Transformation Story: Permanent Parking Place Part 1

This was a story that I had begun, set in a UK city after seeing a couple of women interacting in this way, there. However, I was then contacted by a reader and I agreed to alter it so that it reflected her life in the USA to a greater extent.

While not a sequel to these other stories, this one exists in the same ‘universe’ of avatars and altering reality which features in 'Hahsni', 'The Replacement Lover', 'The New Version' and, to some extent, 'More than an Ally' and 'That Personal Experience'.

Permanent Parking Place

Part 1

Danielle turned away from her computer. It was another job rejection. While she had enough money to cover rent, utility bills and the rest, even some luxuries, for a few months to come, Danielle was eager to get a new job. The downsizing at Waller & Black, she guessed now, should not have been a surprise and maybe it had not been for some of her colleagues. However, it had been her first job as a lawyer after completing her course and maybe, as a result, she had expected it to be her workplace for years to come.

Wandering over to the window, Danielle gazed idly at her weak reflection. Her hair reached to her shoulders in waves. It was a dark brown shade but she tended to have blonde highlights. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to cheekbones which gave it definition when she smiled. Her nose was strong and straight pointing down to a gently rounded chin. Her eyes were a dark brown which complimented her lightly tanned complexion. It was the angling of her brows and her sensuous, full lips that gave her what she had sometimes felt was a mischievous appearance. She wished now, though, that there was a bit more mischief in her life.

Danielle stared down at the street at the flow of young people she could see. Looking at her phone she saw it was approaching ten o’clock and she realized they must be heading in for lectures. No-one seemed to start before ten these days. While she knew, rationally, that these students were of the same generation as her; some might even be her age, as a “worker” she looked on them as being different; perhaps as even naïve and feckless. 

There was that short woman with the long chestnut hair she had seen before, clad in a purple puffer jacket and what looked like black leather leggings. The way they seemed to ripple like a pool of oil around her bum and thighs, Danielle knew now, was becoming something that almost entranced her. In the States there were still those who balked against women who wore them like pants, but Danielle saw a lot of young women who she felt looked great in them.

As she watched the young student until she had gone from sight, Danielle wondered if she should admit she was being attracted by a woman. Had she missed the same-sex strand in her sexuality? Was it simply bi-curiosity; some kind of frisson to pass the dull days of job applications? As she thought about it more, though, Danielle realized it was less that she was attracted by the woman as by what she represented. Perhaps it was no surprise that she felt nostalgia for her student days. Maybe she had not been wealthy, but there had been a greater freedom than she had now. Perhaps too, even in these nervous times, there had more chance of sex and even exploring what it meant to be sexy; sexual.

As she finally understood that she did not want to be with that woman she watched, but simply to be that woman, Danielle felt a kind of release. With that thought came a kind of determination. Though she had more overheads, she had decent savings. She was not yet looking at the poor house. She was young enough to be among those students without standing out. As it was, Danielle knew she could have taken a postgraduate course, anyway. Pulling on her rather plain coat, she decided to walk among the daily flow of students down her street. Perhaps it was some kind of pretense, but it was doing no-one any harm and, if it gave her even a little boost, then it would be doing her some benefit. Naughtily she considered simply going out and buying a pair of leggings like those woman’s and seeing just how good she looked in them.

Stepping clear of her apartment block, however, Danielle was faced with something which riled her about the students. A woman who she was sure was one of them, had parked in one of the rare slots in front of this place. They were meant to be for residents but no-one seemed to police that. It meant that Danielle was too often compelled to park some streets away from where she actually had a permit and it seemed, particularly when it was pouring with rain. Quickly Danielle recognized this woman as a repeat offender. She would have confronted her before, but typically by the time Danielle got down to the sidewalk, she would already be off well down the road. No matter how irate she might be, Danielle knew that anyone running down the street howling about parking breaches was hardly modeling a good look.

The woman was around Danielle’s height and had long, sleek auburn hair falling straight behind her left shoulder. She was dressed stylishly in a chocolate shearling jacket over a plain black scoop top. Her skinny black jeans were second-skin tight. Her slip-on Oxfords were a patent shade to match her jacket. If asked Danielle would have guessed she was Latin American or Middle Eastern. The way she worked her mascara suggest to Danielle the latter; making rich dark brown eyes appear entrancing. Her lips were painted a medium rose and they looked to smile easily, but it was a smile that was somehow distant; serious rather than lightly offered. The woman walked around the car to where Danielle stood and clearly anticipated some kind of encounter. As she stepped closer, Danielle knew, seeing her at this proximity, she would have to admit this student’s beauty.

