by Janet L. Stickney

1. Another Shy Boi Breaks His Arm And Becomes A Spicy Boi Part 1.
2. Another Shy Boi Breaks His Arm And Becomes A Spicy Boi Part 18
3. Another Shy Boi Breaks His Arm And Becomes A Spicy Boi Part 1
4. Another Shy Boi Breaks His Arm And Becomes A Spicy Boi Part 133
5. Another Shy Boi Breaks His Arm And Becomes A Spicy Boi Part 127
6. Another Shy Boi Breaks His Arm And Becomes A Spicy Boi Part 13

<This story is archived on Crystal's Story Site, but I've also asked permission to showcase it here as well, since it's based on one of the images I have in the Modified Covers gallery. - Jenny>

Comments and Disclaimers.

1. THIS SITE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE GO TO WWW.LADYALEXAUK.COM FOR LOTS OF FORCED FEMINISATION POSTS AND STORIES His New Job by Lady A Chapter One, the Proposal. The office building was modern, two stories with shiny black glass windows and red brick walls.
2. Gareth: 'Tha boy's making weird expressions.' Tione: 'Well I guess he is in pain.' The tag of 'Mine' continued on until Bell snapped, his right arm started to hurt so he tossed both of the girls in air and quickly escaped by jumping with walls support and running on roofs.

Then, after a two-hour break, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM and 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM.” We would earn points by reaching designated areas within fixed two-hour periods. Given that the last interval ended at 5:00 PM, the school was probably being considerate of the risks that would come with having us move around after dark. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

This story was inspired by the fine graphic artistry of Jenny North. Her grasp of the conflicts and impossible situations we sometimes find ourselves in, is without a doubt, some of the best I have seen, as she brings a refreshing and sometimes funny peek into our secret lives. Jenny's site is worth a serious look. Laugh, cry, or snicker all you want, but please, check out all of her magnificent magazine covers, and see them for yourself.

This story inspired by her cover entitled 'Boy becomes Girl.'

Jenny's site is tgfa.org, which is a link on Crystal Sprite's site: Storysite.org

Thanks, Janet

The Prom Queen

As strange as it sounds, I was a Prom Queen. It's really strange when you find out that I am not a girl. Let me explain.

My sister and I have always been very competitive, and being only ten months apart in age, we often find ourselves in the same classes at school. One of them was Physics. I do better in Math and Science than she does, while she is better in English and History. We're about even in the rest. I was riding her about having what I thought was such a minor problem in Physics, while our mother was sitting right there with us. Claire, in a fit of anger, wanted to make a bet on who would get the better grade, and knowing a sure bet when I see one, I said I would bet six months of car payments against anything she wanted. It was unfortunate wording.

'Okay, if you get the better grade, then I make your car payments for six months, right?'

'Right.'

'I'll take that bet--but if I get the better grade, you have to attend the Prom as a girl! And I mean the whole works, which means you'll have to get your hair and nails done, a gown, and an escort of course.'

Like I said, the wording was unfortunate, and there was no wiggle room at all. The better grade wins the bet, period. No excuses, no alibis. In a fit of monumental greed, compounded by what I thought of as my superior male brain, and some stupidity, I agreed to the bet as stated. We both studied hard, but my scores were just better than hers, and I looked forward to having her make my car payment for me. Then I fell and broke my arm. As a result, I lost more than a few days of school, and had to wear a cast for a month. That's how it happened. She started to get higher scores than I did, and at the semester final, she beat me by a full ten points!

Claire was smirking, telling me how lovely I was going to be at the Prom, but I appealed to a higher authority: Mom. In my defense, I cited the time I was out of school for a broken arm, and the loss of class work, all of which were out of my control. But Mom reminded me that she had heard the bet herself, and since no exceptions had been noted or allowed for--even an accident--she had no recourse but to rule in my sister's favor! I was stunned, but we both knew that Mom was always fair with us, and I got that sinking feeling in my gut.

Because Claire and I are about the same height, Mom concluded that I could wear some of Claire's clothes, but I would need to have panties and bras of my own, and possibly a few blouses. When I asked why, they both looked at me as if I fell off a truck!

'You can't possibly believe that you can pull off going to the prom without any training, do you?' Claire asked.

'What's the big deal? Shave, pad a little and wear a dress. What's so hard about that?'

My mother set me straight about what she expected and why. She then laid out in detail how she, not my sister, would turn me into a beautiful girl that had all the manners a lady would have. By the time she was done with her speech, I ready to move out rather than do what she told me, but of course I couldn't. Finally, she told me that we would begin my transformation next Saturday morning.

Most of my buddies knew of the bet, and when they found out that I lost, I took a lot of ribbing about it...including who would be my escort to the prom. The biggest offender of all was Mike, so, right in front of everybody, I asked him to take me to the Prom. He wasn't steady with anyone, and had no real way to say no, so after some playful kidding by the others, he agreed.

I didn't look forward to Saturday morning, but I had no choice in the matter. All I could hope for was that I looked so bad that it made people sick when they looked at me, and Mom would relent. I should have known better.

Promptly after breakfast on Saturday, my sister was told to leave, despite her objections to the contrary. I was escorted to Mom's bedroom and told to strip. When I got down to my briefs, Mom looked at me expectantly, but I refused to go any further. Accepting this last bit of defiance, Mom merely began to rub a cream all over me--including my butt--then told me to wait. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I was sent to the showers, and watched in horror as all of the hair on my body washed down the drain. Stepping out of the shower I wrapped myself in a towel and watched as Mom quickly began to fill the tub with warm water. As we waited, I noted that she had added some type of oil and bubble bath as the water started to foam and the scent filled the room. As I crept into the tub, I had to admit that it felt just wonderful as the oil soaked into my skin, easing the chemical reaction of the hair remover. Twenty minutes later, once again wrapped in a towel, Mom began to turn me into a girl. As I absently drew my hand across my smooth skin, I was beginning to have doubts about turning out ugly enough to scare people.

Mom handed me a pair of new panties, which I slipped on. Then she sat me at her vanity and began to brush out my hair, putting it in rollers as she went along, until my entire head was filled with pink, blue, or green rollers. She sprayed on some kind of setting lotion and slipped a plastic cap over my head. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, but the way she acted it was like we did this every Saturday morning.

Mom then handed me a small bottle of makeup, which I accepted uncertainly. Giving me a supportive little smile, she explained that it was foundation, and would be the first step in my makeover. She never touched the makeup, because I did it all, but she guided me through every step. I used powder that made my face look smooth and soft, then added a light brown eyeshadow with plum over that, which she showed me how to blend with a small sponge. She then directed me to apply the black eyeliner, and the liquid flowed onto my eyelids easily. Under my eyes was harder until she had me dip the pencil in the baby oil. Using a small makeup sponge, I then added a soft coral blush to my cheeks, and finished by using a deep red pencil to outline my lips. As I added the lip liner, I took a moment to take in the whole picture. I still thought I looked ridiculous with my hair in the rollers, but the effect of the makeup on my face was quite striking...I really was starting to look like a girl.

Once Mom was satisfied, she handed me a waist nipper and waiting until I had all eleven hooks made before she tightened the laces a bit. The bra was one of the newer Pushemup styles, white with lace trim and fastened in the front. As I fumbled with the clasp, I could see that my own skin had filled almost all of the bra cups. I began to worry more when Mom added the small foam pads into the bra cups, and I saw a small cleavage form on my chest. Never in a million years did I think that I'd ever see it from this particular angle.

Next came an old padded pantybrief of my sisters, followed by pantyhose, a short slip, and the dress. Mom helped me get it over the curlers, then zipped it up, closing the material around me. My feet slid into the low heels, and Mom sat me back at the vanity. I watched as she removed the rollers and began to brush out my hair. With every stroke it only got better (or worse, depending on your point of view), and I knew I was sunk. By the time she told me she was finished, it was a done deal...I looked at least as good as my sister! The lipstick she handed me was red, just lighter than the lip liner, and as I drew it on my lips I wanted to run and hide.

It took Mom about half an hour to add the fake nails, file them down, and paint them red to match my lipstick. Since I have pierced ears, she handed me a pair of red and gold chandelier earrings, waiting until I had them on before she fastened the matching necklace around my neck. A pair of my sister's rings, a thin gold bracelet, and finally, a dash of perfume. Then I got to look in the full-length mirror for the first time. The girl staring back couldn't be me! She just couldn't!

'Mike will be here to meet his date for the Prom in about ten minutes, so you can wait here and make a grand entrance, or you can wait in the familyroom.' Mom announced.

'Mike is coming here?' I cried.

'Yes,' she calmly replied. 'I told Claire to tell him to come over. That way there won't be any surprises, and he won't have this vision of you as some kind of parody of a woman. You're quite lovely--and you know that--but he deserves to meet his Prom date,' she said simply. 'Why don't you wait here, and I'll call you when he gets here?'

What was there to say? She had arranged this, and nothing I could do would stop it. As I stood there staring at myself, I somehow understood that if I did this right it would be easier on everyone. Rather than becoming a parody as Mom cautioned against, I could try to walk, move, and act like the girl I looked like. If I managed to pull it off, maybe nobody would know. My mind raced as I considered the possibilities.

That's when the doorbell rang.

I spun around in shock, and was treated to a wealth of new sensations. As I stumbled slightly in my new shoes, I felt my skirt fan out from my sudden movement and felt my dangling earrings tug gently at my earlobes. My soft hair swept against my cheek, and carried with it the scent of hairspray and perfume. As I unconsciously moved my hand to sweep my hair back, I caught sight of my sparkling bracelet and long painted nails. I felt nervous, excited and disoriented all at the same time.

