Caught In Slips Pt 7
By Christie Myr

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I’d like to thank Emily 63 from Victoria in Australia for providing me with information about various places and institutions mentioned throughout this story. Thanks also to Joanna (Grim City Girl) who proof read the chapter. I’m also advised by several Australian readers that Wagga Wagga is simply known as Wagga.
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Being Janet, year 12 at school started out especially well for me. I now had a boyfriend called Greg, so I wasn’t any longer your typical school outcast along with the other nerds and geeks, woohoo! It also helped boost my confidence more, which quickly became apparent to others at school who knew me. At home mum and dad also seemed to treat me differently now too, particularly dad who even worked up the courage to speak to me “father to daughter” about being careful with Greg and to remind me about not doing anything foolish, that could destroy Janet as well as ruining my family’s ability to live here.

Alas love can be short and sweet and my first crush ended amicably around June that left me not only happy for the experience but wiser as well. But between you and me, Greg was always more happy, whenever I’d agree to relieve his pent up lust with my hand. When I told Sue about the two of us breaking up, she simply told me to keep the good memories of Greg and be thankful he never wanted anything more than friendship and the occasional hand job! A few months later I was asked out by another boy, except this time it was after I’d taken his wicket when our team played his……

At the Wagga Cricket Club (WWCC) during trials for the forthcoming season, my relationship with Greg and its ending saw me receiving both jibes and advice for my welfare. When after the 2nd to last training before the start of the new season, I was promoted out of B grade not into A grade, but into the club's 2nd grade’s turf side as their spin bowler, because the bowler who’d been in that team last season had left during the winter to take up another job elsewhere. The A grade spin bowler who would have normally been promoted, preferred to play with his friends in A grade, leaving the way open for me and admittedly I was now starting to fulfil the promise from all the advice, help and net sessions I’d partaken in

My new captain, Geoff Wright was both encouraging and denigrating at the same time. He went to great pains to really begin to train me in how to bowl leg spin on turf wickets, which turned out to be good for everyone involved. He had a lot of help doing it, including getting the 1st grade spin bowler John Snow to show me different grips to bowl different balls. He even called on a few retired players to come down and watch me at practice and help me improve.

I quickly learnt that bowling on turf was completely different to bowling on synthetic grass pitches and found that the turf wickets were actually far more encouraging to bowl spin on. I also found out just how much quicker the pace of the fast bowling was when I fielded or batted as well. More often than not, batting at number 11 in 2nd grade saw me only last two or three balls before getting out. It made Geoff instruct me that I was to spend at least 15 minutes each training session practicing my batting against the fast bowlers in the nets. It didn’t help me much and I hated it at first, but got to enjoy it more when I began lasting more than just a couple of balls and scoring a few runs batting.

It also came as a surprise that the opposition team’s player’s behaviour seem to change whenever they played our 2nd grade side, basically because no one wanted to be accused of using foul language in front of me. This was pointed out to me by an umpire one afternoon after the end of play, when he told me that it was a pleasure to umpire games I played in, because the only bad language used came after some did something terrible and it was always from the miscreant’s own teammates!

By the start of December, my leg spin bowling had improved immeasurably. It might have been part of the reason for me meeting my new beau, Mark Edwards. That happened at the end of play in my second match with 2nd grade, when Mark, who played for our opposition that game, asked me to go out with him. It surprised me he actually asked me, because I’d bowled him out during the match, just after he had scored a half century. Mark was in the same year at Mt Erin High and had heard from friends about Greg’s and my mutual breakup and decided to then and there ask me out.

Actually thee was just a little bit of a story to Mark asking me out. You see, Mark was considered quite a good batsman and he cam into bat when I was bowling. After a few watchful overs, he took the long handle to me and my captain took me off so as not to ruin my (still fragile) confidence as well as my line and length. Mark had just scored his 50 when Graeme (captain) brought me back on to bowl, hoping that Mark might try to hit me out of the attack and get himself out.

