Archive-name: Changes/promgirl.txt
Archive-author: Leigh De Santa Fe
Archive-title: Prom Girl


                           (Part One)
               Copyright 1990 by Leigh De Santa Fe

   It was probably the most nerve-wracking night of Stephen's
life. For two weeks he had suffered and agonized over the decision
to ask Francesca Esposito to the Mushroom Prom. She had occupied
his thoughts constantly from the moment he first laid his eyes on
her abundant black hair and her lovely olive skin. Of course she
was lovely but she was also an interesting compendium of seemingly
contradictory qualities. On the one hand she was extraordinarily
bright, a straight A student who maneuvered through difficult
courses without any trouble and on the other she was wanton and
wild, wearing the most tempting clothing and using make-up in a way
that belied her years. When he first saw her it was from the back
and her long curly hair fell down her back in big frothy waves
which then directed his eyes to her lovely buttocks, squeezed into
jeans that held her like a second skin. He followed her down the
hall while she chatted vivaciously with her friend, finally turning
and dazzling him with her lovely features femininely framed in soft
black curls. His heart melted. She was beautiful.
   Finally Stephen approached her after math class. She looked
at him incredulously for a brief moment and then she gave him a sly
smile and said, "Yes, I'll go but I know my mother will want to
meet you before you take me out. Can you come by next Wednesday
night around 4:00 or so." He was ecstatic and this simple hurdle
was an easy and even joyful undertaking. He would get to spend even
more time with the radiant Francesca.
   As he approached the house his heart was dancing under his
tongue. He would be near her and away from the cruel peers that
shaped their rigid roles in school. Now he could show her himself
and she would revel in his intelligence and quiet wit.
   He knocked and after a long pause the door opened a crack.
Francesca's face appeared out of breath. He began to sweat and his
mouth went dry. "Can you wait for a moment," she said coyly, "I'm
not dressed." He blushed and she laughed and disappeared behind the
closing door.
   A full ten minutes later she opened the door and let him in.
She was wearing a pink sweatsuit which she managed to turn into a
ravishing garment.
   "I've been trying to sew my dress for the Snowball Prom," she
explained. "It's so hard to know when things are the right length
unless you wear them and so I've been trying the dress on and
changing the hem and trying it on again and well, I never seem to
get it right."
   "It's hard I guess," his sterling tongue divulged.
   "Hard isn't the word. It's impossible." She looked at him and
smiled. He looked down at his feet. "Say, I have an idea," she
laughed. "Are you very brave?"
   "Brave? I guess . . . I don't know."
   "This could take some bravery."
   "Sure, I guess. What is it?"
   "Could you try the dress on for me. It will only take a
minute. All I have to do is put a few pins around the hem."
   "Put the dress on? Oh, I don't know . . ."
   "Oh come on," she laughed and pulled her hair up behind her
head. She was so enchanting. "You're not afraid of being a sissy
are you?" she said disdainfully, still toying with her bounteous
curls.
   "Oh, no. I don't think so."
   "Oh good. Okay, here's a bra and petticoats. Go upstairs and
take off your clothes and put these on."
   "Wait a minute . . ."
   "You can't put a prom dress on over your clothes and I can't
see how it fits unless you're wearing my bra and petticoats. It's
that simple. Now go on." She thrust the bra and panties into his
arms and pushed him up the stairs. "The bathroom's first door on
the right. I'll help you into the dress when you come down. Don't
worry. It will only be a minute. Now hurry up."
    "What was he doing here?" he asked himself as he unbuttoned
his shirt. "I didn't want to do this. Why am I doing it?" And yet
he continued to undress with the vision of Francesca's beauty
spurring him onward. Fastening the bra, a strapless one, took him
five minutes. He wound up putting the bra on backwards, fastening
it in front and then rotating it until the cups ballooned from his
chest. Then he stepped into the tulle petticoats, trying to stifle
the noisy rustle he knew was filling the house.
   But it was nothing compared to the sound as he tiptoed down
the stairs, swishing from step to step in an effort to make a
noiseless entrance but creating an effect that could only be called
demure.
   Francesca sat below reading a magazine, the prom dress draped
over her lap. When the rustle of his petticoats heralded his
appearance on the first landing she looked up and smiled brightly.
Suddenly he felt ennobled by his act of bravery but nonetheless
resumed his shy descent.
   "You look great," Francesca said without irony. She held the
dress open for him to step into, gathering his petticoats and
tucking them in, then pulling the dress up over his arms and
finally zipping him into the tight fitting strapless gown. It fit
him perfectly.
   Francesca stood back and looked at him. It seemed she was
suppressing a laugh but she turned around before he could be sure.
   "Slip into these," she said proffering a pair of shiny black
high heels.
   "Shoes too?" he said.
   "Well, I can't tell how it will look in your bare feet can I?"
   He meekly ascented and stepped into the shoes, wobbling
unsteadily.
   "Now stand up on the chair so I can check the hem."
