I couldn't admire his body, which I had done before, no question, and I felt no shame about it, realizing that anyone would have stared, and, well, after all, he was in great shape, and any man, straight or otherwise, wouldn't be real if they didn't admit that the guy has a great body.

Now, I couldn't see his endowment either.

It struck me as strange, somehow.

It came to me that I missed it, in some bizarre way. I missed seeing him naked, like I had before. It seemed a shame of a sort for him to be clothed now. I mean, he'd been at his most natural, earlier, his most normal. There was no pretense, no fake behavior or anything keeping him from being his true self. Naked, with no barriers, no walls, no impediments placed on him by a proper society, he'd shown me the real Matt Keeper, the one that was alive, at his most primal, a sexual being, having satisfied himself at a level that any of us can achieve, but that so-called moral rules try to drum out of us.

Primitive.

He'd been primitive.

No pretense. No fakery. No arbitrary and proper behavior.

Primitive.

I admired him for that.

I stood and watched him sleep, the empty bottle in his hand, and thought about how maybe the whole world would be a better place if everyone followed Matt's example, and just behaved on that primitive level, the one that nature demands of us, but we repress.

Just after nine in the morning, a ringing phone woke me up. I was back at my crappy apartment, the Bentley carefully parked in my stall. I roused myself slowly, groggily, at the strange sounds, until I realized two things.

The first was that I was partially covered in cum, just like Matt had been, and then I remembered getting home and not being sleepy and eventually masturbating to some porn, none of it thrilling me as much as it usually did, because my mind kept popping away from the video to Matt, and what he'd been watching.

The second thing I came to understand was that it wasn't my cell phone ringing. The tones were wrong.

Then I remembered that I had another phone, the one Betty had given me, with the pre-set number for Matt to call.

Scrambling around so I could get to it before it went to voicemail, I didn't recognize the displayed number at all, and swiped at the icon.

"Yes? Hello?" I asked, anxiously.

"Hi. Mel?" a man's voice said, a thin higher-pitched voice that obviously wasn't Matt.

"No," I answered, and then there was a long pause, and I realized that the other person was no doubt confused, since the number they'd dialed had probably been for Matt's last Associate Producer, the role I now had.

"Um, Mel isn't, um, Mel isn't here anymore. I'm Jeremy. Can I help you with something?"

I heard the guy hum and haw a bit, perhaps not quite knowing what to say, how to proceed, but it didn't last long.

"Mel had something on order here, a, uh, a package. It was on back order for the longest time, but it's finally arrived, so I'm calling to let him know that it's ready for pickup."

I thought, well, if Mel had ordered it, it was probably for Matt, in some way or other.

"What is it?" I asked.

There was a pause.

"I'm calling from Stefano's," he said, "it's a, um, a garment."

I knew the name of the shop. It was very high end, men's and women's fashions from Italy, all very expensive, so I'd never been inside it, but I knew where it was, on which street, right smack dab in the middle of what the locals refer to as Rodeo Drive East.

So, I reasoned, it probably was for Matt.

"How much is it?" was the question that popped to mind.

"Oh no," he replied, "Mr. Keep..." and he paused, sounding almost embarrassed, "the garment has already been paid for, when it was ordered."

Which made things easier.

"Alright," I decided, "I'll be by sometime this afternoon to grab it."

For the entire length of the short conversation, I'd been staring at my own body, my own tummy, marvelling at just how much I'd spurted, flashing back to my jerk-off session from when I got home, and how it had been disappointing for the most part.

Until.

No more lies.

Until my curiosity got the better of me, and I did a search for 'Cross-dresser', and weeded through dozens of clips of men dressing themselves in women's clothes, especially lingerie, most especially panties. Clip after clip of average everyday guys, old young and in-between, most of them ugly or fat or hairy, modelling themselves, and oftentimes touching themselves, while putting on fake breathy voices and fake breathy moans.

I watched them make love to themselves, some quickly, some slowly, some roughly, some gently, all while wearing feminine garments. Grown men, masturbating while pretending to be women.

Or maybe, I reasoned, not pretending. Maybe, just maybe, it was possible that some people had a little of both genders inside them, in some small way or other, like that man on the cover of the DVD that Matt had been watching, and maybe all these people, from all over the world, were just allowing themselves to experience that, letting their feminine parts out more, not suppressing them the way they'd have to normally, to survive in our brutally anti-LGBTQ world.

I watched in glorious amazement at some of them lubing themselves up, and sliding things into their own bottoms. Dildos, vibrators, or butt plugs. Or fingers.

The sounds that came when that happened, they weren't fake or phony.

The gasps and moans that happened when they penetrated their own bodies, they were as real as it gets, as vibrant as it gets, and hit me like seven tons of bricks. I'd never once thought about it before, about sticking something inside myself, in a very non-heterosexual way, but hearing those noises, genuine lovely sharp intakes of breaths, and pleasure sounds that seemed to emanate from deep within them, where they couldn't be faked, the effect on me was stupefying.

Real people, doing very real things.

Like Matt had done.

Primitive.

I'd never cum so hard in my life.

Cleaned up, I got to Matt's just after noon. He wasn't on the sofa anymore, which disappointed me a little bit, since I found myself hoping to see his body again, and after creeping around I found him in his own bed.

He was naked.

I shouted out a little congratulatory "YES!" inside me, and then thought, what the hell? Am I actually that happy to see another guy without his clothes on?

The worst lies are the ones where we lie to ourselves.

Yes, I am happy.

He was more or less face-down again, so my main view was his rear end, which was curved and tanned, which surprised me, until I remembered his private back yard with the in-ground pool, and how he'd be able to sunbathe naked anytime he wanted. And the athlete in him was obvious. His naked legs looked powerful, even from behind, and his rear end was curved and strong, his buttocks round and thick, and his back had the definition of someone who worked it, a lot.

There was a large t. v. opposite the king-sized bed, and again it was showing the blue DVD logo, on pause. I took a couple of silent paces towards him and saw the remote for the player lying next to him, on the satin sheets. Picking it up, I waited for him to react, but he didn't.

He was out.

Next to him also was a plastic case, this one with no cover sheet, which told me it wasn't a mass-produced item for sale. The only thing I could see was three words, hand-written in felt pen.

Me and Mel.

Just before I hit the play button, I wised up and hit the mute button first. The last thing I needed was to have the video start and blare out sound, waking him up, him seeing me in his room, completely betraying his privacy, invading his space.

When the screen burst into life, silently, I gasped.

Mel was a younger man, like me. He had olive-colored skin, of the deep sort that told me he was of Mediterranean heritage, Greek or Italian or something like that. He had a mega-watt smile, with white teeth that rivalled Matt.

Mel was wearing a dress.

Not just any dress, but the sexiest Little Black Dress I'd ever seen, on any woman, anywhere. Not even celebrities, at the Oscars or other big events that I'd watched, could lay claim to his outfit. Skin-tight, and clingy, the material looking like it might be made out of damp crepe paper, it hugged his body, which had curves, including a really impressive bust, the plunging neckline of the dress showing cleavage, the unmistakably feminine lines of breasts there for all to see, and round hips, and an ass that looked like you could rest your beer on it, which was a saying that some of the guys I'd grown up with used to describe an admirable rear end.

Mel was as sexy as they get.

Matt was right there, beside her, naked, with a huge erection, wrapping his arms around her, and she turned in his arms and slid her arms up his chest, and the next thing I knew his head was moving downwards and then he kissed her.

Him? Her?

He kissed Mel, softly.

Mel had long dark shiny thick hair, with ringlets, that spread out around her head and a little ways down her back. His face was perfectly made up, his eyes sparkly and deep, his cheeks rosy, his lips shiny and slick and as red as ripe cherries. He had big hooped earrings hanging off his ears, and a thick diamond necklace, sparkling in the light, and rings on some of his fingers, each shiny and glistening, and his fingernails, er, her fingernails, were painted in a teal color, so different in tone from her natural skin color, which made them stand out.

Mel had a nice-sized lump in her panties, making that part of her dress bulge in a decidedly un-lady-like way, and her lower thighs, visible after the short length of her dress, were covered in a fishnet material, the camera cutting the both of them off at the knees, so I couldn't see what kind of shoes she was wearing, but I somehow knew that they were sexy feminine heels.

When his lips touched hers, or his, they both moaned, and both of them closed their eyes, and then the soft kiss became a little more animated, and her arms wrapped around his head, and pulled at him, and his arms squeezed her tightly, pulling her into him, his massive erection pressing into her tummy, into the fabric of her dress.

I hit the pause button, and dropped the remote.

Just like yesterday, I had to run out of the room and across the house, to the ensuite bathroom off the den, this time having just enough time to flip up the lid, before I jetted my orgasm into the toilet, my knees almost buckling again, my breath fast and hard and strained. At first, I couldn't believe I was cumming again, so soon after all my thrashing about at home, masturbating to cross-dressers.              

Then I instantly filled with sadness, at not having made it through more of the video. If seeing them kiss had affected me so much, how would I have felt watching them do more? Like, well, the obvious.

What might have happened if I'd lasted long enough to view her slinking down to her knees and taking his erection into her mouth? What if she'd spent minute after minute sucking him off? Even better, sucking him off while her eyes were faced upwards, watching his eyes, the non-verbal communication of that something I'd always found irresistibly wicked. Or if he'd picked her up in his arms, like a groom carries his new bride, and laid her on a bed, and worked her panties off? What if he'd quickly stopped kissing her, long enough to use his tongue to get her wet, to get her hole slippery and slick, before he lined himself up and entered her? Oh my god, what kinds of moans would they both have made when his larger-than-life cock pierced her precious anus? Would he lean over and kiss her tenderly while he fucked her? While he slid his huge cock into her, over and over and over and over again?

The thought of it made me stroke myself, standing there in the ensuite bathroom, and, miracle of miracles, unlike any other time in my life, I responded with a new erection, unheard of in my experience, and I began masturbating again, everything about my skin hyper-sensitive, and a new orgasm appeared imminently on the horizon, and I closed my eyes, and imagined what it would look like to see Matt make love to Mel.

Somehow, I just knew it would be the most beautiful expression of passion and affection between two people that could be witnessed.

And I was missing it!

I blasted another stream of white-hot cum into the toilet, fighting to not let my whole body cascade in failure to the floor, and then I cleaned up, and took a couple of minutes to right myself again, and when I got back into the heart of his house I could hear his shower going again.

He was up a little earlier than yesterday.

Without even thinking about it, my legs started carrying me, and the next thing I knew I was opening his bedroom door again, and moving inside, to the same spot as yesterday, and sure enough he'd left the door to the bathroom open again, and the same mirror offered me the same view, and I watched him masturbate.

Again.

The truth shall set you free.

Never in my life had I seen anything so real, so basic and simple and natural, and yet so beautiful.

Matt had his eyes closed tight, his left hand again pinching his right nipple and caressing his right pectoral muscle, his right hand wrapped around his own erection, stroking up and down, slowly, sensuously, and seriously.

Primitive.

The look on his face was a combination of pleasure and hard work, as if what he was doing was taking up a huge amount of his energies, and yet there's nothing he'd rather be doing. I studied his hand, the way he stroked himself, and the way he caressed himself.

The way he loved himself.

Getting harder and harder in my own pants, and more and more uncomfortable, I remembered how I reacted the last time, and how I'd had to run across his house to the other bathroom, and how I'd almost made a serious mess in my own clothes, and decided that the best course of action was to leave now, to let Matt have his privacy, and to take care of my own needs where there was no risk of an accident.

Be honest.

I couldn't not watch him.

I couldn't not witness what he was doing.

I couldn't find it in my heart or my mind to walk away from it, this example of raw and unfiltered realism. I couldn't understand why society demands such things be kept in private, when it was obvious that there was little else on the planet more moving, emotionally and sexually. Why do we keep this act secret? Why?

Matt's hand began moving faster, and his breathing got faster and louder, and I realized he was on the final leg, the home stretch, the last phase of his self-pleasuring before the sweetest finale, and I had to fight myself from reaching into my own pants to mirror him.

I had to fight the urge, the strongest urge I'd had for my whole life, to masturbate myself, joining him in spirit as well as action.

His pelvis started to rock a little bit, as he was helping himself along, using his own movements to increase his joy, using his own thrusts to make love to his own hand, while it made love to him back, and his hips began really rocking, while his strokes became furious, and the thought occurred to me that of all the porn I'd seen lately, this was by far the best, because it wasn't faked in any way.

It was as real as real gets.

Matt grunted, loud enough to be heard above the roar of the shower, which brought me to the edge of release, and I found myself standing on my tiptoes just trying to delay the inevitable, long enough to watch him through his explosion, and long enough for me to get to the other bathroom and take care of mine, again, and I was breathing like I was in the midst of running a marathon, when it happened.

His face scrunched up, and his mouth opened up, and as his whole body jerked upright, and he started shooting his cum onto the glass wall of the shower, his voice got intense, half speaking and half shouting, and those world-class tones, that I'd heard a thousand times before on my television, groaned out one word.

"JENNY!"

Like a rocket blasting off, I came again, shooting into my underwear and pants, standing just inside the master bedroom door, watching Matt Keeper masturbate to his climax. I didn't touch myself at all. It just happened.

In the hardest moment of my life, I had enough sense to stifle my own noises, so he didn't hear me, straining to control myself, my whole body lurching and jerking, biting on my own tongue, until the rush of it passed, until I had enough sense to begin waddling away, trying not to let my own cum slip and slide down, which was futile, since gravity is more powerful than anything, so I only made it three steps into the hall when I had to stop, and whip my pants off, so they didn't get too stained, and use my own underwear to soak up my mess, while still trying to get across the entire house to the other bathroom.

In the end, I made it, although I'm sure there were a couple of drips onto the carpet during my escape. Wiping myself clean with my tighty-whities, up and down my thighs, the smell of it hit me, like the smell of him had hit me, the earthy musky scent of my cum not as strong as his, but close, and I let it fill my nostrils, and my soul, until it began to give me another erection, which shocked the hell out of me, since I'd just cum three times in less than fifteen minutes, and I stood there in complete wonder at these changes in me.

I'd never been this completely concerned with sexuality before. Ever. I mean, I loved jerking off, like most guys. I did it every day! I had since I was thirteen! And sure, most every second of every day my mind would spend oodles of time fantasizing about sex, and sexual situations. You see a woman, almost any woman, anywhere, and you think about what it would be like to bed her, to strip her naked, to suck on her tits, and eat her pussy out until she was spraying all over your face, and then slipping your cock into her wet velvety pussy and riding her until she screamed and you screamed and the bed shook and you blasted off inside of her.

All the typical scenarios.

So why was I so active now? Why was I suddenly hyper-sexualized? Was it because of his DVD's? His obviously gay and cross-dressing porn? Was it just the newness of it, the sheer audacity of it, compared to my usual porn? Or was there more to it than that?

And why, oh why? Why did he call my name out?

Of all the shocks I'd taken, these last three days, that was the one that hit me the hardest.

Respect is truth, and truth is respect.

I sat down on the toilet seat, holding my sopping wet underwear in my hand, not even thinking about what I'd do with it, how I'd get rid of it, without him seeing anything. All I could think about, all that seemed important in the world, resonated and echoed in my brain over and over and over again.

Gigantic tears filled both of my eyes.

He'd moaned out my name.

I mean, not my actual name, but the name he called me, from the start.

He'd moaned out "Jenny!"

My timer was completely out of whack, so I have no idea how long I sat there and let a few tears roll down my cheeks, my insides nervously shaking, fears and worries and uncertainties bouncing around my skull.

What fresh hell have I brought upon myself?

