The Contest Beginnings

by Sarah Bayen

  

The Proposal

  

As I walked down the street from the station I wondered how I had got myself into this. Here I was, on a Saturday morning, heading off to the house of a girl I had fancied for ages, Anita. I should have been happy, and to a certain extent I was. But there was a catch; the reason I was going to her house wasn't for the moments of exquisite passion that I had fantasised about for two or three years. It was for something altogether more frightening. I had agreed that Anita could dress me as a girl.

Dressing as a girl was not something I had ever really thought about. I had seen drag artists on TV, and I suppose more than once, some girl or other had brought it up in conversation. But now it was actually going to happen, and I had allowed it, simply to be close to Anita for a while. As I walked my mind went back to the fateful moment.

"Steve !" she had said, with obvious glee on her face and in her voice. She was one of the few people who could have caught my attention simply by saying my name. "We need you to do us a favour."

I looked at her smiling face, framed by her blonde hair and the pleading look in her blue eyes pierced at me. I was fifteen and infatuated. To do Anita a favour, I would have walked naked across the desert or climbed a mountain with concrete shoes.

"What is it?" I asked, mustering what nonchalance I could.

"We want you to dress up as a girl!" That was not Anita's voice. I reluctantly turned my eyes from her to her friend Nikki. She was taller, and chubbier than Anita, and had thick curly dark hair.

"What?" I said, not sure that I had heard the request correctly.

"We want you to dress up as a girl!" Anita reiterated. "There's going to be a Womanless Beauty Contest at school, as part of the summer festival, and we want you to enter!"

I was rendered temporarily speechless. I had been vaguely aware that there was going to be a summer festival, but for me, it was just a good excuse to get out of lessons for a couple of days. I was not one of those with a particular sense of school pride or spirit, and certainly hadn't considered entering anything.

"A Womanless Beauty Contest?" I spluttered, stalling for time. "What's that?"

"It's like Miss World," Anita offered with considerable enthusiasm for the subject.

"Yes," Nikki agreed. "Except that it's boys that go in for it, not girls"

"Yes, in drag!" Anita explained, still pinning me down with her electric blue eyes.

I stared from one to the other, with a thousand thoughts spinning through my head. Normally I couldn't have refused a request from Anita, but this was altogether different. If I said yes, I would be ribbed by my mates for weeks about wearing a skirt, or being a poof. Peer group status matters a lot at fifteen, and it was an outrageous request.

But if I said no? What would Anita's response be? Would I lose for ever the chance to go out with her, even though that chance seemed pretty remote at the best of times. My mind churned on. Maybe there was a chance that if I did this, she would actually look more favourably on me. Was that possible? If I let her do this, which judging from the excited and enthusiastic look on her face, would give her great pleasure, would that lead to me asking her out, and her actually saying yes?

My mind was torn from its conflict by Anita pressing the point. "So what do you say?" she asked, still paralysing me with her gaze. "Will you do it?"

I was still at a loss for the best response. "I don't know." I muttered. "What does it involve?"

Nikki decided to answer this one. "Nothing much. There's a sort of qualifying round in the morning, and if you get through that, then there's a sort of parade in the afternoon where they do the final judging."

"Well I can't see me getting through to that." I decided to offer.

"Oh you will!" Anita interjected with obvious enthusiasm. "You could make quite a good looking girl if you made the effort."

I grimaced, while Nikki nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

"So will you do it?" Anita continued. "We need to know now, because if you won't, we've still got time to ask someone else."

"Yeah," observed Nikki. "Lots of other boys are going in for it, so you won't be alone."

"Who?" I asked, my peer group status radar suddenly switched on. If the other contestants were a load of nerds or weeds, then I was pretty sure I didn't want to be associated with this.

"John Ryder for one!" Nikki offered. John was neither a nerd nor a weed. He was part of the rugby team. "Sue Freeman's going to dress him up, she told us this morning."

"So are you going to do it then?" Anita pressed the point. "We decided to ask you first because we thought you'd be up for it."

"Yeah," agreed Nikki.