   He obliged but only with great difficulty as the tightness of
the bodice allowed him no flexibility of movement and the heels no
sureness of step. Francesca steadied him with her hand till he
regained his balance. Then she stepped back to look at him and
smiled widely.
   At that moment the doorbell rang. Before he could protest
Francesca had leapt up and answered the door. It was Bonnie Budd
and Suzy Creamer, Francesca's best friends. They looked at Stephen
standing redfaced in prom dress and heels and began to giggle. Then
they laughed out loud and Francesca joined them.
   "I can't believe you did it!" Bonnie said.
   "It was easy. He did everything I asked him to."
   "He looks like Cinderella up there." Suzy said. Then she
walked over to the humiliated boy and said, "Say you're cute.
What's your name?"
   Bonnie had pulled a instamatic from her purse and began
snapping pictures of Stephen as though he were a model. Tears
welled in his eyes which only added to his dewy girlhood.
   The doorbell rang again. It was Nancy Kruel. "Did you bring
it?" Francesca asked her.
   Nancy looked over at Stephen and gasped, "Oh, you did it!"
   "Did you bring it? Francesca asked again.
   "Yes, here it is," she said, handing a large round box to
Francesca.
   Nancy joined Suzy and they began laughing all over again while
Francesca opened the box and pulled out a wig. It was a long
brunette pageboy, backcombed for a bouffant look and with long,
thick bangs. Francesca took it off the styrofoam stand and handed
it to Stephen.
   "Put it on, girlie."
   "I thought you . . ." he said haltingly.
   "You thought I'd go out with you! You're the school's biggest
nerd. Put it on!"
   "No . . . I uh . . ."
   "Put it on or we'll take these pictures to school and show
everyone what a beautiful girl you are! Is that what you want?"
   Stephen took the wig from her hand and pulled it tentatively
over his head. The girls broke out again in gales of laughter.
   He didn't really look all that ridiculous. Actually the
hairless youth seemed rather precious in the strapless satin gown,
brunette hair curling under as it reached his naked shoulders. His
soft features and full red lips, always a little effeminate on his
male face now seemed to glow with a correctness, as though the wig
and satin dress had uncovered some deeply feminine beauty
heretofore hidden by his maleness.
   The girls noticed it too. But it didn't stop them from their
indelicate teasing. Their hilarity grew ever more boisterous as
they thrust new feminine accoutrements on him. Evening gloves, a
little black purse, a black silk choker which Suzy had to stand on
a chair to fasten for the trembling young boy in a gown and
barrettes to pull back his hair. With the addition of each item
Stephen resembled less and less the timid boy that had arrived
moments before or even the broad burlesque of girlhood and instead
was becoming a darling doll, cute perhaps even pretty. The girls'
task now shifted subtlely from direct humiliation and cruel teasing
to one of Stephen's beautification and they conferred over what
would be most becoming on "her."
   "You know I've forgotten how much fun it was to play with
dolls," Nancy said as she fastened a pair of pearl earrings to
Stephen's ears. Meanwhile Bonnie continued to snap pictures of the
unfolding transformation.
   Suddenly the door opened and Francesca's mother walked in.
Stephen thought, "Rescue at last," as the imposing and beautiful
Carlotta Esposito walked unsmilingly over to the Cinderella's
chair. Her hair pulled back severely in a bun and her eyes flared
with exotic eyeliner, Carlotta needed only a mantilla and castenets
to round out her impression as a haughty flamenco dancer.
   She stood looking up at him sternly and then at the girls. At
last she said, "Where's his make up?" Stephen's heart sunk as
laughter once again filled the room.
   It stopped abruptly when Carlotta spoke again, "You little
twerp. You thought you could ask my daughter out and now look at
you. You're a princess in satin and tulle. What an adorable girl
you make." She walked around him, sneering at his helplessness.
   "You've done very well, girls. He's perfect. A perfect little
girl."
   "He does look good, doesn't he?" Francesca said. "It's a shame
we can't put make up on him. He'd really look like a girl then."
   "Why can't you?" Carlotta said bluntly.
   "Well, it's getting late for one." Francesca said.
   "Oh, dear daughter have you no imagination? If you dressed him
today, you can dress him tomorrow and the next day and the next.
You have the pictures. What can he do? Leave town? I don't think
so. No, you can have your plaything as long as you want. Can't
they, little darling," Carlotta said, reaching out to tweak the
cups of his bra.
   Stephen said nothing but looked singularly pathetic as his
pearl earrings twinkled in the evening sunset. A reluctant
Cinderella, he seemed resigned to his dreamdate gone awry while
Francesca's beauty seemed only more desirable for its
inaccessibility.
   "I think we should lay down some rules here. First of all,
shave your legs, girlie. This is repulsive." Carlotta said as she
contemptuously rubbed her hand over the sparse fur on his calfs.
   "But what about gym class?" he cried.
   "What about gym class? You're a big girl. You'll think of
something. Join the swim team. Then you can shave your whole body.
Next I think he should meet here every Wednesday for his 'session'
with the girls. The Wednesday Afternoon Girl Club. And one more
thing: start growing your hair out, honey. You haven't too far too
go. It's already past your ears. One more month and we'll give you
a perm. Wigs are fine for transvestites but very unbecoming on real
girls like yourself." Raucous laughter.