As I struggled to contain my initial surprise, I forced myself to take several deep breaths, and felt the constriction of the bra around my chest and the taste of lipstick on my lips. Then, smiling sheepishly at my overreaction, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and saw the embarrassed-looking girl smile back at me. This was all going to take some getting used to.

I heard Mom walk to the front door, and waited expectantly for her to call me. We had not decided on a name, but I was sure that she would not call me by my male name, so I had to pay attention. I cracked the door open a bit so I could hear her.

'Catherine! Cathy, honey, come on down. Mike is here.'

Cathy. Not too bad, I guess. I stood up straight, all of my 5'6' plus the heels, and stepped confidently out of the room. My heels were silent on the carpet, then became an unfamiliar clicking as I crossed the hardwood floor of the foyer. Finally, I stepped into the family room, a smile etched on my face. I was determined to put up a brave front, even though I was quivering inside.

Mike was on his feet instantly and I saw him smile, first at me, then at Mom. 'Okay, where is Chad? This can't be Chad, although I would certainly like to know her better!'

'Mike, honey, this is--or rather was--Chad. Now she is Cathy, with a 'C.' my mother stated proudly.

'No shi� Sorry! Y-you're�Chad?' Mike asked uncertainly.

I couldn't help but smile at the question. Mike seemed more nervous than I was. 'Noooo, I'm Cathy. I'm your date to the Prom, remember?'

My mother smiled at that. Realizing the situation was in good hands, she said, 'I think I'll just go iron some clothes or something and let you two talk a bit.'

As Mom left, Mike and I stood there facing each other, our shared sense of disbelief hanging heavy in the air...his disbelief that I had turned out this way, and also, my disbelief that I had.

'Maybe you and I could go have a soda at the Burger Bin,' Mike suggested finally.

'I don't know, Mike. A lot of the guys will be there. What if someone recognizes me?'

He shook his head and smiled for the first time since I entered the room. 'Are you kidding? I've known you since we started school together and I didn't recognize you...what makes you think they will? Besides, if you're going to be my date for the Prom, shouldn't we be seen together?'

He had a point. All I had to do was agree. Just then, Mom walked in and handed me a purse, telling me that she had put my wallet inside, along with my lipstick and a few other necessities.

Mike went to the door and held it open, waiting as I gathered the nerve to actually leave the house like this. But if I was going to the Prom this way, I might as well get used to it I thought. I stepped outside, and that's when it happened.

Nothing.

Nobody even looked at me, and there were a lot of people out that day. Our neighbor was mowing the lawn, kids were playing, cars drove past, and everybody went about with their lives without paying me any mind whatsoever. It was actually kind of exhilarating. As Mike stepped outside, I decided to have a little fun with him, so I took his arm and batted my eyelashes at him playfully. He stiffened in surprise, but then apparently decided not to let me get the best of him as he soon loosened up and escorted me to the car.

I sat next to him on the ride to the Burger Bin, and his only comment the entire time was, 'You have really great legs, Cathy.' I didn't know what to say, so I sat there quietly. To my very great surprise, he took my hand as we walked in, then he paid for my soda and walked me to the table. I saw at least four guys that knew me, and even more girls. As we walked by, I saw the guys staring at my legs while the girls ignored me. That at least meant that I had passed the initial test, but I knew there were more coming.

I simply sat next to Mike, hoping we could pull this off. As I anxiously sipped on my drink, Mike slipped his hand over mine and gave me a squeeze. He was making me very nervous, then I saw why he squeezed my hand. Bill and his buddies had walked in. Bill is on the outside of things, and always has been. Tall, rugged, and very tough, he always traveled with his flunkies Fred and Ned. Those two could only gain strength by hanging around with Bill. Fred and Ned were no threat to most guys, but Bill was very dangerous.

They sat at a table across from ours, and leered at me, their eyes wandering over my legs and my boobs. Following some of the advice my mother had given me, I crossed my feet at the ankles and held my knees together tightly. I knew better than to encourage them by looking back, but their constant stares were making me very uncomfortable. I forced myself to try to ignore them.

Mike leaned over and whispered in my ear, telling me to just relax, and stay in character. As if I could do anything else!

Bill was making kissy faces at me, but when I ignored him he finally quit. When Mike and I finished, we dumped our trash then headed for the door. I went out first, followed by Mike, who held the door for me.

We almost made it to his car when Ned grabbed him while Fred made a lunge for me. I spun around and saw a fleeting glimpse of Bill watching. Mike popped Ned in the mouth, which distracted Fred, so I raised my arm, bent at the elbow, and smacked Fred right in the nose with my elbow. I heard the bone break, then saw the gush of blood as he staggered back. Ned spit out a tooth and ran at Mike, enraged beyond reason. This was exactly the wrong thing to do, because Mike popped him again, right in the stomach, sending him sprawling to the ground. I jumped the car with Mike, and he drove off leaving them laying in the parking lot.

'Are you okay?' he asked, concerned.

'Sure,' I responded, brushing the hair out of my face. 'I only look like a girl, remember?'

'Yeah I know, but a damned nice looking one. I just forgot, I guess.'

I blushed at the compliment. 'Thanks, Mike.'

He gave me an embarrassed little grin. It was kind of cute to see him so flustered. 'Hey,' he said, changing the subject, 'let's go out tonight. The show maybe. If you're going to be my date for the Prom, we should be seen together more often.'

He managed to catch me off guard. A date? A real live date? What would Mom say? Or worse, my sister?

'I'll say okay for now,' I responded coyly, 'but call me later to confirm it.'

He drove me home and pulled into the driveway. There was a brief awkward moment as I moved to get out of the car, and Mike looked at me like he was going to say something and then changed his mind. I looked at him strangely until I realized that for a moment he must have thought of me as a girl, and had instinctively moved to play out the traditional boy/girl goodbye ritual.

'If you're waiting for a goodbye kiss, you can forget it,' I said playfully.

He gave me a half-cocked smile. 'What, even after how I defended your honor against those goons?' he retorted.

'You'll get over it,' I said, getting out of the car.

I turned to face him through the open window, and noticed a funny look come over his face as he looked at me. 'I'll call you later.'

As he drove off, I waved goodbye, and then stopped to wonder what I was doing. I never did that when he dropped me off before. I shook my head as I slung my purse over my shoulder and headed inside. This girl stuff was sure getting confusing.

Mom saw me first but didn't say a word. I was about to say something when Claire walked out of the kitchen. She gave me a puzzled look, then asked me who I was! I stood there for a moment, unsure what to say. Suddenly her eyes went wide and she fell silent, her mouth agape.

Mom chimed in with the introductions. 'Claire, this is Catherine. Your sister, Catherine.'

'I'll be�I can't believe that you�' Claire started.

I cut her off. 'I have a date tonight, Mom, but I'll be home at the usual time.'

'A date!' Claire exclaimed. 'You have a date? With a boy?'

I suppose I should have felt embarrassed, but instead her question made me feel very defensive. 'I'm not a wallflower, Claire. Mike asked me to go to a show with him, and I said yes.'

'Cathy, is that blood on your elbow?' Mom interrupted, grasping my arm gently.

I told them about Fred and Ned, what happened and why, then went to my room to wash off the blood. About a minute later, Claire came barging in and sat on the bed while I washed up. Keeping my composure, I walked back into my room, turned around, and asked her to unzip me. That threw her for a second, but she quickly recovered. She helped me with the zipper and watched as I slipped the dress off.

'When I made that bet I never figured that you would actually do it! And even if you did try it, I never expected you to look so�good!'

'Can I borrow that black dress? The one with the two straps?' I asked politely, as if there was nothing unusual about the situation.

I was deliberately trying to provoke her, but she didn't bite. Instead, she went to her room and brought back the dress I asked for. I tried it on for fit, got the okay from Claire, then took it off and slipped on a pair of jeans and a tee. The whole time she was silent, but she was watching me very carefully, and finally I asked her what she found so interesting.

'Well, let's see,' Claire started. 'Where to begin? My brother is running around town dressed up as a girl and decides to go out with a boy to Burger Bin. There, Fred and Ned try to hit on him thinking he's some hot girl. He comes home and announces that he's going out on a date with Mike----a fact that our mother seems perfectly happy with--and then stands there in his lingerie and asks to borrow one of my dresses! Doesn't any of this sound just the least bit strange to you?'

'Hey, you were the one who made the bet,' I pointed out. 'I'm just making good on my end.'

'Chad, I'll give you full points for losing gracefully, but don't you think this is going a little too far?'

'Mike just suggested that if he was going to take me to the Prom then we should be seen together, at least a few times, so I agreed. What's the big deal?' I suddenly realized that I had unconsciously put my hand on my out-thrust hip as I had often seen my sister do when she squared off with my mother. It disturbed me a little that I had so naturally gravitated to the feminine gesture, but I left my hand where it was and concentrated on the argument at hand.

'Men are so stupid!' Claire admonished. 'Listen, dummy, he likes you! That's why he held your hand, why he tried to defend you, and asked you out! Can't you figure that out?'

'But he knows who I am, Claire! Nothing can come of it, so why would he think of me as a girl? I'm the one that nominated him to take me to the Prom, remember? He didn't ask me, I asked him so I would fit in better. We made the bet, but Mom is the one that said I would have to do it, so what choice did I have?' I argued. 'Besides, Mike is a good friend, and he's only doing this because I asked him to.' As I finished, I started to wonder who I was trying to convince...Claire or myself.

Claire raised a finger to make a point, but otherwise her stance was the mirror image of my own. 'Did he, or did he not ask you out?' she asked.

'Well, yes, but�'

'There is no 'but!' He took one look at you and saw a girl he liked and wanted to be with. You'll just have to accept the fact that he finds you attractive. Hell, he'll probably try and kiss you goodnight when he brings you home after the show!'

'He wouldn't dare!' I exclaimed. But I was already thinking back to our earlier episode in the car. He wouldn't...would he?