‘Morning …’ Danielle began uncertainly. ‘You know these places are for residents.’

The woman grinned. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said as if that resolved the matter.

‘Well …’

Danielle tried to muster all the indignation she felt when she traipsed back to her apartment with bags of shopping in the rain. Challenging the woman, down here, however, she found it hard.

‘Let me remind you something: you know nothing about my life and you never will until you have walked a mile; one hundred miles, in my shoes. Perhaps not even then.’

‘Oh …’ Danielle was immediately put on the back foot, feeling quickly that it was she who had done wrong.

‘Okay …’

‘I’m Neda,’ the woman said softly as if they had started on good terms.

‘Well, Neda I …’

‘And you are?’

‘I’m Danielle, Danielle Gregorio,’ she responded. However, she then emphasized, ‘I live here: up there.’

Danielle pointed to the window of her small apartment.

‘Nice apartments; easy to go out around here.’

‘Yes if … if students didn’t park in our places.’

‘Is it that much of an issue? Isn’t this more about you not liking a woman like me, parking here?’

‘No, no, of course not. I would say this if you were … a white man; a middle-aged white man who had driven into town. We get them too.’

‘Okay, but then you might understand his life better than mine.’

Danielle realized then that perhaps this was about more than the car parking. She saw in that second that Neda might have had all her own sleights as a foreigner in the USA. Then she realized that as she had sought a channel to pour out all her irritations with getting through the day onto Neda, the student might see such an opportunity in return.

‘Okay, okay. I accept that, but surely you can see my side too?’

Neda tipped her head and smiled but it quickly faded. ‘Maybe. However, as I say, I think you have got a long way to walk to really understand. Perhaps not exactly in my shoes, but in those of women like me.’

Danielle held back from saying she liked Neda’s shoes and wondered if her bi-curiosity had now flipped to this attractive though challenging woman.

‘But is that even possible?’

‘For some of us; some with a gift … we can arrange it.’

Now Danielle wondered what the woman was getting at. She began to wonder if she was a little crazy or was just trying to wind her up in some way.

‘Sounds good. Alright, come here tomorrow …’

‘I have no sessions tomorrow; Wednesday, we will make it Wednesday.’

‘Okay, Wednesday. Come here with this “gift”; this “arrangement” and I will walk your mile; your hundred miles. Does that sound a deal?’

Neda’s gaze looked intense for a moment and Danielle felt unsettlingly that she was being locked into this deal, even though she was uncertain if it meant anything more than some kind of political or cultural statement. Neda stretched out her hand; silver bangles clanging as she did. Danielle got the message and reciprocated, shaking it. She was a little surprised when Neda raised Danielle’s to her lips and places a kiss on the back. Danielle found the kiss made her tingle.

‘I’ll see you on Wednesday. But be careful, this might be more of a pleasure than a challenge.’ Neda said, smiling again and then quickly stepped away.

It took some moments for Danielle to realize that the woman had gone. She found her irritation about the parking had evaporated and instead she felt a little excitement and a real determination to engage with whatever challenge Neda produced on Wednesday.

****

The following day had been filled with applying for jobs and searching for more vacancies. At times Danielle remembered her conversation with Neda; at others it felt as if it had been something she had dreamt of or perhaps simply imagined having. Now it was Wednesday morning and as she heard the sound of a car horn giving a short signal from down in the street, the memories flooded back into Danielle’s mind. Somehow, she knew it would be Neda hooting the horn. It suggested that the student had decided to up the stakes in terms of this confrontation. Danielle tried to hope that she could win through and eliminate the problem, at least with this driver. However, as she hurried down the stairs to the street, she found, in fact, that she was fascinated to see what the woman would do next. Ideas of them sitting down and resolving this peaceably; even, in time becoming friends, surprisingly followed into Danielle’s mind.

Neda was standing close to her car when Danielle arrived, looking as if she had come to pick her up. Today she had on a long dove grey top hanging down from beneath an olive-green leather jacket. Her soft leggings were a darker shade but soon fed into long dark green leather boots. Danielle tried to be critical about how much money students had these days. However, she could not pretend that she was unaware of the high fees they paid, especially if coming from abroad.

‘I wondered if you would hide away,’ Neda said, but not harshly.

‘You don’t know me well enough, then. Anyway …’

‘Anyway, what?’

Danielle shrugged. ‘I am curious to know what all of this is about; what “magic” you can do.’

‘I think it will blow your mind. Meet Diambal.’