Eventually, I heard the muffled sounds of him walking around, and I snapped out of my funk, and I had to do something with my stinky underwear, so I found a plastic bag under the sink and used it, and then washed my hands thoroughly. Luckily, my pants were dark, and the one small cum stain I could spot was really hard to see, and I figured I was okay, that no one at the station would notice, so I slid them back up my legs, but it all felt weird and not right.

I'd never gone commando in my life, and standing there without underwear on unnerved me more than everything else that had happened to me so far, in my new life in show business. Which hit me as bizarre! I mean, how weird? Standing there, bouncing between his porn and my new-found level of cumming, and yet I was consumed with not feeling right because I wasn't wearing underwear!

I walked back and forth in the bathroom, trying to get used to the feeling of the material of my pants touching skin they had never touched, and it wasn't sitting with me.

Then I remembered that just outside the door, in the den I was next to, was some underwear I could use.

The white ones, hanging on his Emmy award.

And yes, they were obviously women's underwear, but I needed something, and besides, I thought, and laughed, some men like to wear them, don't they? I'd surfed and found hundreds of them, and hadn't even touched the surface of what was available. And hell, Mel had obviously done it too, and he was a man.

Then it hit me that maybe those panties were Mel's to begin with.

Then I wondered if Matt would notice they were missing.

Then I realized that it didn't matter, and he probably wouldn't anyway, since he seemed to be drunk most of the time, and worst case he'd just assume I'd cleaned up and moved them, and I only needed them for today, and I could bring them back and replace them exactly where I'd found them tomorrow, even though it was Saturday, and Matt didn't work weekends, and therefore neither did I.

I slipped out of the bathroom and back in without him seeing me or hearing me. Holding the panties in my hands, I took a couple of seconds to look at them, and admire them, and think about how sexy most women look in panties, and how these would make an ass like Mel's look really really good.

Wait.

Hadn't I already come to a realization, earlier? I distinctly remembered it, remembered thinking it.

Mel seemed to me to be pretty much the same size and shape as me.

Does that mean....?

My hands were shaking a little bit as I slid them up my legs. The barely-there fabric was soft, and silky, so unlike my own underwear, or any of my other clothes, and I loved it! A huge jolt of something went through me as they touched my skin and I took a mammoth lungful of air in and tried to settle my nerves, which seemed to be jumping for some reason, and finished pulling them up, the front panel covering my growing erection completely, the back panel barely covering a third of my ass surface, making my buttocks look round and as sexy as hell, and I stood with my head cranked to see my reflection in the mirror, and thought, man! That's a great looking caboose!

Matt gave me a bit of a funny look as we left his house. Climbing into the back of the Bentley, without my help this time, he glanced over at me as if he was thinking something, or wanted to ask something, or maybe just say something.

No more clever ways to avoid the truth.

The whole drive to the studios, I was an emotional wreck, though I had to fight to not let him see that. Every time I looked in the rear-view mirror, I saw his face, which would remind me of watching him in his shower, and how as he was reaching his plateau, as his sexual release was happening, he'd spoken my name out loud.

My name.

Jenny.

Nobody had ever shouted out my name before.

He was quiet on the walk up to his office, which was welcome, because I couldn't get over how wearing panties made walking feel different for me, how every little movement of me made them touch me, caress me, and cradle me, in the absolute most delectable softness.

Women get to feel this every second of every day?

Why in the world had nobody ever told me of just how satisfying and sensually exciting it was to wear panties? Why had nobody ever let me in on that? And why, why oh why, are only women allowed to wear something this soft, this delicious, and this sexy?

The whole afternoon I walked around the building, just to feel how the panties were making me a little excited, a little stiff, and a little swollen. I even saw Earl at one point, in the hall, and he looked at me kind of funny, and I wondered, can he tell? And then I shook that absurd thought from my thinking, because of course he couldn't.

Betty came and found me close to makeup time, with a huge smile on her face.

"He's in his office right now, reading the new changes to the stations' human rights mission statement," she said, like it was really important, or earth-shattering.

I blanked out on her.

"Okay. So?"

"So," she said, hooking her arm inside mine, like women do to men, and walking with me down the hall, "he's not completely drunk, and he's actually reading things that matter. Whatever you're doing, keep it up!"

I looked straight ahead, feeling the delightful effects of panties on my skin, revelling in the touch of them, and wondered if she'd be so encouraging to keep it up if she only knew.

"I'm not doing anything," I said, mostly to myself.

She was right, though. He was not nearly as hammered as usual, and was actually able to dress himself, mostly. I helped with the jacket, holding it behind him as he spread his big arms and got them in the holes, and when he turned to me to settle it on his big shoulders, I reached up and straightened his tie, like a wife does to her husband as he's getting ready to leave the house.

Looking up at him, he was looking down at me, with a smile on his face.

"Thanks, Jenny," he said, in that deep smooth voice, with a glint in his eye, and then we were off to the studio.

I still belted him in, but he might not have needed it.

During one commercial break, not slumped over, he actually said something to the weather lady, whose name was Christina, and it must have been nice, because she looked away, at all of us behind the cameras, with a shocked yet pleasant look on her face, and her nipples sprung up like two solitary bumps on smooth round surfaces, and the floor manager, the guy with the headset, looked at me and grinned, like a surprised schoolboy, and then he counted down with his fingers towards the end of the spots and then they were back live again.

During the four hour gap between the evening and the late news, Matt asked me to get him some dinner, from the commissary, which I watched him eat most of, and he had time to power up his computer and answer a few emails, until we got close to ten p. m., when he finally sat down on his little sofa and opened up the bottom drawer of his desk, and pulled out a bottle and his pack of cigarettes.

I stood, watching him, wrestling with myself as to whether I should say anything, or try to convince him that he'd gotten this far tonight without booze and maybe he could go a little longer. But I chickened out.

He was the big star, and who am I to tell him what he can and can't do?

He needed the seat belt for the eleven. He wasn't completely smashed, like I'd seen him the first night, or the second, but he'd had half of the bottle before a quick nap, so strapping him in was a good thing.

On the drive to his home, every time I checked in the rear view to see how he was doing, he was staring at me. At first it unnerved me, and made me worry that he somehow knew something about me having seen him the ways I've seen him now, naked, covered in cum, masturbating, or he knew something about me having seen part of the video with him and Mel, or how maybe he knew I was wearing panties, even though logically I couldn't make any of it work.

But he didn't say a thing, and I got him home and inside his place and he sat down on the sofa and without looking at me told me that he had no plans for the weekend so there was no reason for me to show up until Monday.

When I got home I couldn't wait to strip down and fire up some porn. Some cross-dressing porn. It was the only thing on my mind, the whole trip. I was more than half-hard in the panties the entire drive, and walking to my elevator was fraught with danger, since even though it was late there were other people in the parkade and in the lobby and old Mrs. Sturgess slipped in with me and rode up to her floor, looking at me sideways, giving me the distinct impression that she was judging me, that maybe she had x-ray vision and could see I was wearing panties and it disgusted her.

Stripping my clothes off as soon as I closed the door to my apartment, I wandered in just the panties to my bathroom mirror, the only big one I owned, so I could see how they looked. Twisting and turning, up on my toes, it kept hitting me like a slap to the face that my ass looked round and sexy, the white of the panties contrasting with the white of my skin, starkly different, and how I was shivering with tremors of eroticism, my excitement evident in the lump of the front panel, not much fabric still able to cover my smaller size, and I wiggled my hips back and forth and back and forth, forcing little tiny movements of my erection against the cool silky material, riding a wave of tingly effervescence that was new like the morning to me, panties on my penis, and I felt it building, and building, and building.

Once more, without touching myself, I blew my top, so to speak, and flooded the panties with semen, and as I spurted and spurted, my legs lost their strength, and I had to grab onto the counter with both hands and lower myself to a sitting position on the floor, so I didn't crash down, and my mind went blank, and almost black, I came so hard, and so fast, and it felt like I'd just done a hundred sit-ups, my stomach and abdomen muscles sore and inflamed.

Breathing heavily, it took three and a half minutes for my heart rate to return to normal, a calmness settling over me that felt so welcome and so earned.

I sat on the floor of my little bathroom wearing soaked panties, and trying to understand how I could have orgasmed so many times in such a short period of time, and marvelling that I still had any to shoot.

My panties were dripping in my seed.

Be honest.

A wave of sadness enveloped me, thinking about having to take them off, already missing their sweet and soft kiss on me, the way they caressed my skin. Looking down, I could see a pool of cum leaking out of the hem, onto my belly, the smell of it hitting me like earlier, like his had hit me, that primitive real and honest odor tickling my soul.

Again.

My seed. My essence. My juice. The product of my loins.

Globs of it were slipping down my skin, the cool touch of it as it moved almost like someone's finger, tracing down my curves, and without thinking about the ramifications, I was swept away by a feeling of regret, that it would be wasted sliding down onto the floor, and my right hand reached over and I got both my forefinger and middle finger coated in the slime, and like a mindless unthinking zombie I brought both of them up to my lips, the smell of it now as close to my nose as possible, filling me with its acidic sharpness more than ever, and I closed my eyes and moaned out just before I slipped my fingers into my lips and closed them.

That first touch of it on my tongue, on my taste buds, was a moment I could have never anticipated, never having tasted my own cum once, always thinking it was just something that women liked, or did, and then of course gay guys too, but that had never entered my realm before either, because I wasn't gay. Shock is too soft a word to describe what happened.

I was jolted.

Jolted into another dimension of existence.

Jolted into a world suddenly bigger, and wider.

Jolted into an entirely new definition of satisfied.

My 'mmmm' echoed against the walls, and the tub, and came back at me louder. The taste of it was startling.

A revelation.

Tell the absolute truth.

My cum was almost tart, and tangy, and had a stronger flavor than any food I could ever remember eating, salty and nutty, and it had substance, parts of it thin and other parts almost chewy, and it was one of those things that gets stronger the longer you taste it, like a radio signal that somehow gets boosted and amped up, and it literally overwhelmed my palette.

I didn't have to think about it, at all. My fingers, once cleaned of cum, automatically got more of it, and I fed myself again. And again. I was squishing my fingers under the top of the panties, and up against my own hard-on, once again ridiculously erect, and my testicles, the hair trapping some of the cum, and letting me collect it in dollops, and with my eyes closed, sitting on the floor, I swallowed every single drop of it that I could find.

The last little bit I managed to grab, sneaking down the gap between my ball sac and my upper thigh, headed in an ooze for my bum, I spread over my lips, like a lip balm.

Or a lipstick.

Finding the strength to stand up, I pulled the panties off me, and realized there was still some cum to be had on them. Once again, without thinking about it, I brought them up to my face, smelling the odor of me, and began licking the cloth.

I sucked all the juice I could get out of them, revelling as I licked in broad strokes up the gusset of the panties, more 'mmmm's pouring out of my mouth, from deep inside my lungs, heartfelt, and genuine.

It was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted.

I crashed in sleep moments later, the panties held tight in my hands, my whole world suddenly revolving around erections and orgasms.

Until my phone started making noises.

My new phone.

I woke, addled, from hours of strange ethereal dreams, exciting without being detailed, and stubbed at the icon.

"Hello?"

A familiar voice came on.

"Hello? Hello?"

"Yes, hello," I said, louder, to let him know someone was there.

"This is Damian calling, again, from Stephano's..." and then he paused, hoping I'd remember him.

"Uh huh," I said, a little groggy, "yeah, um, sorry, I forgot about the package, didn't I?"

"Yes," he said, "the garment is still here, waiting."

As if a piece of clothing could feel neglected, somehow.

"Okay, sorry," I stammered, "I'll come in today, later, and pick it up, alright?"

I showered and shaved, the latter while absentmindedly scanning the rest of my body, and noting that I didn't have much hair anywhere, and it would be so easy to get rid of it all, and then flashing on a thought that felt like a revelation from the heavens, which would be that those panties I had gently washed in a sink until they were completely rid of my cum and now drying on a floor vent would probably feel even more amazing against smooth skin.

The hardest part was removing the thickest of my hair, which was in my groin. I had an electric shaver that was also designed to do body hair, as I remembered the claims on the packaging, so I got out the different attachments and figured out which ones were for what and then I spent close to an hour ridding myself of every hair below my eyebrows.

And let me tell you, shaving all the tiny soft hairs from one's own buttocks, and one's own anus, including the crack between one's cheeks, was an adventure in flexibility. I had to lay on my side, on the floor, with a hand mirror set up opposite me, so I could see everything, with one leg held straight up in the air, my arm around my thigh, the razor trimming away all around my puckered hole.

It looked like a starburst, in a way. At one point, I stopped shaving, and, staring raptly at the mirror, I flexed my ring, concentrating on pulling and using those muscles down there, or ligaments, or whatever they were, and I watched the starburst move, in and out, in and out, like it was alive, like it was a creature, a hungry animal almost reaching out to find something to take in, something to feed itself.

I was going to wear my normal clothes, including underwear, so I could find a way to get the panties back to where I'd found them, hanging on one of Matt's Emmy's, but slipping them up my hairless smooth legs made my insides quiver, especially in my guts, my whole lower torso alive with excitement. When they settled in my now-hairless crack, the string and the fabric of the panties touched me in yet another new way, and I instantly sucked in a lung full of air, which took just as long as it took to become throbbingly erect.

I decided I could wear them until I needed to take them off.

Walking into Stephano's, I felt more alive then I'd ever felt. The combination of the way the panties made me feel, coupled with the thrills of being in public wearing lingerie, around humans, them not knowing, put me almost on my toes as I stepped.

There was a very well-dressed man behind the counter, who was looking at me with a small measure of scorn, seeing the way I was dressed, in boring jeans and a well-worn t-shirt under my coat.

"Can I help you, sir?" he asked.

"Is Damian here?" I asked.

He put a look of forced subservience on his face.

"And who might I say is asking for him?" he replied.

"Jeremy," I said, and saw nothing in his look, and then I remembered, "uh, I mean, I'm, well, he thinks I'm... well, just tell him I'm the new Mel. He'll know what that means."

The man's face lit up.

"OH!" he said, almost a little cry, "YOU'RE the new Mel!"

I watched his eyes go up and down me, three times each, slowly, the last gaze with his head slightly turned, as if he was doing it from a different angle.

Then he nodded, as if something had been confirmed for him, or satisfied.

Fetching Damian, they both returned shortly, the new face holding a long, rectangular white box, with a purple ribbon tied fancily all around it. Handing it to me, Damian smiled, and then pointed to his left, his arm extended, and asked me if there was anything I wanted to browse, since I was already here.

He was pointing in the direction of the Ladies Wear side of the business, and specifically at a floor rack that was holding two expensive-looking evening dresses. Cocktail dresses, I think they might be called.

The one facing me was as brown as chocolate, with slightly padded shoulders, a deep neckline, tapered at the hips, quite tightly, and then flaring out to mid-thigh length. Whatever material it was made of seemed to sparkle, the lights overhead making it almost shimmer with life. It had a thin belt, around the middle, under the bust, with the tails designed to fall down next to the left hip.

It was a beautiful dress, anyone would agree.

Instantly my mind started conjuring up images of the dress being worn by women, models, as they walked, or stood, or did anything. About two dozen different little glimpses of possibilities went by in the space of a second or so, like they would for any human.

I shocked myself when the last image I saw was the dress on me.

Damian leaned a little bit towards me, and lowered his voice, so no one else in the store could hear him, and he whispered.

"Mel has always had an unlimited budget here. We've always kept Mr. Keeper's credit card number, with his permission."

He was encouraging me, I suppose.

I gazed at the dress, and admired it some more. Then my eyes wandered, further on, to racks of other dresses, and blouses, and skirts, and outfits, and even some lingerie racks, at the back, by the sales counter, discrete displays of bras and panties, and other things.

