September 9, 2009, 1:00 AM

After breakfast, I headed over to the physics building. I had planned a fairly cursory search. As I remembered, I had been in a fairly large lab, so how hard could it be to find it again? Sure, the guy who signed me up for the experiment had met me at the desk in the building lobby and guided me there, but still…

My plans came to an abrupt halt when I reached the door. It was locked. Apparently, since there were no classes on the weekend, and the professors had off, the building wasn’t open. So I needed to find somebody with a key. I had one idea about who could help me, but I wouldn’t see him until lunch, so I spent the morning studying. Or tried to, at any rate.

I was interrupted by a knock. “You were really serious about being busy, weren’t you?” Terry asked as she opened my door. You’ve really turned into a study Sue. Did you have a lot of trouble with your mid-terms?”

“My grades were fine, actually,” I answered, “but I am pre-med, after all. I have to get really good grades if I want to get into medical school.”

“Sure, but you’ve never been this obsessed over it, before. You are coming to the game with us, aren’t you?”

“The game…?”

“Marsha! The football game, remember?”

“Oh, right… um, of course I’m going.” Even though I had no idea who “we” were. If Marsha had gone, then I had to, even though I wasn’t all that big a college football fan.

She looked at my garment rack. “Oh! You’re getting through your jobs. Do you have time for me, now?”

Nikki had praised my pinning skills, so I decided to take a chance. “Sure,” I answered. “Go get the gown and I’ll measure you.” Then I remembered something Nikki had told me. “And change into the underwear and shoes you’ll be wearing at the party. I’ll need to measure you in it.”

She shrugged and left, then came back immediately with the gown and shoes, much too quickly to have changed. To my surprise, she closed the door and then proceeded to take off all of her clothes before dressing as ordered.

“W- wait…” I stammered in surprise, my eyes bulging. “You… but… no underwear?”

“I intend to enjoy the entire evening, Marsh,” she explained with a conspiratorial smile. “Greg and I don’t stop partying when everybody else does.”

I didn’t say anything, but tried to act the consummate professional, keeping my thoughts to myself and my eyes in my head, although I knew that was more acting than professionalism. It would have freaked her out to have “Marsha” show too much interest, so I focusing on the pinning itself. It was enough of an effort that it took most of my attention. There were a few places that needed to be taken in, and one that seemed just a bit tight. Nikki hadn’t been explicit about it, but it seemed obvious that I would have to open a seam before measuring, so I had Terry take off the gown while I found something in the sewing box that would work. I carefully tore open the stitches, sneaking a couple of peeks at her splendid naked body when she wasn’t looking. Then I measured and pinned some more after she had put it back on. That actually had taken me a bit to puzzle out, but my acting experience helped there. Mr. Condrin had always said that when you get lost, you just carry on, and your audience won’t know, and indeed Terri never noticed anything wrong. In particular, she didn’t notice my increasing nervousness, and she would never had imagined the reason, even if she had.

Rather, she talked all through the session. “I’m really hoping that you can get this done early, Marsh. I mean, I know that you have a lot of things to do with the play and all, but I was hoping to give Greg a preview. I mean, what I wore last spring wasn’t really anything, and I think this is going to show off my figure a bit better. You know how hard it is for me to find something to look good in.”

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what she was saying, as it didn’t seem important. That is, it seemed more important to her that she say it than that I respond. But there were times when she did seem to need an answer, so I told her general things, such as “You’re going to look great in this, Terry.” I tried to remember what Mom had said to her own customers when she fit them, but I hadn’t really paid a lot of attention. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Terry seemed quite pleased with any compliment I gave her.

When I was done, Terry took off the gown again and handed it to me.

“Any idea when you’ll have it done?” she asked, while standing before me in nothing but her heels.

“A few weeks,” I told her; I had decided to ask Nikki to help me learn to do this one myself. Since there was still about seven weeks until it was needed, that wasn’t going to be a problem. But her nudity and my silent reaction to it was a problem – possibly a very serious one – and Chad was the only one I could think of who might be able to help me. I really needed her to get dressed and leave.

“I assume you are going to be grinding away again this morning, Marsh?” She asked, finally donning her regular clothes again. “I’ll come get you when we leave for lunch.”

As soon as she left, I closed my door and called Chad. I got his mother again, of course. “Jennifer! Is something wrong?”

Not now! I thought to myself. I need to talk to Chad! But I bit my tongue and went through the ritual. “Nothing’s wrong, Mrs. Barnes, I just had something I wanted to talk to Chad about.

“Was he helpful yesterday?”

“Yes, Mrs. Barnes,” I said, trying hard not to sound as if I were clenching my teeth, “we had a very nice conversation. Your son always has an interesting perspective on things.”

“Why, thank, Jennifer. Let me go call him.”

Whew! Only two questions, that time. Still, if I ever came into money I was definitely going to buy him a cell phone.

“Marsh?” Chad was understandably surprised to hear from me two days in a row. “What’s up? Did you find them already?”

“I haven’t started yet, Chad. Look I need to talk to you about something else.”

He must have heard the urgency in my voice, because his tone switched to one of concern.

“What’s wrong?”