A young black woman with flawless skin stepped from the passenger side of the car. She was Danielle’s height and there was something about her features that surprisingly seemed familiar. However, Danielle doubted she could come close in beauty to this woman. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to cheekbones which gave her face definition as she smiled. Her nose was strong and straight pointing down to a gently rounded chin. Her eyes were a dark brown; her brows were angled and her lips looked wonderfully smooth; sensuous even. Diambal’s dark brown eyes were incredibly alive. Her hair was in a mass of long, broad pale violet twist braids hanging far down her back. The woman looked at Danielle and she felt as if the newcomer’s gaze was penetrating deep into her mind.

Embarrassed, Danielle looked down; then to the side. That angle still allowed her to see that this woman was dressed no less trendily than Neda. She had on the popular biker-style leather jacket and, Danielle noticed with a little envy, just the kind of leather leggings she had fantasized about trying. She wore over-the-knee black suede boots. The black of her outfit was broken up by a tight-fitting top in purple with geometric designs and a loose scarf of slightly lighter shade.

‘So … this walking in someone else’s shoes or is it boots?’

Neda nodded to that. ‘You understand, yes. When I said meet Diambal, maybe I should have properly said be Diambal.’

Danielle imagined she should be irritated at more of these word games and she looked to the black woman for some kind of confirmation; some clarity. However, as she did, Danielle felt something was different. Madly, the woman seemed somehow flatten, her features become less defined.

‘Are you alright?’ Danielle asked, stepping a little closer to this Diambal.

As she did, however, she realized that, now, somehow, she could see Neda’s car growing clearer by the moment. It was as if Diambal was becoming transparent; fading away like a ghost. Then Danielle realized she felt peculiar too. She had been dressed in the tee-shirt and joggers that had become her go-to outfit since her job ended. Coming down to the street, she had slipped on a pair of sneakers. Now, however, she felt as if she was in very different clothes. Glancing down she saw she wore leather leggings and suede boots. She looked up then, worrying that she was hallucinating. Seeing that Diambal was no longer there, did nothing to reduce her dismay.

The glint of light of shiny leather drew Danielle’s attention as it was reflected in the window of Neda’s car. As she stepped towards it, however, Danielle could not believe that it was not simply Diambal’s jacket but Diambal herself who was reflected. There were those moments of her lifting her hand and moving her head to show her the reflection was her; confirmed then by looking at her own smooth very dark brown skin.

‘What … what have you done?’

Danielle asked but, somehow, she knew this was the “walking in another’s boots” that Neda had promised. The fact that her question, she realized then, had come out in Senegalese French, just hammered home that recognition. Danielle glared at Neda expecting some kind of answer. However, she realized she could not be angry with the woman; with her lover. Neda was too beautiful, too fascinating, too clever, too sexy to really even get annoyed with.

Without thinking, Danielle closed on Neda and gently touched her cheek then dived in for a kiss. As she broke from her, Danielle realized how much she loved the very touch and scent of this woman. Then, sharply, she reminded herself, that this was not her; she was not Diambal from Dakar.

‘So, this is … this is showing me what it is really like? I am hardly poor and struggling, even as a student.’ Danielle forced herself to speak in English, even if it came out in a Francophone accent.

‘No … it has to work; it has to make sense in this world, even if I can conjure up a new life. Your family would have to be rich for you to be here in New York.’

Danielle was still finding it hard to believe that this woman could work magic to bring about this transformation, but having taken that step, it was relatively easy to accept that there were rules the sorceress had to work under. As she thought through Neda’s words, Danielle found herself thinking back to her parents or rather, Diambal’s: the Gadjigos; her brothers and sisters and their house in the suburbs of Dakar. It all came to her as if it had been her life. Still, she tried to assert that her parents were the Gregorios and then understood what else Neda had done here.

‘But still, a lesbian; your lover.’

‘Yes, why not? I always wanted a black partner and anyway this is all meant to challenge you. Being a black, foreign lesbian in New York, that is still going to bring you some challenges, isn’t it, even these days?’

‘What about the real Diambal Gadjigo? Won’t she get upset that I am riding around in her body?’

‘There was no Diambal Gadjigo; the Gadjigos have never had a daughter named that until today.’

‘You have the power to make a new person, fully grown and with a history?’

The more she thought about it, the more Danielle could indeed access the memories of that woman’s history as if it was her own. Quickly she guessed that, incredible as it might seem, it was answering the question strongly with a “yes”.

‘You have made me into … into your dream lover?’ Danielle asked then with some indignation.

Neda smiled and shrugged in that way Danielle now thought she had long found cute.