   That night Stephen stared up at the ceiling, Carlotta's words
ringing in his ears. "Little Darling." "Princess." "A perfect
little girl." How could he possibly do what she asked of him. He
slept little that first week and when Tuesday night rolled around
he found himself locked into the bathroom with a safety razor and
a can of shaving cream. Half an hour later his legs were smooth and
soft. He couldn't help marveling at how the absence of hair made
his legs look . . . feminine. There was no other word for it. He
ran his hands over his thighs again and again. Feeling a rough spot
he applied more cream and ran the razor over it. Smooth. It was
suddenly an exhilarating experience. A depilating experience. He
felt his arms and without thinking began to shave them as well. He
even shaved the straggly first signs of puberty under his arms.
Sleep came easily that night despite the strangeness he felt as the
sheets moved against his hairless body.
   The next day he chewed his nails through every class and tried
to avoid the three girls who eagerly awaited the next Girl Club
session. At lunch Nancy appeared beside him in the cafeteria and
whispered, "Long sleeves for such a hot day. Did you shave, little
girl?" And in math class Francesca sent him a note that read,
"You're going to look good tonight. Can't wait." He avoided her
laughing smile.
   After school he walked to Francesca's, quite conscious of his
hairless body moving against his clothes. What would they do to him
today? How could he escape?
   He knocked quietly on the door. Francesca pulled him in. She
was wearing a peasant blouse, jeans and had her hair pulled back
with a butterfly clip. She was beautiful. Suzy, Nancy and Bonnie
were waiting for him in the livingroom. They pulled the curtains
shut and turned on some lights.
   "Today the girl's club is going to play with their doll. And
here's our doll," Francesca announced.
   "Oooh, he's ugly."
   "Yuck!"
   "Strip him!"
   Francesca turned to Stephen and shrugged, "You heard the
girls. It's time to take your clothes off, Dolly."
   "My clothes? In front of you . . ."
   "What's the big deal? We're all girls here."
   "But I'm not a girl."
   "No, you're not, are you," Francesca said, placing her hands
on his shoulders and then sliding them down to his shirt front
where they began unbuttoning his shirt. "But you will be."
   The closeness of her body had the effect of a tranquilizing
dart and as her hands moved quickly from button to button he felt
as though they were partners in a pas de deux. Obediently he lifted
his feet so that she could slide his pants off and then she began
to peel off his underpants while the audience of girls watched in
rapt amazement at her control of the situation.
   Soon he stood before them, a naked doll. Bonnie broke the
silence.
   "Who brought the bras?"
   "I did," Suzy said. She opened a plastic bag full of lingerie
and removed out a skimpy black bra.
   "That's no good. He's going to need an underwired bra with
plenty of padding . . . to start with anyhow," Nancy said.
   "Okay what about this one," Suzy said, holding up a white
longline bra whose cups looked full even as they hung from her
finger.
   "Yeah, that's good. Hook him up, Suzy," Francesca said.
   Suzy approached the naked young boy as though he were prey and
the brassiere were a trap. Which it was.
   A moment later the girls had their venus under construction
wired in and cupped out. This was just the beginning, of course.
Soon heels, hose and a breathtaking fanny padder were added until
the ungainly princess was taking shape, so to speak, before the
girls' eyes.
   The addition of lingerie to his limp and passive male form
did more than just append a few feminine curves to his body, it
gave him, even from the short distance that the girls viewed him,
the look of a doe-eyed ingenue. He could have been a young model
between changes, her hair tousled by the quick removal a sweater
or a junior miss mannequin with the sloping posture of seductive
girlhood. Francesca corrected that problem by standing behind him
and pulling his shoulders back sharply which thrust the cups
forward into space like white bullets.
   "That's better. Be proud of your assets," Francesca said,
slapping his butt with the back of her hand.
   "I want to see him walk around in his bra and heels," Bonnie
said as she retrieved the camera from her purse.
   "You heard her. Walk." Francesca said.
   Stephen took a few steps in his high heels before he tripped
over Nancy's extended foot and fell. As he lay sprawled out on the
thick pile carpet Bonnie began snapping pictures. "Stay there a
moment. You look so helpless. I like it." Stephen turned back to
look at her and caught the flash head on. It made a good picture:
the brassiered boy, his padded fanny sticking up in the air, white
bra straps cutting into his back, his face turned back to the
camera, red with shame. Bonnie pulled his leg up so that the heel
dangled seductively from his toes and took more pictures. "Smile."
   Smiling was the last thing he felt like doing but he managed
to force his lips into a grimace that when developed later could
be mistaken for a lusty leer.
   It was at this point that Carlotta arrived home from work. She
smiled broadly as she saw the padded lad stretched out on the
floor. She walked over to the Stephen and knelt down by his head,
making sure that he had ample opportunity to look up her skirt, a
view unfettered by panties.
