Easy As Falling Off A Bike.
by Angharad.
Part 6.

Climbing stairs in heels is slightly easier than going down, the heels tilt you forward so there is more chance of falling up than down. However, none of this was going through my mind as my hairdressing hostess dragged me up the stairs.

I staggered back into the bedroom and she shoved me into the ladder-backed chair once again. I almost felt glad to be seated, the heels were higher than anything I usually wore, though I had bought the odd pair of silly ones from charity shops when I was younger. Younger, I was all of twenty three!

My tormentress was stood with her back towards me, laying out her instruments of torture on her makeshift dressing table. "What colour are your eyes?" she asked without turning round.

"Green, I think."

"Yeah, that's okay, we can use browns then."

"Sorry?" I queried.

"If your eyes had been blue or grey, we'd have needed different colours of eyeliner and shadow and stuff."

"Oh," I said feeling out of my depth, "I usually bung on some green shadow and black mascara."

"Does it usually look a mess?" she asked still fiddling at her shelf and her back still to me.

I felt myself blushing, "Erm, I erm, didn't think so."

"Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound quite that brutal. Usually young girls and others who don't have much experience of makeup, tend to look very amateurish. They use too much, have no idea of blending or subtle use of colours. They often have so much pearlised eyeshadow on that they could be used as cat's eyes."

"Oh," I sighed feeling dejected; how did she know I had pearlised eyeshadow?

"You okay?" she asked glancing back.

"I suppose so," I said with more than a hint of resignation.

"We don't have to do this," she added.

"What's taking you so long?" I asked.

"I'm trying to get the old mascara off my eyelass curler;" she replied waving said instrument in the air.

"Eyelash curler?" my voice felt as if it was trembling, "won't that hurt?"

"Only if you catch your eyelid."

"Catch my eyelid? I'm not sure I'm ready for that degree of femaleness," I quivered. I had this flash of her tearing off an eyelid with the torture tool.

"What!" she gasped, "I thought you were lined up for a sex change?"

"As far as I know, sex reassignment surgery does not require me to have my eyelids torn off. It's my testicles they remove not my eye-balls."

"You wimp!" she declared shaking her head.

"I am not," I declared back, "I've fallen off my bike a few times and.." I paused thinking about the times I'd fallen off my bike. It bloody well hurt and I shared that with anyone who was prepared to listen. This recollection prevented me suggesting how brave I was, because it wasn't really true. I might have gender identity disorder or whatever they call it, but I'm not a liar."

"Yeah, and what?" she asked.

"I know what pain is," I threw in, saved by the bell.

"Try a bad period or childbirth, then you'll know about pain," she threw back.

"I once came down hard on the crossbar, was black and blue for weeks."

She stopped and looked at me obviously thinking about something; then asked, "Is that why it's so small?"

I gasped in shock. What a personal thing to say, but on reflection realised I had provoked it. "No, I was always small. In school I refused to use the showers because of the insults."

"Awwwwwwww," she said rubbing my shoulder. "Right let's get on, shall we?" Then before I could say anything in reply, she asked," Do you usually use any sort of foundation?"

"No," I said because I had never worked out what sort I should need.

She placed her fingers under my chin and lifted my head up, "You don't shave do you?"

"No."

"You are very lucky missy, you don't need to wear skin make up, especially in the day time. Your skin is as good as most women."

"It is?" I squeaked, "I mean is it?"

"Yeah, it is. She looked at me and said, "What are you going to call yourself when you go through with things?"

"Catherine," I said blushing like sunburst.

"Right Cathy, lets get busy." She held a pot of cream and began rubbing it on to my skin. "A quick cleanser."

I nearly said that I'd had a shower not an hour before, but thought better of it. What did I know?

She wiped my face with a wet wipe thing, then told me to close my eyes.

There was a sudden pain in my eyebrow, "Ouch!" I yelled opening my eyes.

"Hold still, and keep quiet, I'm only pulling out one or two straggly hairs."

"God, everyone will notice," I protested.

"Don't be such a baby," she chided; "nobody will notice, they can't see them anyway, they're so fair."

I sat still and sulked, the way things were going I was going to need a sex change by the end of the week to balance my eyebrows. maybe I could tell anyone who noticed that I'd had an attack of symmetrical alopecia. Yeah that sounded good, makes your eyebrows very thin but doesn't make them disappear entirely. It's very rare so you won't see it in any medical textbook, only affects trannies and transsexuals! Maybe I won't say the last bit, I thought to myself.

"There that looks better," she said rubbing some cream into my damaged face.

"I look like a plucked turkey, I'll bet."

"Chicken!" she riposted.

"Plucked chicken, then." I wasn't going to argue about scale.

"You big chicken, I stopped because you sounded like a cat having sex and I couldn't take the noise anymore."

I blushed with embarrassment and indignation. I once had my legs waxed before a bike race and I sat bravely silent, mind you my eyes watered. I decided not to offer this example of my courage in case she decided to wax my eyebrows. Maybe I was chicken?

So engrossed was I that I didn't notice she had put some sort of crayon on my brows, until she had finished. I hope all this stuff comes off, I thought to myself.

"Eyes shut," she barked and I felt a blunt stick or something being run across my eyelid near my eyelashes. "It's only eyeliner, so keep still and eyes shut, no don't screw them up like that, relax Cathy."

"I didn't ask your name," I said wondering why I hadn't asked for it at the site of the accident.

"I'm Stella," I heard a smile in her voice.

"If your surname is Artois, I won't believe another word you say."

"That's rather an old joke," she chided me.

"Well I thought it was funny."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" she continued rhetorically, "And if you tell me I'm a star, just remember I'm moving across your eye with a sharp applicator stick."

"Okay, okay I surrender!" I thought discretion the finer part of valour.

I sat with my eyes closed and felt her rub something blunt and cold onto my eyelids, which was then rubbed with a finger, obviously eyeshadow.

"Open them and look up," she commanded as she drew lines under my eyes. Then came the dreaded eyelash curlers.

"Watch out," I squeaked, "you'll have my bloody eye out!"

"You've got another one, keep still."

"Ouch, you've got my eyelid."

"Well stop blinking then!"

"You try sitting still while somebody is prising your eyelids off."

"You big baby, keep still."

This banter went on for several minutes because she followed the eyelid curling with mascara, and once more I feared for my sight.
Eventually, she stopped endangering my visual organs and put some blusher and lipstick on me.

"There, pretty well finished. I see you've got pierced ears, took Valium for that, did you?"

"Ha ha, very funny. That didn't hurt one bit compared to you poking my eye out."

"I've got a piercing gun, shall we do a couple more holes?" she said calling my bluff.

"Nah, I think it looks common," I retorted before I noticed she had two in each earlobe. Oh bugger! "On some people," I quickly added, knowing it was too late.

She gave me a dirty look and I was about to apologise when I heard a door shutting and a male voice called, "Stella." I froze in shock.