‘Then sue me. Anyway, surely it is better to feel that you are with the woman you find so sexy, you can’t keep your hands off her, than one pine for one you would hate?’

As she heard Neda’s response in her own version of French, Danielle realized it was what they spoke between them. Neda was from the second generation of her family to have been born in exile in Paris.

‘So, you have reshaped me into being this … admittedly hot, sassy black woman from your dreams …’

‘And I am pleased it has worked out well. I checked with my grandmother but I was worried that I would mess it up. You are my first.’

‘And I trust your last … your everything,’ Danielle added inadvertently. ‘But do I get no say in this?’

‘You did. I can’t impose the changes that come from an avatar on anyone who does not want them. But, remember, you agreed. Or are you forgetting so quickly being Danielle Gregorio and what you said?’

Danielle did recall she had agreed, though obviously not envisaging anything of this kind happening. She then began to worry about Neda’s had said next. Danielle fought to overcome the simple assumption that her Diambal elements was making that her believe anything that Neda did would be well intentioned; from love.

‘So will I forget I was ever Danielle Gregorio and be stuck as Diambal Gadjigo?’ she demanded.

‘No, it is not permanent. This was only meant to be a lesson.’

‘But how long does the lesson last? An hour? To sunset? Until I have walked a mile – no, one hundred miles, in these boots?’

‘Ma fée,’ Neda used an affectionate term they shared. ‘I do not know. Are you angry with me? Do you forgive me?’

Neda had closed now and was speaking softly. While Danielle had the distant sense that these ideas; these sentiments. had been planted in her head, she realized she could not resist them. The history of “her” life in her mind encompassed days of intimacy with this woman that she found she could not deny.

‘No, ma louloute, I cannot,’ Danielle responded softly.

The couple kissed again. Deep inside her, Danielle knew all of this was strange; was wrong, but now she found such views were being buried under so many layers of Diambal that the personality she had just some minutes earlier, now stood right at the back of the queue in controlling what was going on. The fact that she currently had a sleek, Senegalese woman’s body that was easily aroused by Neda, made it harder still.

‘Come on or we’ll be late for that reading.’

Neda stretched out her hand and automatically Danielle took it. This was the twenty-first century after all and two women, who after all, might be wives, walking hand in hand, was nothing peculiar. Yet, it still seemed to assert something that Danielle struggled against enjoying.

It turned out Neda was not even going to a lecture or class but heading down to a bookshop for a poetry performance. Once there, Danielle soon actually found she was enjoying it. However, the pleasure she got from sitting next to Neda, their hands interlaced, however, pleasurable, she knew was something that had been put into her by this woman’s magic. She had been enthralled and yet, while there were parts of her that kept insisting it was wrong, every time she caught sight of her body, let alone when her long, full Senegalese twist braids, the sense that this was precisely right for Diambal; the woman she was now, kept on being reinforced.

By the end of the event, Danielle found herself snuggling against the woman she found it hard not to see as her girlfriend and then kissing her. Kissing a woman passionately was new to Danielle, though she did wonder if it was building on the perhaps awakening bi-curiosity she had found growing in her. If Neda had asked her out on a date when she was in her previous form, would she have given it a shot? Certainly, housed in this body that was clearly into women, and specifically found Neda a turn-on, there was no resistance.

As they walked from the store, Danielle battled with what she was thinking and worried that even though it looked as if they were partners, Neda would want something different.

‘Ma louloute ... I need …’

Neda gently pressed her fingers to Danielle’s full lips. ‘I know you do. I’ll give you what you need.’

Danielle reached forward and kissed Neda again, feeling pleased that this woman understood her. While her thoughts wanted to say that she had little idea beyond some things she had read online, how two women actually had sex, there was almost a constant retort that she knew very well and knew well too what Neda liked.

It was only when they were in the taxi, kissing and giving each other those touches that were a precursor to sex - and seemed to be highly entertaining to the cab driver - that Danielle wondered why they had not walked back to Neda’s car. Now she was settling into this body, she increasingly found it difficult to recall that it was magic that had made her this way; that she had not woken up this morning as a Senegalese student. Neda’s ability to get a taxi on time in New York and with a polite driver who knew his way, she began to reflect, perhaps should have reminded her that this woman had special abilities. That then was followed by pride; gratitude that she had connected with such a capable woman.