I'm not sure if it was overconfidence by Mark or just my good line and length, but with me fifth ball of my first over back, I managed to fool him into misreading the flight of the ball and got him bowled, just hitting the top of the stumps while he was swinging at air hoping to smash me out of the park. He actually congratulated me after the game for bowling him out, before asking me if I was free to go out with him!

When I came home afterwards and told my parents over dinner, neither seemed that surprised I’d been asked out by another boy. Mum told me later on that anyone could see I was pretty to look at, and that this Mark “what’s his name” had just been quicker off the start than anyone else. After going out with Mark a few times, I found that our mutual interest in cricket made for a much more cordial relationship than I’d ever had with Greg. Not that Greg hadn’t been fun to be with you understand, it’s just that I found it easier to talk to and be around Mark than I had with Greg.

It also helped out at school (socially) for me too. Because as word got around that Mark had asked me out, it seemed to me as if I was noticing a number of the other boys in our year looking at me differently now too. Although the school year was almost over, neither of us really associated with the other’s friends there, so although we might spend an occasional lunchtime together, Mark had his own circle of friend’s that he’d mix with, as I had my circle of friends. That way both of us could happily relate to each other stories about something that had happened in our different classes, which was always handy for something to say (if it wasn't about cricket) to someone you see every day at school when you’re going out with them on a weekend.

On the home front several months before Mark asked me out, I’d play up if mum or dad didn’t drop me off and pick me up from school each day. This was because although Uranquinty mightn’t have been as cold as Tamworth in winter, the unreliable school bus service often saw a number of us getting onto the bus each morning with faces almost turning blue waiting for the bus to arrive. I’d passed my driving test long ago and wanted a car of my own so as to at least be able to make sure I got to school on time and hopefully warm.

I’d been forever asking dad (and especially mum) to allow me to dip into my trust fund so I could buy a car, using buying my sister her car as justification to both of them. Each time I asked, the answer was usually the same from either of them and it took one of the “in crowd” girls in my year accidently being run over almost outside her house, for dad to finally relent and agree I could have a car.

By then however winter was turning to spring and with spring and the coming of summer the trouble of freezing to death waiting for the bus was replaced by being cooked slowly to death waiting for the bus. Also my parents had the problem of knowing that by early the following year I’d have had my gender changing operation sorted, and although I was reasonable confident of getting a scholarship to University, exactly where that would be (or should I say which one) was still to be decided by my results after I did my finals in October.

What have these two things got to do with one another you might be asking yourselves?

Well, if I moved to Sydney to do my computer science course AND the car that I purchased turned out to be unreliable, I could have no end of trouble getting around safely. So for that reason (although I had a lot of other reasons) I wanted to buy a new car or at worst a new car demonstrator instead of a used car. Mum thought it was a good idea too, but her idea of a new car and mine was almost as bad as buying a possible lemon used car. In the end it was dad who decided (finally) that I should buy a new car when (if) I moved to Sydney, but until that had been decided on, he’d find a neat and tidy used car for me to buy to use now and I could use it as a trade in on a new car later on.

Much to my horror, after telling me what would happen, dad smiled as he told me about a used “motor” that he’d seen and it would be perfectly ideal for driving around locally. I thought “hello Mr Toyota or Hyundai used car special” when what I really wanted was “hello Mr new bright red soft top Mazda MX5 sports car!” So it turned out that early one Saturday morning, I sat silent for most of a trip out to one of the farms almost at Albury, so dad could show me this “motor”. it turned out to be a cross between god knows what cars stuck seemingly together at random. He mustn’t have seen the look of disappointment on my face as he showed me a Mini Moke that he thought was a good small car for me to buy.

At first I thought he was joking, but apparently he wasn’t!

He’d told me on the drive down, that the vehicle he wanted to show me was a convertible soft top, (true) and was painted red (also true, although it appeared badly faded and almost rust brown in colour). It had a manual four on the floor gear box and it even had a separate hard top I could use if I needed. He quickly told me as he saw the look of dismay in my eyes looking at the car(?) that the car was also a small 4 wheel drive and I could easily take out the seats for transporting things around too! Dad honestly seemed to believe it was a good first car for me to have and enthusiastically took the keys from off the nearby hook on a barn wall suggesting we hop in and take it for a test drive.