'I'll bet he not only would, but will,' she said confidently, as if reading my thoughts.

'We'll see,' I responded, with somewhat less aplomb. I didn't want to back down in front of Claire, but she'd given me a lot to think about.

Later, after dinner, rather than make a mess of things, I washed off my makeup and felt my skin, checking for any hairs that might have grown out. I should have known better, since I only shave twice a week as it is. I had to use Claire's vanity to redo my makeup, so I went in her room and tried to remember everything Mom had shown me that morning. I was almost done when Claire came in, took one look at me, then suggested that I wear a darker red lipstick with a brighter rose blusher. I made the changes, then pulled the slip over my head and settled it on my shoulders. Claire watched as I pulled the dress on, then managed to zip it up by myself. Since I could wear her shoes, I changed to the black heels, and used gold button earrings with the same bracelet as I wore earlier. Claire suggested a thin gold necklace and handed me one. I was getting used to the longer nails, and fastened the clasp on my own, then again checked my lipstick. I used the same perfume as before, then, when I was done, turned to look at Claire.

'You are hot, girl!' she declared. For a minute I wondered if she weren't being sarcastic, but when I looked at her earnest expression, I realized she was paying me a genuine compliment.

I tossed my hair and with an air of mock vanity responded, 'Yes, I am, aren't I?'

We both giggled at that. Then, turning more serious, Claire looked at me and said, 'Just be the girl he wants tonight, Cathy, and everything will be fine.'

I nodded and gave her a little hug. It was actually kind of nice being able to talk to Claire like this. The two of us had always gotten along, but this was a side of her I'd never really seen before. It wasn't until much later that I realized that was the first time that she had called me 'Cathy.'

Later that night, when Mike saw me, his eyes went wide and he broke into a wide smile. He looked me over from head to toe and back before he took my hand and we started for the door.

Mom stopped us. She wanted a picture! Darned digital cameras. She must have taken twenty before we could leave, and not once did he let go of my hand until I got in the car. It felt strange, yet somehow normal, which is why I didn't shy away when he took my hand. Everything about dressing as a girl was beginning to feel very nice, and I was surprised to find that I didn't mind wearing a dress one bit. The dress I had borrowed had a pair of one-inch wide straps over the shoulders that held up the square cut neckline. It was fitted in the bodice and flared out at the hip, the hem just below mid-thigh. I knew I looked good, and more, I felt good. It's not that I like dressing as a girl all the time, really, it's just that if I have to, I'm glad I look good.

I was still scared a little, but for some reason, it was a good kind of scared. It was kind of like the frightened-excited feeling you get from riding a roller coaster. My stomach had butterflies the entire night, and I found myself clinging to Mike, which he seemed to enjoy, as well.

Mike and I had a really good time at the show, then he took me to Kelly's, a popular nightspot for teens. I was more than a bit apprehensive about going in, but he once again took my hand and I let him take the lead. We went in, found a table, and ordered some cola as I looked around the room at all of the other guys and girls. We hadn't been sitting for more than a few moments before Mike asked me if I wanted to dance. I said no, but he ignored me took my hand and gently coaxed me out of my seat. Soon, I was out on the dance floor, his arms wrapped around me. Not normally a dancer, I was able to follow him okay, then the house lights dimmed and he pulled me just a bit closer. There were kids all over the place that I knew, and I was getting very tense, but he never once let loose, until the lights went even dimmer. As I backed up a little, he whispered my name and when I looked up, I found his lips on mine! Just a touch, then he smiled at me and pulled me closer into him. He kissed me! What next? A motel?

Mike continued to act as if it was perfectly normal for him to kiss is best friend in front of God and everyone else, while I was still in shock at what he had done. As we turned I saw Claire with her boyfriend, and she was watching me. She had seen Mike kiss me, and she was smiling widely. Mike and I went back to our table, had just sat down when Claire and Greg, her boyfriend, joined us.

'Greg, this is Cathy,' Claire introduced us.

'Nice to meet you, Cathy.' I blushed slightly as his eyes meet mine.

Claire turned to Mike. 'And this is Mike,' she said, introducing him to Greg.

Mike looked a little flustered, clearly a little uneasy about being around my sister, since she also knew who I really was. However, if Greg didn't seem to pick up on it.

'Come on Cathy, let's use the powder room.'

Claire and I excused ourselves, and I soon found myself entering forbidden territory: the ladies' room. I was very edgy about being there, but Claire pointed to a stall and I went in. Using the restroom as a girl is like unwrapping a plastic toy, I discovered. Up, down, don't fall over in the heels, do the deed, then reverse the order. Not at all what I was used to, and I quickly understood why the ladies' rooms were always so crowded. They had to almost completely undress!

When I emerged from the stall, Claire was there waiting for me, checking her makeup. 'You can't say that Mike isn't attracted to you now can you?' she whispered.

'What does that mean?' I said defensively.

'You know what it means,' she countered, pouting in the mirror as she checked her lipstick. 'I saw him kiss you, and I didn't see you pulling away either.' She had a very self-satisfied air, but she wasn't mocking about it. That surprised me a little, since I couldn't imagine her passing up the opportunity to poke fun at my expense. Instead, she was treating me like�I don't know, like a sister, I suppose.

I did not answer her because there was nothing to say. She was right, except for me liking it. He just caught me off guard is all. Claire didn't say anything else, but waited patiently as I quickly checked myself in the mirror and gave me a supportive smile as we headed back to meet our dates.

About eleven Mike and I left the club and started for my house, but he stopped the car about two streets away, under a big tree. I fidgeted in my seat nervously as I anticipated what was coming. Without a word Mike pulled me closer and kissed me again, and this time it was not just a touch. I felt his tongue on my lips, and in a fit of lust, I opened up and tasted him.

There is no other way to say this�we parked, and while I was extremely aware that I was a boy, it didn't seem to matter. He walked me to the door, kissed me again, and I left with the taste of him on my lips, his aftershave in my nose. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of feminine feelings, fighting to retain my masculinity. And yet, I had not put up any resistance when he parked the car, nor did I stop him when he pulled me close and kissed me the first time. I went to my room hoping I had not made the biggest mistake of my life. Part of me wanted to stay up and talk to Claire about all this, but the rest of me was still reeling from the whole experience. Later, when I heard her creep in and softly knock on my door, I pretended to be asleep.

I washed everything away and appeared as myself the next morning, vowing not to dress as Cathy again until I had to. I knew I could do it, after all a lot of kids had seen me. They knew I was with Mike, and that's all that counted. Neither Mom or Claire mentioned my being myself, but I generally stayed in my room so as to avoid the subject.

On a whim I went on-line and ran a search on boys that want to be girls, and got something like a million hits! I narrowed my search and found a number of sites that dealt with what I was doing: sites describing on how 'pass' better, even describing things like how to make my own breast forms. One site even sold a panty that made it seem the wearer was a female, complete with all of the right working parts--and they did work! I found fiction sites, lingerie sites and personal sites, many of which offered a number of hints on how to become a perfectly normal looking girl when I was dressed. Taken all together, if I had the right stuff, I could become Cathy, and get away with it, even if I was almost naked! I bookmarked the sites and started to read some of the fiction I found. Some were just plain terrible, a few helpful, and some that offered a lot. Most were enjoyable to read, some plain trash, but as I looked around I found out that there were thousands of boys out there just like me, dressing as girls. The only difference is that they wanted to do it.

On Monday morning I went to school like always, keenly aware that Mike and I had shared something not many boys share. I tried not to think about it, but when I saw Fred with a bandaged face, it all came rushing back. He gave no sign that he knew it was me that had broken his nose, so thank heaven for small blessings.

I saw Mike about third hour, and while he and I talked, I could see that he looked hurt that I was not Cathy. It felt oddly comforting to know that he missed me as Cathy, yet neither of us gave any outward sign that our relationship was anything more than a guy thing. By the time the day was over I was more confused than before. Mike had actually told me he was going to call Cathy that night, yet he knew that I was Cathy. But then, he never said he was calling me, just Cathy. When had life gotten so confusing?

Over dinner that night, Claire asked me how my date was. Then she not too subtly let it drop that Mike had kissed me.

'We passed Mike's car when you guys were parked under that big tree, and it sure looked like it was going hot and heavy to me!' she said, smiling.

I almost dropped my fork. With Mom sitting there listening, I felt like crawling under a rock.

'Catherine is a pretty girl Claire,' Mom admonished. 'And there is no reason for you to tease her about it when a boy finds her attractive.' I looked at her in surprise�it felt a little funny being referred to as a girl when I was sitting there dressed as a boy, but I had to admit that her statement did make me feel a little better.

'I'm not teasing her,' Claire responded. 'I'm just wondering how long she can last before she starts going to school as a girl. I mean, most of the kids I talked to wanted to know who she was, and did she go to our school. Besides, Mike likes her, that much anyone could see.'

'I'm not going to school as a girl, and Mike is only being friendly!' I demanded, perhaps a little too forcefully.

'Ummm, well, okay, if you say so, sister dear.'

'That's enough, Claire. If Cathy decides to go to school, she can. If she decides not to, she can do that too,' Mom said. Then, turning to me, she added, 'Now tell me about parking under the tree.'

I cut a glance over at Claire. Thanks a lot, sis. Then, turning my attention to my plate, I muttered, 'It just happened, Mom. It won't happen again.'

'If you say so.'

Dinner passed quietly after that. Obviously, neither of them believed me, but I didn't care. I went back to my room afterwards, and jumped when I heard the phone ring�I had forgotten that Mike was going to call. Mom answered the phone and called 'Cathy' down to the phone, but I told her I didn't want to take the call. I caught sight of Claire smiling at me across the hall, but shut the door in her face before she had a chance to make any comment.