   "Oh girls, girls, girls. You've forgotten the best part: his
make up. Take him to the upstairs bathroom and I'll join you in a
minute."
   Carlotta's decisive request brought prompt action from the
girls who grabbed their hapless victim by the arms and hoisted him
up the stairs.
   The bathroom was large with a bank of mirrors covering one
wall. The girls seated Stephen on a stool facing the mirrors and
Carlotta reappeared with a small tote bag bursting with cosmetics.
   "Oh, this is going to be fun," she said laying the bottles,
pencils and jars out on the counter top. "Now I think that the look
we're after here is bold and brassy," she said blotting Stephen's
face with foundation until he looked like a kabuki actor. When the
canvas was totally blank Carlotta began applying her palette of
bright reds, vivid blacks and velvety blues. The girls watched in
amazement as Stephen's frightened pallor disappeared and was
replaced by an exceedingly cheap but quite vivacious mask of
sensuality. When the last false eyelash had been affixed Carlotta
backed away and Stephen saw himself at last in the mirror. His gasp
was audible and the girls exchanged knowing smiles. He face made
the strong graphic impression of wanton girlish sexuality despite
the emotions of despair and terror he was feeling beneath the mask
of powder and paint. The incongruity resulted in a strange mixture
of sultriness and vulnerability, a mixture that excited Carlotta
and the girls with its new possibilities for humiliation and
torture and they hurried to complete Stephen's transformation.
   "It's wigtime," Carlotta said.
   Nancy disappeared and returned quickly with the pageboy wig.
Carlotta pulled it down snugly over Stephen's head and combed it
out. Then she pulled it back tightly and created a poufy ponytail
with a length of pink ribbon. "That's more like it. He's a real
girl now. Look at him. A ponytail princess."
   The male erasure was now total. Stephen stared into the mirror
looking for a trace of his lost boyness but even the slightest nod
of his head seemed a deeply feminine gesture. He did not seem
capable of moving without a daintiness, a delicacy borne of his new
feminine appearance. This wasn't an outcome that the girls or he
had foreseen. However, Carlotta seemed to know exactly what was
taking place beneath the crown of dynel curls. She knew that any
coarse movements or gracelessly boyish gestures on Stephen's part
would violate the virgin in the mirror and make her a mere cartoon
of a boy in a bra when in the young man's mind she was already
assuming more than the two dimensions he examined so intently in
his reflection.
   "I think she's ready for some clothes," Carlotta said, pulling
Stephen out of his revery. "Come on. Let's go into my bedroom . .
. girls." The girls were eager to complete the last act of their
doll's drama, and beat a hasty retreat to Carlotta's bedroom where
they began to rummage through Carlotta's closets for the perfect
dress. Carlotta and Stephen remained behind for a moment. His gaze
was still affixed to the miraculous image of his girlishness.
Carlotta spoke to him softly, "Stephen . . ." He turned to look up
at her, a doe-eyed innocent in false eyelashes. "Mommy thinks your
a very pretty girl. Let's go find a dress, shall we?" She took him
by the arm and lifted him off the stool and they floated, like two
heavily made-up angels, into the bedroom.
   Carlotta sat Stephen down on the edge of her enormous bed
while the girls brought up sweaters and skirts, dresses and gowns
for Carlotta's approval. None of the sexy outfits they selected
seemed to appeal to Carlotta's exacting taste and finally she went
to the closet and selected a summer sun dress with a wide skirt,
puffed sleeves and a demure scoop neckline.
   Soon Stephen was modeling the sun dress for the girls who now
sat on the bed whispering and giggling as he turned round at
Carlotta's instruction. The dress, wholesome and homespun, fit
perfect with his ponytail and bangs but contrasted vividly with his
garish make-up and continued the conundrum of the waify looking
whore. But Stephen seemed unaware now of the discrepancy between
his face and the rest of his feminine form. In fact, he seemed
unaware of the girls, Carlotta or the oddly poignant figure he cut
as he whirled the dress around and around. He seemed aware only of
the dress itself, swirling and fanning out and allowing his legs
a freedom that pants never did. And aware also of the tight bodice
which clung to his torso and provided a perfect debut for his
virginal bust: chaste and yet unquestionably inviting. His eyes
fell to his bodice with a look that appeared to combine lust and
pride at his own curvaceousness. The puffed sleeves added a
piquancy, arousing, perhaps, because of its old-fashioned
femininity, a quality that Carlotta was surely trying to evoke in
the girls' living doll.
   Francesca, amused at first by Stephen's emotional
transformation, began to grow bored with the prissy little country
queen her mother had fashioned for them. She wanted to make her
pretty doll squirm in his gingham dress. She got up off the bed and
began to mock his darling dance. "You think you're a girl now,
don't you?"
   Stephen stared at her blankly and then at Carlotta who looked
away.
   "I feel like a girl," he said tentatively in a shy little
voice that slipped out of his painted mouth like a plea for mercy.
   Francesca was never more beautiful than when she allowed her
intelligence to inform her wickedness and Stephen swooned as a
thoughtfully crooked smile crossed her face. Swooned, not with
desire but with envy at Francesca's malevolent beauty.
