Dark
Matters
5. Private Fashion

by Donna Lamb

 
We took the long way home, going all the way out to the west side of town before turning back north. My neighborhood was closer to the school, but we looped by the airport, and Jon pointed at a blue-and-white plane parked among the smaller aircraft.

“That’s my mom’s Skylane,” he said. “It will carry six if two of them are small.” He grinned. “I’m too big to fit into the back now so if the whole family flies, one of my sisters has to sit in the kiddie seats. Both of them if Lauren’s husband, Doyle, is with us.” He laughed.

“Huh,” I said. I tried to memorize the shape of the plane as we passed it, I wanted to draw it later. I have a pretty good memory for anything I see, sort of what is sometimes called a photographic memory. I can even remember how a printed page looks and read it later.

He pointed to a private lane heading toward some ranch-style buildings. “That’s our house out there. The ranch belongs to Mom’s brother, Uncle Pete but he leases it to a big company to manage the land. We’ve got horses and animals, and an emergency private airstrip.”

I had known the Carlyles were well-off and Jon’s uncle, Pete Harkins, was on the city council, but I had never really seen any of their stuff.

“You should come out and see the horses, go for a ride. You like horses, don’t you?”

Up until that moment, I had regarded such beasts as dangerous animals that belonged to someone else, but suddenly the idea of riding one sounded intriguing. “I guess so,” I hedged. “I’ve never really been around them.”

He shrugged. “They’re kind of cool. All of ours are retired cowponies, smart and well-mannered. My sisters were both into horses big for awhile.”

“You have two sisters?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” he said. “Lauran is 23, the eldest, she’s married and lives in Bakersfield now with Doyle who works for one of the oil companies; they’re trying to have a kid. Marigold is 19, going to Berkeley to study cultural anthropology.” He made a face. “She wants to be a professor like Dad only not the kind that digs in dirt all over the world.”

I thought of something. “Is your dad back from, you said Turkey? Did you ask him about the ring you found?”

Jon grinned at me a bit ruefully. “He was back for a few weeks, but he’s gone again, this time to Iran, or Persia as he calls it. And I forgot to ask him while he was here. It’s always busy when he’s home, and school was just starting. He’ll be back for Thanksgiving.” He paused. “If we decide to ask him.”

“We?” I sounded squeaky.

“Well, you’ve got a ring too, now.”

“I duwanna talk to your Dad about this stuff.”

“Y’know, neither do I,” he admitted.

We turned on County Line Road and drove past the K-Mart where the fight Saturday was supposed to take place. The part of town north of the road, including the big store and the Carl’s Jr. in its parking lot were in Tulare County instead of Kern County, but it didn’t make any difference unless you were paying property tax or something. The kids north of the line even went to the high school in White River rather than go twenty miles to the nearest high school in Tulare.

Jon didn’t even glance at the field where he was supposed to meet Toby Underwood to defend me. Thinking of that gave me goosebumps. I put a hand over my mouth and glanced at Jon sideways.

“What?” he asked.

“Not what. Why?” I said. “Why are you doing this? I mean even without the ring and whatever it does, ‘the power to cloud minds’ or whatever—even without that you could probably have any girl at school as your girlfriend. At least freshman or sophomore. You’ve got looks, money, you’re a sports hero, you’ve got a car! Why me?”

“I dunno,” he said. “Especially since I’m not queer. I mean, boys do nothing for me.” He turned and looked directly at me for a moment. “Except you.”

My face turned hot again but maybe I was getting used to it cause I went right ahead asking questions. “Is it the ring?”

He shrugged. “Part of it maybe. But Wally, you remember when you skipped a grade?”

“Huh? Yeah?” One of the worst things life had ever done to me. Until now.

“That’s when I first noticed you. And there was just something. We were both little kids, but up until then I kinda had a crush on your sister. And I–I got confused.”

This wasn’t blushing or goosebumping information; this was more in the nature of hair-raising. “You had a crush on me? When I was seven and you were nine?”

“No,” he said. “Not really. Not until September when you started high school. And that was after I got the ring so maybe it did have something to do with it.” He turned the car on Rancho Portero Drive, the entrance to our subdivision.

“But you dated Hayley right around then,” I protested.

“Couple times,” he said. “We didn’t hit it off. I—I kept thinking…about…. I think I was just dating her to get a better look at you.”

“Huh?” You could have hit me in the face with a live lobster, and I would have been less surprised. I mean, a lobster in Kern County?

He kept talking. “I started noticing. You carried your books like a girl. You sat down like a girl. You talk like a girl, walk like a girl, laugh like a girl. At least it seems so to me.”

Embarrassing as that description was, I’d been told all those things before, going back to kindergarten, even. I was never aware of it until someone pointed it out and I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. And I had tried. But the beatings continued and morale failed to improve.