School was the same as always. But by the time Friday neared, I found myself wondering what Mom would say if I became Cathy again. She did tell me that I needed the practice. Every male part of me screamed 'no, don't do it,' yet I felt myself drawn to it. It was almost as if I had no control over my own actions. Nobody was at home when I got there, so, without any more thought about it, I went into Claire's room and took a skirt and blouse, her taupe shoes, and the jewelry I thought would match, then all of the makeup I needed, and returned to my own room. I never heard anyone come in, and got completely dressed within an hour. The short tan skirt and pink blouse looked nice together, and nicely accented my figure. The taupe flats were even sort of comfortable. I did my lipstick, added the earrings, and walked down to the kitchen and started dinner.

I had on a bib apron and was busily cooking dinner--my favorite, and my specialty--when the door opened and Mom walked in with Grandma right behind her! There wasn't anyplace to go, and since I had to stir the potatoes anyway, I tried hard to ignore them. They left the kitchen without a word, returning a few minutes later.

'Hi Cathy. What's for dinner?' Mom inquired.

I told her, and then went to see about setting the table. Grandma helped, and did not say a word about how I was dressed. Claire came in a bit later and all four of us took the meal to the table. That's when Grandma finally said that she thought I was a pretty girl, even though she didn't understand why I was dressed as one. Mom and I explained it to her, and while she seemed to accept it, I wasn't so sure.

After dinner, Claire and Mom were washing dishes when the doorbell rang, and I went to get the door. It was Mike. His face absolutely lit up when he saw me. He took my hands, and kissed me lightly on the lips, which everyone saw reflected in the foyer mirror. I let him in, and introduced him to my grandmother, telling her that Mike was taking me to the Prom. It threw her when he kissed me, but even more so when she found out that I was going to the Prom as Mike's date--as a girl! Greg came over to get Claire and they left, leaving the four of us. Mike stayed about an hour, then left after asking me out for the next night. I accepted, and after a goodbye kiss he returned home, leaving me with Mom and Grandma.

'Obviously that young man finds you attractive, Catherine, and you say he knows?' my grandmother asked.

'Of course he knows! I asked him to take me to the Prom myself.'

She looked me over again, for about the hundredth time this evening. 'Just how often do you dress up this way? It can't be every day.'

'Just on the weekends, Grandma, I still have to go to school,' I explained.

'That's not very much practice if you are going to be the Belle of the Prom,' she said simply.

'I don't intend to be the Belle of the Prom Grandma. All I have to do is attend as a girl. With an escort, of course.' I smiled inwardly at her comment, though--can you imagine? Me as the Belle of the Prom?

'That doesn't seem like a lot of time to me, even if you just plan on attending,' she insisted. 'How would you like to come stay with me? I'm in a different school district, and you could become Catherine full time. That way, you'll have plenty of time to become a real lady.'

I was shocked at her suggestion, because I always thought she was an old-fashioned stick in the mud! Mom said I could go with her if I wanted, but I would have to take some of Claire's clothes, plus buy some of my own. For me, it wasn't a question of moving, it was a question of my becoming a 'real lady' as Grandma put it. But Mom took that out of my hands when she told me that I would move and change schools at the end of the grade period, which was only two weeks away. That would mean I would become Cathy from October until the Prom, which is in May next year! I wasn't so sure I could do it, so obviously I should have said no. Should have, but didn't. So, like a good little girl, I simply nodded my head yes. Then I realized what I had agreed to!

'Wait! I can't do that! What if someone finds out? How can I become a girl every day, Mom? Birdseed breast forms might break, or the foam pads might pop out! That will be fun. I can just see it now.'

Mom looked exasperated. 'If you don't want to do this, then don't! It's just a chance for you to become very good at being a girl, and that's all!'

'Do you want me to do it?' I asked timidly.

'Cathy, honey, all I want is for you to do whatever you feel you have to do. If you want to go live as a girl with your Grandma, you can, or you can stay here with us. That's up to you.'

'I'll think about it,' is all that I managed to say.

Well, Mike and I went out the next night, and again on Sunday, then the following weekend. As much as I wanted to deny it, I discovered that being thought of as a girl wasn't so bad, and I really didn't mind the short skirts or tight blouses, the makeup or the perfume. I also found that I was waiting longer and longer to change out of my girl mode so I could return to my male self and go to school. Twice, right in school, I found myself making a motion to sweep my skirt aside when I sat down! That's when I knew that I had to make a choice, and make it quickly. I was starting to act like a girl, even when I wasn't dressed as one, and that could be dangerous to my health. If the guys ever caught on, well, it would be ugly at best.

So these were my options: I could stay with my Grandma and live full time as Catherine, or stay here at home and only do it on the weekends. If Mom simply told me to do it, then I would be guilt-free, because then I'd just be following her wishes. But if I said yes on my own, then it would be my choice, and everyone would know it. Then what? What would that make me? Mom had merely told me the choice was mine to make, and left it at that. As a guy, I thought of girls as strange creatures that we males could try and date, maybe understand, then marry so we could have children. Now, if I decide to move and become a girl full time, I will be the strange one. (Stranger than most, I would guess.)

But like I said, I didn't mind the clothes, it was everything else that bothered me. Like for instance, why did Mike--who knows that I'm not a girl--find me so attractive and put his best moves on me? Worse, why did I submit to him? As I looked in the mirror, I tried to find a way to deny the fact that deep down, I liked being a girl, being treated as one, and more importantly, I liked the way Mike looked at me. I hated myself when I realized that I could not find a reason to say no. I had come to like being a girl, and no matter what anyone else thought, I could not escape what was in my own mind. I would be giving up my 'male privilege'--what most guys thought of as being superior to women--but then I knew better. I knew that I could make Mike do what I wanted, just like any other girl could usually get her guy to do what she wanted him to do, even if he didn't want to do it. Women had the power, the men just don't realize it.

I decided to move in with my Grandmother, but right after the Prom, I was done, and would return to being my old self! That was my plan.

I told Mom that I would move, and was more than a bit surprised when she told me that she was sure I would! As we sat across from each other, she told me that I had begun to exhibit progressively more feminine mannerisms, and that often I looked dejected when I went to school on Mondays after having spent the weekend as Cathy.

'I never expected this to happen, dear. In fact, I never thought that you would actually try it! If you had put up a big enough fuss I would have found another way for you to repay your sister, but you did try it. You surprised all of us when you looked as nice as any girl your age, and I was equally surprised, but not shocked, when Mike found you attractive. You don't realize it, but men are visual, and they are drawn to a woman that meets what they think is their ideal. Obviously, Mike thinks that you fit his ideal, which is why he is always mooning over you. After that first time you went out and you let him kiss you, I was sure that you found out that you liked dressing as a girl, even though you had never done it before. Now, both Claire and I know that you not only like it, but you hate when you have to become a boy again, so I am not at all surprised that you decided to move in with Grandma. I won't pretend to understand it, but I can see that it is important to you, so I am going to let you try it. However, if at any time you want to come home and be yourself, just tell me, and this will end.'

Just how could I tell my mother that the more I wore the dresses, the more I liked it? How could I admit, even to her, that she was right? How could I tell her that I had decided to become a girl, full-time, and all I could think about was what I was going to wear for my first day in a new school, or how I didn't mind it at all when Mike kissed me? That night I began to pack up, taking some of my old stuff, like my sweats, but mostly, clothes that my sister, Mom, and I agreed I could take with me. I had three skirt and blouse sets, a few dresses and tops, and two pairs of shoes. The rest I had to leave behind. Oddly, Claire did not say much.

I drove myself to Grandma's house, then, with her help, we moved me into her spare bedroom, which had been my Mothers room way back when. I put things away, set up my computer, and began to look around my new room. Grandma left me alone to get settled in, and I soon had everything the way I wanted it. Then I joined her in the family room.

'Your mother tells me that you found items on the Internet that will let you look and feel more like a girl. Can I see them?' she asked.

Just how did my mother know that? I nodded my head yes, went online, and showed Grandma the items I had found, plus a few of the sites that I liked best. I could hear her gasping over my shoulder when she looked at some of the pictures on a few of the personal web sites, then I printed out most of the information and handed it to her at her request. She loaned me a few things, and I got ready for my first full day in a high school as a girl.

As much as I worried about it, it was an anticlimactic day. All of the kids simply accepted me as a girl named Cathy, and went on with things. During the first week I became friendly with a couple of girls, but generally remained aloof and did not try to join in. Grandma and I settled into a routine, and by Friday I think we were both comfortable with the way things were. When Friday came, I was told to be home immediately after school, no explanation offered, but the minute I walked in the house, I was told to go to my room. Grandma shut the door, and asked me to undress, which I had never done in front of her before. But she insisted, and I was soon standing there in just my bra and panties.

'Take your bra off, dear.'

I put my birdseed breast forms on the bed next to the bra, feeling naked without them. I watched as she opened a small pink and white box, then pulled out a perfectly shaped breast! It quivered, even in her hand! Using a small marking pencil, she made small marks on my skin, then using some kind of adhesive, she attached each one to my chest, and stood back. I looked in the mirror and examined them. They were very lifelike, the color almost exactly matching my skin tone, the nipples poking out just a little, the breasts with almost no sag to them. Using a color stick, Grandma easily hid the thin seams where the latex abutted my skin, and those breasts became my own, just as if I had grown them!

'Now comes the hard part, Cathy. We can order one of those special panties you showed me on the Internet, or we can try something I read in one of the stories you printed out for me.'

I knew what she meant. Ice and glue could be used to make my manhood disappear and take the shape of a woman's vagina. She left it up to me, and as much as I worried about how it would work, it was obviously better than wearing a panty that might or might not work well. We traded looks, and I began to giggle, and she joined me.