   "Our doll has developed a mind of her own. Tell us, sweet
thing, what kind of girl are you?" Francesca said, as she lifted
the long skirt and held it up, briefly exposing the newly modest
parts of Stephen's anatomy. Stephen blushed deeply, a response
befitting his quiet, country girl demeanor. The girls loved it.
Carlotta said nothing.
   "It's getting warm in here isn't it, girls," Francesca said,
letting the dress fall and pulling off her sweater and urging the
other girls to do the same. She wore a very revealing brassiere
that cupped her breasts seductively. Soon all the girls had
stripped to their pretty bras and panties and surrounded their
country queen taunting him with their nubile and luscious bodies.
Carlotta remained on the bed but after a hopeful look from Stephen,
she too removed her blouse, exposing her black bra and captivating
cleavage. While Stephen watched, as in a trance, she unhooked her
brassiere and coyly dropped it off the side of the bed. Then, as
though she had just discovered them for the first time, she cupped
her breasts lovingly, pinching the nipples and caressing them with
a great tenderness. The other girls followed suit and soon Stephen
was encircled by a chorus of licentious nymphs each trying to outdo
the other in their enticing charms. As the dance reached the apogee
of lustful desire Francesca pulled up Stephen's skirt while Nancy
yanked down the fanny padder disclosing the throbbing information
that Francesca had wanted to extract from him all along.
   As Bonnie's camera clicked away and Francesca gloated,
Carlotta leaned back on the bed, her long black hair undone and
falling over her naked shoulders. Stephen looked tearfully at her
as she mouthed the words, "Mommy thinks you're a very pretty girl."
It was the end of the first girl's club.

   During the week following that first terrifying encounter with
the power of womanhood Stephen agonized over every minute of his
tormented transformation and its cruel denouement. What upset him
most was not the humiliation he suffered at their hands but his
surrender to his own girlish beauty. The seduction of his own
femininity was far more disturbing to him than Carlotta's
rejection.
   Not that he was aware of this of course. A searing pain that
encompassed the entire event was all he felt but each night in his
dreams he returned to the mirror and was served with the same
vision of pony-tailed sweetness, of his own Barby doll portrait of
Dorian Gray. In the morning the images of himself as a radiant
teenage girl were gone and in their place only the residue of heavy
guilt.
   The night before the meeting he found himself once again in
the bathroom shaving his legs and arms. But this time his skin
tingled not with the suspense of being discovered but at the sheer
excitement of the act itself, the first step in a transformation
ritual. As he cleaned his mother's razor and put it back in the
drawer he caught himself in the mirror. He was trembling visibly.
His hand went up to his face, a simple gesture which rapidly
progressed in his mind's eye from merely effeminate to feminine.
He stood there for a long moment in a frozen pose of coy
girlishness. It was an echo of his recurring dream and when he
moved again it was not as a boy but as a girl admiring herself in
the mirror. He had begun casting his own spells.
   Despite this flirtation with the increasingly exciting idea
of being a girl he was still petrified at the impending Girls' Club
meeting. More so perhaps because of his late night revery in the
bathroom. He now harbored a secret far more precious to him than
his adventures in girls' clothing and as he approached Francesca's
house he feared his budding fascination with femininity might be
readily apparent to the girls, as though he had traces of lipstick
on his lips or the indentations of imaginary bra straps marked his
shoulders.
   When Francesca answered the door the next day she seemed
almost bored at Stephen's arrival. She seemed to be expecting
someone a great deal more exciting. "Go upstairs. Mom's waiting for
you," was all she said.
   Stephen went upstairs and into Carlotta's room where she was
laying out things on the bed for him. She looked up and smiled with
mock surprise. "I don't think I've ever seen you as a boy before,"
she said taking him in with a long up and down glance. "You're much
prettier as a girl. Go in the bathroom and take your clothes off.
Then wait for me."
   Stephen hoped he'd concealed the lightness of his step as he
minced to the bathroom. He hadn't. Carlotta noticed and smiled to
herself as she finished folding the clothes. When she arrived in
the bathroom Stephen was sitting naked on the stool facing the
mirror.
   "Here put these on," she said handing him a pair of pink
panties. Then methodically she began making his face up, this time
taking special care to let him watch and participate in his facial
transformation. It was almost a learning exercise and Carlotta took
pains to praise him when he applied his false eyelashes evenly or
lined his lips with the red pencil she suggested. She sensed the
subtle shift in his attitude toward these girl behaviors from the
quickness with which he adapted to the meticulous tasks of
feminizing his features. When she left him alone for a moment to
retrieve a tube of mascara from her purse she found, upon her
return, that he was leaning into the mirror and daubing bits of
color from a blusher compact onto his cheeks. She ran to get
Bonnie's camera and snapped a picture as his stroked his cheeks
with the blusher brush. He turned sharply at the flash and smiled
weakly as she entered and then resumed his effort. She lavished
more praise on him and suggested this or that color to heighten the
effects.
