I had been trying to get my vintage clothing business off the ground for six months when Mary offered me her boyfriend.
"Just to borrow," she said. "Just to teach the Boy a lesson."
She always spoke of him as the Boy during our chats, when she would tell me in exhaustive detail about her latest ploy to bend him to her will. As soon as he let her have her way she would try something else to "bring him out of his comfort zone". It was never clear from her stories that he enjoyed these experiences as much as she did but something kept him in her orbit. I can only guess it was the sex.
We have no secrets, Mary and I, even though I haven't had much to contribute since my long-term boyfriend sloughed off with a woman young enough to be our daughter.
Her dates rarely seem to meet her exacting standards and the Boy, with his humdrum job and timid, unworldly manner, barely warranted an invitation back to her place.
But, she said, she was drunk and horny and fancied tying him up for a bit of oral sex. He didn't protest, nor did he really have the chance. Mary recalled his arms flexing briefly against the silk scarves she had used to bind him before slackening in resignation.
She didn't see his face as she perched on his chest because she let the hem of her dress cover him, but he seemed enthusiastic enough.
When she returned the favour his sighs were so high pitched that she got a fit of the giggles. "You are a squealer," she told him. "Do you always sound so girly?"
He lowered his pitch but Mary told him she preferred him as he had been. "Don't hide your delicate nature," she said, reaching for a scarf left over from snaring his wrists. She wrapped it around his neck to tie in a big bow. Pleased with the effect, she retrieved her knickers from the floor.
"The look on his face..." she told me later. "He looked like he was about to cry."
She untwisted the pink satin and lace g-string knickers and studied his face as she pulled them up his legs. His brow crumpled and crushed but his cock bobbed as if it belonged to another body. The string tucked tidily into his cleft but no amount of stretching would cover his cock. It was only after she took him back in her mouth for an almost instant orgasm that he subsided enough for her to get the knickers properly in place.
"I loved it, the change in him, and I knew I wanted more," she told me. She had searched her wardrobe for anything else that might fit him and settled on a polka dot swimdress. "It was the only thing that was stretchy enough. It was a halterneck thing with a sweetheart neckline with a wide frill. He reminded me of a chorus girl, like Betty Boop."
I asked how he reacted. "Oh, he asked if he really had to wear it and I said yes. I told him that Boys in knickers must do as they're told, and besides, I wasn't going to untie his hands till he was dolled up the way I wanted him."
As she spooned him she pondered where she could get more clothes in his size and smiled sleepily as she remembered my online shop. Betty's Vintage, I called it, as my real name and its variations lack retro appeal. It's a simple enough operation. I buy in bulk at auctions and from charity shop collections and cherry pick the garments that will appeal to a hipster crowd.
I have a bargain bin full of items too worn to sell individually but cute enough to include in a mixed bundle. Mary, after a morning of canoodling with her dizzy Boy, sent him home wearing her pink knickers beneath his suit and came round to mine for coffee and inspiration.
She told me of her fantasies to make him a bimbo, too preoccupied with the way he looked and too stupefied by arousal to think for himself. "I need to dress him in a way that..." she searched for the word, "intoxicates him. He'll be lost to anything but the pleasure I give him."
If he didn't love his outfits, she said, then he would learn to.
She riffled through the bargain bin with evident delight. Pre-loved knickers, stockings, suspender belts, nightdresses: all went straight on her "definite" pile. I said that she could have them for nothing but she insisted on paying. "Keep a lookout for more," she told me. "It doesn't matter how worn they are so long as they're sexy. You know, costumes, party dresses, the trashier the better. He's got to look like the party girl on a hen night."
Over the weeks and months the Boy became my most loyal customer, although I never saw him until Mary dreamt up her proposition for me to borrow him.
I had complained to Mary about my wilting sex life, blaming myself for putting on weight and dating unreliable men. For all his hopelessness, Mary said, the Boy was certainly reliable. Repeated sessions of being told to strip and dress to order had not lessened his embarrassment, but Mary wanted to try something new.
"It would be delicious for someone else to see him like that," she said. "I think he's in denial about what I've turned him into. There will be no running away from it after this."
I asked why he would agree to that, but Mary told me to leave it to her. All I had to do was treat him as someone who wanted to wear girly clothes regardless of what he claimed. She would do the rest.
She sent him round on a Friday evening after work, as arranged, to pick up some items she had selected for him. He looked so sheepish on my doorstep in his shabby jacket and tie. I instantly wanted to take care of him. He told me his name and said that he had come to pick up something for his girlfriend.
I invited him into the living area of my flat where I had laid out Mary's items in a loose bundle. "These are your ones, here," I said, standing next to him as he looked at the black lace babydoll, leopard-print high-waisted briefs and vibrant fuchsia petticoat.
"I love that petticoat, don't you?" I asked, as scripted. "I've got just the dress to go with it, too. I'll throw it in for nothing."