'It is a big step, I know, but it does seem the best, doesn't it?' she offered.

'Can you do it?' I asked. 'I mean, without any problems?'

She demurred. 'That story pretty well defined what I have to do, and I have everything right here, except I am going to use medical adhesive rather than some sort of super glue. I think it will be safer,' she explained. Then, looking at me she said, 'If you want to try it, just take off your panties and lay down on the bed and we'll see what we can do.'

For the first time since I was a baby she saw me naked, but without a word, she slapped the ice bag on me and held it there. After I pulled my fingernails out of the bed frame and my teeth quit shaking, I grew used to the chilling numbness of it, and relaxed as Grandma, wearing latex gloves, pushed and folded, glued and grinned, then more pushing and grinning before she stood facing me, her hand still on my manhood, or rather, what was left of it. She held her hand that way for about ten minutes before she removed it and examined her work. Smiling, she told me to get up and take a look. My eyes fell on the fold of skin that now defined me, the hair on my groin defining, not hiding, the thin slit that was now my vagina. I felt no pain, but I worried about being able to use the bath.

Grandma then told me to stand still, then used the same adhesive to attach a pair of oddly shaped, foam filled latex pads on each side that filled out the hollow in my buns, making them appear rounder and fuller. My hips were now wider, and because they too were the color of my skin, completed the transformation. I looked at myself from every angle, then smiled as I got dressed. My panties fit better, my bra, now holding weight, had to be adjusted, and while not expansive, I did have some minor cleavage. I was on cloud nine as Grandma walked out of the room, leaving me to get dressed. After Grandma left the room I let my finger trace the slit, but there was no reaction, and I got dressed.

Grandma told me later that she had not told anyone about these changes, telling me that they had no need to know, and I agreed. After that I became more natural, joining in with the girls in a few outings, and of course, I was still seeing Mike. I had no intention of letting his hands roam and wander no matter what I had under my clothes, and we satisfied ourselves just parking. Although I know he was reacting to me as he would any girl, I never gave him any relief that way.

About a week after Grandma made the changes for me, she invited me to join her in her aerobics class. I said I would, and the two of us went shopping for a leotard and tights for me to wear, as well as a sports bra. Aerobics was hard, but Grandma did the exercises like a pro, all without so much as a hard pant, while I felt like a rag after each workout. About all that I had going for me was the two girls from my classes at school were there with their mothers, and the three of us tended to stay together. The hardest thing for me to get over was changing and showering in the ladies' locker room. I mean, all those naked females were in there, and I was still technically a male. I got over that quickly when nobody paid any attention to me, even in the shower. I was just one of the girls. One of my friends, naked, walked over and asked me if Mike was taking me to the Christmas dance.

I mentioned it to Mike, and he said he would love to take me. Mom, Grandma, and I went dress shopping, but Mom didn't know about the changes we had made to make me look like a girl. I had a suspicion that she would find out today. While I was now used to not having any male equipment, I wasn't sure how Mom would take it when she found out. I was ready to just try on dresses, but Grandma said no, telling me that I had to have the right undergarments. That turned out to be a corselet, with matching panties of course. At a very elegant lingerie shop, Grandma steered me to them, picking out three for me to try on. I now wore a 36B bra, and my waist was down to 25 inches, but she insisted. So, with Mom in tow, I went into the changing booth, and slowly undressed with Mom watching me the whole time. When I slipped my blouse off, Mom did not react until I reached back and undid the bra and let it fall into my arms. That's when I heard her take a deep breath and exhale it slowly.

I slipped my skirt off and she did not see the lump made by a folded male member, but the smooth, tapering lines of a woman, and drew in another breath, but this time, she said something.

'Well, you've certainly changed!' she commented.

'Yeah,' I admitted. 'It makes it easier at school and when we go to aerobics classes.'

I did not elaborate, and quickly wrapped a corselet around myself and made up the hooks. Mom tightened the laces, and I saw my breasts rise into the cups of the built-in bra while my waist drew down to at least 23 inches. The black satin and white lace looked nice, but after I tried on all of them, I chose the all-black one in the same style with the matching panties.

Mom was still looking at me in amazement. 'Claire will not believe this, Catherine! You have breasts, and while I'm not sure, I'll bet something else.'

Walking through the mall, Grandma and I explained to her just how I did it. Mom just shook her head and we kept walking. The dress I ended up getting was an emerald green strapless gown, cut like a Prom dress with a very full skirt and a sweetheart neckline. The fitted bodice would require me to wear the corselet, but I didn't mind a bit. I had silver shoes and a purse to match, and a set of rhinestone and emerald earrings and necklace. Then I made an appointment at the salon to get my hair done. By the time we got back to Grandma's, Mom was clearly anxious to find out how I really looked, so I asked her to come to my room. It did not take long to strip naked, then I stood there, looking just like she and my sister did. Then I got dressed again.

'That is really something! I never would have known that under that you are a boy unless I already knew!' she said.

'That's the idea, Mom. I have to shower with the women, and this way I can. Besides, I like it this way.'

'I already knew that, honey. My only question is, will my son will ever come back to me, or do I have another daughter now?' she asked, smiling.

Of course, by then I knew the answer to that question. I had asked it myself many times, and each time I got the same answer.

'How can I become a man again, Mother? I'm a woman now, and I like it. Nobody but the few of us knows the truth, and everyone thinks I'm a girl�even me. Mike has given me his ring, and I took it because I like being his girl. I like being a girl and can't give it up.'

'That's what Grandma told me. Have you and Mike�?'

'No! Of course not!' I said, embarrassed. 'But that doesn't mean that we won't,' I amended. 'I've thought about it, but no, we haven't done it.'

'Just be careful,' she implored. Then, giving me a sly little grin, she asked, 'Can I tell Claire?'

'I would rather you didn't,' I said, a little smile of my own starting to form. 'She might not take it too well when she finds out that I'm prettier than she is.'

'Don't be snippy, Catherine,' Mom admonished. 'I won't tell her. I'll let you do that.'

The dance was on Saturday, so that morning I went to the salon for a six-hour appointment. They started with a waxing which left my skin smooth, the lotion made my skin softer. Then I had my hair and nails done, and for the first time, my eyebrows thinned out and my makeup done by a pro.

I had thought about what Mom had said, whether Mike and I had done it, and decided that his Christmas present would be a memorable one. I took a long hot bubble bath, then began to dress by slipping the thong panties on. Boy did I like the way they looked! I had worn the corselet every day to break it in, so was not able to fasten it up easily and draw the laces tight myself. After fluffing my boobs, I put on two very full petticoats before I slipped the dress over my head. I had to have Grandma zip it up, and as she sat on the bed, I put on my earrings, then asked her to fasten the clasp on the choker necklace. I added a bright red lipstick and my best perfume, then finally I stepped into the shoes. My purse lay on the dresser, already filled with a thin wallet. I slipped the lipstick into it before I stood in front of Grandma for her approval.

She looked me up and down very carefully, then fixed me with a very serious expression. 'If that young man of yours isn't dead, he will be in love before the end of the night, I'm afraid.' She walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, adding, 'You're a very pretty girl, Catherine, and I have to tell you, I had my doubts when this all started. But now, well, you have become a wonderful granddaughter.'

Just then the doorbell rang, but I stayed put in my room, waiting for Grandma to call for me. I heard the doorbell again, and a few minutes later, my name being called. I took one last look in the mirror, hiked my boobs up again, gathered a smile on my face, and stepped out of the room and carefully walked down the stairs. At the bottom stood Mike, his eyes shiny and bright, a smile on his face, next to him Mother, and right beside her, my sister Claire with Grandma just behind her.

I stepped down into the foyer, as they all stared at me. Mike came and took my hand while Claire just stared, clearly wanting to know how I managed to have boobs, let alone ones that were bigger than hers, while Mom got out her camera again and took several pictures.

The dance was very nice, and Mike was gracious and attentive. Best of all, I got a lot of compliments on both the dress and my hair from my girlfriends. Mike took me to a late dinner, then, on the way home he parked the car in a very secluded area. I returned his passion, and for the first time, I let his hand fall on my breast. Because of the fit, and the fact that I had worn them for so long, I could sense his touch, so between that and his panting in my ear I knew that he was on the edge.

Which is when I took over by pushing him away.

He lay very still as I unzipped his pants, pulled his member out, then took care of him the only way I could. The moment my lips touched him, I knew that I would never return to being a male again, but I had made that decision before we even left the house, and I think Mike knew it, too. As time went on all thoughts of being a male disappeared, and I felt like a female right to the core of my being.

Later that evening, Mike and I were out walking in the park when we were confronted by Ned, Fred, and of course, Bill. I felt Mike tense up, ready for action. Bill once again remained silent, letting the stooges do the work. Ned, well aware that Mike wasn't afraid of him, and Fred, with his dislocated nose, both stayed just out of reach, yet they looked menacing, and I was sure they would make a joint rush on us.

'Why don't you just stand over there and let the lady come with us?' Fred snarled.

'Why?' Mike responded. 'So she can break your nose again?'

Fred, already angry at me, made a rush at Mike. Mike waited until he was extremely close, then stood aside, and put a roundhouse right hard against Fred's nose. He fell to the ground bleeding as Ned yanked out a knife and moved in, waving it back and forth. I cried out a warning, and Mike turned just in time to catch the blow on his arm. Blood ran down his sleeve, and Ned took another stab at Mike, but my foot caught him right in the manlies and he fell to the ground rolled in a ball. Bill walked over, looked down at Fred and Ned, shook his head, and stared right at me.

'You're a hot chick, but these fools wouldn't recognize class if it bit them on the ass,' he said, staring at me.