   All in all, his look was much less tawdry than the week before
though you couldn't really call it subtle. It resembled a typical
teenage girls' failing attempt to resist the seductions of a
department store cosmetics counter. In fact, his face resembled the
masklike professional excess of a cosmetic counter girl.
   Of course, that was just his face. Had one stood back and
observed his entire body he might have been mistaken for a
harlequin in pink panties. But that would soon be remedied.
   "I have a surprise for you," Carlotta said as Stephen fussed
with the mascara brush.
   He turned to her and smiled. Over the course of the hour his
obvious pleasure in the transformation process could not be
concealed but somehow that didn't matter. Carlotta seemed so
understanding, so helpful now.
   "Don't you want to know what it is?" she asked teasingly.
   Stephen blushed. "What is it?" he asked shyly.
   "Something to make you twice as pretty," she said, pulling a
long, smooth fall from a box. It was light brown to match his own
hair. She put the fall aside for a moment and brushed out Stephen's
own hair, giving him bangs that fell past his eyebrows. Then she
tenderly placed the fall over Stephen's head like a crown,
carefully arranging his own hair so that it met the fall
seamlessly, then backcombing the fall to give it a bouffant
fullness at the top of his head. Very sixties. Very sexy.
Stephen was thrilled with his hairdo, turning his head to examine
how he looked in profile and marvelling at the rush he got at the
way the fall tumbled over his bare shoulders. He caught Carlotta
watching him in the mirror and she smiled warmly at him.
   "Ready for your bra?"
   "Yes, please," Stephen said with an undisguised eagerness.
   Carlotta ran from the room, heels clicking on the tile floor,
and returned with a strapless push-up brassiere. She looked
momentarily perplexed when faced with Stephen's less than buxom
chest.
   "We'll have to tape up your baby fat to give you some
cleavage."
   Fifteen minutes later Carlotta was looking down Stephen's bra
at an admirable pair of breasts nuzzling together cozily to create
the successful illusion of bustiness. These new and significant
additions to his female physique brought a wetness to his eyes and
a quickness to his heart. Every minute he spent with Carlotta he
became a more convincing girl. In fact, it would have been hard to
believe that one hour before he had been a boy and that 30 minutes
later he had become a female impersonator in transition and now an
emerging teen queen with breasts that actually cast heavy shadows.
As he progressed from one stage to another his excitement became
harder and harder to contain, especially since Carlotta seemed
equally delighted with his metamorphosis until they were both
giggling like teenage girls at the amazing success of Stephen's
transformation.
   "Now we come to the hard part," Carlotta said in an abruptly
serious voice.
   Stephen's face clouded over instantly. "What?"
   "Deciding what you're going to wear?" she said laughing at his
sudden anxiety. Then she merrily ran off to her closet and returned
with a blouse and skirt still in dry cleaner bags.
   "Here's your blouse and skirt. But first you'd better put on
these black tights and your fanny padder."
   Stephen unwrapped the brand new tights and pulled them on,
taking care to admire his slender legs encased in black lycra, then
the fanny padder and the skirt, a short and tight miniskirt that
made the most of his newly curvy buttocks and finally the blouse,
a white off the shoulder peasant chemise that dramatically focussed
attention on his shadowy cleavage with its lacy filigree across his
bodice.
   When all these ingredients had been assembled Carlotta led him
to the long oval mirror in her bedroom, making sure that he
couldn't see himself until the moment that she wanted him to. At
last she turned him around to face her triumphant handiwork. He
gasped and his knees gave way for a second. He had never
experienced such an exotic feeling of euphoria. He had never
considered that he could pass for a girl and even when that
possibility had presented itself he had never imagined that he
would be so captivating, not merely convincingly female but
exquisitely feminine, exuding a daintiness, am allure that
transcended the mere trappings of girlhood. He turned to look at
Carlotta. She smiled at him like a madonna.
   "How do you like it so far?" she asked him, as she fastened
a black silk choker around his neck.
   "I never thought it could . . . I never thought I could . .
."
   "But you can and you have," Carlotta said, turning him round
to attach a pair of large hoop earrings. "Now if you'll step into
your heels I think you're ready to join the other girls."
   Stephen shot Carlotta an apprehensive look but she was already
on her way downstairs. He looked back at the mirror. The earrings
and choker completed the sixties look. He thought the teased bubble
of hair on top was extremely sexy. He slipped on the heels and
began the descent, turning as he reached the door for one last
glance at his image in the mirror. He didn't want to leave her,
this girl with the light brown hair falling demurely over naked
shoulders and buns straining against their skirted bondage. She was
sweet. She was sexy.
   As he broke away from her enchanting beauty his eye fell on
a picture that sat on Carlotta's dresser. It was a photograph of
a pretty young girl with hair styled in a fashion similar to his
own coiffure and wearing the same skirt and blouse. She was smiling
at the camera in a manner both kittenish and dreamy. It was
Carlotta. He took the picture back to the mirror and compared
himself to it. The similarity was striking. Even the overdone
eyeliner was the same. Carlotta had fashioned him in her youthful
image. What did it mean? He put the picture back and headed for the
stairway, once again uncertain of what was happening to him.
