Skirting the Matter

Christine had already made up her mind to give the last resort a try that afternoon. But her plan took a bit of a left turn when she arrived home to the smell of pizza. "Josh?!" she called out as the pleasant odor hit her just inside the door. "Did you order pizza without waiting for me?"

"No," came his voice from the kitchen. "I'm baking it."

"Sweetie!" Nearly a year into their relationship and sometimes he still seemed too good to be true. Christine realized just how right she was about that when she got to the kitchen doorway. There he was, sipping a glass of red wine and holding one out for her. He was dressed, hilarious yet sexy, in his Speedo and wingtips and nothing else.

Christine burst into laughter. After accepting the wine and getting control of herself long enough to sip it, she set the glass down and threw her arms around Josh. "You remembered! God, when did we read that book, anyway? Six months at least."

"I guess," Josh said. "But it just seemed too good an idea I not to do it. Don't you think?"

"Speaking of which..." Christine said with a sly grin.

"No, Christine! Come on."

"I just want you to try it this one time," Christine pleaded. "You won't stand out at all at the festival; you know how bohemian it gets there." Their otherwise-conservative city was famous for its anything-goes Spring Festival, coincidentally due to be held on April Fool's Day that year.

"Geez, Christine, I do this for you..." he gestured up and down to his bizarre outfit, which was inspired by a novel they'd both read months before in which the male narrator commented on how his mistress loved making dinner for him in her underwear and high heels.

"Yes, and it's lovely, Josh! I know, I know, I said I'd like to see him try to do that for her and see how much he liked it, and you said..."

"'Maybe you will see me do it,'" Josh finished. "And I do like it. Kind of a kick, really, knowing you enjoy the view while I'm also doing something special just for you. Maybe that guy's lady did like it. It certainly is great to see how it turns you on, too," he added, grinning through the mild argument.

"Well, Josh, if you really want to turn me on..."

"Two more weeks until the festival," Josh grumbled. "Are you going to ask me every day until then, no matter how many times I say no?" He'd already fielded the request numerous times, always in the negative.

Christine took a deep breath. Time to haul out the big guns, all right. "I'll make you a deal, sweetie," she said, putting one leg up on the step-stool by the sink and pulling her pant leg up as far as she could, revealing a few days' worth of stubble. "If you'll do it, I won't shave until the festival."

At long last, she saw his lips curl into a grin and she knew she was winning. "You won't?" he asked.

"Then people will be staring at me at least as much as at you!" she pointed out. "If anyone stares at all, which they probably won't, since it's such an anything-goes crowd. But if they do, you'll be in good company." As he still wasn't quite over the edge, she reminded him, "And don't think I don't remember what hairy legs do to you!"

Josh gazed at Christine's leg, recalling how deliciously taboo it had looked back in January and imagining it in public in the spring. His tiny trunks were already bulging at the thought, Christine noted with pleasure. It would be worth one afternoon of mild humiliation, he concluded. "One condition," he said. "I'll do it if you also don't shave for a week afterward."

"It's a deal!" Christine exclaimed, setting her leg back on the floor and leaning over to give him a victorious squeeze. Privately delighted to not have to worry about shaving for three weeks anyway, she even gave some thought to offering to give it up entirely, like she had for a year or so back in college -- but there was no need to offer him that just yet. Instead, after another sip of wine, she went to the bedroom, where she retrieved two peasant skirts from her closet. "You're going to look so adorable!" she said on her return. "It'll be a little shorter than it should be on you, but so what?" She held them up side by side. "Red or blue?"

Josh didn't even look away from the oven. "Whichever you want, dear," he said, inspecting the pizza. "It's for you, not for me. I'm going to be doing my best to forget I'm wearing it."

"Josh, that's a terrible attitude!" Christine said. "Whatever happened to sticking it to the patriarchy and embracing your individual freedom to wear whatever you like? Besides, you might even find you like it. There's nothing like the feeling of a skirt brushing against your legs when you walk. If men gave it a try, I think they'd all give up on the women-only nonsense." Stepping up close so he couldn't ignore her, she repeated, "Red or blue?"

"Whichever one you don't wear that day," Josh finally said.

"I won't be wearing either of these," Christine said.