The panties I was wearing were almost talking to me, telling me to go ahead with it.

"Um, no thanks," I said, discretion getting the much better part of me, "maybe next time."

The whole drive over to Matt's house, I kept looking in the mirror, at the box, on the backseat, wondering what was in it. Based on the shape and size of it, I figured it was something long.

My gentle knuckle tap produced nothing, nor did my fist knocking, so I opened the door a crack with my key and stuck my head inside and called out, not too loudly, "Matt? Are you up?"

I got nothing in return.

He wasn't in the living room, to a small measure of my disappointment not naked and passed out again, covered in his own cum, and he wasn't in the den or the kitchen. Down the hall, his bedroom door was open, just a crack, so I pushed at it a little and poked my head in and said his name out loud again.

Nothing.

When I got the door all the way open, I could see where he was. Out on the deck, in his hot tub, facing away from me, a cigarette in one hand and a tall glass half-full of something dark in the other.

His upper back looked built, his shoulders substantial and big.

The big t. v. was dark. On the bed was a pile of DVD cases, some of them with pictures on the covers and some not. I wasn't close enough to see any details, but I instantly wanted to know what he'd been watching, what he'd been masturbating to.

I stood there, silently, and watched him, for over a minute, counting away the seconds, true, like a professional in the broadcasting world.

Eight seconds into the second minute, his head turned, as if he got the feeling that someone was there, and he had to crane his neck, but he saw me standing there, and even with our distance I could tell his mood changed, the look on his face changed.

He slammed out his smoke, into an ashtray, and in one big gulp pounded back his drink, and then he rose, dripping great rivers of water, and when he got to his full height I could see that he was naked, his muscular round ass cheeks pointing at me, until he climbed out with one stride and turned at the same time, now facing me, outside the sliding glass door, his body wet and fully on display, his penis long and hanging down and swinging back and forth a little.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, loudly, some anger in his voice.

I held the box higher, in both hands, like I was offering a sacrifice to a god, "I picked this up. You ordered it."

He stepped inside the room, dripping water onto the rich thick carpeting.

"I told you to take the weekend off!" he said, his voice louder again. "I don't need a fucking baby-sitter!"

Shaking my head in agreement, I stammered a few words, but he wasn't giving me any room.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" he yelled, "barging into my house like this! MY HOUSE!"

I took a step backwards, as fear rose in me. I'd always found that people who drink, when they get mad, can get really mad, sometimes even violently mad. I didn't know exactly how much he'd already had, because his words weren't slurred, but the fact that he was so much bigger than me scared me, like it always does.

"I'm sorry," I said, and started backing away.

He matched my motion, every step, but his legs were longer than mine, so he got closer to me really quickly.

I got into the hall, about halfway towards the living room, when he got within touching distance.

His eyes were angry.

He was naked, and still dripping water everywhere.

"If you were an intruder I could have shot you dead!"

The very idea of it made me tremble, even though I couldn't remember seeing any weapons in my look-arounds. I backed up some more, and he matched me.

"GO HOME!" he screamed, "AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"

I dropped the box, right there on the floor, and ran for the car. His car. The whole way home, my body shook in fear, little struggles one after the other, and my eyes just filled with tears, a couple of them finding escape, and I felt like I'd never been so hurt in my life, even worse than getting my heart broken, especially that first time, when Peggy Sussman, who for close to a year had made out with me a ton and let me feel her fifteen year old boobs, already full and womanly, and who once let me finger her pussy, and who I was sure I was going to marry and have kids with and live the rest of my days with, dumped me for Rick Deboyce.

That had hurt, and for my entire junior year of high school I moped, friends and family worried about me, but this felt worse.

For four hours, I lay on my bed, curled up in a ball, under the covers, wearing just the panties, and sobbed, the lights off, in the dark, the occasional sounds of civilization around me, cars on the road, kids in the park across the street, an airplane flying thousands of feet above us. My initial tears were of the rejection, getting thrown out, by him, by somebody I was beginning to have feelings for, even if I didn't understand them. Then I cried tears about my discomfort, about crying about a man, almost a stranger, blowing his top at me, as if I was a silly teenager, with a crush, which shamed me a little bit, since this crush, if it existed at all, was over another man.

And I'm not gay, right?

Telling the truth means telling everything, even the difficult stuff.

Okay. I did have feelings for him.

I rationalized. He's a nice guy. There's nothing wrong with wanting to help other people, it's to my credit that emotions like empathy and kindness were propelling my actions, and even if he didn't like them, I was still acting in a noble way. An honorable way.

And then yes, okay, I give in. I'll admit it.

I did have feelings for him in other ways too. It'd never happened before, so the newness of it was strange, and hard to think about.

But I did like his looks. I did. He was an attractive man, to me. To my sensibilities. He was handsome. He was built like someone strong, and rugged, and rippling with masculinity, all the things I'm not. He had the shape of someone who was physically active, which in and of itself was sexy.

Matt's choice of porn, his desires, had opened up something in me, something I didn't know existed. In just three days, and a bit of today, it seemed like his passion, from one side of the coin, was inspiring my passion, towards the other side of the coin.

The same coin.

I dozed, here and there, and tried not to think about how he must hate me, how he would probably ask for a new Associate Producer, and how I wouldn't have a job anymore. I mean, there was no way that little old me was going to somehow argue with him, or convince anyone to save my income, not against the wishes of the biggest media star in the tri-city area.

It was just after five in the afternoon when my phone rang.

My new phone.

I didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?" I asked, hesitation in my voice.

There was a long pause, and then I heard Matt's voice.

"I want to go out."

I had time to wash and dry the panties again.

He was dressed, casual but stylish, and got in the back seat without need of help, and I sat and waited for a long awkward silence, until I finally had to ask.

"Where to?"

Slowly turning his head towards me, his eyes caught mine in the mirror.

"Anywhere. Just drive."

So I drove.

In silence, he watched the world go by. His own gated community first, and then the real world, houses and small businesses and parks and shopping malls, and then The Falls, which is a small area where the river drops, on its way winding through the city, until finally we were in the downtown, with neon everywhere and people all over.

I saw him pull his head back a little, trying to disappear from people's view, if they were inclined to look into moving cars. And since his was a Bentley, I wondered if maybe more people might look than with a more common vehicle, like a Civic or something. Traffic clogged up a couple of times, and I tried to be discrete in my spying, but I watched him looking around, most of the time not focussing on any one thing for very long before moving away, but at one stop he seemed to be staring intently at the front of a multiplex, groups of people in front, singles and couples, people on dates, and clumps of friends, foursomes and moresomes.

He seemed fixated on it.

"Did you want to go to a movie?" I asked, hoping the tone of my voice let him know that I'd be happy to go with him, if he wanted it or needed it.

He scoffed.

"Are you kidding? I can't go anywhere."

The melancholy in his voice almost broke my heart. It was as if he was filled with sadness, and yet accepted it nonetheless.

"Why not?" I asked.

His eyes snapped over to mine, in the mirror.

"I can't go anywhere! Don't you get it?"

I looked away, and then back at him, and then he looked away from me.

"It's not your fault," he said, softly, "so, sorry."

And that, I thought, is the very first time I'd gotten to see the real Matt Keeper. The human being, and not the broadcaster, famous in the area for years, a celebrity, one easily and readily noticed.

"I understand," I said, as softly as I could, "you probably get recognized a lot, right?"

He nodded.

"I wasn't thinking," I continued, not having to try to sound apologetic.

He looked quickly over at me with his eyes only, and then away again.

We sat for the next spurt in traffic, and got snarled up again three blocks later, in front of a nightclub. The sidewalk was jammed full of people, almost all of them dressed up, looking fine, partying, looking for good times and, for many of them I suppose, looking for sex. Or love. Or both. I wasn't much of a club-goer.

He looked over at me again, and I smiled for him.

"I guess you probably haven't been out dancing for a long time?"

Matt laughed, a short sharp burst, his face almost lighting up.

"A long time."

I hit the gas, and we were moving again. I wormed our way out of the core and got us onto the parkway, which was a lot more open, and he cracked his window a bit and closed his eyes and enjoyed the fresh air, cooled by the river next to us.

When the gas gauge got close to empty I found a station, attached to a convenience store/fast food palace, and he slid me one of several hundred dollar bills he'd pulled out of his pocket, asking me to go inside and get us something to eat. Armed with burgers and fries and milkshakes for two, I got back into the freshly-filled car, in the front, and as I was handing him the paper bag, over the seat, Matt smiled a little bit, and told me to eat in the back with him.

If I wanted.

Neither of us spoke while we ate, but we did look at each other a few times, and I felt like he was trying to become more comfortable with me around. Maybe, the cynic in me said, he's just resigning himself to me being there, paid for by the network.

The optimist in me, though, kept seeing glimmers of something, in his eyes, and the little tremors of a smile that appeared when our eyes met.

When I was dumping the garbage in a can near the front of the store, a man wearing cowboy boots and a business suit who had way too much hair, all of it completely wild, came up to me, and pointed at the car.

"That your Bentley?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"No, I'm just the driver," I responded.

"Driver?" he scoffed, "for who?"

I thought for a second, and smiled.

"Nobody you'd know."

Matt laughed when I told him the story, as I drove him home.

He was silent for the rest of the drive.

When I pulled into his driveway, I asked him if he needed anything, any help inside, or anything, and he looked at me for a very long time, close to forty seconds by my count, and then he snorted out a sound that was half laugh and half incredulity.

"Jenny, you can't help me with what I need."

As his hand reached for the door handle, I turned in my seat, to face him, and look him in the eyes, instead of through a mirror.

"Why? Why can't I help? What is it that you need?"

My question was sincere, my concern genuine.

I watched the look in his eyes turn to rueful, the tiny little upturn of the corners of his lips slowly disappearing, and then he opened the door, and swung one of his big legs out, and then he stopped, and turned back to look at me.

"I need to get laid."

He closed the door quietly, not slamming it, and then he walked to the front door, opening it and waving at me before he went inside.

The front porch light went dark.

The whole drive home, I couldn't sit still.

Energy was crashing through me, wildly shooting in every direction, all my nerves going haywire, jolt after jolt of sparks going off inside. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, scattered and tumbling, and I'm surprised I didn't crash into anything before backing the car into my slot.

I couldn't sleep. I stripped down to my panties, and pranced around my living room, circling my little coffee table, and then out into the short hall to the kitchen, and then back again.

I was almost painfully erect. I had been since Matt had gotten into the car, including all through our dinner, in the backseat. I knew, as sure as I knew anything, that if I touched myself, even with just a fingertip, I'd go off like a shaken-up soda can.

Then I wondered if he'd noticed.

Maybe that's why he had those tiny smiles?

Logging on to my ISP, I searched on 'cross-dressers having sex', and once again was given a choice of thousands and thousands of videos, some of them crudely made, people setting up their smartphones to record, while others had actual production values in them, well-lit, with cameras that moved with the action, zooming in and out from time to time, some of them with cuts between cameras, which I knew enough about to know required a crew. For some reason, those vids seemed so incredibly more exciting to me, because it meant that the people having sex weren't alone in the room.

They were doing what they were doing, raw and uninhibited, as natural as breathing, with other human beings in the room, manning the cameras, witnessing the sweetest primitive behavior known to mankind.

We tell truths now, that's all.

Without touching myself, I came like a firehose at the third video I watched, a lovely young man with long blond hair, and a gorgeous body, with her own erection that never seemed to wane, in what was her greatest hits collection, scene after scene of different men making love to her, some with her under them, some with them under her, some behind her as they lay on their sides and kissed.

That's when I exploded.

Seeing her so frankly, from the front, her erection hard enough to pound a nail into a board, a man behind her, his cock firmly in her ass, the condom he was wearing shining in the lights, her right leg up in the air, providing him easy access and providing me the viewer with the best angle, her head turned up and over her own shoulder, his lips and tongue caressing hers.

The sounds the two of them made, their joys completely obvious as they made love, the murmurs and moans, the gasps and the smacking of skin, set me off.

I had to wash the panties again.

Well, after my tongue washed them as clean as it could get.

My search was never-ending. Fighting the intense need for sleep, I kept hitting link after link and watched every kind of cross-dresser imaginable getting laid. Some old, some young, some cute, some ugly, some completely feminine and some just masculine hairy guys wearing panties, all of them getting cock inside them.

Inside their anuses.

Just the thought of it made me quiver, being hit with complete opposite of thoughts. One was that it must hurt like hell, so why do it? The second was that they wouldn't do it if there wasn't something good about it, and maybe it was something I should try, just to see.

Most of the vids had sound, and even the amateurish quality of them did everything to keep me hard and throbbing. I especially loved the audio when men would first enter the ladies, the initial push, expected or otherwise, and hear the shock and surprise and genuine physical strain come out of their lipsticked mouths.

It hurt them, oftentimes, and yet they still did it!

The video that made me cum again, so hard I passed out, was still frozen on my computer screen, later. I must have hit pause at some point.

A beautiful gurl, which was how the word was spelled in the title, with natural auburn hair, long and silky, and perfectly made-up, wearing a bra and panties and garter belt and stockings, as well as monstrously-tall heels, on her hands and knees, being taken from behind, crying her eyes out, bawling at the pain of it all, howling in agony, her mascara running down her cheeks, as a tall and large hairy man railed her, just pounded her, again and again and again, ignoring her cries of discomfort.

My heart broke for her.

There seemed like no enjoyment in what she was doing, no pleasure being had. She was going through an ordeal, and while the angle of the camera didn't allow me to see how big the man's cock was, based on her grimaces and her sobs, he must have been big. Maybe even Matt big, or bigger.

And I reacted, my eyes filling with tears, for her, in sympathy for the obvious pain and torture she was going through. My mind cried out, STOP! to him, silently begging him to take pity on her, to remind him that this was love-making, and it was supposed to be good for both people!

PLEASE, I silently begged him, GIVE HER A BREAK.

And then, as if he'd somehow magically heard me, he stopped, a look on his face, like he was suddenly becoming a caring person, and he began pulling out of her.

She screamed out one word.

NO!

Then, after two seconds where he hesitated, not moving at all, she screamed out six words.

DON'T EVER STOP! KEEP FUCKING ME!!

As difficult as it was, the torment she was going through, the pain and the tears and the obvious physical toll she was enduring, she couldn't bear the thought of her man N              OT hurting her, NOT loving her, NOT fucking her.

I thought it to be the most moving and profound thing I'd ever seen.

A voice somewhere deep inside me screamed out.

It's so good, it's worth the pain.

Taking a cock that way must be so amazingly pleasurable, in some way or other, that it was more than worth what must be a difficult experience, at least in some ways.

I was licking up more of my own cum when my phone rang.

Matt's voice was slurred, worse than I'd heard it yet.

"Where's the grinder?" he demanded.

"What?" I asked.

His voice got louder.

"Where's the goddamned grinder? I want a coffee! You cleaned up and now I can't find it!"

I thought back to the other day.

"It's on the counter."

He wasn't listening to me.

"WHERE'S THE FUCKING COFFEE GRINDER?"

I yelled into the phone that I'd be there as fast as I could, which seemed to satisfy him, and he grunted out what sounded like an acceptance of my answer, and then the line went dead.

My panties were still damp as I drove.

I didn't bother knocking, I just used the key and walked into the front door.

Matt was passed out on the sofa, in the living room, an empty bottle lying on the carpet in front of him.

To my bitter disappointment, he wasn't naked.

His t-shirt was red and had the logo for a local sports team on it, and his sweat pants were grey, like you see in gyms.