The taxi pulled up at one of those historic places that could have been put up, in Danielle’s eyes, any time throughout the first half of the twentieth century. She had the sense that she was in Williamsburg but maybe it was Greenpoint or Red Hook. She realized then that she could not remember what college Neda was at. It was probably one of the independent ones over on Manhattan which was why, if she lived over here, she commuted. Danielle tried to recall where she studied herself. Memories of the FIT campus on Manhattan; lectures on business were vague in Danielle’s mind now, but felt to be becoming well established.

Soon they were up into Neda’s loft apartment. It had a nice bohemian feel to it; all that Danielle realized she had imagined would be the case when she had arrived in the city from Dakar. There were tasteful pieces of art on display which looked to be a cut above what an even well-off student could afford. The latest high-tech equipment was dotted around the place. With voice commands, Neda had the blinds closing automatically, a bit of low lighting on and some unintrusive jazz playing. Danielle found herself smiling now she recalled how she felt sometimes that Neda was like a man in kitting out her “pad” but, saying that, she would be far from the first lesbian to use what she might from any gender stereotype, if it got her into a woman’s pants.

Now there was no time for doubts; for questioning. Danielle shucked off her leather jacket and closed on her lover. They started kissing tentatively again, at a slower pace than before. Danielle’s breasts had always been generous and easily excited. While the skin she was in had changed, their dimensions had been retained. Her excited nipples now were hard; pressing against her smooth bra and even visible in the tight top she wore. Slowly she brushed them back and forth over Neda’s; pleased that her lover’s body was reacting the same.

It was a slow strip in the middle of the living area of Neda’s apartment. Danielle removed Neda’s jacket and then her dove grey top. Neda took off her bra. Though Danielle saw to her own, she found it was one that unclipped at the front as if intentionally making it easier for a lover to do it. Naked to the waist now, she took in her sleek, dark-skinned body, her breasts with wide areolae and dark-berry nipples.

Neda lounged back on the long sofa and Danielle found herself going down to her knees to strip off Neda’s long boots, then to help tug down her green leggings. Then Neda deftly removed her panties and spread her thighs to show off her mound; her lower lips, kept smooth to present no obstacle to a woman who was going to be licking there. The sight triggered a string of thoughts; of urges in Danielle that she could not resist and without instruction she crawled between her lover’s thighs and then started long, slow licks up her opening lips. At first the tang; the scent surprised her but quickly her mind told her that she loved both and could not get enough of pressing her face into the soft folds of Neda.

Soon Neda’s hands were guiding Danielle, bringing her tongue and lips to where she wanted them most at each stage. So directed, Danielle had Neda’s clitoris at the tip of her tongue working it each time until her lover gave a moan or a grunt or gently pressed back her forehead. Danielle was increasingly distracted by the demands of her own sex, throbbing beneath her leather leggings. However, she recognized that denial of attending to her own lust would make that ultimate step, so much sweeter when it came. Then, even as Danielle slackened her licks, Neda became louder shouting exclamations in what Danielle knew was French and what she guessed was Farsi. Neda then bucked and convulsed on the sofa, now reduced to simple sounds of pleasure.

Danielle was trapped between Neda’s legs. Still, she adored the confinement of this female skin and soft flesh as her partner fired out all that had been provoked in her by Danielle’s attentions. Being able to deliver such an orgasm, perhaps a series of them, pleased Danielle. All her worries about her knowledge and her competence were dismissed and there was a spark of pride that she could bring off a woman as well as a lesbian at it across many years. With Neda subsiding, Danielle extricated herself. This scene had fired her up and she was hungry to receive what she had just given. Quickly unlacing and removing her long boots then easing down the shiny leggings she realized just how ready she was. Her panties were soon cast aside and her slick lips were ready for attention. As she sat back down on the sofa, however, she realized Neda had gone from it. There were sounds from the kitchen area as if the woman was preparing coffee; perhaps even food.

Despite being left alone, Danielle could not hold back any longer. Deftly, perhaps with even more accuracy than before, as if she had had a refresher course in her body, Danielle easily slipped a couple of fingers into her pussy. The other hand teased her unsatisfied nipples. However, it was as she envisaged Neda between her thighs; her tongue gently pressing; her lips trapping and softly sucking her clit, that Danielle truly began climbing to a climax. Her beautiful, ebony body was stretched out in front of her. She could feel the sweat and imagined her braids would need attention after this. However, the pleasure was simply too much to resist now. While she did not let herself moan aloud the way Neda had done – it seemed rude in someone else’s apartment – she too was soon making French and Wolof exclamations. This orgasm that came kept firing one burst then another which ran the length of her body until she was slumped back, breathing heavily, her head spinning.

