In August it became apparent, even to me, that I was neglecting my other friends. And so I broke out of the sex fog for an entire Saturday to spend time with Chloe and Veronica.

As it turned out, I was not the only one who had delved rather deeply into the pleasures of the flesh. Veronica was just as inexperienced as myself — more so, because she did not have a history as a man to fall back on. As it turned out, whenever I was over at the guy’s place, she was at ours, or vice versa.

I’m amazed that Chloe did not strangle us both, but over a bottle of Pinot Grigio at a trendy little West Village wine bar, she gave a confession of her own, enough to rival either of ours. Her father had used mental conditioning to keep her sex drive at zero through most of her teen years, so much so that she thought there was something wrong with her. Then, when there was a business partner whose son was just about her age, he reversed it.

“For six weeks, I did nothing but fuck, except think about fucking,” Chloe concluded. “I was insatiable, and I think they had made some kind of alterations to my body to make it particularly addictive.”

I was floored. “Oh my God... what happened? What did you do?”

“Do? I didn’t DO anything, except like I said, fuck.” Chloe took a much more casual sip of her wine than I could have in her circumstance. “The business deal fell through, and suddenly it was no longer desirable for me to be with Chip. Otherwise...,” she shrugged, and polished off the glass. “I’d have been married off to him. His personal sex toy, long enough to make lots of fat grand babies for Daddy and his partner, and then who knows.”

“That must be illegal!” exclaimed Veronica.

“No doubt. But I’m sure the records at BodyMat make no mention of the conditioning. You can get away with a lot when you own the place.” She gave a wry smile at our surprised expressions. “Yeah, not a lot of people know it, but he is majority owner. It’s a public company, unlike eNext itself, but he can still hide between layers of shell corporations.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. “Sorry we ignored you for boys,” I said eventually.

“I will forgive you both,” Chloe declared, “if you give me all the details.”

The conversation went way deeper than I would have been comfortable a few months before, but I had a greater comfort level with my body now. I had now had sex way more as a woman than I ever had as a man, and in a greater variety of ways. I shared this with my friends, though it required us to play the pronoun game again.

“So which is better?” Veronica asked curiously.

“Oh, the girl side is way better,” I assured her. I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to describe what a male orgasm was like, but I’m not sure either of them got it.

“Well, I’ve decided,” Veronica said an hour later, over tapas. “I’m not going to change back. My mum will kill me, I know, but sod her. She’s the one who fed me chips when I was a baby, just to stop me crying.”

I knew it wasn’t an easy choice for Veronica. As much as she hated her old body, it was hers, and that’s not an easy thing to walk away from. Chloe put a hand on hers. “You know we don’t care either way, right? We’d still be your friend.” Veronica smiled her thanks.

“Of course, I won’t have a choice,” Chloe said bitterly. “Daddy will have me back to his twisted version of perfection before he lets me set foot in the house.”

“But you’re an adult now. Don’t you get to decide for yourself?” I asked.

“I guess. In a way. But see, I’m not really a full legal person.” She pointed to her purse. “I’ve got an ID, but no social or anything else. My degree, my bank account, nothing transferred over. And anyway, he’d find me.” She looked down. “He has before.”

It wasn’t until dinner that we regained some momentum. Chloe’s revelations about her father were all I could think about, and only after dozens of assurances that we would stay in touch after the summer was over, and never abandon her, did the conversation move away. When it did, though, I was unprepared.

“How about you, Holly?” Chloe asked. “Are you going to change back? Or stay a girl?”

It wasn’t that I had never thought about it, but every time I put the question off until later. But I had to admit, the end of the internship was getting closer and closer, and then the countdown timer started. “I really, truly have no idea,” I replied.

We talked about me the rest of the night. Veronica’s choice was made, and Chloe’s was made for her. There was a lot to be said on either side, and it sort of fell out that Veronica argued in favor of me staying a girl, and Chloe wanted me to change back. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, womanhood,” she said over dessert. “You’ve been one of us for what, two or three months? But try it after a year, or two years, or twenty.” She jabbed her fork into a helpless slice of cheesecake to emphasize her words.