The front of his sweat pants were rich with cum stains, some of them looking fresh. I could smell it on him, even from a few feet away. The giant t. v. screen was dark, and the coffee table had the remote and one empty DVD case on it.

Written on the case, in felt pen, was the words, "Me and Mel 3".

OH MY GOD! I thought, excitement racing through me. THERE'S MORE THAN ONE VIDEO OF HIM AND MEL!!

On that spot, right there and then, I decided that the next time he was totally passed out, I was going to watch one of those videos. The brief amount I'd seen of the first one, where they kissed and caressed and were starting their trip to paradise together, was more than enough to tempt me, more than enough to make me risk him waking up and finding me watching his most private moments, with his past lover.

In the kitchen I found the grinder, right where I'd left it, and the bag of beans that he'd pulled out of the fridge, and I ground a bunch and found a sealable jar and filled most of it, and then I set the machine going to make a full pot.

When I went back to the living room, Matt was gone.

Poking my head in the bedroom, I found him. He'd managed to fling off his wet clothes, and was sprawled in his bed, naked.

I could make out traces of his cum, sticking to his skin.

His cock, from what I could see, was semi-hard, and seemed to vibrate with the rhythm of his breathing.

Just seeing him like that, I was as erect as ever, in my panties.

The same panties I'd been wearing non-stop for two days.

And technically, I realized, his panties. Matt owned them, since I'd borrowed them from his den.

The box I'd picked up at the high-end clothing store was lying on the settee, at the foot of the bed, and it had been opened. The velvety-soft paper had been pulled back, and laying on and over both ends of the box was a wondrous sight to my eyes.

An evening gown, with a slit all the way up the left side, the color of a plum, with a plunging neckline and long sleeves, both of which had a trim of black lace on them.

I'd never seen anything so luxurious. I'd never seen anything so rich, so elegant, so absolutely womanly and feminine.

I'd never seen anything so sexy.

"Matt?" I asked, my voice quiet.

I waited and then asked again, louder, and got no response.

Walking up to the side of the bed, the smell of the cum stuck to his skin was heady, reminding me that it was my new favorite odor. It just inflamed me, how steeped in the most basic stuff of life and love it was. He was half rolled over, so I couldn't see his all of his groin.

We only tell truths now.

I was disappointed. I wanted to see it. Something inside me wanted to see it again, in a kind of desperate way, to admire it again, to gaze in wonder at it again, his length and his thickness. And those balls! It shook me to realize that my attraction wasn't just his cock. Yearnings were there, to touch them, to feel them, to kiss them, to be affected by their heft, their thickness. I wanted to see it again, the head of him glistening wet, with his own juices.

I wanted to taste them.

I did, I wanted to taste him. I wanted, I was aching to compare his seed with mine, some innate intuition telling me his would be different, and be better. By now I'd watched hundreds of CD's taking their lovers' erections into their mouths, painted with lipstick, and orally loving them, sucking them, tasting them, their cheeks hollowed out and then pushed out again and again, and even though I'd grown up in a culture of friends that claimed loudly that only 'fags' sucked cock, that word being said with real hatred, I knew more than almost everything that I wanted to try it.

I needed to understand, how it felt, to have a cock in my mouth, on my tongue, between my lips, savoring the cum, savoring the experience, as if it was a big flesh-colored lollipop, meant to be licked and orally caressed.

I looked up and saw the closet door open, enough that the female clothes could be seen. A quick glance at him told me he was out to the world, so I stealthily kicked off my shoes and padded over, slipping into the room and slowly sliding the door close to almost-shut, ajar from his viewpoint, if he woke up.

A little earthquake of tremors rippled around my nervous system, like when somehow your body just realizes that it's about to go through something, a change, or an experience, something wild and new, something maybe even a little wicked.

The first drawer I slid open, purely at random, made me catch my breath.

Right there, in front of my eyes, was the perfect set of lingerie to go with the evening gown. A bra, panty, and garter belt set in the exact same plum color, the beautiful dark reds and purples of ripeness, and my hands just reached and pulled them out. Two drawers later, I found stockings, all of them silk, in so many different colors it was impossible to find a perfect one, since most of them would match.

I ended up taking a pair that were gauzy black, the weave tight and yet see-through, and as I crept back into the bedroom, Matt still completely zonked, I hesitated.

A voice inside me was screaming, "TAKE THE GOWN!"

A different voice inside me was arguing, "BUT WHAT IF HE WAKES UP AND SEES YOU?"

One look at his face told me he was fast in the sleep of the dead, and I wondered.

Should I?

Do I want to? YOU FUCKING BET I DO!"

Should I?

You can't just tell the truth when it's convenient. You have to tell the truth all the time.

Always.

I lifted the gown off the box and took the whole collection across the house, to the ensuite bathroom off the den.

The room's aroma hit me, and it took me a second to realize what it was.

My underwear, the tighty-whities, in the plastic bag, which I'd stuffed back under the sink, away from potential prying eyes, was covered in my cum, all dried of course, making it the best cum rag I ever used. Before, my whole life, the smell of it had turned me off a little bit.

Now, I couldn't think of a lovelier scent.

At no point did I think about my job, or my future, or consider that Matt might magically wake up, see the gown missing, and scour the house to find me, and the myriad of ways he'd be upset. At no point did I think about how this could backfire, how he could tell people at the station, use it to get me fired, and how I'd be a laughing stock.

At no point did I consider all the different scenarios that could happen, or the potential consequences of them.

The only thing I could register was that I had to do it.

I had to.

After seeing all those videos, all the scenes of cross-dressers, men, young and old and everything in-between, going through the experiences of sex and love-making with other men, every tiny element of them so riveting and vibrant, from the clothes to the inferred roles to the blaring fact that they were enjoying it so much, and identifying so strongly with the feminine creatures they became, how could I possibly NOT do it?

It stands to reason, I'd probably never get another chance like this in my whole life. Ever.

Sliding the stockings up my smooth legs, my skin felt as if it had been asleep for my previous twenty-two years. My skin felt alive, it felt bubbly and delighted as the material caressed it, until covered from the tip of my toes to my upper thighs. Snapping the garter belt together, I began attaching the stocking tops, getting the first couple too loose, having to go back and adjust them, which made me stand up straight, my spine arching, and the straps running across the skin of my bum cheeks at the back felt like thin silky constraints, the tiniest of caresses of warmth while the surrounding air coolly touched the rest of my exposed skin, and I looked in the mirror and saw on my face the biggest smile I'd ever seen.

Panties sliding up my legs and settling onto my package just took all the wonderful feelings of the stockings and garters to a new level, a boost up the pleasure meter, and after a minute of fumbling with how to put a bra on, when I spun it and set it into place, the cups holding my pecs in a perfect position, creating a little line of cleavage on my chest, I had to reach down quickly and squeeze my penis, which was rock-hard, to stop myself from shooting off.

Just putting on lingerie had me ready to explode in orgasm.

The exquisite material of the gown touched me in more ways than just the sensual enjoyment of something silky on my skin. As I reached behind me to zip it up, which is hard enough as it is, it began to close up in the back, which began to pull my body in, a little, from my chest on down to my hips, which began to make me feel as if I was changing, becoming more feminine in shape, more womanly. It was like I could see, in my mind's eye, that tightening the gown at the back was not only altering my look, it was changing my minds self-image.

A rush of emotions came over me, all of them a mix of delight and pride and surprise and a profound realization.

This was what I wanted, in my life.

I stood, gazing at my face in the mirror, a suddenly and newly-beautiful me staring back, feeling as if I had been almost re-born, in a way.

I felt desirable. I felt vivacious.

I felt charming, I felt soft, I felt more at ease.

I felt natural.

A loud noise shattered my reverie, from close by, and I panicked, and all my fantasies came crashing down to earth, and I realized Matt was up, and I'd be caught and ashamed, and I lunged for the door, to make sure I'd locked it, suddenly worried I hadn't, when it came swinging open, and he stood there.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!?"

Barely knowing him, having only been around him for a few short days, I still somehow knew he was both as angry as hell, and as confused as hell. With a large helping of maybe being offended as well.

A giant jolt of fear shot through me, as scary as I could ever imagine, not saying a word, because I couldn't think of a single word to say that might help my situation.

And I called myself a writer.

"ANSWER ME!" he yelled, his words clear and unslurred.

I felt the shaking in me begin, burbling up from my core and spreading out to all my extremities at a slow mournful pace, and by the time it got to my face I could feel tears beginning to fill my eyes.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he asked again, loudly.

My head was shuddering, I could feel it, tiny tics that felt like major tremors, and adrenaline was making my blood pump harder and my lungs expand and contract harder and I was breathing heavily, gasping, and one lonely teardrop plummeted down my left cheek.

"DID THAT ASSHOLE EARL PUT YOU UP TO THIS?"

From somewhere unknown I managed to answer him, although not in words. I shook my head, four times.

"THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DRESSED LIKE THAT?"

Tell the truth.

"Because I want to."

It just came out, my voice nervous and soft, without any traces of sadness or regret. Breathy.

Matt's look became a little less angry.

"You want to?"

The way he stretched out the word 'want' was perfect, if he was doing a broadcast, but this was real life, and the way it came out made me realize he was feeling surprise and disbelief all at once.

I nodded. Four times.

He looked at me for thirteen seconds, by my count, and then he took a deep breath, like he was trying to calm himself down.

"Why?"

We tell the truth now.

Every detail, every thought, every nuance from the past three days and nights came out of me, standing in his ensuite bathroom, dressed as I was, in panties and a bra and a garter belt and stockings and the sexiest dress I'd ever seen. I couldn't have held back anything if I'd wanted to, and I didn't want to.

I wanted Matt to know. Something inside me wanted him to understand where my heart was at, where my soul was at, and why I was doing the things that I was doing.

I told him about seeing him naked. I told him about seeing him covered in his own cum. I told him about cleaning him up.

I told him how all of those things had affected me, how they'd opened my eyes to feelings I never knew I had, how they'd expanded my universe.

I told him, with tears running down my face, about watching a short clip of the video with him and Mel, apologizing again and again for having intruded on his privacy, and confessing that I wanted to see more, see all of it, see the completion of it.

More embarrassed than I'd ever been, I admitted that I'd watched him at his most private moments, when he'd been masturbating, in the shower, waiting for him to get angry, or explode, or be so offended that he kicked me out of his house, or kicked my ass.

I told him about the videos I'd been watching, at home, and how they'd been consuming my soul.

When I was done, standing there, breathing heavily from the stress, my chest rising up and down, encased in the most beautiful bra, which felt like an ethereal lover's grip on my body, my chest and breasts safe in the hands of the universe, Matt just stood there and looked at me.

He'd not said one word, the entire time, nor made any sounds at all.

For two long minutes, by my count, we gazed at each other.

My mind kept telling me to take off the clothes, that they didn't belong to me, that I'd broken some sort of trust and violated his property, and that I should shrug my boring clothes back on and give him his key chain back and start walking home.

I should cut my losses and just leave.

I could start looking for a new job tomorrow.

Finally, Matt sighed, his big chest moving noticeably, as he came to some sort of decision.

"Okay."

I had no idea what that meant.

He stared at me again, for twenty-two seconds, and then his eyebrows shot up a little, and he nodded, as if he was coming to accept something, or at least come to terms with it.

"Why don't we drink some of that coffee you made?" he said, and began backing out of the doorway, his big right arm pointing at the kitchen.

I stood in place.

"I should change," was all I could think of to say.

He looked at me, up and down. Twice.

"These clothes don't belong to me," I added.

He gazed at me again, actually concentrating on looking at me.

"It's okay," he said, his voice deep and low and sensitive, "wear them if you want. You obviously like it."

He smiled.

A genuine, honest, no pretense kind of smile came on his face, and for the second time I felt like I was actually getting to know the real person, the real Matt Keeper, and not the celebrity.

Then his eyes darted down to my crotch.

I followed his gaze, and saw the lump.

My lump. I was as erect as I could get.

He was right. I obviously did like it.

He poured us both a cup of coffee, asking me if I took sugar or milk, and after adding both he brought it to me, and we sat, on the sectional in the den, both of us sipping our drinks, not saying anything.

I quickly got to the point of curiosity.

"What happens now?" I asked.

He stared at me.

"Are you gay?" he asked.

It hit me as funny, and I couldn't help the laugh that escaped my lips.

My boring, dry, un-covered lips.

For just the briefest of seconds, a quick flash, I felt like I hadn't finished the job of getting dressed. I'd failed to complete the task. I hadn't put any makeup on, to match the femininity I was rocking with the clothes.

"Everybody thinks so," I answered, and when he looked at me questioningly, I explained what Betty had said, and what Mitch had said about what Sid had said.

"Mitch is still here?" he asked, a look of disdain accompanying his words.

I nodded.

"He's a worm."

The way he said it told me he'd had plenty of interactions with Mitch in the past.

I filled him in.

"He says the big fella is going to retire soon, and there are lots of candidates, including you."

Matt nodded, slowly, as if he was recognizing a reality he'd already considered.

Then I watched his mood change, as if he was thinking about the idea of going national, being the big star, and if my intuition was even remotely working correctly, I got the distinct impression it wasn't something he was overly keen about.

Then the look on his face got downright dour.

"But I'm a drunk," he said, matter-of-factly, his eyes not looking at mine, his honesty almost a confession, "so they convinced you to become my keeper."

He laughed at that, a burst of sound, at the use of his own surname.

"Keeper's keeper."

I honestly couldn't think of a thing to say, so I sat there, my newly-smooth skin going absolutely bat-shit crazy at the sensations of the materials of the lingerie and dress, the softness of it all, the slinkiness of it all, the ways they held me, so different from my boring boy clothes, the way my heart seemed to pound differently, harder, with more energy, with desire, and with steely determination. One little voice came floating through all the others shouting in my brain, which was that after I was fired, after Matt or Earl of Sid or Betty or whoever told me my time was up, that I was going to go straight to Stephano's, because that cocktail dress I'd seen was going to end up in my closet, along with as much of the rest of the women's clothes as I could afford with whatever severance package I received.

Or didn't.

Even if they kicked me out with nothing, fired for cause, I was still going there. I'd spend my own money, if I had to.

"So, are you gay?" he asked again.

This time, it was me who couldn't look at him. My honesty. My confession.

"I don't know."

Before he could ask, I continued.

"I might be," I said, "I mean, I've never done anything like that, but..." and I struggled to find the right words, the ones that completely and accurately described how I was feeling, what I was going through, "... but I... I... I think I want to."

Matt's voice was whisper-quiet.

"You want to what?"

Big fat teardrops swelled up in my eyes.

"I want to know. I want to try. I want to understand what it's like, what it feels like. I can't explain it, but watching all those vids, seeing all those different guys becoming, you know, girly..." and I paused, searching for the perfect words, "... and then seeing them with men, other men, having sex... making love..." and I wiped my cheeks, wet with tears, "... it's all changed me... it's like a door inside me got ripped open, a door I didn't even know was there... and then seeing you and Mel..." and I paused, waiting for him to say something about how I destroyed his privacy, but he didn't, "... seeing it for real, real people, not just strangers..." and I had to stop myself from shuddering again, "... it just took over... took over my thoughts, my brain..." and I cried a little more, "... and then, these clothes...", wiping more tears, "... wearing these clothes..." and I gasped out a sigh, the most honest sigh I've ever made, "... it just consumes me... day and night... it's all I think about... all I can think about... all I want to think about..."

Almost a full minute of silence later, he finished the rest of his cup of coffee, and stood up, walking to the kitchen to get more.

He brought the pot with him, and topped up my cup, and after returning it to the kitchen, he sat down again.

"They look good on you."

Which was the straw.