I was speechless just simply looking at the seats! SEATS…..They were nothing more than canvas over a metal frame and had no visible padding or comfort support, and as for the dashboard? What dashboard I was silently wondering. It only had one main gauge and that was the speedometer and it didn’t even have a glovebox, only a tray shelf underneath the windscreen and didn’t have a radio for Fricke sake! The soft top was folded down behind the back seat and there were no pillars or doors anywhere. All you had in front of you was a large windscreen with only a lap sash seat belt to prevent you from going through it if you had to brake hard suddenly.

What the car (?) did have though was exhaust noise. Lots of it too I found out as dad turned on the engine and gently revved the motor to warm it up. After about a minute, he engaged 1st gear and the car almost leapt in the air as we skidded up the long dirt road and turned onto the bitumen road. Once on the road I could begin to understand why there are people out there who prefer driving with closed windows, as aside from the windscreen there was nothing to prevent the wind from whistling and buffeting me around as dad drove.

I found that after a few minutes though, I was actually beginning to like the open air sensation and although dreading each bump or small hole that sent a jarring through the seat into my body, I listened to dad shouting almost at the top of his voice, about needing to find a radio to put into it……among everything else it was missing, I thought.

Dad slowed the car to turn off the sealed road and headed up a barely defined dirt track, where he stopped for a moment then proceeded to show me the additional advantages of the car’s (?) 4 wheel drive, none of which I’d ever use and if I did and dad caught me doing it, he’d have skinned me alive! When he’d finished and driven back to near the sealed road again, he stopped the car and struggling to climb out, suggested I should try driving it and see how it handled. After getting out and discovering just how low to the ground I actually was sitting inside it, I found it easy getting into the door less driver’s side seat.

Jacking the seat forward to the stops, I buckled up, adjusted the mirrors and tentatively eased the car forward, surprised at how sudden the throttle response was. Five minutes and countless gear changes later, I was sold on the little beast. True it wasn’t an MX5, and it didn’t have a radio, air-conditioning, a tacho, a boot, windows, doors and just about anything else a sensible car would have. But when dad told me that it would only cost me $2,000 because it was an old farm vehicle his company still had on its books and that no one used anymore I was hooked, netted and ready to fry up.

When I finally drove back down the farm dirt road into the barn where it was kept, I was as a high as a kite because of the rush of adrenalin driving the car had given me. Dad saw my face and told me if I offered him $1,200 this instant, it was mine and he assured me I’d get that back when I traded it in for a new car later on. $800 off for saying nothing, where do I sign!

He also said that he’d get some of his workers to wash and polish the car to make it nice for me when I picked it up the following weekend, while he’d also arrange to have the car fully serviced at no charge so that I got a clean and ready to drive vehicle, that only need someone to give it a good home. On Monday dad withdrew the money from my trust and that evening told me that the car would be ready by Friday, so that mum could drive me down to pick it up on Saturday. I think that having a dad like mine whose company’s H O was almost 20,000 kilometres away turned out to be a good thing (again).

Because the following Saturday saw me confronted not by the car I’d seen and driven the previous Saturday, but by one that actually now had a new eye catching bright yellow duco. It also had two clean white canvas seats in front and a white canvas lounge seat in back along with the now clean white soft top roof folded down and the matching coloured hard top firmly secured in back. The tyres had been blacked, the chrome wire wheels (which I admit I never even noticed when I test drove it) were cleaned and polished, along with all the chrome work around the car. It actually looked better than a Mazda soft top sports car (for the cost), as far as I was concerned. Mum just gave an exaggerated loud groan as she watched me dash from out of her car and race over to see my OWN car up close……..After a five minute test drive though, mum’s smile was as broad as mine as she pulled up and told me it needed a locked glove box and a radio, but she’d borrow it to go grocery shopping whenever I didn’t need it!