I got right to the point. “One of Marsha’s roommates was standing in front of me totally naked today in high heels and I didn’t feel turned on at all.”

Chad laughed. “Well, then you’re not any guy I know. Unless she was a total dog?”

“No, that’s the point, Chad,” I said, a bit annoyed. “Terry is really sexy. Three weeks ago, I would have gone for her in a heart-beat – if it weren’t for the fact that her boyfriend is the size of a small truck.”

He laughed again. “OK, you’re also definitely not Marsha. Wow. So, what were you doing? I’m pretty sure that if I were in the middle of a tough game, I probably wouldn’t react to a naked sexy girl, either. And… if you ever feel like putting me to the test on that…” He snickered. “You may be a boy inside, but your body would work as a very nice test subject.

“Come on, Chad! That’s sick! I’m not going to parade around… Ugh. You’re missing the point. I wasn’t doing anything distracting. I was just helping her with some clothing, and she tried it on without any underwear!”

“And you got an eyeful. Very nice. So, there’s a silver lining to this ‘turned into a girl’ thing, right?”

“Chad, you’re not hearing me. I got my eyeful…. And I didn’t react. Not physically, anyway. It was like she was… I don’t know, a beautiful piece of artwork or something. Intellectually, I admired her, but that was about as far as it went. I’m freaking out about this a bit. Shouldn’t I have been really turned on?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re just too used to the nude female body now, since you’re wearing one yourself?”

Aargh! Why am I not getting through? “Chad, in the past five years, I’ve seen lots of lots of naked girls, and I’ve never gotten tired of it or jaded. Seeing Marsha’s body is not a turn on, and never has been. But other girls’ bodies should be. So what happened?”

I heard him hesitate, and sort of hum, which was a familiar sign. It meant that he was finally thinking about the puzzle. “So looking at a beautiful naked girl didn’t turn you on? Weird.”

“Not ‘weird,’ Chad. Horrible! Look, I’m definitely in a ‘no touching’ mode with girls, since Marsha was straight. But I figured I could at least get my jollies from looking!”

“Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, that’s sounds like a problem. OK. OK, let’s think about this. Um, what kinds of things have turned you on since… uh, since this experiment?”

I thought for a moment, but couldn’t come up with anything. “To be honest, Chad, I’ve been so intent on trying to cope as a girl, that I haven’t gotten turned on at all.”

“Not at all?! Well…” and he paused again, but this time he sounded a bit hesitant. “What happened when you… I mean, now that you have free access… you know what I mean…? I’m sure you must have… you know… played with… the new parts?”

“You mean have I masturbated as a girl?”

“Um…. Yeah.”

“No. Absolutely not. That’s one part of my body that is definitely not mine. It’s Marsha’s, and I’m not going to… take liberties with her body like that.”

He was incredulous. “Seriously? I mean, dude, you get to finger a… um… oh boy. I’m working hard on the ‘you’re a guy’ bit, but I still feel like I’m talking to Marsha, and she’s kind of… you know, modest in the way she talks.”

“I understand, Chad, and I’ve been working hard to talk like her. Tina was really shocked when I got a bit spicy in my language a few weeks ago.”

“I’ll bet.” He thought a bit more. “But why not, you know, pleasure yourself?”

“Because this isn’t my body. I’m living in it, but the real me is inside. Besides, you’re missing the point. I’m sure that really getting turned on physically is something I could recognize. But I’m talking about what happens when I just look. Even if I didn’t fully get turned on as a guy, I’d feel something. So why aren’t I feeling anything now?

“You haven’t felt the urge to look at all?”

“I’ve felt the urge; I mean, I looked at Terry while I was working on her gown and she was naked. I just didn’t feel anything when I looked.”

“Well, maybe you just don’t know what it feels like. I mean, as a guy, it’s pretty obvious, right? It’s pretty much impossible to look and not get turned on a little. You’re used to that, and now you’re sort of missing a critical indicator.”

That sounded good. “So you’re saying that maybe I did feel something and just didn’t notice?”

“Exactly.”

It was just the answer I wanted, and I grasped at it. It proved that there wasn’t anything wrong with me; I was just working with an unfamiliar body and an unfamiliar response system.

“Thanks, Chad,” I told him. “I was starting to get a bit worried.”

“Well, you know,” he continued. “That means that you need practice, right? So you can get to know what it’s supposed to feel like.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Right. So, here are your marching orders, Private: you need to spend the day girl-watching!”

I laughed. This was the buddy I remembered. “Problem is, Chad, I’m supposed to go to a football game with the roommates this afternoon.”

“And they don’t have cheerleaders? Sexy cheerleaders in skimpy little skirts? Little skirts that going flying as they wave their pom-poms?”

“You know they do,” I laughed again.

“And porn! That’s what the internet is for, you know. Unless you expect to have lots and lots of chances to see naked girls…?”

“Probably not. OK, the porn’s a good idea, too.”

“Right. And report back to me after the game, OK? Diss… missed!”

I laughed again and hung up, feeling much better. The football game hadn’t interested me, but now I had my own reason for going. And maybe just as important, Chad and I were back on the same page. The day was definitely taking a turn for the better.