She realized a second too late that that answer would give Josh the wrong idea, but it was too late. "Hang on!" Josh said, throwing the potholder down angrily on the stove. "When I said I'd do it, I figured I didn't need to say you'd be wearing a skirt too! What kind of deal is you not shaving if no one can see your legs anyway?"

"Josh! I wouldn't do that to you!" Christine set both skirts down on the kitchen table. "What kind of manipulative jerk do you think I am?" Before he could answer, her attitude softened a bit. Of course the poor dear was nervous. She grinned at him. "I'll wear a short skirt, that's all I meant. Like I said, they'll be looking at me as much as you. Or more."

Josh's anger melted into laughter, and he put his arms around her. "Okay, I'm sorry. It's just..."

"I know, you're nervous. There's no need to be. It's only clothes, Josh. And don't we both always say how much we hate rigid gender roles! Here's a chance for us both to give them the finger in the sweetest way." Pulling back to look him in the eye, she added, "You do want to do it, don't you? I know I've kind of pushed you into it, it's just that I've always had a thing for men in skirts and how often do you get to see that, even here? Imagine if you only saw a woman in one a couple of times a year."

Josh nodded. "Blue," he said.

"Yeah, you would be blue!" Christine said. "So, please? For me?"

"No, I mean the blue skirt," Josh said. "I don't expect to look half as cute in it as you do, but..."

He never got to finish his sentence, because Christine stuck her tongue down his throat in celebration.

It seemed too good to be true: fifteen years at least since that class trip to Washington, DC, where she'd seen a man in a kilt for the first time and it had turned her insides to a raging inferno of desire, Christine had at long last succeeded where she had failed with all her other boyfriends. If she had to tell a little white lie to do it, well, Josh could take a joke. When they got to the festival and saw no other men in skirts, she'd just say it was an April Fool's joke. He'd get over it, especially as long as she held up her end of the bargain and didn't shave her legs. And she was more than willing to do that.

Not wanting to push her luck, Christine was careful never to mention it over the ensuing two weeks. But she hung the blue skirt prominently on Josh's side of the closet, and took every opportunity to flaunt her legs in his presence as they grew wild and furry. It was all the reminder she needed to offer Josh that they had a deal, for Christine knew that while her Josh was a little more conservative and a lot less free-spirited than she was, he was also a man of his word.

Not to mention a sucker for the taboo allure of hairy legs, as she had discovered last winter. Although Christine had been a lackadaisical shaver at best ever since college, she had never found the natural look sexy or unsexy. It just something that was, like the shape of her nose or the size of her earlobes. She enjoyed the way it always seemed to make squares recoil and she had learned to ignore the occasional nasty comment from a strange man, and certainly it served as a pleasant reminder of just how far she'd come from her miserable adolescence in her stuffy East Coast suburb. But going natural had never turned her on particularly.

It had, though, always turned off the guys she had dated before Josh. Christine never was sure why it had ever come as a surprise to any of them given her hippie-esque style and attitude, but it always had proven both unexpected and unwelcome. Since she didn't particularly object to shaving her legs anyway, she had therefore been diligent about doing so for the early months of her relationship with Josh.

Until his trip back East to visit his family last Christmas. Since he'd been between jobs, he had accepted his mother's entreaty to spend a month there. Christine having no such desire to spend even one day with her parents, she had stayed put and taken on all the overtime she could get at the library. With the weather too cold to even think about wearing a skirt most of the time, she had seen no point in shaving. And so it was that she had been lounging about in her flannel nightgown late in the evening, her legs propped up on the coffee table and fully on display and nearly as hairy as a man's, when Josh had arrived home two weeks early. Engrossed in her book and with the radio drowning out the sound of the door opening, she'd had no time to even realize she'd been literally caught with her pants off, much less get nervous about what Josh would think, before she heard him calling from the hallway. "Christine?"

Overjoyed at his return, she had forgotten all about her appearance when she'd jumped up to greet him. "What are you doing here?"

"Mom was driving me crazy. I should've listened to you. I got an early flight back, and she had no complaints about it either!"

"God, I believe that. You couldn't have paid me to spend one day with my mom at this point. So good to see you!"