I found the long drive home the perfect remedy for any over enthusiasm I might have had when mum had been driving me down to pick the car up. A quick test drive is one thing with the wind buffeting you. It’s another thing entirely when you’re needing to drive almost 100 kilometres with the wind howling straight through you. Since I foolishly didn’t try raising the white soft top up over me, (mainly because I didn’t know how to yet) I was unaware of how exhausted I’d feel by the time I drove home with mum following behind me. I also had to affix my red P1 plates and was limited to 90kmh.

The only conditions dad had made me agree to about the car the night before, had been that I wasn’t to drive the car anywhere for the rest of the weekend once I drove it home. From then on until I had a green P2 unrestricted licence, I wasn’t to drive with any more than two passengers in the car during daytime and one passenger until 11pm. I was prohibited by law to have any passengers under 21 between 11pm and 5am and with only one passenger when it was dark. But by the time I’d driven back home with my little beastie, I was too fatigued to even want to drive anywhere anyway!

On Monday at school, the bright yellow beast was the centre of attention in the student’s carpark among my girlfriends and some of the other girls and guys in my year. Even our principal, jokingly, told everyone at morning assembly about a blinding “yellow something” addition to the student’s car park area and warned every student not to try doing anything foolish to it.

But by the end of the day somebody had, and I came out to find my cutie had somehow or other been picked up and carried over onto the bricked in grass area out the front of the school. It was with a lot of laughter from amused students, that I stood opened mouth wondering how to find a way to somehow or other get the car back onto the bitumen again. But it didn’t take long before six of our first grade football team players miraculously appeared, almost out of nowhere, offering to pick the car up and carry it back out onto the road......hhmmmm!

Which they did…..in return for a kiss for each one of them as payment……I was happy to pay it……. believe me it’s cheaper to have to kiss six guys than it is to pay $800 for a heavy lift tow truck to move a car! After that, I never had anyone at school do anything to my little beastie aside from some of them tossing the odd empty lunch bag or empty soft drink can inside it every so often!!!

I almost forgot to tell you about something else that happened earlier on to me, what with my car and Mark Edwards. This next part of the chapter is even more important...........

When the end of May rolled around, a recently new annual phenomenon that had invaded Australia and most of the rest of the free world called the “school formal” was to take place. Somehow or other (even back in Essex), this event had migrated over from America and was now an important happening for school students in their final years at high school. My brother Greg had attended his while we lived in Tamworth as did Sue, so my parents already knew what to expect for my year 12 formal. My boyfriend (it’s still strange to type that word) Greg and I were still together back then, so of course he invited me to be his partner to escort to the Formal.

My sister had laughed uproariously when I skyped her about the invitation to escort him, but I was glad that she offered without me having to ask her, the loan of her own formal dress for me to wear. She even drove back home specially to deliver it, justifying the trip to my parents by bringing my brother Greg back with her as well for the weekend. Sue had already told mum that she’d be bringing the matching shoes for the dress too, so the two most expensive items were covered for free, which mum and dad must have been thankful for.

My sister, mum and I then spent most of a Sunday at the Wagga shopping centre allowing me to try on gowns, so I could experience the thrill for myself, knowing I already had my dress. My sister’s dress only needed to be “slightly!” taken in around the bust area because of Sue’s extra blessings there, for the dress to fit perfectly. The shoes already fitted me I knew, even though Sue was slightly taller than me. Because of our shopping excursion my sister and brother jigged university classes on Monday as they drove back to Sydney, because mum refused to let her daughter drive all the way back to Sydney in the dark on the Sunday night.

Mum also booked with her hair salon to do my hair (which I’d been deliberately letting grow longer for quite some while ) so that two Saturdays later, I found the new longer style that her hairdresser had given me suited me far better than my old shorter pixie style. Dad supposedly,(according to mum) had agreed to pay for my make up being done professionally by a mobile beautician, who called in at home to do it along with doing the faces of two of my girlfriends who wanted professional make up assistance. They’d agreed to share the cost both for the beautician as well as for a stretched limousine. Our escorts also shared for the cost of the limo because they’d be picked up at their own homes by the limousine before calling around to each girl’s home.

Although I’d been going out with Greg for a while now, the school “Formal” was entirely different and I’d have to admit to having some nerves preparing for it. Because my makeup was being done professionally at my home, I was left till last to sit in “the chair”. So my friends never saw my end result, whereas I saw their faces made up, although admittedly not with them dressed in their gowns.