He yanked Fred to his feet, then helped Ned up, and the three of them walked, stumbling, out of sight. Mike and I went to his car and I drove him to the hospital. It turned out to be a superficial wound, but it was still reported to the police, and Fred and Ned were arrested later that day for assault. As much as I felt like a girl, when we were attacked, I went right into my male mode, ready to defend myself or Mike, all thoughts of recoiling as a real girl might do fading out of sight. I was proud of Mike, but ashamed that I so easily reverted to my old way of thinking. Claire told me it wasn't such a bad thing for a girl to be able to defend herself, which only brought home just how much I had changed, and how much more I had to learn. Claire had long ago decided that our bet wasn't worth much, especially when I was attending school as a girl, but there was no way I could give it up now. I had become Catherine, inside, where it counts the most.

Mike took me to the Prom, and I was nominated as Queen of the Prom. They had no idea how right they were. It was on that night that Mike and I satisfied our mutual passion for each other. While not equipped like the other girls, I found several ways to sate our passions and enjoyed it all, climbing over the wall of my self-doubt, with no regrets. I graduated in June, turned 18 two weeks later, and started on that long path to complete what I knew to be true. I was a woman, and needed to be one. Eventually, I was, and Mike loved every minute that I proved it to him.

� 2000

The above work is copyrighted material. Anyone wishing to copy, archive, or re-post this story must contact the author for permission.

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Boys flocked to the three-story, wood-shingled house on Mountain Avenue in Revere for the teenage version of the Holy Grail: an endless supply of beer and weed. Being drunk and stoned made everything-from the air hockey to the movie watching-significantly more enjoyable. There was also money to be had. The pocket cash came from the local men, who especially liked it when the local boys (hustlers, gay teens, straight teens) lounged around the house with their shirts off.

Then there were smiles all around.

There was also sex. The boys had sex with each other. The boys had sex with the men. All of this was done quietly, because neighbors would later say that they didn't see or hear anything unusual coming from the house. There were no naked boys loitering in the doorway, no drunken men stumbling in the back yard, no obvious signs of depravity. It was a normal house, the neighbors thought, until they learned that it wasn't.

In June 1977, police arrested the house's owner and announced that it was the national headquarters of a sordid, pornographic sex ring. It was a stretch to call it a “ring,” but Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne declared that the arrests were just “the tip of the iceberg.” There had to be other perverted people in other wood-shingled houses. And Byrne had a way to catch them: A hotline people could call with anonymous tips about molesters.

In fact, man-boy relationships had been flourishing-not particularly secretly-for years in Revere. Revere Beach, on the eastern fringes of this working-class city, was a notorious cruising ground for men and boys. “It's surprising that no one has stumbled onto a 'sex ring' in Revere before this,” Frank Rose wrote in a 1978 Village Voice piece about the scandal.

Everybody was talking about the case, which led to the indictments of 24 men. During an interview on a Boston television station, poet and outspoken boy-lover Allen Ginsberg joked about the scandal. “I had sex when I was 8 with a man in the back of my grandfather's candy store in Revere, and I turned out okay,” Ginsberg declared before being hurried off-stage as the station cut to a commercial.

That moment aside, there was little to chuckle about that year for gays in general, and men who liked boys in particular. In Florida, beauty queen Anita Bryant was pushing her “Save Our Children” campaign, spearheading the repeal of budding gay-rights ordinances. In Toronto, police raided the city's gay newspaper after it published an article entitled “Men Loving Boys Loving Men.” From coast to coast, states began enacting tougher laws against child pornography, alluding to the need to protect children from the clutches of homosexual adults.

Staffers at Fag Rag, a now-defunct Boston-based radical gay paper, decided to fight back. They formed a committee to defend the suspects in Revere and rally against police harassment. Two groups emerged from that committee. One, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, is still a respected legal organization. The other, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, would soon become the most despised group of men in America.

Two boy-lovers sit at a small table in a boston coffee shop. “Everyone's telling me not to talk to you,” says one, a gray-haired, 62-year-old NAMBLA founder who goes by the pseudonym Socrates. “I mean, really, what's the point? It may be naive to think that an article that is really honest about NAMBLA can be published in any major magazine in America. We are the poison group. This is the poison story.”

It's a story that began unremarkably enough. In 1978, NAMBLA was just another oddball sexual group proposing another oddball, radical philosophy: Kids should have more rights, particularly the right to have sex with whomever they please. Age should not be a consideration in anything, especially sex and love, and age-of-consent laws should be repealed. It was a more permissive time, a time before AIDS, and during NAMBLA's infancy in Boston (it would later move its headquarters to New York), the group enjoyed the support of a vocal minority in the gay community, who believed that attacks on boy-lovers were veiled attacks on all homosexuals. To NAMBLA's greater surprise, it found that even many straight people were willing to discuss adult-youth relationships without resorting to name calling and finger wagging.

“The '70s were an incredible time,” says Socrates. “We were at a time when things were changing, when our voices could be heard. We began to believe the rhetoric that the revolution was coming, that we were going to create a free society.”

They could not have been more wrong. Twenty-two years after forming in the Community Church of Boston, NAMBLA finds itself close to extinction. It has achieved nothing except brand recognition. Its members live in fear, victims in their own minds, captives of their political blunders, their misreading of popular sentiment, and a sustained, multi-pronged attack from right-wingers, feminists, homophobes, gays, abuse survivors, police, politicians, and the media.

“Today, we are seen as worse than murderers,” says long-time NAMBLA member Bill Andriette, who sits, unshaven and shoulders hunched, across the table from Socrates. Andriette joined NAMBLA in 1981, when he was 15. “But if I was 15 today, I don't think I would join NAMBLA. NAMBLA itself has become pretty irrelevant, except as a symbol invoked by its enemies.”

And there are plenty of those-particularly in Boston. The 1997 murder of 10-year-old Cambridge boy Jeffrey Curley by two men, one a NAMBLA member, and the Curley family's subsequent wrongful death lawsuit against the organization, have stoked popular outrage. While many legal experts describe the Curley lawsuit's prospects as slim, it is another offensive against a group that has spent most of its time defending itself. “That case is probably going to break our back, even if we win, which we will,” says Socrates. “Out of the closet since 1979, today we must hide again in America.”

Could NAMBLA's founders have had any idea that they would become America's symbol of organized depravity? That a group founded mostly by eccentric, boy-loving leftists would come to be considered Public Enemy Number One in the nation's battle against child sexual abuse?

“Never mind the fact that NAMBLA has never been a very large or influential organization,” says Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University and the author of Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. “But it fit our need then, and still does today, to think of child molesters as being part of an immense, vast, powerful conspiracy that moves in elite circles. NAMBLA has become the acceptable symbol to blame for a lot of what has gone wrong morally in America over the last 20 years.”

For its part, the organization has tried to point out the hypocrisy of its critics. Americans, NAMBLA argues, go to remarkable lengths to pretend that kids aren't sexual, even as they promote youth sexuality in music, films, beauty pageants, and advertising. Still, if NAMBLA had any chance at even counterculture legitimacy, it wasn't going to achieve it by convincing Americans of their supposed hypocrisy. It would succeed only as a passenger on the bandwagon of gay liberation, which long tolerated (and, in fact, celebrated) the inclusion of outcasts and deviants. While NAMBLA's founders never expected the mainstream gay movement to be as radical as they were, they also never expected gay culture to shed its pre-AIDS sexual radicalism and ditch boy-lovers in the name of mainstream legitimacy.

Meanwhile, NAMBLA and its members made a series of perplexing, misguided, and irrational political choices. Theirs is the story of a small group of unapologetic radicals who badly overestimated both the inclusiveness of gay liberation and the breadth of the sexual revolution.

David (not his real name) is a 62-year-old cab driver who likes, among other demographic groups, teenage boys. More than anything, though, he likes to be left alone to sit on the couch in the cozy, carpeted living room of his San Francisco apartment, where he can watch Monday night football on mute while listening to classical music on high. Today, he's also talking about how it feels to receive telephone calls like this one: “Hey, fuck you and all your NAMBLA friends! You fuck little boys up the ass! I'm going to find out where you live, and I'm going to kill you. I'm going to bash your skull in with a baseball bat!”

That call, which he reported to police, is one of several he has received since anti-pedophile crusader Mike Echols posted David's name, address, and phone number, and those of about 80 other suspected NAMBLA members (David insists he's not a member and doesn't act on his attraction to teenagers), on Echols' anti-NAMBLA Web site.

In small towns and big cities, suspected NAMBLA members are being warned to stay the hell away from kids. In New Mexico, a suspected member had his tires slashed and the word “pedophile” graffitied on his truck. In San Francisco, an 82-year-old former NAMBLA member got a death threat at his nursing home. In European countries, angry mobs have staked out the homes of men convicted of sex crimes with minors, calling for nothing less than public lynchings.

“It's a bad time to be a pedophile, and an even worse time to be a NAMBLA member,” says Tim Painter, an inspector on the district attorney's child sex abuse unit in Alameda County, California. He has worked on several cases involving NAMBLA members. “NAMBLA has done more good for those who want to stop them than they have for themselves. What NAMBLA has done is put a face to the enemy.”

These days, NAMBLA's face fronts for little more than a publishing collective and several hundred scared, paranoid members. There are no more annual conventions, no more public appearances, no more city chapters, no more NAMBLA contingents in gay-pride marches, no more eager new recruits. Times are so bad, in fact, that most NAMBLA members would just as soon not talk about them. Of the 50 members (or suspected members) contacted by phone, mail, or e-mail for this story, only a handful agreed to talk. Others wrote responses like these:

“I'm under court order not to have anything to do with NAMBLA, so I would appreciate it if you didn't send me anything else, or I could get in a whole heap of trouble.”

“I got your letter today. . . . I would imagine we will want to use encryption to e-mail each other as it is easy for someone to read our e-mail. I do not know how to use encryption. You will have to instruct me.”