I just started crying, shuddering sobs of tears, my whole body wracking with the gasps, the severity of the situation hitting me harder than anything ever hit any person in the history of the world. Everything came down on me, emotionally. Sitting in the den of this man's house, this famous man, this journalist, dressed as I was, confessing my desires to wear more feminine clothes, more of them, all the time, and becoming sexually active with other men, as if the two go hand in hand, all these things I'd never done and never thought about and never imagined, all of them so completely outside my boring middle-class parameters, outside the conventions of what I'd grown up thinking was the meaning of life. All of it, new and unheard of and beyond scandalous, hit me hard.

The next thing I knew, Matt was sitting down right next to me, and putting his big arm around my shoulders, and pulling me towards him, hugging me, one-armed, and my face landed on his shoulder, near his neck, and he let me go through what I had to go through.

Six minutes of sobbing later, I calmed down, somewhat, and just breathed, collecting myself, steadying myself, coming to the realization that he'd just shown me the greatest kindness anyone ever had.

He'd let me do my thing, offering himself up to be caring, and thoughtful, and, well, human, just by hugging me.

I lifted my head, and looked up at his face, as he looked down at mine.

"Jenny," he said, and then he smiled, something unexpected passing through his mind, "and now you look a lot more like a Jenny," he added, and then we both smiled, "you're young, and just discovering your, um, your feelings, right?", and I nodded, "and I remember what that's like, and so how about this? How about we make a deal? How about, when you're here, if you want, you can wear anything you like, anything you find. It's up to you."

I couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

He nodded and smiled again, a little one.

"Whatever floats your boat," he added.

Then he took his arm away, and stopped hugging me, and stood up, his full height making my neck crane to look up at him.

"I guess there's probably makeup and stuff in the bathroom too, if you want to play with that junk as well," he said, not really looking at me, "I know he left most of his stuff here, when he left me," which came out sounding like the saddest confession I'd ever head, "I mean, you might even find a wig or two somewhere in the closet," and then he walked back to the kitchen, behind me, so I couldn't see him anymore.

"But you'll have to find somebody else to play with," he said, his voice quiet and as unlively as I'd ever heard it, "someone else to experiment with, or whatever you want to call it, because I am not the man for that."

I was about to turn around and plead with him to change his mind, to become my lover, when I heard the sound of his bare feet padding away from me, out of the kitchen.

His voice was getting quieter as he walked.

"I'm not the man for that, anymore."

Without moving, I listened to his footsteps fade, and then the door to his bedroom closed, and I realized I was alone again.

Once more I welled up with tears, the sadness of not finding myself in his arms, the thought of which would have been ludicrous just days ago, settling on me like a thick fog. I put my coffee mug down and hugged myself, wrapping my arms around myself, realizing that while I'd been brave enough to tell him the truth, about myself and how I was feeling, that it hadn't been enough to change anything.

I was still a lonely person, like I'd been most of my life.

I'd confessed the deepest darkest secrets of my soul, something I'd never done before, to anyone, admitting to another human being my dreams, my fantasies, my yearnings, and while he'd been very nice about it, in his reactions, even caring enough to one-arm hug me when I was crying, all my extraordinary words and desires hadn't worked.

I felt like a silly fool.

So I sat and quietly cried, and realized that the biggest thing that was upsetting me was that wearing the clothes felt perfect, felt right, felt surprisingly wonderful and apropos, and showed the changes I was experiencing deep inside me, inside my mind, and my soul, and my psyche, and yet none of that seemed to have achieved the next step, the next natural extension of the whole scenario.

He had no interest in me, the femmed-up me.

I wasn't his new Mel.

Jarring me more than anything was the weirdness of feeling those things, about another man. Sure, I'd had my heart broken by women, of course, and sure I'd had hopes for scoring with certain women over the years that never panned out, much to my disappointment and frustration, and that's just the way of the world and the same for pretty much every guy in the history of the world, right? They give you the impression that you've got a chance, and then they shove their hands with their painted sharp nails magically straight into your chest and rip your heart out, throwing it on the ground and stomping on it with their high-heels.

They give you that 'come here, come here, come here' feeling and then when you do that they give you the 'go away, go away, go away' thing.

Women.

Who fucking needs them, anyway?

Sitting on the sectional, wrapped in the sexiest evening gown I'd ever seen, my left leg mostly exposed, in the stockings, from the giant sexy slit up the side, my body encased in the silky tightness of lingerie, panties and a bra and garters, the heady smell of my own dried semen wafting from the ensuite bathroom door just a few feet away, those words sounded like they'd blared from a loudspeaker.

Who fucking needs them anyway?

I rationalized. My brain told me I looked as good as any woman might, that I exuded the raw femininity that they did, and rocked the same clothing that they did, and yet I was somehow better than they are, better than they ever will be.

Because I wanted not just to look like this, all the time, I wanted it to be an integral part of not just toying with men, but actually landing them.

I wanted to be sexy, and I knew I was being sexy, but as opposed to pretty much every woman I'd ever known or heard about, I actually wanted the love and sex that should follow.

I was ready for it. Willing for it. Pining for it.

I wasn't teasing.

I wasn't using men for some other purpose.

I had the desire, for sex in all its myriad of glories, all of it, all the time.

I had a man's natural twenty-four/seven drive, adding to the fact that I looked like a woman. The best of both worlds.

Sexy, and sexual. Dressed, and desirous.

Hot.

And as horny as fuck.

The truth.

The absolute best of both worlds.

And then, the most remarkable thought entered my mind.

If Matt won't make love to me, and won't fuck me, and won't fulfill that part of me just newly discovered, then I'd find someone who will.

Holy Fuck!

Did I actually think that out loud?

The truth, always.

I heard his feet padding towards me, and from behind me he spoke.

"I'm going for a soak in the hot tub," he said, matter-of-factly, and after six seconds of pause, he added, "feel free to join me, if you want."

I turned around to look at him, the direction his voice was coming from, and he was standing behind the island in the middle of the kitchen floor, naked from the waist up.

That body that I'd come to know so well, in just a few short days, right there again for me to savour.

He swigged down the last of his cup of coffee, and then smiled at me, a little one.

"Up to you," and then he turned and started to walk away, and in two strides his entire body became visible to me.

Completely naked.

Without turning his head, as he walked into the hall and away to his bedroom, I heard that smooth-as-silk deep voice resonate.

"I'm sure there's probably bathing suits in the closet," and then he added, "bikinis, and such."

My breath caught in my chest.

"Up to you."

Two minutes and fifteen seconds, by my count, I just sat there, stunned.

Bikinis.

I saw the back of him, as I walked into the master bedroom suite, his strong shoulders tanned, a cigarette in one hand and a tumbler with dark liquid close to half-empty in the other, relaxing in the steam of his hot tub on the deck. Just getting down the hall, wearing the gown and the lingerie, had set my heart tingling, changing everything about me, the caress of the stockings, the firm loving grip of the panties and the bra, the way the cut of the evening gown altered the way I walk, automatically, as if my soul understood that my paradigm had shifted, for one brief second wondering if it was a permanent thing or just for the moment, the sway of my hips pronounced and sultry, deciding on the spot that I hoped the former won out.

It took seven drawers being opened before I found them.

Bikinis. Two one-piecers as well, which immediately made me think of swimmers, like you see in the Olympics, and how they always made the women's asses stick out, barely covered, and how fucking sexy I'd always found them.

Touching them, gingerly, I felt shoots of thrilling titters go up my fingers and my arm and into my trunk and my brain and my heart, the softness so different from what I normally wore, the fabric sleek and shiny and mind-bogglingly attractive, knowing more than I knew anything that they'd feel SOOOO good against my skin, so delicious and so gratifying.

About to pick one up, and hold it, knowing I'd press it against my face and smell it immediately, taking in its texture and scent, absorbing it's past somehow, out of the corner of my eye I spotted something snow white, in the back of the drawer.

A bikini. A halter bra, two triangular patches of fabric joined by thin straps, and the bottoms, one hourglass-shaped piece of the same fabric, with thin ties on the sides.

In my mind's eye, I instantly saw it, on a woman's body, a faceless woman with a slim build and smaller breasts. Kind of like my body, I realized. I imagined her walking down a beach, her beauty and her confidence and her sensuality on show for the entire world, unashamedly lovely and sexy and knowing it and realizing it's the greatest gift to humanity and completely empowering.

Then I looked up, and saw her face, and realized it was me.

Tying the halter, I looked in the mirror, gazing at myself, my smooth skin, hairless, the budding bumps of breasts barely there, and my genitals, encased and surrounded and settled in a pouch, looking womanly and yet decidedly different.

Women don't have the bulge.

Well, I thought, most women.

The truth.

Some women, I realized, the ones I'd fallen in love with over the last few days, and the ones I was yearning to emulate, they had bulges.

I had a bulge.

I found the other things I needed in the third drawer I opened, in the giant bathroom. The first drawer, under the left hand sink, had guy stuff in it, so I switched to the other sink in the vanity and under the drawer with the combs and brushes and hair pins and various scattered loose bangles and rings, I found some make up.

Using mascara seemed to me to be a breeze, as if I'd been doing it my whole life, and my eyelashes became dark and long and thick, my blood racing and I got erect in the bikini panties, and when I layered on the lipstick, the most gorgeous rich lustrous shade of pink I'd ever seen, I had to squeeze my crotch, to stop myself from cumming.

When Matt's head turned, as I walked up to the hot tub, I coyly tried to not look at him, but in my peripheral I saw his eyes open wide for a second, in what was either surprise or delight, or maybe a combination of the both, and then a grin appeared on his face, but after a second he reined it in and tried not to look too obvious.

As I got up the steps and slipped my first leg into the warm water, I felt like I was stepping into a dream. Sitting gently down on the seat directly opposite from him, I looked at his big long legs, under the surface of the water, and then scanned upwards, and even though the bubbles got in the way, there was no avoiding that he was as erect as I was, except his was a cock, I mean a COCK, thick and long and rigid, whereas mine was a small facsimile, my scan finishing on his chest, and his face, and his eyes, which looked like they did when he was on the air, open and serious and attentive.

The heat of the water was intoxicating, adding to the already record-breaking thrills I was feeling, the shocking new me, sitting in a naked man's hot tub wearing a bikini and makeup, with him behaving as if it's completely normal and me wondering if I'd lost my mind.

The truth shall set you free.

I had lost my mind, of course, in the best of ways, suddenly free of the rules that had been drummed into me since I was born, the ones that said you're a male, you have to behave this way and not that way, you have to want these things but not those things, you have to dream about this list of normal dreams and not that list of delightful dreams.

Those dreams, I now knew, were so much stronger, more vivid, and pulling at me.

"Want a drink?" he asked, holding up his glass as an example.

Alcohol was not something that ever meant much to me, the occasional beer on a hot summer's day notwithstanding, but a ripple inside of my brain waded in, and I said yes.

I watched him put his drink down on the little tray built into the rim of the hot tub, and then he stubbed out his smoke in the ashtray on the other edge, and then he stood up, slowly, right in front of me, his feet stable on the bottom of the hot tub, his legs outside of mine, just barely out of reach of us touching.

My eyes, locked on his as he'd stood, lowered slowly, admiring his chest, his build, the boy part of me remembering various times in my life when I'd hoped to develop that exact shape, muscled and toned and in-shape, and above all else the physical manifestation of the word 'male'. But that voice got drowned by a newer voice.

I wondered what it would be like to touch his body. In just those three seconds, as he rose, I conjured up imaginings about how his skin would feel, if I touched it with just the tip of my finger, gently, lovingly, and how my pulse would rev as I traced that finger over his collar bones, and then across and down his pectorals, his chest looking like a formed shield, as strong as steel, the masculinity of it pierced by two dark colored circles, each themselves pierced with nubs, thick as a pencil and full, almost angry looking, and then his belly, not flat like a male model, or a gym monkey, but close.

And then, as it appeared, his cock.

Like the big hand of a clock, sticking up towards twelve, except his leaned a little towards where one would be, to his left, the underside of it, with the huge thin bulge of a vein riding all the way up, dead center, was staring me in the face, underneath it the two roundest eggs, larger than grade a, held neatly in one gorgeous sac.

I snapped my eyes back to his.

"Sorry," he said, not really meaning it, "it happens."

He meant the erection, of course.

"If you're going to spend any time here," he added, "you'll just have to get used to it."

Then he swung his big leg over the edge of the hot tub and got out, dripping water everywhere, taking two steps over to a short cupboard I'd not seen before, on the ground, and opening it, and I could see some shelves with bottles and glasses, next to a small bar fridge.

"Beer? Wine? I'm drinking rum, myself."

I picked a white wine, and he returned and sank himself back in the tub, still erect, and we sat opposite each other and silently sipped our drinks.

His sips were way bigger than mine.

I allowed my eyes to close, five minutes in, feeling more relaxed than at any other time in my life, amazed that this kind of zen could have been achieved at all, let alone so easily.

All it took was a bikini and a hot man.

He asked me if I wanted a top up, and I still had some, so he got out again and got himself another drink, and I cracked my lids, which felt so much heavier with the mascara on, wide enough to see his cock again, as it passed me by.

Both ways.

We soaked and relaxed for thirty-one minutes, wordlessly, with occasional stares at each other, while he had three drinks to my one. The steam and the eroticism of how I was dressed and what I was doing combined with the wine made me feel like I was being overcome with a gentle giddiness, like the warmest softest blanket, elevating my normal levels of happiness to uncharted territory.

When he got up to get his fourth drink, he didn't get back in. He just stood beside the hot tub, stretching a little bit here and there, moving his musculature to keep it going, keep it active. I lolled my head to my right and watched him, admiring the curve of his buttocks, how round his ass is, how his thighs were thick and looked strong, whereas mine were slimmer and more petite. More dainty. Feminine, compared to his.

He looked over at me, at one point.

"So," he said, "you're enjoying this?"

I knew what he meant.

Nodding slowly, I smiled.

"Very much."

His gaze got harder.

"And you're a virgin?"

I felt myself blush.

"With men."

He just looked at me harder.

"And how many women have you slept with?"

Some male part of me inside flared up, the part that has to brag, to compete, like I was going to say 'tons' or something like that, but the switch had been flicked and I was only telling truths now, and I realized that the actual number was embarrassingly small.

"Four," I meekly answered.

He just nodded. He could have asked further questions, like how many times each, or how long each, or asked for examples of things I'd done, different variations or kinks or fetishes, like guys do. He seemed to either not care, or already have a good idea that I hadn't done it many times with any of them.

Three of them, only once.

The fourth one was on-and-off for a few months, until she found someone new, and our grand total of nights when we'd had sex was nine.

And being honest, other than being pretty good at orally loving her, at making her squirm and scream and spray with my mouth, I wasn't what anybody would define as a great lover. I didn't last too long, and I had a tough time going for a second stab, usually falling asleep instead.

"And now you think you're gay?"

Before I could answer, he kept going.

"Just because of seeing some porn?"

I shook my head, instantly.

"No, no," I said, frankly, "it's so much more than that."

He turned full on to me, and put his free hand on his hip.

"Like what?" he asked.

The truth shall set you free, remember?

This is what free feels like!

"Like everything," I said, "everything I've seen, the clothes, the actions, the sex," and then I looked at him, seriously, "you, your body, your cock, you and Mel making love, what little I saw of that, everything! It's sitting here right now, in a bikini for the first time and being mad at the universe that I didn't know how amazing it feels until now, until today, when I could have been feeling this amazing my whole fucking life! It's as if before, back before Sid called me into his office, twenty two years of before, that was all so boring, so bleh, you know? But this," I said, waving at myself a little bit, "this is what being alive is supposed to feel like. I'm pretty sure of it."