****

Not sure of how much time had passed and whether she had slept or simply been dazed, Danielle was stirred by Neda’s words.

‘Go have a shower before you get into the bed. What have you been up to anyway?’ Neda asked but did not wait for an answer.

Danielle sat up and then rose, catching sight of Neda’s back in a russet silk kimono disappearing into what she now knew to be the bedroom. Danielle looked at her body, lithe and smooth and felt a real pride in it. Oddly there felt to be something new about it, but as she headed to the shower cubicle, she dismissed that as ridiculous. Surely this was the body she had been born with; had grown into; now pleasured to its delight.

The shower felt good and Danielle spent quite a while in there. As she came out clad in the most comfortable towels, she padded to the bedroom. Neda was naked, in the bed, fast asleep despite it being early afternoon in the bed. One hand tossed back looking as if conducting an orchestra in her dreams. Danielle quickly shed the towels and hung them over the chair. Then she crept in beside her lover and reached out to rest one hand on her beautiful body. Neda stirred a little but did not wake. Soon Danielle was asleep herself.

****

Danielle awoke. She was naked. Sitting up slowly, she found her mind was busy with so many flashbacks from the day before, or had it been earlier this day? Uncertain, Danielle clambered from bed and tracked down her phone. It told her that it was now late afternoon on the same day. Danielle padded to the kitchen trying to process what was in her head. There seemed to be so much about that woman in the street and an African woman. There were sharp pleasant sensations as she thought of sex with one or other of them. Pondering whether job hunting was taking its toll, Danielle wondered if, from exhaustion; from tension arguing with the Iranian woman, had led to something like a hallucination. Had she crawled into bed and the visions she had seen had then morphed into an incredibly vivid dream?

Looking down at her body, Danielle confirmed for sure now that it was the rich, lightly tanned pink shade, she remembered it as; her hair was highlighted from dark brown, had a slight wave and reached a little beyond her shoulders. Her breasts were as in the dream, though of course with a different skin tone; the areolae perhaps rather smaller. She found too that while the hair on her mound was clean and well-tended, it was not all smooth down there as it had been in her dream. With no lover at present to be pressing his – indeed her – face into it, there was not a need. That thought reminded Danielle of what she was coming to see now as being bi-curious. Perhaps, she considered, it was simply all about the frisson of the “other” – being a lesbian; being an African. These things were different from what she was now and she knew that such differences would often excite people sexually.

Unused to moving around her apartment naked, Danielle went back to her bedroom to look for some clothes. A tight-fitting top in purple with geometric designs was draped on the chair over her favorite pair of leather leggings. Searching for underwear, Danielle tried to recall when she had got these two items. She liked them both, she knew that, but just could not recall when or where she had bought them. Soon she was in them, liking the snug feel of both and the shine of the leggings.

Restless, Danielle wondered about going out for a meal; calling up a friend from her previous job and seeing if they were doing any better. Perhaps she just needed a walk to clear her head. By the front door, almost without thinking, she reached down her biker-style leather jacket and saw her long suede boots had been left there. Again, as with the top and leggings Danielle knew she liked these, but they felt new, even unusual. Maybe, Danielle thought then, rather than heading out, she needed a quiet night in.

Trekking back to the area she used as her home office, Danielle fired up her computer. At first, she found herself searching for information on hallucination and very lucid dreams. Then, almost without realizing it, she was on erotic fiction websites and reading stories about women turned into lesbians. Then she was sliding into ones that featured racial changes too. None fitted her dream precisely, but she found that she was getting hot and wet reading what was there.

Almost without noticing, Danielle had her hand under her leggings and was toying with herself. She retreated to the bedroom and was quickly naked again. As she re-ran the incidents from the stories in her head details of the dream came vividly back to her, Danielle quickly found she was unashamedly playing with her body, slipping fingers inside her, trapping her clit between two others but being unable to shake the sense of a woman lapping at her sex bringing about the climax that finally came.

****

Some days had passed since she had encountered the woman she thought of as Neda. However, Danielle found it difficult to accept what had followed had been true. She was sure she had had some kind of encounter with that woman and it had pushed up her blood pressure or something, then led her to hallucinate. She had tried to throw herself into applying for jobs and even thought about locating to another city. Yet, she still kept looking out for the Iranian woman parking down below. In part she wanted to know how much – if anything - had been real and how much had stemmed from her fetishes, as she now knew them to be, protesting at being neglected for so long and pushing themselves right into the front of her mind.