"And we thought you'd be good at it too. You're not too tall, and you're quite good looking."

That made me jolt. Anita thought I was quite good looking. The part of my brain that was seeing this as an opportunity to get closer to Anita began to assert itself. She obviously saw something in my face, and decided to press her advantage further.

"We'd be ever so grateful if you did. Wouldn't we Nikki?"

"Yes."

Both of the girls were smiling now, and staring at me intently, waiting for my answer. I briefly glanced at Nikki, and then returned my stare to Anita; the lovely Anita.

"Well," I began." I suppose I could."

"You will!" Anita squealed with delight. "Oh Steve that's wonderful!" She moved over and hugged me gently for a second, while I stiffened.

"But I don't want to look an idiot," I added by way of caveat.

"What do you mean?" asked Nikki.

"Well, I don't want to wear anything too outrageous."

"We may not have much choice about what you wear." Nikki explained. "There's a whole list of rules. I'm going to pick it up from the school office on the way home."

"Well what we thought," Anita said conspiratorially, "is that we ought to have some sort of dress rehearsal before the event."

"Yeah," enthused Nikki.

" A dress rehearsal?" I asked.

"Yes. You know, so we can sort out what you're going to wear. What suits you, and what make up you can have." Anita explained. I thought about this. It made sense. If I was going to dress up as a girl, I could see that there needed to be some practice involved.

"That way we can really see what suits you and make sure you win!" Anita added.

"Win? I can't see me winning." I mumbled. I actually could see me winning, however, and the trouble it would get me in with my mates. Me, a beauty queen! No, that would never do.

"Of course you can win!" Anita continued, oblivious to my internal thoughts. "Anyway, we want you to do as well as possible."

"Yes," added Nikki. "We'll be gutted if you don't get through to the final."

"Yeah" agreed Anita.

I shrugged. "Well I'll do what I can, but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

"But you're no sow's ear!" Anita insisted. "You're actually quite good looking. Even as a bloke." For a second I was in heaven as Anita called me good looking again, but I frowned at the 'even as a bloke'. She saw this in my face. "I don't mean it like that Steve. It's supposed to be a compliment."

"Yeah," Nikki agreed, although I cared a good deal less for her opinion on this.

"So are you free on Saturday?" Anita asked.

"Saturday? I suppose so." I replied.

"Oh goody!" she exclaimed. "Then that's when we'll do the dress rehearsal. You get around to my house for ten. Then we'll have lots of time to sort you out all you need."

"Yeah," agreed Nikki, laughing. "You leave it to me and Anita to sort things out, and everything will be fine."

It was Thursday, so in some ways Saturday morning still seemed some way off. I consoled myself with the thought that I still had plenty of time to pull out of this, if it wasn't going the way I wanted.

"Do I have to bring anything?" I asked.

Anita giggled. "Not unless you've got your own skirts and stuff that you want to wear for us." She and Nikki burst into laughter at this.

"I meant records, or drink or anything." I stumbled, trying to rescue myself.

The laughter subsided. "No, you're all right." Anita responded. "Leave everything to us."

And with that we had parted. And that was nearly two days ago. Now I was walking along the streets of Anita's town, moving inexorably towards her house. The train timetable hadn't helped. They all got in at twenty past the hour, which meant I could either turn up ridiculously early, or be twenty minutes late. In the end I had opted for being early, but I was taking a bit of a circuitous route to Anita's house so I didn't look too keen. Too keen to be dressed up as a girl that is, I would have been happy for Anita to think I was too keen for anything else.

Eventually I came to her road, and walked painfully slowly along it until I got to her house, number 47. Sighing to myself, I opened the gate and walked up the short gravel path to the green front door. This was it, the gates of heaven and hell. Taking my breath again, I rang the door bell, which sounded loud and clear behind the frosted glass.

For a few moments nothing happened. I was almost hoping that I had got the day wrong, or the house number. I looked at my watch. It was twenty five to ten. Just as I was about to ring again, a figure distorted by the glass began to move towards the door. This was it, the day was about to begin.

  

  

  

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