“I thought you liked being a girl, especially when you got to pick your own body.”

“I do! I mean, it’s fine. I’ve never been a guy, so I don’t really know. I guess it’s like, well, cheesecake.” She held up a forkful. “It’s great. I love it. But what if that’s all I could eat? All I’d ever eaten? And I see other people eating other things, but that’s not for me. And I just want to try it. Maybe I don’t like it, and I go back to eating cheesecake. Maybe I never eat cheesecake again, and maybe I watch to have cheesecake sometimes, and other stuff other times.”

“You’re making me want cheesecake,” said Veronica, who had skipped dessert. She was watching her weight like a hawk, so as not to fall back into old habits.

“Maybe your father would let you try it out some time.”

“Never gonna happen,” Chloe said firmly, and that more or less ended the discussion.

Now that the question was in my head, though, it was hard to get it out. Did I want to stay a girl? It wouldn’t be forever, exactly, but unless I got hired on full time by eNext, it would be prohibitively expensive. It would be like buying a new car, and not a cheap one. There were loans you could get, but the interest rates were prohibitive. Once the deadline passed, it would be years before I could resume my male form.

On the other hand, I felt that I had barely started to get to know myself as Holly. To abuse the cheesecake metaphor, I had taken a bite, but I wasn’t full yet. But I didn’t know how much appetite I had, or if I would regret making the choice.

Lamar was no help. I had not told him about my true nature, and after discussion with Chloe and Veronica, did not intend to. For one thing, I didn’t know what he would think to realize that the girl he had been dating for the last six weeks had been born a man. Sure, I acted like a girl and I had all the girl parts, but I retained enough of my male mind to know that it would take some getting used to, if nothing else.

No, better to wait and see if our relationship had a chance of lasting beyond the summer. I liked Lamar, and I think I was even starting to fall in love with him, but I didn’t know if he felt the same way about me.

And so the end of the internship approached. We did our final projects, killed time the last few days with nothing to do, and finally came to our last weekend before we would all go home. Still Lamar and I had not talked about the future. I decided on Saturday, the next to last day before we moved out, to be the girl and broach the subject of where we were going as a couple. To my surprise, he did it first.

“We go to school in two different states,” he said. “What do you think that means for us?”

“I don’t know.” I sat on the bed. “I mean, I’ve tried long distance stuff before, but it never worked out. Obviously.”

“True. But I guess the in person stuff didn’t work out either. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be together now.”

I nodded. “But that doesn’t answer the question. Here’s another one for you. Do you think you’ll change back to your old body? You have the option of keeping it, you know.”

“I know. I’m still trying to figure that out too.”

Silence fell, and stretched out like a lazy cat. At some point, one of us changed the subject — I don’t remember who — and things were back to normal.

That night, we fucked. We were not doing anything so tender or intimate as “making love,” nor yet anything so plain as “having sex.” We threw our bodies at each other to see what stuck. It was a wild and joyous abandon that left us panting and sore. Cum dribbled down my thighs, streaked my chest, and even slicked bits of my hair. Lamar, in turn, was shiny and slick with vaginal fluids. I had come countless times myself, and Lamar had managed three, though the last was feeble.

We should have cleaned up that night, but instead fell asleep in a sweaty, sticky tangle. The next morning, I left him in my bed and went to shower. It took a while, between shaving and shampooing and conditioning and blow drying, humming all the while.

I had lain awake for an hour after our frantic fuck session. I thought back on my life and realized that this summer was the happiest I had ever been. Why would I deny that? Perhaps I had been born a man, but now I was a woman, and a happy woman. And I intended to stay that way.

Still humming, I returned to my room in my robe and towel, fully expecting to find him still in bed asleep. In his place was a note.

“Dearest Holly,

“I hate to leave this way, but I couldn’t find the words to tell you in person. I can’t be the man you need from me, the man you deserve, and remain true to myself. The fault is entirely with me.

“Hurting you is the worst thing I’ve ever done. I hope some day you can forgive me, but even if you can’t, I hope you find happiness.

“Lamar”