He just looked at me.

"And now, what? Now, you want me to fuck you?"

My head didn't move, but it was like being slapped in the face. It took me two seconds to understand that if I was being truthful, that also meant other people could do it as well.

"Like," he continued, "you get to meet the famous guy, you find out he's a fag, a secret fag, stuck having to spend his whole life that way, you see a little bit of a video he made with his lov..." and then his voice caught, and he took a second to collect himself, and I watched his Adam's Apple go up and down as he swallowed and steeled himself, "... with a former lover, and now you're thinking you could take over? Fill in?"

I shook my head, slowly.

"No, of course not," I said, but my voice felt weak, and I wasn't sure if I believed me or not, so how could he? "I could never replace someone, anyone, like that."

Then it struck me that I didn't like the way he'd pronounced the word 'fag'. He'd said it like every juvenile guy I grew up with, like maybe even I'd said it a few times, with hatred. He'd said it with spite. He'd said it with disdain.

I didn't like it.

"And besides," I ventured, trying not to sound like I was lecturing, "you're not a 'fag'," and I matched his hateful tone, and then looked at him, seriously, "you're a human being."

He nodded, slowly, and then walked towards the tub, reaching for his pack of cigarettes and lighting a new one, all the while standing so that there was literally no way I could NOT see his body, see his nakedness. There was not a snowball's chance in hell I couldn't look at his cock, his genitals, and my own genitals felt like they were suddenly alive, inside the silky panties of the bikini, because of his nudity.

"I'm a fag," he said, with slightly-less spite, "is what every person in the tri-city area would say, every day, when they turn their televisions on to watch the news."

Taking a big lungful of smoke, he blew it out slowly.

"That's the truth. That's the reality. That's a career-ender, right there, because they'd say it for a short while and then they'd stop watching and then I'd be gone."

I shook my head.

"Things aren't like that anymore," I gasped, "we're in the twenty-first century now. Famous people are gay, all over the place, in every industry. It doesn't matter, and it's not the career-ender you think it is."

Matt laughed, a derisive kind of noise, and shook his head, as if I was a moron, or at least someone who didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

He slugged back the rest of his drink, in one big gulp.

"I mean," I continued, "there's publicly gay baseball players now, and football players. There's publicly out politicians now, too."

"Oh yeah?" he asked, argumentatively, "how's that working out for the one or two guys who've been stupid enough to ruin their own futures by announcing? How many of them are barely accepted, in public, and then probably whispered about behind their backs by the very people they think are accepting them? How many?"

I searched my brain for an answer, having to admit to myself that the combination of being dressed in front of him, plus the steam and the heat of the Jacuzzi, plus the glass of wine I'd mostly finished, were all lessening my debating skills.

"Elton John does okay."

Matt laughed.

"That's your answer? Elton John?"

He moved, and poured himself another drink, which he swallowed half of in a second.

"Jenny," he said, softly, "Elton John doesn't broadcast the news. Elton John isn't trusted to tell the sheep the facts."

"The sheep?" I asked, incredulously.

Matt nodded. "That's what we call them. They're sheep. They'll go where I tell them, think what I tell them, they're the great unwashed. You ever wonder why all broadcasters, not just us, use the pronoun 'we' a lot? Or 'us'? We call the reporters 'our' so-and-so, stuff like that? You ever wonder why?"

I shook my head.

I adjusted the strap of my bikini bra, feeling the way it shifted the weight of my breast, just a little, and allowed a small satisfied sigh to escape my lips.

He took another big swig.

"It's because the sheep out there are so stupid, if they hear pronouns like 'us' and 'we', they think they're part of it, they think they're a part of the news, they think they're involved. Focus groups have shown it for decades. It makes them feel loyalty, and helps build the audience." He paused for a second. "The bigger the audience, the bigger the costs for advertising. Simple as that."

I remembered how Earl had talked about Matt being the big fish, the big draw, the stations' bread and butter.

"And you're number one, and have been for years."

He nodded.

"Uh huh."

I let seventeen seconds of silence go by.

"And they'd accept you, because they always have. They trust you."

Matt scoffed.

"The sheep would dump me, in a second, if they found out I was a f-...", and then he stopped himself, and looked at me, and I watched his look soften, perhaps in consideration of my feelings. "If they found out I was gay."

About to disagree with him, he kept talking.

"That's why I can't go out," and his voice was suddenly quieter, "I can't go to movies, I can't go dancing," and he nodded at me, reminding me of the other night when I was driving him around, "even though nobody knows about me and my sexuality, they all know me. They all think they know me. I can't go the goddamned grocery store without people gawking at me, pointing at me, wanting to talk to me, wanting autographs."

There was a touch of slur to his voice now. He slugged back the rest of his drink, and I watched his internal debate about whether to have more.

What I couldn't make out was his decision.

We sat in silence, me actually sitting, in the hot tub, in my bikini, and he stood next to it, naked, his manhood at its natural state, barely excited, not hanging straight down but with a little elevation to it, right there in front of me, close enough to touch, if I reached out, close enough to my mouth to imagine kissing it, tenderly, his length and girth still larger than mine when I was fully erect.

Which is what I was, and had been, since I slipped the panties on me, after tying the halter of the bra, earlier. Stiff as steel, unwavering.

He stood in silence, and I ogled him in silence, my mind a whirling dervish of images, all of them romantic or sexual, usually both, Matt's cock in my mouth, in my throat, if I can learn how to do that, promising myself that if it comes right down to it, I will learn, or his cock in my ass, my pussy, my legs curled around his body, my arms wrapped around his back, his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth, me arching my back to receive his thrusts, our timing perfect, one blistering stroke after another, me full of another person, him buried in the sweetest warmth.

Finally, he sighed.

"I'm going to sleep," he said, his 'sl' coming out more like an 'shl'.

Grabbing a half-empty bottle of something dark, his rum, I presumed, he walked away from me, to the door, where he towelled off one-handed, not doing the worlds' best job of it, before padding onto the carpet inside. His rear end moved like a lion's, purposefully, with raw power and energy, even when on one step he waddled a little bit, the alcohol inside of him doing its thing.

"Do what you want," was the last thing I heard from him, although I think I might have heard a really long sigh from further inside, long enough after to assume he'd crawled into bed.

I waited fourteen minutes. I counted them off.

When I was dry, I crept into the house, and off to my right Matt was wrapped up in his blankets and snoring. The bottle was a full quarter emptier.

Back in the closet, I had to dress again, in the plum-colored lingerie and the matching evening gown. I had to.

It took trying on three pairs of heels before I found one that fit me, a black pair of simple sling-backs with three-inch heels which were tight, but didn't cripple my feet like the others, and I swished and soft-stepped out of his bedroom suite and into the hall, letting my legs move more freely, feeling like I just naturally had to keep my back straight, pushing out my breasts, making them front and center, which allowed my upper body weight to be independent of the rest, which made me swing my hips in a truly enticing way, a foreign way, and my whole insides just went 'YES!'

It didn't take too much snooping to find Matt's stash of DVD's, in the living room, and after bringing the sound down to lowest setting without muting it, I threw in a disc titled 'CD SLUTS VOL.1', and sitting in the exact same spot Matt had been in when I found him covered in his own cum, I slipped my hand into the slit of the gown and pulled the panties up and away from my genitals, and began stroking myself, gently toying with my erection, slipping the foreskin over and then off of the head, watching little oozles of pre-cum seep out, covering my head, the smell of it hitting me, enticing me, as the first image from the movie danced up onto the giant t. v. screen.

A gorgeous short-haired French CD, named Stephanie, perfectly made up with a black bob wig, wearing sexy panties and heels and a bustier, with a black man behind her, his cock buried in her ass, and a black man in front of her, his cock in her mouth, and she was sucking and bucking and the audio was of her moans and sharp short breaths, and then she seductively looked up and to her right, directly into the camera, and even with an almost-Matt-sized cock between her lips, she still managed to smile, radiantly, absolutely and profoundly joyously.

YES THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO DO, THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO FEEL, THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO HAVE HAPPEN, THAT'S WHAT I WANT, THAT'S WHAT I NEED, I NEED TO BE FUCKED LIKE THAT AND FILLED LIKE THAT AND DRESSED LIKE THAT

We only tell truths now.

I edged for one full ninety-minute DVD and sixteen minutes of a second one, called 'RUSSIAN CD SLUTS', one gurl in particular sending shivers down my spine, positively thrilled at how much I would look like her, with the right wig and the right make-up, and how she absolutely adored being fucked, being made love to, kissing her man while he buried himself in her, the way it's supposed to be.

Primitive.

I came so hard I passed out.

Just like Matt had done.

After waking, and cleaning up, both me and the clothes, I borrowed DVD's, as well as several pairs of panties, three bras, three sets of thigh-high stockings, and two camisoles, as well as the shoes, and went home. Matt was snoring away, covered in sheets and blankets, much to my disappointment.

When I got home, I showered and shaved all over and dressed again, and fired up the next movie, and watched until I came so much it took four minutes to scoop up all the cum and lick it off my fingers, the act of which just made me erect again, an unheard of event.

Well, unheard of when I was a normal, straight guy.

I picked Matt up on Monday in the early afternoon. He was mostly sober, I think, which I was happy to see, and I couldn't manage to not smile as I drove to the studio, the camisole under my shirt and sweater feeling like a whispered silky breath on my skin, matching the indescribable feeling of the chord of a G-string tightly pressing all the way from the bottom of my balls through my crack, right over top of my puckered starburst hole, and finally out to meet the string around my hips, and the way the thigh-highs caressed the skin of my legs.

Nearing the parking lot, Matt spoke.

"What are you so happy about?" he asked, curiosity in his deep voice.

I snapped my eyes to the rear-view mirror, and met his.

I couldn't help it. I grinned.

"Do I need a reason?"

His eyes narrowed.

"Jenny. Are you?" and then he stopped, and looked at me harder, "... are you wearing lingerie under those clothes?"

I saw a bit of a grin form on the corners of his mouth.

"Maybe," I said, coyly.

He looked at me, hard, for eight seconds, and then he nodded, and smiled, and then he looked away again.

Safely in his office, after a staff meeting with the News Director, Betty told me that Earl and Sid and Mitch wanted to see me, in Earl's office, one floor up. It felt so amazing and so scary walking in, with what I was wearing, hidden yes, but just underneath the surface.

Might one of them see something, or figure something out?

"He seems better," Sid said, to start the conversation, and everybody nodded their agreements, "he really does, so well done, Jeremy. Keep up the good work. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

Mitch looked at me sideways.

"Do it more."

All three of them shook their heads vigorously.

I brought Matt dinner after the six o'clock show, and then he pulled out a bottle and poured himself a glass, shooting me a look that was almost a challenge, like, I dare you to say something.

I so much wanted to tell him that he didn't have to drown his sorrows, the way he was, that he could find love again, and that while not everybody would accept it, he could let go of his loneliness and his despair about it and be out and open and proud, and that I would give anything to help him do that.

Anything.

Somehow, he knew what I was thinking.

"Don't try to save me, Jenny," he whispered, eerily quietly, staring at the floor, as if it was all he could do just to say what he wanted to say, the entirety of human noise around us icily disappearing, "I'm a lost cause. I can never be happy. It's the price I have to pay, for being me."

My heart broke for him, and my eyes filled with tears, a pool so large there was no holding them back, and my cheeks became wet with them, and before I could say anything he gently waved his hand, like he was asking me to leave things at that, and to leave him to himself.

To leave him to his misery.

"I'll never fall in love again," he whispered, closing his eyes, "it hurts too much when it fails, which it always does."

The question just burst out of me.

"WHY DO YOU THINK IT WILL ALWAYS FAIL?"

He said nothing for nine seconds, and then he whispered out two words.

"Vicious circle."

My mouth started to open, to ask another question, when he gently waved his hand again, softly, asking me to respect his wishes, so I did.

I didn't get more than ten feet down the hall, crying silent little tears, when Betty came out of somebody's office and looked at me, first showing shock, and then showing empathy, and she detoured and put her hands on my shoulders and steered me around and back to the last door on the right.

The ladies room.

"Okay," she said, sitting me down on a toilet, inside one of the two stalls, "spill it."

"It's just so sad," I blubbered, "he's just so sad."

She grabbed some toilet paper off the roll and handed a wad to me, and I used it to dry my face.

"What's sad about him?" she asked, probably just to get me talking.

"He won't let himself be happy," I bemoaned, "he won't!"

She nodded her head, like she was agreeing with me.

"When I started here, oh, about five years ago, he was not so bad, in terms of the drinking," and I watched her eyes look away, her brain calling up the memories of those times, "I mean, sure, he drank, but not to excess, like now," and she paused, "like it has been since, well," and she paused again, "since Mel left."

"How long ago was that?" I asked, hurriedly, tears still running down my face.

"Almost a year now," she answered, handing me more toilet paper wadded up. "It obviously hurt him, Mel leaving," she added, "and just confirmed what most of us suspected, which was that they had to have had a pretty intense relationship, not just driver and star, you know?"

I nodded, because I did know. I'd seen a brief amount of a video, that showed how intense their relationship was.

Sexually intense. Romantically intense.

The kind of intensity I wanted.

"We've all taken turns driving him home and picking him up since then," she said, and sighed, "but he just kept getting worse and worse. And I thought, well hell, just find someone new, move on, dust yourself off and get back on the horse again, that sort of thing, like we all do."

I nodded my agreement.

"But he can't," I said, my voice filled with a quiet resignation, "he says he'll never fall in love again, it hurts too much when it fails, which it always does."

Betty looked at me as if I'd said something shocking.

"He said that?" she asked, demandingly. "Really?"

I nodded again.

"He calls it a 'vicious circle'. He can't fall in love because who'd want to be in a relationship with someone who can never go out in public, never be his true self? Who'd want to be a part of a couple that has to be kept secret, or he'll lose his career?"

She looked at me as if she was just now figuring something out.

"You mean he thinks he can't come out of the closet and go public, or he'll lose his audience and his star status?"

"Yes."

"Which leads him to drink, to drown his sorrows?"

I nodded, and replied.

"To numb the pain."

She nodded slowly, as if everything was now finally making sense.

"The pain he creates for himself," she added.

"A vicious circle."

Betty sat with me for fifteen minutes, until we'd both cried ourselves out, me more than her, and as we were leaving the women's washroom, she stopped me, and put a hand on my shoulder.

"I'll tell you something," she said, her voice and face serious, "he's better now, with you here."

I made a mocking sound, as if I didn't believe her.

"No, seriously," she continued, "I mean, look at the meeting we just had! He was lucid, he was active, he answered questions and talked, he even cracked a smile." She smiled herself. "You're obviously a good influence on him."

I thought about it.

"Maybe."

After the six o'clock show, I got him dinner, and he ate most of it, before finding a bottle of something in his desk drawer and lighting up a smoke, which I knew was my cue to leave him be.

I strapped him in his chair for the eleven o'clock show, but I'm not sure he needed it.

As I was straightening out his suit jacket, pulling it down at the back, he whispered to me.

"It's warmer tonight, don't you think?" and not waiting for me to answer, he continued, "be nice to go for a swim when we get home."

I had to leave the set, right away.

Just the image of wearing one of the speedos I saw in the drawer in his closet was almost enough to set me off.

The whole drive to his house, he didn't look at me, or talk. He started stripping off his clothes in the front hall, as he walked towards his master bedroom suite, and by the time I followed him in he'd already gotten completely naked and was sliding the big glass door to the deck open, headed for the pool.

My hands were shaking as I slid into the suit. It was bright, almost neon orange, with tiny little straps going up and over the shoulders, obviously designed for a woman with a smaller bust. Or someone with no bust at all, like me.