Only when she'd seen that unmistakable shy grin of his had she realized what was coming, or that there was no time to do anything about it. She'd had just enough time to register that look before he'd followed it up with the invitation. "Are you up for a more formal reunion, dear?"

Then the panic had taken over. "I...Josh, you don't want that just now!"

"You know I don't mind that, we'll just use a condom! And you always say sex helps with cramps, right?"

"It's not my period. It's...worse than that."

"How on earth is that possible? Are you sick?"

"Well, no..."

"Pregnant?!"

"No! But..."

"But what? This isn't like you at all, Christine."

She'd given up. "I wasn't expecting you home for two more weeks, Josh, so...God, this is embarrassing!"

"You have nothing to be embarrassed about with me, you know that. What's wrong?"

"This is." She had pulled up her nightgown to reveal the undergrowth.

Too embarrassed to even make eye contact with him, she had missed out on seeing his eyes pop out of his head; but subsequently he had assured her that they had. For the moment, she had to settle for his delighted "Wow!"

"What?! Come on, Josh, I didn't know you were coming!"

"No! It's beautiful!"

"It is?"

"So...liberated?" He'd groped for the right word. "Open minded? Individual?"

"You like it?"

"I love it! I have hairy legs too, after all, so it's one more thing we have in common, and it looks so...virile! That's the word."

Christine's angst had melted into relief and joy by then. "Christ, I'm lucky to have you, Josh! Come to bed!"

"I'm lucky to have you, too," he'd said. And he'd shown her how he'd meant it, caressing her legs so the hair had tickled her pleasantly, commenting at length on how sexy it was the way the hair had grown thicker as it segued from her legs to her pussy, kissing her all over them and teasing the hair with his tongue, and all of it leading to the most intense lovemaking they had enjoyed to date. Christine had, for the first time ever since losing her virginity, lost count of the number of orgasms she had enjoyed that night.

She had more than willingly continued to let her razor grow dusty on the bathroom shelf for a few more weeks. Once the weather started warming up again, she had gone back to shaving, and Josh was man enough not to complain about that decision, perhaps because she had promised to grow it out again next time it got cold.

"Well then," he'd said with a grin, "I'd better start looking for work in Alaska."

"You know what they think of hippies up there?" she'd reminded him. "If I didn't shave, I'd have to wear pants all the time."

"Which means at least you'd have to stop pressuring me to wear a skirt," he'd retorted.

"Oh no I wouldn't!" And he hadn't suggested any such thing again.

He also hadn't pressured her to stop shaving again. And so she had returned the favor with regards to her own fetish...until a few weeks ago when signs for the spring festival had started appearing. That had led to a gentle suggestion here and there, accompanied by a reminder that they would see far more bizarre things. "It's like the sixties come to life on steroids," she had explained early on, upon learning he'd never been there in his two years in the city. "The whole idea is to let your freak flag fly."

"But I don't have a freak flag," he'd rejoined. "You do."

"And I'm only asking you to indulge me on it for one day! In the safest place in the city to do it. No one is going to give you a hard time."

"It's not what anyone will see," he'd insisted. "It's what I'll feel, what I'll be aware of. Skirts are for women, end of story."

"Josh, don't you know how recently women weren't allowed not to wear skirts?" she had reminded him, knowing full well that he did know: his usual lack of respect for rigid gender norms was one of the first things she had fallen in love with about him. "It was just as taboo for us to wear pants, and there's no reason why men can't get that equality now like we did then, if you want to."

"We don't want to, or at least I don't," Josh had said with some finality.

But Christine had never been one to give up easily on anything, especially not her oldest and most cherished fantasy. And as each day brought the festival closer, the sight of Josh's side of the closet brought more joy and titillation. It got to the point where she always let him shower first because she knew she'd want to spend more time in there, and not to wash herself. If Josh had figured that out, he never commented about it. But he also didn't try to back out of the deal, and so Christine kept her mouth shut as well.

She did not, however, keep her mouth shut among her colleagues at the library. She'd just had to tell someone, after all.

"Are you sure he's just going to laugh it off?" asked Janice, the circulation manager. "If my husband tricked me into being the only one to do something embarrassing like that, he'd be very sorry."