My own getting dressed regimen was a long drawn out affair, comprising of 1st showering making sure my hair didn’t get wet or damp, followed by the 2nd step of drying myself completely, then the 3rd step of putting on my underwear and dress, followed by the 4th step which was the lady putting my make up on, followed by the all-important 5th step of looking at the finished product to see if it could be improved on (or shock of horrors) finding something wrong that needed to be fixed.

MY horror moment was discovering (before my face was made up) that somehow or other my underwear was clearly VPL (visible panty line). When I’d tried on the dress a fortnight ago, there hadn’t been any VPL problem. Mum’s suggested reason as to why that was, doesn’t even deserve to be mentioned!

To fix the problem I tried on several other pairs of panties including an old thong of Sue’s I had in the bottom of my undies drawer, but nothing seemed to work, as the VPL was clearly obvious wearing any of them (With the thong , it was the top of it standing out under the dress). Mum finally suggested I “ditch em” and not to say anything about it to dad, then smiled as I self-consciously did just what she suggested and Voilà …. no VPL! anymore.

When everything was done mum did her best in trying to calm me. 1st breathe slowly, 2nd don’t imagine anything other than happy thoughts, and 3rd …… don’t touch my face. If I felt I was starting to perspire, I was too lightly dab a tissue softly over my brow. After that, it was a simply a matter of remaining calm and relaxed and trying not to sweat. So instead I ended up almost freezing because mum turned the air-conditioning down to 18 degrees to help the sweating problem when it was early winter!

When the limousine finally pulled up outside our door, Greg left the limousine to come to our door to collect me, carrying a small corsage for me to wear, which luckily could also be worn around my wrist or attached to my purse. His mum and dad drove up behind the limo because they wanted to see the two of us together and take their own photographic memories as well.

Greg’s hired white tuxedo luckily didn’t clash with my dress and when we all saw the first photos, both sets of parents agreed we looked lovely as a couple. After some more hurried snaps, some alone, the two of us together, then with our dads and then our mums, then each of us with our own parents, then all of us together, it was a hurried good night and we somehow or other managed to crowd into the stretched limo without me (or Greg) ruining our outfits.

When we finally got to the auditorium booked for the dance, we had to endure the line up on the red (more like muddy brown) carpet wait, before proceeding onto the obligatory photo pose beside a sentimental prop, for both of us to remember the night by. The school magazine had promoted a deal of $5 for two prints paid for now, and $10 for every additional copy. THEN we were allowed to enter into the hall, which had been decorated quite extravagantly with several mirror balls, rotating coloured spotlights and hundreds of fairy lights and looked spectacularly wonderful.

Mum and I had talked several days previously about how to behave at the formal. Thankfully my sister and I had also skyped on Friday night, where she told me all the do’s and don’ts that mum wouldn’t have dared mention to me. Sue’s advice for me to survive the Formal was not to act smug, or bitchy, not to show off, or make any rude remark about some other girl’s dress (or their choice of escort either). And I was to make sure I offered lots of smiles and complimented every other girl there about their dress or them and their partner for the night. She told me this was the hardest thing to try and maintain, ending up in hysterics as she then told me what NOT to say to anyone at the formal, which to maintain decorum I won’t repeat to you.

Of course, neither Greg nor myself was in the running for any of the prizes to be presented (that a few airheads on the social committee must have thought up for the evening), but I did enjoy myself as my sister told me I would. We both got invited to several “After Formal” parties, which my sister had warned me were nothing more than excuses for the boys to shag the girls silly they’d escorted to the formal and had probably already been agreed to several weeks before.

Sue assured me that at “her” Formal, it allowed some of the girls who it was already assumed were sexually “experienced”, to lose their cherries for “real”. She also suggested I try and remember how a lot of the girls looked at the formal, especially those that accepted invitations to the after parties. She told me to look at them in a month’s time and then again another month later, because 2 or 3 of them would get unintentionally knocked up and would be desperately trying not to show it, she told me with a laugh!