The cold early-spring midnight air made my nipples sproing up like two silos on huge flat farm, and the back of the suit settled into the crack of my ass like it was holding me, strapping me in for some sort of adventure. Rounding the side of the house, I heard the water splashes of Matt swimming, and then saw him, his naked body cutting through the water, his long legs kicking behind him, his ass strong and flexing, his long arms slashing out in front of him. The pool itself was maybe thirty feet long, by half as much wide, and the water was clear enough that I could see markings down one side, depth numbers.

Matt was so tall and long that he only took four full sets of movements to get from one end to the other, and he rolled and turned, underwater, and completed his lap.

I stood, almost shivering, feeling the heated air rising from the pool and smelling the chlorine, the front of my suit showing my little bulge between my thighs, and watched him swim two more laps, until he finally came to a halt and bobbed in the waters of the deep end, his long legs barely moving underneath, treading water.

He wiped his eyes free of drops and then looked up at me.

"You'll be warmer in the water," he said, with just the hint of a smile in his voice.

I shrugged at him.

"I'm not much of a swimmer."

"No time like the present to learn."

We swam. He slipped through the water like a shark, sleek and strong and elegant, while I stumbled and stuttered and clunked along, and I soon realized that the swimsuit was meant to be gorgeous dry, and almost see-through wet, as I watched his eyes several times flicker to my groin, or my breasts, my nipples wretchedly erect, throbbing so hard they almost hurt me.

After forty minutes he got out, his naked body rising out of the pool in one lunge, streams of drops falling to the tiled surface he stood on, and the cool air enflamed his nipples too, both of them thickening as he stood there, me watching, and I saw him smile again, a little, and his cock bobbed up and down a little, and he started walking away, towards the house.

"White wine again?" he asked, over his shoulder, and I murmured my approval, and a minute-twenty later he came around the corner with a goblet in one hand and a tumbler in the other. Mine was half-filled with wine.

His was full to the rim with rum, and a mixer which I assumed was cola.

For the next hour, we swam, and sipped, him more than me, and neither of us said anything. We seemed to have found a comfort level in just being.

He went through three drinks in that time, so when his eyelids drooped a little bit and he slumped a little bit while sitting in the shallow end, I knew he was done for the night.

Assured he was asleep, I found a black leather bustier that took all my strength and flexibility to zip up, which led to thong panties and thigh-highs, when I added the same three-inch heels, all of which was my preparation for spending almost two hours in the living room, watching DVD's.

Nothing but cross-dressers and transvestites, with a few she-males thrown in, amateurs and professionals alike, all engaged in one form or another of naughty same-sex fun, and I edged and edged until I came so hard I pulled a couple of stomach muscles.

I ached afterwards, like somebody had punched me or something.

There was one disc, though, that I couldn't bring myself to watch.

Me and Mel 2.

I wanted to, more than anything in the world. More than everything in the world. It ate at my soul, it pulled me harder than any wish I'd ever made from day one, but every time I went to open the case and pull it out, I stopped myself.

Something inside me said it would violate something, an unwritten rule of the road between Matt and I, never spoken but planted in my brain. As much as I wanted to see it, I couldn't betray his privacy like that.

When I got to his house the next afternoon, he was in the shower.

I stood in the same spot I had before and watched him masturbate again, covered in suds, in the reflection of the mirror. His big left hand pinching his right nipple, while his right hand slid up and down his mighty rod, occasional grunts and moans louder than the spray of the water behind him. My pants hit the floor two seconds later, my left hand pulling my panties away from myself, my right hand wrapping around my penis, and I began matching Matt, stroke for stroke.

I came before he did.

At the last second I cupped my left hand, making a bowl out of my palm and fingers, and shot my cum into it, not wanting to stain the carpets in his bedroom. In the hardest difficulty I'd ever had to endure, cumming silently and collecting it sufficiently while my body was shuddering and thrashing about took all my concentration, and when my breathing got close to back to normal and I was able to open my eyes again, I realized my cum would start seeping through my fingers and drip down, so without thinking about it I zipped my hand up and opened my mouth and my lips and tongue sought out all the juice they could find.

I swallowed, and swallowed more, and licked and tasted and glopped up all my seed, all my salty confection, and moaned out my approval. It was a rush, like that first toke of a joint, when it hits your brain, just after you've done it, and the normal world bends a little bit, in every direction.

Shivers of joy ran around me, and I started to get hard again, which was so unlike me, and after I'd finished cleaning my fingers, tonguing them so they didn't have any more to drip, I came down a little bit from my reverie, and looked up.

Matt's eyes were wide open, staring directly at me, in the mirror.

His big right hand was still wrapped around his cock, but he'd stopped his stroking.

He'd been watching me, witnessing my orgasm, my explosion, and my hungry tastings afterwards.

His eyes were on fire, full of darkness.

He started masturbating again, staring at me, staring through me, as I stood in awe of him, my erection almost fully returned, and for thirty-eight seconds I marvelled at his power, his masculinity, and his sexuality.

When his eyes shut tight, and his face curled into something resembling a grimace, and he stood up on his tiptoes and all the big muscles in his body tensed up and then he started blasting ropes of his cum against the glass of the shower, he moaned out one word.

"Jenny!"

The ride to work was quiet. As far as I could tell, he didn't have anything to drink in the hours leading up to the six show, and judging by the bottle he'd brought out after, he'd barely touched it before the eleven show. He was quiet, but it appeared he wasn't all that drunk.

Afterwards, he told me to take the long route home, which I knew meant he just wanted me to drive around the city, so he could look at things. He didn't want to go out in public, because he'd get recognized, but he didn't want to stay home all the time either.

We stopped at the same gas station complex as last week, and loaded up on the same burgers and fries and shakes, and ate them in the back, parked at the back of the lot. We were watching other customers, driving in and out, some of them wandering between their cars and the buildings, or just around.

He made up a back story on all sorts of them. On the spot. The old reporter in him, which he must have been at one point, starting his career, came shining through, and every person he talked about suddenly became real to me, regardless of the silliness of the story he was telling. He gave them names, made up of course, and histories. One of them was a secret gambler, one was a prim and proper school teacher who slept with both male and female students on the QT. One guy was an escaped convict, one was a world-famous scientist, Nobel Prize winning, and so on. I was amazed at how easily each story came to him, how smoothly he transitioned from one subject to the next, and how funny he could be.

When we got home, he headed for the hot tub with a full bottle of something in his hand, and I didn't hear an invitation so I left him to himself, and he downed most of the bottle and ended up passing out in his bed, wet.

I went looking for new clothes to wear, new items of sexy silky fabrics to drape on my hairless sensitive skin, when I found them.

The toys.

The sex toys.

A drawer half full of them.

Butt plugs, and dildos, and cock rings, and vibrators, and what looked like big marbles on a string, separated by inches, which I had no idea what they were for. But the phallic-shaped toys, those were easy to figure out.

I began enjoying yet a new video in the living room, this one full of flashing images at high speeds, called a HYPNO, which I suppose was meant to convince people who might be on the fence about things to act on, as if they'd been coerced into it by the power of the images.

But I didn't need any convincing. I wanted it all already, so for me it was just entertainment, albeit really convincing.

When the rounded bulbous end of the dildo first touched my hole, my whole body tensed up, the enormous psychological weight of what I was about to do coming down on me, heavily, and all that self-induced stress caused me to clamp down, some voice in the back of my head saying 'NO!', and my ring became tight as a drum, and unyielding. The same voice kept rationalizing to me, 'that's a hole for exit only!', the years of societal cliché's forming a barrier in my mind to the act, as a video played in my head, showing a stream of images of the grimaces and harsh faces men like me made in all the hundreds of clips I'd watched in just over a week.

It hurt, my soul kept saying, it was so obvious! And why would I want to hurt myself?

My answer, of course, was immediate and louder.

We tell the truth now.

The men in the videos, dressed as ladies, did it because there was something about the act that made all that discomfort and grimacing worth it. There was some part of it, some aspect, unknown to me yet, that made it all worthwhile, that justified whatever rigor they were going through. So with gritted teeth, I lubed up both myself and the dildo, and in a moment of bravery, and in the spirit of exploration and experimentation, I closed my eyes and thought of the beautiful Stephanie, who I'd seen in one of the very first vids I ever watched, the French cross-dresser who had one black man in her ass and one in her mouth, and who looked into the camera and smiled the single-biggest self-satisfied smile I'd ever seen, and I forged ahead.

Exquisite, was the only word I can use to describe it.

A dozen seconds of mild shock and stretching pains from my ring gave way to the most beautiful feelings. Fullness, of a kind unparalleled in my experience, everything inside me pushed outward, a kind of pressure you feel once in the bluest of moons when you're having a bowel movement, all the tissues flexing at something large and round going by, except this time not going away in a second or two, but constant, and challenging.

And oh so wonderful.

When the dildo brushed past something and my entire body started buzzing and tingling, as if I had to pee, it sent wave after wave of triumphant shudders through my whole body, and my mind screamed YES!

Just like that, I knew why all those cross-dressers put up with the discomfort. I knew, down to my molecules, the reason why they endure the shocks of it.

BECAUSE IT JUST FEELS SO GOOD TO BE FUCKED.

I edged and edged and jerked myself off with six inches of rubber inside my ass, not as thick as Matt but close, and at the end, nearing my explosion, using one hand to masturbate and one to slide the dildo in and out of myself, simulating fornication, as I was hissing out my breath, concentrating all my energies on taking the discomfort, on cherishing it, on knowing it was part of the process and accepting that, it was as if the sun suddenly started shining, after a lifetime of darkness, and I had what can only be described as my epiphany.

I no longer wondered what all the fuss was about, and why all those men I'd watched had done it.

My life lesson was complete.

My release came when I stopped touching myself, and just stroked the black rubber cock in and out of me, fast and full. My back arched and my toes curled and a lovely long moan came out of me as I burst, entirely from being fucked.

I came just from something in my ass.

For the rest of the week, Matt and I carried on our informal relationship. We'd swim, or soak in the hot tub, him always naked, me always wearing a swimsuit, usually a bikini, since for some reason they gave me more internal quakes and thrills than the one-piece, until he passed out, usually in his bed, and then I'd get all girly in lingerie and dresses and blouses and heels and make-up and rub myself while first sucking on and then fucking myself with a dildo until I saw stars and shot loads of cum all over myself, always eating it afterwards, after I caught my breath and calmed down.

We fell into a new habit, though.

Every day, when I went to pick him up to take him to work, he'd have a shower, and I'd watch him, from his bedroom, and he'd watch me watching him, and he'd masturbate himself, slowly and with emotion, making love to his own erection, and I'd strip down to almost nothing and match him, and we'd watch each other in the mirror, and we'd both cum, both of us in huge loads, me first, always, and he'd watch me eat my own semen, which would inspire him to finish himself off, shooting his ropes onto the glass of the shower.

Every day.

And every day, as he was blasting off, at the height of his passion, his big deep resonant voice would sail above the noise of the water pouring down around him, with one word.

"JENNY!"

Friday I took him to the station early, because he had a meeting. He didn't tell me what it was about, which was fine, since it was none of my business, but when he came back to his office afterwards, he hit he bottle hard, immediately. When I had to get him to make-up, he was pretty far gone. Like the very first day, I had to lean him on his own desk, just to get him dressed.

On the word 'six' he straightened up, and, as usual, delivered the news perfectly, the mark of a true professional broadcaster.

Betty helped me get him back to his office.

"So, what's going on?" she asked me.

"What do you mean?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot.

"C'mon," she spat out, "he's been doing so great since you started, right? Like," and she paused, "like, something must be up to make him slide backwards like this."

I didn't answer.

"Did you two have a fight, or something?" she pondered.

Shaking my head, I was about to speak when she took off again.

"Well there has to be something," she said, as she and I stepped back from his couch, his body crumpled on it, snoring away already, the both of us staring at him. I couldn't tell what she was feeling, which kinds of emotions were racing through her, but I knew what I was going through.

Heartache.

Profound sadness.

Someone I cared about very deeply was in pain, and there just seemed to be nothing I could do to alleviate it, or stop it.

"He had a meeting earlier, with the brass," I said, out of the blue, my voice quiet and tender.

Betty looked at me, one eyebrow raised, as if what I'd just said was enormously interesting.

"Really?" she asked, stretching the word out so she sounded more curious about it, "okay. I'll use my magic on Judy and see what I can find out."

I looked at her with surprise.

"You have magic you use on people?"

Betty laughed, as we left Matt to sleep it off in his office.

"Only on Judy right now," she admitted, referring to Sid's executive assistant, the one it was rumoured he was sleeping with.

"She's a closet case, for sure," Betty said as we strolled down the hall towards the elevator, "so I have to work at it, but she'll break down and tell me, eventually, after I make her cooperate."

"How?" I asked.

As the elevator door was closing, she looked at me and grinned.

"Poor girl thinks she's straight," Betty said, "except that she's in love with my tongue in her twat. Once I make her explode a couple of times, she'll give me all the dirt."

I'm not sure, but the smile on her face could have been the biggest one I'd ever seen.

Who knew this kind of stuff went on in workplaces?

Matt slept all the way up to the eleven o'clock show make-up time, and as I was getting him there he was quiet, and wouldn't even look me in the eyes.

The drive home was the same.

Inside, he stripped down and went straight to the bar fridge by the hot tub, pouring himself a large rum with a little cola in it and downing it, in two gulps. His second drink, less strongly mixed, sat in his right hand as he soaked in the tub, a cigarette burning in his left hand.

When I slipped my smooth legs into the water, wearing a neon-lime green bikini with tiny yellow polka dots all over it, the bottom so tiny it barely covered my naughty bits, he went out of his way to avoid looking me in the eyes.

For eight long minutes we said nothing.

Finally, staring into the water in front of him, he spoke.

"Mitch offered me the job," he muttered.

I tried to make my voice sound happy for him.

"Congratulations."

Shaking his head, he finally met my eyes.

"For what?"

"For what?" I asked, shocked. "For being one of the best broadcasters in the world, who has earned his chance at the spot in the national chair."

He stared at me, until the cigarette's heat got too close to his fingers, and he let out a quick "ow!" and then stubbed it out.

"Fuck!" he muttered, and shook his hand, as if that would lessen the pain he was feeling.

Here he was, a grown man, in his early fifties, and yet all I could see was the reaction of a boy, who forgot what he was doing and got a little pain for his troubles, and it made me smile.

"What's so funny?" he asked, sternly.

"Do you want me to kiss it better?" I asked, nodding at the hand with the owie.

Reflexively, I suppose, he responded like a lot of men would, gay or straight.

"How about you kiss my ass."

I laughed out loud, and then got brave.

"If that'll make things better."

"Ha!" he said, a little playfulness entering his voice, "in that case, kiss the hairiest part of my ass."

If he was looking for playful banter, I wasn't giving it to him. Instead, the ten most important days of my life, the ones with him, the ones with cross-dressing and gay sex and anal love, they took over my thinking, the open spirit of unfettered sexuality infusing itself right down to the molecules in my spine, and I looked him straight in the eyes, and my voice got soft and serious.

"If that'll make things better."

This time it was him who couldn't find anything to say. He just stared at me, intensely, for fourteen seconds past the minute mark, when I watched his eyes soften, and his jaw stop grinding.

"Do you actually have any idea what you're doing?"

I knew what he meant. He was questioning whether I was grasping the ramifications of flirting with him, if I understood just what I was asking for.

"What do you think I'm doing?" I answered, a question for a question, stretching out the word 'you'.

He shook his head, and took a big swig of his drink.