   
   I thought I knew what was happening when I developed a crush
on Francesca. I thought I knew what was happening when she asked
me to meet her mother and now I think I know what is happening as
I hit the first tread of the stair, my heels digging into the
carpet and pulling the threads of fabric up with a noise like
distant velcro.
   But did you know what would happen when I hit the bottom of
the stair, when Francesca spotted me in her mother's old clothes
and with a hairstyle ressurected from the fabulous sixties.? Did
you predict that Carlotta might turn away again at the crucial
moment just when I needed to see her loving glance of approval as
I displayed my new bosom for the girls, mincing past my tormentors
with a demeanor that for once cannot be described as demure.
   Do you have a clear picture of Carlotta?  An old she-wolf with
a leathery neck and whisky-drenched voice? No, I don't think so.
A aging bosom with spots and lips whose tiny tributaries run high
with gloss? No. A mummified tart whose unrepentant long hair still
bears the sheen of her wonder years? No. Who is Carlotta and why
do the wounds she inflicts never heal?
   Why do I build a shrines to her in my sleep? To say she is
severe is to say that my bosoms bud and I wobble like a fawn in my
heels. Her devotion to my toilette is legendary, her wickedness
convenient. But not as convenient as my mute permission to be
swathed in spandex, bathed in Chanel and misted with Miss Clairol.
   It's not Carlotta who's the mystery here at all. We know her.
She's the most familiar prop in the trunk. Auntie Stern and her
fabulous wardrobe of guilt. I should have been a Lennon Sister
smiling across Southern Seas. I could be one even now as I descend
the stairway and glide across the set twirling a parasol with
dangerous things beneath my antebellum gown and not a trace of
three-dimensionality. Behold the Anti-Belle.
   No, Carlotta, in her leopardskin leotard, ankh disappearing
in her creamy cleavage, is not the mystery woman here. It's me.
It's the boy in the dress. Pale and wan with a curious lack of
secondary sex characteristics. Lips: full. Hair: longish. Hips:
girlish. And, poor thing, horribly mute. He suffers for his desire
but keeps mum nonetheless. Keeping mum is what it's all about.
   Am I still descending the stairway? Or have you left me to
read backwards to where my foot left the carpet and your lust was
disengaged as my heel hit the clutch and we began to coast
together, gliding together down the stairway while Francesca and
her cardboard friends wait in aspic. They can wait. We'll put them
on ice for now. Francesca's type can be reheated indefinitely. But
let's glide now. Can you see us gliding down the stairs like a herd
of Glinda the Goods, Anti-belles in bubbles floating down to our
curious fate. Curious and predictable.
   I have a better idea. Let's leave the stairway and fly out of
the house. It never had a roof anyway. It was just a set. Like
"Father Knows Best" or "Leave it to Beaver." We be gliding Glindas
now, flying out over the silent cities of drag. Our hooped skirts
swing and sway like belles and our petticoats sputter like flags
in a windstorm. My fall might fall but who cares, we're cruising
over the world in drag below and headed for Venus. Once again.
   Oh, my lost little girls what happened when we strayed into
Mommie's domain and watched her bend at the waist and lap the ends
of her bra, watched her breasts fell neatly into the cups? Or when
we saw her by the mirror, applying lipstick, turning her lips
bright red or soft pink or watermelon blood or virginal peach? Did
she lean over us and squeeze our cheeks or did she take the brass
bullet out and rub our own tiny lips with that mutating balm.
   Or were our womanly synapses created in the womb? Did our
mothers paw through the pink section, imagining their little girls,
little replicants of themselves, growing up perfect and going off
in prom gowns and getting married to Mr. Right and breaking the
cycle of Mr. Wrongs. Were we to be the link that breaks the sad
chain of our mother's sorrow? And when we emerged and the blue
cigars were passed around, did that dream die hard?
   Or was it a revenge on all males that led our Carlottas and
Auntie Sterns to subvert Daddy's message and replace it in the
adolescent night with petticoat and periwinkle, watermelon blush
and strapless bra. Stealing into our dreams and turning our shiny
shields around so that we might admire our own reflections.
   Or was it father's abdication in that rosy post-war bliss. To
relinquish his throne for a lazy-boy and never see the boy hiding
behind the ottoman peering up at his imperious invisibility.
   Or was the fate sealed in our stars, dear Brutus. Delivered
by a mincing virus from outer space, a femme spore alighting on a
pie cooling on the sill, ingested in a slice and traveling
groinward where it sat twiddling its protoplasm until we reached
our dresswearing years and then asserting its bifurcating demands.
   Oh, my mute darlings, are your temperatures rising, have I
lost you entirely. Wait, wait a minute, I might yet return to
Carlotta and Francesca. But stay with me a bit longer. I need your
company out here in these moot and silent stars.