Idly Danielle watched those walking along her street that she felt had to be students. She was ambivalent when she admired some of the women, not certain if that was her genuine sexuality coming out or had been triggered by some kind of excitement in envisaging herself as very different from what she was. Then she saw her – Neda. The Iranian looked to be heading to a parked car, though Danielle could not see any she recognized from before. Quickly pulling on her ring-and-stirrup ankle boots and throwing on the leather jacket which was her “go-to” one now, Danielle was quickly down in the street. She rushed to where she saw Neda opening a car door despite being sure now that it was different to the one before.

‘Neda,’ Danielle called.

Neda looked up sharply. It took a few moments for her to smile. Today she was in distinctive leggings, a terracotta shade with bold lateral patterns. Her cropped jacket was over a black, buttoned shirt, and was patterned in wavy shades of brown. Neda’s boots were chocolate brown snakeskin with a block heel. Her long dark hair was simply pinned back but still cascaded to her shoulders. If she had had any doubts before, Danielle now had it confirmed that this woman was beautiful.

‘Hi,’ Neda said at last. ‘Wasn’t that lesson enough?’ she then added slowly.

‘It was … well, what was it? It wasn’t … it can’t have been real. But … but it felt so real.’

‘Of course, that is what I can do,’ Neda responded quite imperiously. ‘But it was a lesson and lessons run for a set time and then they finish.’

Danielle swallowed and realized now that she had to confess something she had not even really admitted to herself.

‘But I want … I need more. I need to do it again.’

Neda held up a hand as if to stop Danielle; to dismiss her request, her demand. However, then, abruptly, she appeared surprised. Danielle felt unsettled in herself and then looked down. A simple glance at her hand, let alone running it along her broad braids, showed Danielle that she was back in the body of Diambal Gadjigo; in fact, once more, for all that the world knew, she was Diambal Gadjigo. Returning to that form, immediately reignited her affection; her lust for Neda.

‘That … now, that was not me; not my doing this time,’ Neda said with an air of bewilderment. ‘I … I,’ she stuttered.

Distantly Danielle had the sense that something about the magic had got away from Neda. However, she had no complaints as she admired; enjoyed her Senegalese lesbian body. To Danielle it felt as if she had unlocked a door and stepped through into where she belonged. Diambal was unapologetic at being an African woman and one who loved to have sex with women; indeed, to have sex with the woman across the car from her.

‘Come on, ma louloute, you know we are good together. We are wasting time here when we could be having fun,’ Danielle said unselfconsciously.

Without any further thought, Danielle opened the passenger door and climbed in. Neda hesitated but soon joined her. Then they were driving away and Danielle soon recognized some of the route they had had in the taxi. It was not long before they were at Neda’s apartment. They had not spoken much in the car, but Danielle had rested her hand on her lover’s thigh and Neda had not removed it. Once in the apartment, whatever attitude Neda had chosen to adopt, for a reason Danielle could not understand, they were quickly kissing. Neda was then taking off her clothes as she headed to the bedroom. Danielle followed, finding that even more than she had anticipated; even more than she had fantasized, this return visit was exciting her.

While Neda stood doing something in the closet, uncovering her body, Danielle relished its rich dark-brown tone, its smooth skin, including over her mound. She stroked her long fingers across herself as if she had got back into a favorite outfit. However, as she slipped beneath the bed covers, her braids like a mane around her, Danielle knew it was much more than that: it was her. As Diambal, she could admit openly what she wanted; who she was. It seemed highly ironic that she could do that now that she was a clear outsider here, far more than when she had been a New York City insider.

‘You are going to enjoy this,’ Neda said.

Stepping from the closet, Danielle saw that around Neda’s waist was a kind of harness and from the front of it protruded a large black rubber phallus. Danielle remembered once some man telling her this was the only way that lesbians could have sex. She had been skeptical back then, but now, having read through so many stories and advice online, she had come to know it was far from the truth. While she would not have claimed herself as an expert on tribadism, she certainly knew what it was now and how best to do it for your and your lover’s pleasure. Still, some lesbians did this and Danielle thought it worth finding out if she enjoyed it herself. Neda certainly appeared to be deep into the idea.

Neda came and threw back the covers and with firm but gentle instructions got Danielle to remove most of the pillows beyond those she needed to support her head and neck in the middle of this large bed. Then she spread Danielle’s thighs and clambered on to the bed to kneel between them. Danielle knew she was already excited, but, as before, she held back from touching her opening lips and her clit, despite them being eager for attention. Then without any warning, Neda leaned forward. Danielle gasped, glad that she was already slick down there. Sex with men seemed very distant to Danielle, even alien to Diambal so the rubber cock felt very insistent inside her pussy, filling her up in an unexpected way. As she became more familiar with it, clasped her pussy as best she could to it, Danielle found it was stimulating enough.