Encryption? The need for silence and pseudonyms is particularly agonizing to NAMBLA's founders, who have historically been open about their attraction to boys. Only seconds after sitting down at an Upper West Side restaurant in New York, “Steve,” a NAMBLA founder who asks that his real name not be used, says: “I absolutely hate having to be not up front. I find this very painful. But I think the climate has really gotten bad, and I have no doubt that I would be fired from my job if it came out that I was a NAMBLA member. What's so sad is that it didn't used to be this way. We used to celebrate our lives.”

That was before NAMBLA began its baffling pattern of self-destruction. The group, somehow unaware, or unconcerned, that police might want to infiltrate its meetings, unwittingly voted undercover law-enforcement officials to its steering committee. “Working against NAMBLA members is like stealing candy from a baby, only easier,” says Echols, seated at a seafood restaurant in Dallas and never failing to plug his two true-crime books about child sex abuse (Brother Tony's Boys, I Know My First Name Is Steven). He says he personally infiltrated several NAMBLA meetings and also got his hands on the group's “top-secret” membership list.

Perhaps hoping to improve their image, several NAMBLA members cooperated with the making of a 1994 documentary about them, Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys. It was a rare chance to show the world that they weren't nearly as despicable as people made them out to be. Typically, NAMBLA blew that chance. Several members came off as unhappy, childlike, nerdy, predatory, even delusional. The film's undisputed star is long-time NAMBLA member Leland Stevenson, a 55-year-old former Mormon missionary who is seen chatting up boys at shopping mall pay phones, interpreting their aloofness and resistance as flirtation and saying things like “Okay, that will be our little secret.”

If NAMBLA members were bad at security and public relations, they were even worse at staying out of jail. Members (and those “with NAMBLA ties,” as prosecutors and the media described them) were arrested for possession of and distribution of child pornography, statutory rape, and molestation. In 1989, at least one NAMBLA member was arrested in Thailand after police said he was running an orphanage that served as a front for child prostitution. (NAMBLA member Bill Andriette insists the organization had no knowledge of the purported orphanage, a claim police reject.)

Arguably most damaging to NAMBLA, though, was its refusal to change its position calling for the repeal of all age-of-consent laws, despite the argument made by a vocal minority of members that such a stance-with its implication, sometimes stated and sometimes not, that a prepubescent child can consent to sex-was political suicide.

“I have been trying to convince the NAMBLA people for years that they should argue for an age of 14 or 15, something that people could see as a little more reasonable,” says William A. Percy, a professor of history at UMass/Boston and the author of Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece. “But they're a small group of inbred and fanatical ideologues. They only talk to each other. They won't listen to ideas of compromise.”

They also failed, for the most part, to attract boys to their cause. While an occasional voice seconds NAMBLA's outrage over age-of-consent laws (“They are just one of the countless ways we discriminate against gay people and treat teenagers like second-class citizens,” says Mike Glatze, an editor at Young Gay America, an Internet magazine for young gay men and women), the question is clear: Just where is the army of boys backing NAMBLA and fighting for the rights of teens to have sex with whomever they wish? The short answer is that there is no army. The North American Man/Boy Love Association is, and always has been, remarkably short on boys.

“I am an ethical man,” says Socrates, sitting in the kitchen of his modest Boston home, next to several framed pictures of former teenage lovers. “I never hurt or manipulated the boys who have been my lovers. And they were my friends, not just my lovers. They are all part of what I consider my family.”

The first was James Dubro, now a Canadian crime writer and documentary filmmaker. In 1961, Dubro was an openly gay, sexually active 14-year-old living on Beacon Hill, and Socrates was a 22-year-old college student just coming to terms with his attraction to boys. The pair met in a Charles Street coffee shop, where Dubro stopped every day after school to sell copies of the Boston Record-American.

“[He] chatted me up and offered to buy the five or so papers I had left,” Dubro recalls. Socrates took the teen back to his college dorm room, where the pair had the first of many sexual encounters and began a friendship that continues to this day. “[Socrates] is extremely loyal to the boys he has had relationships with,” says Dubro. “And a lot of the boys could not have survived without his assistance. To my personal knowledge, he has never abused anyone — and is, if anything, too trusting and self denying to a fault.”

Socrates is attracted primarily to teenagers 14 and older, and men in their early twenties. He is the legal adoptive father of one of his former lovers, considers himself a surrogate father to another eight, and says that about 30 young men have lived with him at one point or another. Socrates travels often to meet with his three current teenage lovers in a foreign country (all three are at least 18, he says). “Today, it's too dangerous in America,” he says.

That danger has sent some NAMBLA members, and many boy lovers, running to Internet boy-love communities, where men of all ages post tortured poetry about their 10-year-old neighbors, debate the best place to take a 13-year-old on a date (WWF wrestling matches, toy stores), and share advice about how to charm unsuspecting mothers.

Many of NAMBLA's founders and key members insist that they now avoid sexual relationships with underage boys. Chris Farrell, a long-time NAMBLA member, made that decision after serving four years in prison in the early 1990s for sodomy with three boys, ages 15 and 16. “For me, contact with young people was not only a means of sexual satisfaction, but an enormous and important part of my broader social relationships,” Farrell says, standing in the cluttered Manhattan office of his mail-order book and video company. “But to have those relationships so severely truncated is a difficult thing. And it's so hard to stomach. For years, in many societies, my love for boys was valued.”

That hasn't been the case since the early 1980s, when America discovered, with much media sensation, that its day care centers seemed to be run by perverted Satanists. There were convoluted tales of children being flown to cult-like churches, where they were raped and videotaped by chanting, mask-wearing preschool teachers. While abuse did occur in some cases, these stories were often as unbelievable as they were wrong.

A decade later, the discovery of the Internet as a powerful and very real tool for the sexual abuse of children only served to heighten national anxiety over child sexual abuse, making it nearly impossible for anyone-least of all, NAMBLA-to engage the country in a discussion about youth sexuality.

“We live in a culture that's hysterical about children and assumes they have no sexual agency or desire,” says Dan Savage, an author and nationally syndicated sex columnist. “But anyone who can remember what they were like when they were 11 knows that kids are sexual, and whether it was messing around with their cousin, playing doctor with their neighbor, or making passes at people 10 years older, they were horny. So NAMBLA steps out to articulate all this, albeit in its usual highly dysfunctional and creepy way, and because we know what they say to be true on this issue, we've got to label them as insane perverts. Any attempt at rational discussion about youth sexuality and intergenerational sex is simply shouted down.”

Which may explain what happened in 1998, when a journal of the American Psychological Association published the results of a study of college students who, as youths, had been involved in sexual relationships with adults. The study found that the harm done was less than generally believed, and that some people-particularly males who had been involved in the relationships as teenagers-didn't view those relationships as abusive. In fact, many valued them. Finally, the study suggested that not all such instances should be automatically labeled as “abusive” and the youths involved as “victims.”

Predictably, Dr. Laura Schlessinger was aghast. So was the House of Representatives, which took the unusual step of condemning (by a 355-0 vote) a scientific study. The resolution's sponsor, Representative Matt Salmon of Arizona, called the study “the Emancipation Proclamation of pedophiles.” The APA, under intense pressure, distanced itself from the findings, saying it should have considered the “social policy implications” before publishing it.

“The reaction surprised us tremendously,” says Bruce Rind, one of the study's coauthors and an assistant professor of psychology at Temple University. “But I think it goes to the heart of the extent of America's current insane moral panic.”

That panic, argues James Kincaid, the author of Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting, is a result of America's love-hate relationship with stories about gothic sexual demons. “If we didn't have NAMBLA, we would undoubtedly find a new national monster,” says Kincaid, an English professor at the University of Southern California. “We need an enemy, because the endless talk of child sex abuse allows us the vicarious, titillating thrill of talking about children and sex, while at the same time allowing us to shake our heads at someone else's depravity. And while we find a threat to loathe and deplore, we will continue to promote child sexuality [in entertainment], and we will continue to position at the center of our national desirability women — and sometimes men — who look 14 years old.”

As much as a 10-year-old can, Jeffrey Curley owned his East Cambridge neighborhood. Charming, mischievous, and always a handful, Jeffrey liked playing hockey and baseball, speeding around town on his bike, and bragging about his two older brothers and the many girls who invariably wanted him.

Still, on October 1, 1997, it was two young men-Charles Jaynes, 22, and Salvatore Sicari, 21 — who wanted Jeffrey Curley most. Jaynes was an auto detailer and lifelong outcast who was deeply disturbed by his obesity. He made occasional appearances at Boston-area gay-youth group meetings and became a NAMBLA member in 1996, receiving copies of the NAMBLA Bulletin, the group's quarterly magazine. In his diary, Jaynes wrote poetry about his love for boys.

Sicari was a pale, dark-haired house painter who lived near Jeffrey with his mother, two sisters, younger brother, and a stepfather he did not like. Nicknamed “Salvi,” he strutted through the blue-collar East Cambridge neighborhood wearing hooded sweatshirts and trying to act tough. Sicari could be violent, and in 1997 he confessed in court to beating his girlfriend. A year later, Sicari's 17-year-old brother, Robert, was found guilty of raping a 10-year-old boy he lured to a parking garage with the promise of a bike.

At about 3:15 p.m. on October 1, Jeffrey left his grandmother's house wearing a maroon and gold football jersey with the number “32” on it. Reportedly lured by the promise of a new bike, he joined Jaynes and Sicari in Jaynes' 1983 gray Cadillac, where several copies of the NAMBLA Bulletin were in an envelope behind the driver's seat.