"Don't play games," he said, "you're just a kid, a virgin. You have no idea what it would be like to have gay sex, do you? You've never done it before, have you? Even if I wanted to, which I do not, you wouldn't last a minute before begging me to stop."

I sat up, rising in the water just high enough that he could see my nipples, erect and throbbing.

"I've done lots," I answered, my voice soft and serious, "and I'll bet you money, right here and now, that I'd last longer than that. A lot longer. I might even outlast you!"

"Do you have any idea..." he said, loudly, before I cut him off.

I only tell truths.

"Every day now, for days, I fuck myself with dildos. Big ones."

His eyes shot open and he stopped talking, his mouth half-open.

"Every day," I continued, "I get further and further along, more and more into being dressed like a woman and feeling like a woman and having sex like a woman, having a big hard something slide into me, and work me, and take me to a place I never knew existed, a place I want to live in all the time."

Matt never stopped looking at me, and took a big gulp of his drink.

"If you can look me in the eyes," I kept going, "and tell me you're not attracted to me, then I can take that. I'd be disappointed, but I can understand it. Taste is taste. One man's beauty is different from everybody else, I get that. Eye of the beholder."

His left hand fumbled around beside him, trying to find his pack of smokes, and once holding them, trying to fish out one cigarette.

"But don't think that just because you have more experience at it than I do that I don't know what I want, because I do."

Twenty seconds of silence went by.

"So what do you want?" he asked, quietly.

"In the grand scheme of things?" I asked, "I want peace and love and happiness for you and me and everybody else on the planet."

Then I smiled at him.

I most definitely only tell the truth now. No more hints, no more vague ideas, no more skirting around issues.

"In the short term, I want you to take me to your bed and make love to me. And," and I paused, "I'm pretty sure you want the same thing."

He studied my face for half a minute.

"What makes you say that?"

"Three reasons," I opined, "one, I can see how hard you are just from sitting with me in this tub," and he made a tsking sound and replied, "I'm always hard, you know that," and I tsked him right back and said, "no, you're not, but you are throbbing hard right now, just like I am. And then, reason number two is that you moan out my name when you cum, when you're masturbating in the shower, watching me masturbate, while watching you."

Matt's eyes were big, and his face serious, as he listened to me.

"And reason number three, is because you told me that you needed to get laid, remember? Well, so do I," and I stood up, the water dripping off of me, my upper half exposed to the chilly night air, my nipples achingly erect, and then I slowly and sensuously stepped out of the shower, making sure he saw my ass and my smooth legs and my groin in slow languid detail, "I'm going to dry off now, and then I'm going to put on the sexiest lingerie you own, and some more make-up, and then I'm going to get under the covers, in your bed, and wait for you."

Matt stared at me.

"Up to you," I said, walking away, "whether you want to join me."

I picked white panties, chuckling at the whole 'virgin' quality of it all, barely-there and gauzy, to match a white demi-cup bra, lace everywhere, and white stay-up stockings, and I slathered another two coats of lipstick on, a coral pink, added more mascara to my full lashes, and finished with a spritz of Chanel No. 5, from a half-full bottle that was probably Mel's, and finally a shot of lubricant, which I smeared all over and into my pussy hole.

Slipping into the sheets, I threw them over my head, so none of me was exposed, and nervously waited for his decision.

It was the longest four minutes and twenty-eight seconds of my life.

Towards the end, I started tearing up, my eyes half-filling, assuming I'd blown it, that I'd pissed him off, and that he was not only rejecting me, but that I'd probably lose my job.

Maybe he wasn't attracted to me.

Maybe he still didn't think I could handle it, even if he'd wanted to, which he'd said he didn't.

All the maybes went out the window when he pulled the sheets up and away and slid onto his side of the bed, next to me, his body still damp in parts.

I peered over at his eyes, as he studied me, and it just popped into my head.

"Did you say yes?" I asked.

Wordlessly, with a forehead furl, he asked me what I was talking about.

"Did you take the job?"

Keeper laughed, a full-throated full-lunged laugh, a belly-shaker, and then his face got serious, and he stared at me, piercingly.

"Jenny, are you sure?" he whispered.

"Matthew Keeper," I whispered back, "I've never been so sure of anything. Please, I'm begging you, make love to me. Take me now."

His initial kiss, after he'd gathered me in his arms, mine wrapping around him as best I could, was timid, and nervous. But seven seconds into my response, my moans of delight and my lips searching out his, encouraging him, his spark lit up, and he got down to serious business.

We kissed, sometimes softly and sometimes with passion, for thirteen minutes, by my count. His lips were soft and full, bigger than mine, and from the first contact I couldn't get enough of it. My first time ever, being kissed by another man, was like the skies opening up after a lifetime of rain, the warmth and heat of the sun blazing through, igniting the age-old fire that burns inside everyone, only a few of us daring to touch it, and his tongue was long and thick and felt like an invading species in my mouth, and he played with me, never letting me suck on it for longer than a few seconds before slipping it away from me, tasting the insides of my cheeks or the roof of my mouth or tapping my teeth.

I could have kissed him all night, nothing more, and been the happiest person who ever existed. Nothing had prepared me for just how monumental it could be, this same-sex romantic act. For just the briefest of moments I wondered what all my buds from back in high school would think, if they saw me this way, dressed in lingerie, in a man's bed, kissing him as if my life depended on it, knowing instantly that they would all reel, some even to the point of being offended, instead of seeing me for what I truly am.

A sexual, sensual, romantic feminine man.

When I broke the kiss, it was only to catch up on a little air, and to look Matt deeply in the eyes and tell him exactly what I was thinking.

"Oh god, Matt, I want to do this all the time, I want to kiss you and hold you and touch you," and I gasped, "and I want to suck you, suck your cock, and drown in your cum," and I gasped again, "but right now, please please please make love to me, please? I can't wait. I need it now!"

He moved himself, so his upper body was on mine, and his legs were between mine, and I could feel his iron rod of a cock between us, pulsing with energy.

"Matt," I begged, my voice raw and real, "fuck me, please!"

He moved himself again, just a little, and his cock banged into the inside of my right thigh, and left a little wet mark, an almost-invisible pre-cum tattoo, and he shuffled again, and as I brought my legs up towards me, wrapping them around his torso, his cock landed directly on my lubed hole, my starburst, and I puckered around the tip of him, and we both breathed in air, and I watched his eyebrows shoot up, one last time, giving me the chance to back out, and my arms shot down his back as far as they could and grabbed onto his muscular buttocks as best I could and I pulled at him, and with a squishy little sound that we both heard his rounded head began spearing into me, opening me, and as his entire girth and thickness pushed everything out of its way, making me moan out loudly, and making my eyelids close as my eyeballs rolled into the back of my head, he took me.

That deep rich voice, the one that kept me abreast of the developments in the world daily for years, slowly spoke out my name, Jenny, as if I was the sweetest chocolate he'd ever tasted, and then his mouth clamped onto the side of my neck, and he arched his back and pulled almost all the way out of me, eliciting a disappointed low moan from me, and then in one deliberate long languorous push, he buried himself into the core of me.

I came, shooting spurts of cum in-between us, coating both of our tummies, and clenched down around his shaft, which made him roar out a half moan/half shout, and then suddenly he was kissing me again, hard, with lots of tongue, taking all my concentration away from the stretching of my channel, and my ring, both of which were letting me know they were going through something unusual, something new, and something that was pushing them to the edge of their limits, but miraculously not past them.

And then, like my heroines in the videos I'd been watching intently for just over a week, I settled back, the weight of my man on top of me, my legs wrapped around his back, my arms the same, my panties pushed aside, my lips matching his fervor, and my man started fucking me.

Short stabs, long strokes, frenzied humps, romantic thrusts, huge lung-emptying pushes, flesh slapping noises, and every different kind of pleasurable moan and groan filled the room, as we made love. Matt's height advantage on me seemed to disappear as we lay there in the horizontal plane, the beast with two backs, entwined around each other, holding onto each other for dear life, knowing that this is how two people are supposed to experience joy, together.

Nine absolutely glorious minutes later, Matt suddenly pushed his upper body away from mine, propping himself up on his arms, and stared at me, his eyes ablaze with a kind of animal intensity, and he pulled himself almost out of my pussy, until just the barest rounded top of his cock was inside me, and I pulled at him with my arms, silently begging him to get back up inside me, but he wouldn't do it, so I verbally begged him.

"PLEASE MATT, PLEASE.... FUCK ME... KEEP FUCKING ME... I NEED THIS... I NEED YOU..."

He stared at me, so intensely I wondered if something was wrong.

"Oh, I'm gonna fuck you, don't you worry about that," he whispered, "but this? What we've been doing so far? That was just a warm up, a rehearsal. Now, now it's gonna get intense now... so I'll give you one last chance to walk away... virgin."

I laughed at him.

"HA! I AINT NO VIRGIN ANYMORE!"

His stare lasted for six more seconds, and then his decision was made.

"OH YES YOU ARE!"

He lanced me, in one massive plunge, his whole body weight coming down on me, hard, and fast, and all the air went out of my lungs, and his arms collapsed and his face was suddenly next to my neck, and then, like a machine, something high-tech in a factory that moved hundreds of times a second, he started really and truly fucking me.

Like a powerful engine, he was, displaying all-out superpower confrontational kind of energy, as if his life depended on it, and I screamed out my approval, which helped mitigate the intensity of his fucking, nothing in my boathouse preparing me for the total body work out he was putting me through, and the headboard shook, every three or four strokes enough to touch the wall behind it, banging loudly, the aural manifestation of our love-making, which became our soundtrack, and then his lips clamped on to the side of my neck, and he began sucking, but only for a half-dozen seconds, and then he stopped, his breathing strained under the physical exhaustion he was putting himself through, and I realized he'd stopped giving me a hickey because of concern for me, for my reputation, that people at work would see it, high on my neck.

"DON'T STOP!"

His voice was breathy, and uncontrolled.

"But - it'll - leave - a - mark," was all he managed to get out.

"DON'T STOP! I WANT EVERYBODY TO SEE IT! I'LL WEAR A BIG FUCKING NEON SIGN THAT SAYS 'MATT KEEPER GAVE ME THIS WHILE HE WAS FUCKING MY BRAINS OUT!"

Matt grunted out a laugh and then doubled down on fucking me. The slap of our skin was louder than our gasps and moans, as his big cock plunged into my ass over and over and over and over again. He got so powerful, and so insanely dedicated to the job, that all I could do was hang on to him, grasp his body as he pummelled me, so I didn't bounce away, or lose his magnificent erection from inside me, and giving up that oversight was the best decision I ever made, because the last of the walls came down, the ones we build in our minds, the ones that stop us from experiencing things because we're examining them through arbitrary filters, and I was able to close my eyes and just be.

Be his lover.

Be the feminine sexual creature I am.

Be the yin to his yang.

Be the best fuck he'd ever had.

I came, and came again, while he banged me, each one smaller than the one before, until all I could shoot out of my little penis was dribbles of cum, which didn't match the hugeness of the strain on my body, on my muscles and ligaments, which felt like they were being put through the heaviest wringer ever, and each release for me made my starburst flex and cramp and grip on his cock, and he'd moan out loud, that voice huge and deep and frenzied, which would make him fuck me harder, more energetically.

All good things come to an end, and we both began nearing it, his humps wilder and stronger, my back arching again and again to encourage him, until finally he began to make a noise, from deep inside his barrel chest, that sounded like a build-up to something, and his plunges inside my ass got harder, and sharper, and stronger, and faster, his full body weight slamming down on me, crushing me into the mattress.

The noise became a roar, which he bellowed out loud, and somehow I knew we were there.

His last nine strokes into me were hard, almost brutal, as if each push was meant to be significant, all on its own, with huge emotional attachments to them, and despite all the physical shocks I was going through, my eyes welled up in tears, uncontrollable, and without thinking about it, I screamed the magic words out loud.

"I LOVE YOU!"

When his last thrust bottomed out in me, and he screamed out my name, "JENNY!", and then added, "I LOVE YOU TOO!" I could actually feel his shots, inside me, buried as deep as his cock could go, as deep as my ass would take him, all my insides a quivering mass of flesh, and he filled me with his cum.

He filled me with his cum.

When I woke up, a short time later, he wasn't in bed with me, which made me scared, and I sat up, light-headed, about to call out his name, when I saw him, by the foot of the bed, setting up a video camera.

"Wanna make a movie?" he asked, his grin huge, his cock looking like a flesh-colored iron bar, hard and rigid and solid, and the next thing I knew he was on me again, his mouth on mine, his tongue inside me, and I just naturally reached for his cock and guided it to my pussy hole, almost screaming into his mouth when he wasted no time and penetrated me, fully, all of him, in one go.

We labelled the DVD cover 'ME AND JENNY 1', with a felt pen.

We spent the entire weekend together. We swam in the pool, we soaked in the hot tub, we lounged in the family room and watched movies, some of them even legitimate Hollywood releases, but most of them porn. We ordered food and had meals delivered. I got to change my outfit whenever I wanted, swapping dresses and skirts and blouses and gowns as the mood struck me.

We made love in every room in his house.

He fucked me in the pool.

He fucked me in the hot tub.

On Monday, we went to work again, me with lingerie under my male clothes, and him, happy and smiling, mostly sober, shocking people with his effusiveness and his friendliness, saying hi to everyone he saw, in the halls, and in the studio.

The weather lady's nipples got huge again when he told her she was 'looking good', on the set, just before they went live. I was watching, behind the cameras, on a monitor, and listening with a headset, and I heard the director, in the booth, tell whoever was running the mixing board to get away from the camera that was on her, because he didn't want the tri-city audience to have to see her 'headlights'.

Betty hugged me, for no reason at all, except that Matt's happiness seemed to spread throughout the entire building, and everybody was happy.

As she hugged me, I cheekily whispered a question to her.

"How's Judy's pussy?"

She giggled in my arms.

"Tasty and wet, as always," she whispered back, and then she waited two seconds and got cheeky herself.

"How's the great Keeper cock?"

Somehow, she knew.

I pulled away from our hug, so I could look her in the eyes.

There was no point in making anything up.

We only tell truths now.

"Emmy-winning!"

I moved in with Matt the next day, giving notice at my apartment, pissing off my landlord, who kept asking me where I was going, until I finally told him the truth, with some politeness thrown in.

"I'm moving in with my lover."

I don't think he believed me, that I even had a lover.

"What's his name?" he asked, laughing at his own innuendo, at his own insinuation, expecting me to react, and respond to his crass humor.

"His name," I said, and paused, letting the pronoun sink in, "is Matthew," and I paused again, and smiled, watching his expression change, as he realized that his crude little gay-bashing joke turned out to be real, "and tonight, after work, we're going out dancing, to a nightclub you've probably never heard of, called Luv Affair, which caters to the gay community, and then, after we've partied and danced and had a good time, we're going back to our place and we're going to fuck each other's brains out, while you sit at home and twiddle your thumbs, all by yourself."

Matt didn't take the job.

He told Mitch that he wasn't ready for it yet, and when Mitch asked him why he thought that, Matt explained that while he was ready to do the job itself, he wasn't ready to go national yet.

When Mitch and Sid and Earl pressed the question to him again, as to why not, he was happy to explain.

"I'm a gay man," he said, his voice loud and strong, a smile on his face, saying it in public for the first time ever, "and I'm not going to hide it anymore. So, if this medium-sized market doesn't lynch me when they find out, which they will, slowly, then maybe we can talk about moving on up. Until then, I'm going to live my life, and enjoy my time," and he looked over at me, standing in the back of the room, his Associate Producer, and he smiled, and winked.

It was my proudest moment.

He'd aligned himself with me, philosophically.

WE ONLY TELL TRUTHS NOW.

The End.