Soon Neda was sliding in and out with regularity. Danielle was not sure, but she felt sure that part of the dildo attachment had to be stretching into Neda for her to get anything out of it. Then she was leaning forward and tweaking Danielle’s hard black-cherry nipples and she stopped analyzing anything they were doing. Instead, the rhythm of the sliding of the slippery rubber, which she was slowly coming to like in her, the clasping of her nipples and her lover’s face moving in close as she rode Danielle, were soon enough to start raising her to climax. It was very different from before, but it built slowly and steadily and again, whispering then calling profanities; encouragement in French then Wolof, pushed Danielle further. She deserved this pleasure and she was driving her lover on to deliver it.

Neda then seemed to tire, resting back on her heels and rolling clear of Danielle to slay beside her, panting heavily. However, Danielle knew she had done enough to build her to orgasm. She looked down at Neda, her tortilla-shade skin was almost golden and contrasted with the far deeper brown of Danielle. The view of the two female bodies lying side-by-side was enough to slam that mental trigger into Danielle. Perhaps having sex with a woman once was an experiment, but it now becoming what seemed like a weekly event, surely made her a lesbian. Once she might have shied from that; even denied it, but now, due to this magic which had made her so different, in so many ways, surely it had become a truth about her. That acceptance swept over Danielle like a wave and she issued a long moan of satisfaction as her back arched and her body quivered with all that she was; all that she was doing.

By the time Danielle had come back down and caught her breath, Neda was sat in the chair, a purple vibrator grasped in her hand.

‘Back with us, Diambal?’ she said laboring the name to make a point that Danielle guessed she had missed.

Danielle licked her lips wondering what they were going to do next. She shunted the pillow up the headboard and sat up with her back against it.

‘Now something for me,’ Neda said.

She switched on the vibrator and slowly maneuvered it between her pussy lips; aligning the “ears” to capture her clitoris.

‘Tell me who you are; what you are.’

‘Je suis Diambal,’ Danielle found herself responding naturally in French.

In the next few minutes Danielle was describing how she was a lesbian, that seemed the prime thing; that she was a fashion business student from Senegal who loved tight and shiny clothes and then that she had a lover called Neda and that they had great sex. It all came from Danielle as if it was genuine. Every time she tried to add in elements about being a lawyer or her previous style, she slipped instead on to something else like the fashion designers she admired or what she looked for in a woman.

For a moment Danielle thought that Neda had fallen asleep but then as she gave out a sigh and her body appeared to be shuddering, she realized the words had been contributing to the pleasure that the vibrator had been providing. She now changed tack.

‘You are Neda,’ Danielle said fluently in French she never would have managed before, ‘an amazing sorceress who can take a white lawyer only bi-curious and turn her into a black lesbian student.’

‘Oui, oui, oui!’ Neda almost howled in response to that.

Neda slid from the chair and was on her knees, the vibrator deep within her, her eyes fluttering; her body shaking as if it was too much to cope with. Danielle had a quick aftershock herself as again she was reminded of how precisely she had been rendered by Neda’s magic and how much she enjoyed being Diambal.

Soon it was all at an end. Neda picked herself off the floor. She cleaned and put away her vibrator and strap-on kit. She restored pillows and covers to the bed, moving Danielle where she needed her to be. Then she disappeared off to the shower. Danielle sat patiently her mind wondering if she was slipping deeper into Diambal and whether Neda had been wrong that first time to say that the Senegalese lesbian identity would not overtake the New York lawyer one. Quickly, though, Danielle realized that, in fact, she might quite like it to do so.

****

As before, Danielle woke to find she was neither Diambal nor at Neda’s apartment, but naked in her own bed as white, or at least tanned pink, as she had been before. She told herself that it was all fantasy; that how she saw herself was really only some kind of elaborate hypnosis trick, made even easier this last time by her recognizing how exciting it made her to step into that alter-ego. She did not know how long things might go on with Neda but felt certain that if their relationship did not grow, she had to reassess what she was looking for in a partner. She imagined it would be frustrating to be with an African woman and yet still be herself, but perhaps there were some women of Middle Eastern background she might connect with. Then she thought of the beautiful women from India, or of that heritage, that she had seen in the city down the years. While perceiving no need to rush out there into the lesbian “marketplace”, especially if she could have very close encounters with Neda regularly, Danielle was feeling her future, if not fully lesbian, would have to recognize its bi side.