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The three drove to a grocery store in Newton. There, Sicari later told police, Jaynes dragged the 4-foot-7, 80-pound boy into the back seat and tried to sexually assault him. Jeffrey struggled to get away, police said, but the nearly 300-pound Jaynes sat on him, then suffocated Jeffrey with a gasoline-soaked rag. “Don't fight it, kid, don't fight it,” Jaynes told the boy, according to Sicari.

The pair drove to Jaynes' apartment in Manchester, New Hampshire, where Sicari says Jaynes sodomized the boy's dead body. They then stuffed the body into a container, drove to Maine, and dumped it from a bridge into the Great Works River. Two days later, Sicari correctly sensing that the Curley family suspected him, confessed his role to police but pinned the murder on Jaynes. Police charged both with kidnapping and murder.

The alleged act of necrophilia was quickly reported as fact, even though Maine's chief medical examiner found no evidence that the body had been sexually abused.

“It went from 'Sicari said' to 'police said' to simply being fact, and there wasn't a shred of evidence that it happened,” says Jaynes' attorney, Robert Jubinville. “The way the sexual aspect of this case played out in the press was absolutely ludicrous.”

The reports outraged the public. Declaring that Sicari and Jaynes “should not see the light again,” Governor Paul Cellucci joined a campaign to reinstate the death penalty, falling one vote shy (80-80) when a Democratic legislator changed his mind at the 11th hour. Sicari was eventually convicted of first-degree murder, while Jaynes got second degree. Because Jaynes had copies of the NAMBLA Bulletin in his car, NAMBLA quickly became a focus of the story. Sensing yet another PR disaster, the group issued this statement: “The alleged actions of these two individuals run absolutely contrary to everything we believe in and stand for. NAMBLA condemns the use of threat or violence against anyone.”

That did not appease the Curley family, which has filed a $200 million civil suit against NAMBLA — specifically, purported members Roy Radow, Joe Power, David Thorstad, David Miller, Peter Herman, Max Hunter, Bill Andriette, Denny Mintun, and Arnold Schoen, most of whom were singled out because they were listed in the NAMBLA Bulletin as part of its publishing collective.

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The suit claims that, “As a direct and proximate result of the urging, advocacy, conspiring, and promoting of pedophile activity by . . . NAMBLA . . . Charles Jaynes became obsessed with having sex with and raping young children.”

Curley family attorney Larry Frisoli flatly compares NAMBLA to the Mafia. “NAMBLA is a criminal organization that teaches its members how to rape kids,” he says in a conversation in his Cambridge office. “To say that age-of-consent laws should be changed is fine; it's legal. But to actually encourage and assist in the abuse of children is illegal. If you look at The Godfather, in the '40s and '50s, the Corleones always got up there and said, 'We don't exist.' Yet they did exist. And NAMBLA does exist. And it has tiers of membership. And like the Mafia, the question becomes how much can you blame the Godfather for what the foot soldier on the street is doing?”

Many question the extent to which NAMBLA can be called a criminal organization, let alone one that resembles the Mafia. The FBI and local law-enforcement agencies have been trying for years to find NAMBLA in violation of laws against the sexual exploitation of children. The most organized attempt, which included a year of police infiltration in the mid 1980s, produced nothing, and the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that NAMBLA did not engage in criminal activity.

The Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is defending NAMBLA, agrees. “This lawsuit is akin to someone getting killed by the permissive attitude of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and then suing Rolling Stone for creating a climate when the murder was possible,” says John Reinstein, the lead ACLU attorney on the case. “NAMBLA is not the Mafia.”

On a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, NAMBLA the Clown sits on the stage at the Folsom Street Fair, a popular and eclectic yearly gathering of leather daddies, bondage lovers, drag queens, ravers, and curious gay suburbanites. NAMBLA the Clown looks exactly like he said he would: Hell Raiser after a messy shopping spree at the Home Depot. He wears a heavy black robe, eight-inch mirrored platform boots, pushpins in his head (complete with fake blood), and black make-up to accentuate harsh black eyebrows.

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The self-described “post-modern joke that dare not speak its name,” NAMBLA the Clown is actually a real person. His name is Ggreg Taylor (he spells it with three Gs), and he is a celebrity of sorts in San Francisco's artistic gay circles. “There are two things that really scare people in this world: NAMBLA and clowns,” he says, sweating, as he leans over the side of the stage. “So, being the twisted guy I am, I thought I would combine them and create some real mental havoc. Unfortunately, I am a joke that a lot of people don't get. Some people think I am in bad taste.”

Many of those people are gay people. Standing next to a booth selling X-rated videos, vibrators, and glow-in-the-dark dildos, a young man wearing only tight leather shorts says, “NAMBLA has no place in gay culture. Gay culture celebrates everything, as long as it is consensual. Fucking kids is not consensual.”

The Folsom Street Fair is a collection of gay culture's fringiest elements, and there was a time when NAMBLA shared a place at their table. That table is the freaks' table, where everyone not quite ready for prime-time television has taken a back seat to a mainstream gay movement concerned with looking respectable, and all-American, and decidedly not after the little boy next door.

In the early '90s, the gay community watched in horror as the Christian right used NAMBLA's presence in gay-pride marches to attack gay-rights legislation and tell Americans that homosexuals were after their kids. The tactic worked. “Starting in 1994, it would have been easier for Jerry Falwell to march in a gay-pride parade than for NAMBLA,” says Echols, the anti-pedophile crusader.

Today, as gay organizations fight for the rights of gays to marry and adopt, they officially condemn NAMBLA. Even XY, the national magazine for young men that champions teen sexuality and argues for a lowering of the age of consent, published an opinion piece by writer Karen Ocamb in 1998 that dripped with anti-NAMBLA anger: “I watched the NAMBLA creeps [at the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots] rub their hands in glee. . . . My skin crawled as these pasty-white, nerdy, hunched-over men scurried away from my tape recorder like cockroaches afraid of the light. . . . These men aren't gay, and we mustn't let them co-opt our movement. . . . They are simply perverts who like to fuck children, using the gay community as a Trojan horse to storm the barricades of legitimacy.”

Gay bookstores are putting up barricades of their own, choosing not to carry the NAMBLA Bulletin for the first time in the organization's history. At Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia, the store's owner, Ed Hermance, says he pulled the NAMBLA Bulletin off the shelves last year after his staff threatened to strike if he didn't.

“I think it's a strange day for gay culture when we start banning something because it makes us uncomfortable,” Hermance says. “Especially when that thing is a foundation of gay literature. If we pulled all the books that had adult-youth sexual themes, we wouldn't have many novels, memoirs, or biographies left.”

The shirtless kid has a huge smile on his face. After all, he's years away from puberty, about 7 or 8 years old, but he's already shaving. He has a razor in one hand and a glob of shaving cream in the other. He looks happy.

Two shirtless boys stand on a beach. The older boy, about 12 or 13, has spiky brown hair and a surfboard tucked under his right arm. He's talking to the younger boy, who looks about 8 and is holding a toy shovel in his right hand.

Those are two of the images from the October issue of the NAMBLA Bulletin. The Bulletin publishes news pieces, opinions, semi-erotic short stories, and pictures of boys, most of whom have not reached puberty.

“I never felt very comfortable with how the Bulletin had pictures of so many young kids,” says Steve, the NAMBLA founder from an eastern city. “I felt that it was politically stupid.”

NAMBLA members have long disagreed over what they are and what kind of unified front they should show the public. Socrates insists that the group is made up of a majority of pederasts (as NAMBLA defines them, people attracted to boys in or after puberty) and a minority of pedophiles (people attracted to prepubescent children). Yet the Bulletin has rarely reflected that, angering many of NAMBLA's members.

“The Bulletin is turning into a semi-pornographic jerk-off mag for pedophiles,” NAMBLA cofounder David Thorstad wrote in a December 1996 letter to the magazine. “Has the Bulletin forgotten that NAMBLA has always consisted not only of pedophiles, but also of pederasts? In fact, were it not for the pederasts, there would never have been a NAMBLA. . . . What has happened to the political goals of NAMBLA, which are to struggle for sexual freedom and liberation, not merely for the right of dirty old men to get their vicarious jollies?”

The Bulletin's then-editor, Mike Merisi, replied angrily in print: “I well remember visiting Mr. Thorstad's NYC apartment in the early '70s, and viewing in his library books and magazines . . . [that] featured nude boys apparently between 6 and 16, and I can assume Mr. Thorstad has since shredded these artifacts of our culture, at which time he became a good pederast, only interested in age-appropriate teens, leaving the rest of us bad 'pedophiles' behind, in much the same way as the larger gay movement left him.”

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Nearly every year at NAMBLA's annual convention, a small faction requested that the organization decide on an age at which the group believed a boy could give consent. Every year, NAMBLA chose not to do so.

“Politically, we made a disastrous choice,” says Socrates. “We were going to lose with that choice, and we did, big time. And while we could have said, 'Okay, we favor an age of consent at 12 or 14,' that goes against our philosophy that the important issues to consider are coercion, manipulation, and ultimately violence, not age. We hoped we could strike a blow to the core of the problems in society. Philosophically, we know we made the right choice.”

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The right choice? To everybody except NAMBLA, that choice was dumbfounding both politically and philosophically. “They lost everybody who might have supported them by arguing that [prepubescent kids] can consent to sex with adults,” says Savage, the sex columnist. “The problem with NAMBLA is that it packages reasonable arguments about teen sexuality and age-of-consent laws with irrational, insane arguments about 7-year-olds. That's why the group is where it is today.”

And that's why some NAMBLA members wonder if any of this was worth it.

“I sometimes ask myself whether organizing NAMBLA was a good thing to do,” says Steve. “Because I do wonder if things would be as bad today if we hadn't organized, or if we had tried to approach this topic in an entirely different way. Did we create the backlash? [Socrates] says that we didn't, that the forces of repression didn't need us to bring us where we are today. I don't know. I hope he's right.”

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