   But I see I am alone, wandering the desert at twilight in
search of lipgloss, a belle still, in hoop skirts and ringlets. On
the horizon a lone figure is waving to me. My petticoats gather the
goatsheads as I run toward it. My heels sink into sand. The dust
clings to my makeup creating the perfect matte finish at last. But
the figure becomes a saguaro cactus, not arms waving but stretched
skyward in thorny supplication and my perfect matte finish becomes
a pilgrim's pallor, not a mask of loveliness but a vision of
embalmed beauty.
   I turn skyward too. And there you are, my pretties, where I
have left you. Checking your hems and waiting. Waiting for
Carlotta's return and the fatal descent down the stairway into more
familiar territory. The desert is empty, it's true. And there are
no mirrors here but the air is cool and a breeze blows my ringlets
gently and I have a hunger for beauty apart from my own.
   But there you are suspended in space above me, encased in a
comforting bubble of sultry self-seduction and I must join you. On
the first tread of the stair at Carlotta's, the girls thawing
below, my hard-won beauty cribbed from an old Vogue, my demeanor
as submissive as a scarecrow. Ready, girls?
   
   The conversational din of the teen girls came to a sudden halt
as soon as Stephen's legs came into view on the stairway, and the
rest of his descent occurred in dramatic silence. The skirts, the
blouse, the choker, the hair. Then proud Carlotta took his hand as
his heels hit the floor and ushered him into the living room where
his judges awaited.
   "Oh, Mom, you've turned him into a Sixtie's chick," Francesca
said, squealing with pleasure at their antiquated doll. Bonnie
began snapping pictures one after the other.
   "Yes, she's cute, isn't she? An interesting combination of
little girl timidity and big girl lustiness, coy little bangs and
a choker from a hooker's top drawer, delicate lacy blouse and . .
."
   "And breasts to fill it," Suzy finished, running a finger down
Stephen's illusory cleavage. "How did you do that?"
   "Oh, it's nothing really," Carlotta laughed.
   "Turn around for us," Francesca ordered.
   Stephen obliged and the oohs and ahs as they eyed his buns
were immensely gratifying. It didn't go unnoticed.
   "Oh, look. He loves it when we admire his buns," Bonnie said.
   Francesca stood up and faced him, her hair was big and
beautiful. Her lips close to his. "You like being a girl, don't
you?"
   The blush rose from his cleavage and blossomed out beneath the
blusher in his cheeks. He looked down at his shiny heels.
   "I can't believe it. He actually enjoys being a girl,"
Francesca said to her friends.
   "What's so odd about that? You enjoy it, Francesca," her
mother said.
   "Yes, but . . ." Francesca smiled suddenly. "If you like it
so much, you'll love going to the prom as a girl."
   "Yes, I think a coming out party is a good idea," Carlotta
said, grinning up at the trembling boy with bangs.

   The following day Stephen was trying without success to
concentrate on his homework but the looming prospect of the Prom
filled him the oddest combination of dread and delight. He couldn't
decide how he felt and the agonizing debate his mind waged was
terribly bewildering. Absently doodling in the margins of his
notebook he found himself drawing possible hairstyles for his prom
night adventure. It was during this daydreaming that his mother
appeared behind him.
   "Francesca's mother came by this morning," she said.
   "Oh," Stephen said, covering the drawings with his arm.
   "Yes. She had some interesting things to say about you." Her
voice was flat.
   "About me?"
   "Yes, about you. She said that I might be interested in
looking at some photographs she had."
   "Photographs?" Stephen turned around and looked at her.
   "They were very interesting pictures but I couldn't believe
they were of you until she showed me this one," his mother said,
throwing the photo on his desk. It was the picture Carlotta had
taken in the bathroom as he applied his blush. There was no point
in bluffing.
   "She said," her voice breaking, "she said that you had broken
into their house and were caught trying on Francesca's clothes. She
said you need treatment."
   "But you didn't believe her, did you?"
   His mother was sobbing now. "I'm glad you're father's dead.
It would kill him to see these," she said throwing a handful of
pictures on the desk. They were all of Stephen is various states
of transvestment. On top was the picture Bonnie had taken as he had
fallen to the floor. He looked particularly slutty, staring back
at the camera in his bra and heels, his big pantied ass in the air.
Not at all the frightened boy he really was, but more a defiant
trollop caught in the midst of some disgusting sexual escapade.
   "But that's not how it was," he protested lamely.
   "How was it?" she screamed. "How was it when you were caught
redhanded in panties and brassiere putting make up on like a
teenage whore?"
   "But . . ."
   "How was it when your hair is teased like a girl's, when
you're wearing high heels and a skirt? Maybe Carlotta could have
made up a story but these pictures aren't fake. It's you. You
dressed up like a girl. And not just wearing panties but
everything. You look like a little slut when you're dressed. I
can't believe it," her voice cracked and trailed off.
   "What are you going to do?"
   "I don't know. Carlotta had some ideas but . . ." her teary
eyes went past her petrified son to the drawings on his notebook,
tiny pictures of bouffant coiffures, ponytails and pageboys, bubble
cuts and bangs.
   "Maybe she's right. Maybe she's right," she said as she
stormed out.

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