My sister also told me to listen out for where the “passion pit” was for the evening and to see who visited it, if I wanted to start any rumours later. Yes, as it turned out there was one too. It was located in a nearby smaller side hall, thirty of forty feet away outside one of the side entrances, which we saw very clearly in the hall’s outside lights when Greg and I looked outside. It was obvious what was happening at the smaller hall, because one of the larger football forwards was acting as the doorman outside it, allowing some couples to enter it while others were being forcefully turned away.

It was fun watching some of my less friendly (to me) school friends walking back from over there and hurriedly dashing off to repair facial makeup damage, or with the boys re-entering the hall, to watch them hurriedly remember to wipe their faces to remove any smudged makeup evidence. My sister promised me I’d have a fun night if I was carefully discreet and she was right.

Remembering that I was “sans” panties myself, I did my best to quietly point out to Greg (unheard by the crowd around me) my opinion about certain girl’s dresses, some of which obviously showed that the girl had nothing on underneath. This had my date choking back tears of laughter trying to keep a straight face as I pointed them out to him. At one point I felt his hand slowly glide over my own derrière and he made the remark that I didn’t seem to be wearing underwear either. So I smiled as I told him I wasn’t because the dress didn’t allow me to, but that he wasn’t going to find out if I dyed my pussy either!

The formal was scheduled to finish at midnight and our limousine had been booked to return for us at 11.40pm, so at 11.30 we went round and told our two other couples it was time to leave, only to discover ten minutes later that one of the girls wasn’t my friend Denise who’d been driven here but one of the “it” girls in our year called Beverly Raff (no spelling error). Her “new” escort Frank, quickly spoke to the driver and saw our limo stopping at a house where loud music emanated from inside and had couples standing around out the front, that I recognised from earlier on being at the Formal, which provided the fuel for conversation among the four of us left in the limo, as each of us was driven to our homes, the girl’s home first.

When the limo drove slowly down our dirt driveway, my house seemed to be in total darkness. This allowed Greg to get out with me to say goodnight, as well as receive his expected “Thank You Greg for Taking Me to The School Formal Snog” ,which I unashamedly gave him to show my appreciation for inviting me. My sister had told me the previous night, about how it would be when I got home and the house being in complete darkness and she was right again. She also assured me that she knew mum and dad would be sitting in their bedroom with the lights off, waiting for me to come home then they’d be straining to listen for any shenanigans, in-case I bought someone inside with me.

So I made sure I was just noisy enough closing my bedroom door to let them know I was home safely but decided not doing what my sister suggested, which was speaking in loud whispers as if I was talking to someone else with me, and quietly giggled to myself as I got undressed, wondering what would have happened if I’d played the prank on mum and dad?

When I woke up on the following morning and looked at my phone, I saw my message bank had almost thirty unread texts to look at. I spent the next hour or so reading them while occasionally answering one before mum’s voice called out asking if I was coming out for breakfast. A quick glance at my mirror showed I was almost respectable and donning a housecoat made my way out to the kitchen where mum and dad were waiting for me.

Mum had a look of anticipation and must have been bursting to ask questions while dad smiled, probably just glad I wasn’t a real girl (not yet anyway) that might have been partaking in hanky-panky the previous night. After the usual questions and answers, I was left to clean the kitchen away, while dad did his usual routine of sitting in the lounge room to read the delivered Sunday papers and mum went to their private bathroom for a leisurely bath.

I spent the day catching up with school friends about last night, as well as answering some of mum’s more personal questions about how everything went that she’d never ask me in front of dad. I also made sure to drive round to visit Greg at home later on, to thank both him and his parents for a wonderful night and to give him a another private thank you snog out of sight of his family!

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Red P1 and Green P2 licenses: P1 held for 12 months then after a computer test upgraded to P2 for 2 years. 17 Is the minimum age for a license which means you are 21 when you are eligible for an unrestricted license after another computer test.......(Courtesy of Grim City Girl)

I've had some problems with the computer at my garage and the next chapter may or may not be able to be proof read while I await clearance to email again. C.M.
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