"Well, Josh is easygoing for the most part," Christine reasoned. "And no one is going to give him a hard time at the festival, you know that. There'll be plenty of people dressed more bizarrely than he'll be. And really, I think he'll fall in love with the feeling of a skirt brushing against his legs as he walks...don't you love that? Don't you feel sorry for men never getting to feel it?"

"Yes and yes, but didn't you say you've asked him this again and again before and he's always said no?"

"Well...yes," Christine admitted. "But he'll understand."

"I sure hope for your sake that he will." Janice was clearly not convinced.

When she got home on the Friday before the festival, Christine gave serious thought to giving Josh a sneak preview of the next day. But tomorrow would be all the more fun if the sight were brand new to him, she concluded, and so she kept her jeans on. He did, of course see her legs in full blossom when she undressed for bed that night. "Lovely view, dear," he said from the bed as he watched her.

"And you get to enjoy it for the next three weeks," she reminded him with a grin, letting the "if" hang in the air as she remembered he had never actually said anything to the effect that he wanted out of the deal.

"Ever so worth it," he said.

"So you're still willing?" Christine couldn't hide her surprise completely.

"Of course," he said. "I've been thinking about what you've said all along, about how it's one more way to say screw the patriarchy, and hey, strength in numbers."

Christine felt a twinge of foreboding as she recalled what Janice had said, but it was too late to back out now. "Wonderful answer, dear," she said. Having gotten all her clothes off by then, she headed for the dresser to retrieve her pajamas. But on second thought, decided to reward him in advance for being such a good sport and climbed into bed with nothing on at all.

When the morning light came streaming in through their thin curtains, Christine awoke to find Josh already awake and looking amused as he turned his head away. "Oh, good morning," he said. "I didn't know you were awake."

"And that's why you were staring at me?" she needled him. She lifted her arms to stretch and remembered that her armpits, like the rest of her body, hadn't seen a razor in two weeks. Did that turn him on as well?

Evidently it did. "Nice view there," he quipped.

"I don't see you shaving yours regularly either," she said.

"Yeah, I know. Male privilege. It sucks. Speaking of which, when are we going to change clothes for the festival?"

"We aren't," Christine declared. "We're going to shower now, and then we're going to put on our festival clothes."

"But we won't be leaving for hours yet!" Josh protested. "You know it doesn't really get rolling until at least lunchtime."

"You could use that time to get used to being in a skirt," she told him.

"And you could use it to enjoy the sight," Josh said.

Christine pulled back the covers to reveal Josh's hard cock. "I'd say you've been enjoying the sight of me, haven't you?"

Josh could not deny that, and it was off to the shower with no more complaints.

Christine was tempted to protest when they got back from the shower and Josh went to the dresser to get a pair of boxers. But there was no sense in pushing her luck, and she wasn't up to going commando either. She watched as he retrieved the hanger from the closet and held it at arm's length, as if he feared the skirt might bite.

She couldn't help laughing. "Josh, I've been wearing them all my life and the world has never once come to a screeching halt when I've gone outside in one."

"That's different and you know it," he said, unclipping it from the hanger.

"How is it different? Who says what's between our legs makes any difference in what we can wear any more than what we can think or say or do for a living? Isn't that what we always say?"

"I guess it works better in the abstract," Josh said. "But I said I'd wear it."

"That's the spirit!" Christine was rather unimpressed with his attitude, but at least he was trying. She watched in silent delight as he pulled the skirt over his head, and forced herself not to laugh when he pushed it all the way down around his hips like a pair of jeans. "Here, I don't fault you for not knowing this, but you wear a skirt further up, around your belly, like this." She pulled it up into place. It only reached halfway down his calves whereas it was ankle length on her, but she loved the way it framed his shapely legs. "Now, look in the mirror," she prodded, turning him to face it. "Lovely, isn't it?"

She braced herself for another whiny comment. But Josh regarded himself in the mirror and finally allowed a smile. "Not bad," he admitted. "I can't say it looks right, but..."

"That's because society says so," Christine insisted. "What does society know about Josh and Christine? Nothing!" She had her underwear on by then, and retrieved her own new purchase -- a short, flared floral print skirt whose vintage she could only guess at -- from the closet. It reached only halfway down her unshaven thighs. "Now, do you really think people are going to be staring only at you?" she asked, admiring her unorthodox beauty in the mirror.