He didn’t look at me at all as he said, “So I had to find out, were you at all into boys?” He turned onto my street. “I’m sorry I called you queer. I don’t think you’re queer anymore. Girls can’t be queer, can they?” He stopped the car in front of my house.

I started to get out, to get away.

He put a hand up. “Wait. I’ll get the door for you.”

I waited. Not wanting to, but doing it and feeling a sort of warm appreciation of him doing something for me. He held a hand out for me after opening the door and I took it and stood up, then he reached in and got the bag which he handed to me and my books from the backseat that he kept for himself.

And all the while we were grinning at each other like fools.

“Have you been here before?” I asked as we walked toward the front door.

“Once,” he said. “I came here for Hayley’s twelfth birthday party.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering. “You brought her some souvenir from Disneyland.”

The front door wasn’t locked so we walked right in, Jon holding the door for me again. I could see lights on in Mom’s workshop out back but the rest of the house was dark.

Two steps down the hall and I opened my door and flicked on the light. My room was the front one, next to the living room, what was called the den in most floor plans. Meaning it didn’t have a built-in closet, I had to make do with a freestanding cupboard thing and an open rack for hanging stuff. A lowboy chest of drawers, my drawing table/desk, a chair and a single bed filled up most of the rest of the room.

Jon followed me in but stopped in the doorway. “Can I see what you bought?” he asked again.

I dumped the Penney’s bag on the bed. Looking at all the girly stuff, I blushed and when I glanced at Jon, he was blushing too.

“Wow,” he said. Then he grinned. “I like the purse; you should carry that to school tomorrow.”

“Yeah, if I want to get killed,” I said.

Jon glanced around. “I feel odd, being in your room with underwear on the bed.”

I laughed. “You feel odd.”

“Were you going to try some of it on, to show me?”

I fidgeted. One part of me definitely wanted to and another part dreaded it.

He fidgeted, too, putting my books on the drawing table, looking at the Lego sculpture of King Kong I had made on top of my lowboy. “That’s cool,” he said.

We stared at each other. He looked at the stuff on the bed. “You’ve got a bra there.”

When I looked at him after he said that, he appeared to be sweating. I giggled nervously.

He started toward the door. “Uh, uh,” he stammered. “Put some of that on, like one of each thing? And, um I’m going to see what your mom is working on.”

I nodded at him as he left. I felt relieved and oppressed at the same time. Now I knew what to do but the idea of doing it made me feel cold in the middle.

The phone rang. I heard Jon open the sliding glass door to the back patio but he called out. “You can answer that,” before he went outside and closed the door behind him.

I hurried into the kitchen where the wall phone hung between the refrigerator and the door to the little utility room. When I answered, Hayley replied, “Oh, good. You’re home. I’m over at Donna’s; we’re doing homework. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Tell Mom I ate dinner,” she said all in a rush. “Maybe you should check on her to see that she’s eaten something.”

“Okay,” I said and she hung up. I could hear giggles in the background, so homework was not that high on the agenda. Nobody laughs at a History paper that’s due on Friday.

I went back to my room and began taking off clothes. My hands were not trembling which seemed odd. Down to my skin, I tried to look at myself in a mirror but the small one above my lowboy didn’t show much.

I picked out a pair of panties and put them on, enjoying the cool softness. But of course they didn’t fit right. I didn’t have a lot down there but what I did have made lumps that were just wrong.

I put my penis between my legs, sort of bent backward, and tried to hold it there by squeezing my thighs together. When I did that, my testicles slipped up inside me, something I hadn’t been aware they could do. The arrangement looked right from the front but was unstable and as soon as I moved, it all came undone.

But it gave me an idea. I put one of the girdles on over the panties, re-arranged things and snugged it all tight. My maleness was completely concealed, up inside my abdomen or between my legs pointing backward. It felt odd but sort of right.

I needed to see this. Hayley wouldn’t be back for hours, Mom and Jon were in the converted garage she used as a studio and workroom. I left my room and went down the hall to the bathroom I shared with Hayley. A full-length mirror hung on the inner side of the door and I examined my reflection.

I held one arm across my chest and messed with my hair with the other one. I didn’t look like a boy at all.

Back down the hall to my room. With a little fumbling, I got the bra on. The cups seemed empty, so I stuffed each one with two pair of panties. Then I put on the hose and used the built-in garter snaps or whatever they’re called in the girdle to hold the stockings up. That took longer than you would suppose because I had no idea how to put them on and had to figure out how the garters worked.

Back to the bathroom mirror. Now I really, really looked like a girl. My hair was too short, even if a bit shaggy, but was also cut wrong, so I looked like a girl with a boy’s haircut. But Jon was going to…. What would Jon do if—when he saw me like this? Tingles ran all over me thinking about that.

I dashed back to my room in stocking feet to put my own clothes back on over my girly underwear.