Just how low n' lovely would a strapping red-blooded junior jock go for a motorbike?

Easter Pageant
By Dee Eon

This is a previously shelved raw 2002 story I've just found and thrown up here unretouched for this apt special day, so if it seems rough and choppy that's why, as I'm currently unloading my HD's entire TG inventory to the web. Happy Easter!

-- -- --

"You know, that Easter "Bonny" Pageants' up at the mall Saturday!" Jake said with a braggy junior jock wink during our seventh-grade's lunch in our junior high cafeteria. "Since I'm picking out a new Daisy BB air rifle at Walmart over there, I might as well hang and check out all the chicks too!"

The Easter Bonny Pageant, stuck between Easter and St. Patrick's Day and a celebration of both, was a "walk-in" beauty pageant held in Springdale Mall's central atrium court where Santa perched kids on his knee only three months before. As long as a girl or woman was aptly all dolled up in Easter finery, they could sashay out the platform stage for an applause poll from shoppers and even win a cheap rhinestone crown. Lots of "pageant vets" as well as nervous and eager newbies turned up all lacy and froth-frilled to the max as Brownie points in their pageant resumes or for a shot modeling for a mall store sponsor. The pageant drew shoppers and mall patrons alike, and lots of junior high and high school dudes too, mainly exercising their wannabe-stud jollies by drooling at pageant princesses like a bear over a beehive.

I smirked at how Jake loved to needle an animal lover with his BB sniper brags. "Better stick with hittin' squirrels--the ones that are sleepin' when you're hunting them!"

"Oh yea? So how come I got all them trophies for whacking chipmunks and rabbits and ravens and stuff?"

"That's because they're so small they figure you can't see them!"

"Tell that to the doe I bagged with my dad last week!"

"That was blind luck and because your dad was showing you his real gun!"

"Hey, I can shot and stalk game on my own easy! Freak, I can sneak up close enough to a deer to ride 'em!"

"Sure! I bet I could sneak up on you and bead your butt just with my BB pistol and you'd never see me coming!"

I snorted. "Yea? In a pig's eye! You can't even hit a barn door with that cheap pistol thirty feet away!"

"Bet I can! I'll use a red paint pellet to mark your butt to prove it!" Jake asserted then blinked impishly. "Would you do all my homework for a year if I did?"

"I already do half your homework helping you!" I snickered, then a bell rang in my head. "Okay, if I tag you before you hit me, I get your Honda motorbike!"

"You kiddin'?"

"'Fraid?"

"No way!" Jake cockily said. "Okay, I'll be at the mall all day, and if you pat my shoulder before I zing you, you got the bike!"

"Bet!" I cried, sealing the deal with a high-five.

Man! I wanted a motorbike like nine lives, especially since my family was so wallet-strapped when dad lost his job all I got for Christmas was a three-year-old Xmas card.

A Honda XP motorbike!!

No more 'poor boy' jock!

Yea!

Now...just how the freak am I gonna do it??

* * *

I moaned aloud in our TV room; "Oh man, a year of doing that jerk's homework! What an ass I am making jumping at that bet!"

"Well, there's your answer. lil' bro!" Colleen, my high school cheerleader sister, coyly chirped during Babylon Five where a sly disguised alien assassin was sneaking up on the unwary hero in a crowd. "Jake's on the lookout for any short scrawny guy sneaking up on him, right?"

I smirked. "I'm not 'scrawny'! Just -- skinny!"

"Whatever. So why don't you disguise yourself??"

"Disguise? You kiddin'? That's the first thing he'd be looking for! He's a hunting nut with his hunting nut dad! They camouflage themselves so good sneaking up on ducks while duck hunting that they can just grab the stupid birds without shooting their guns! So he'd spot me in disguise a mile away!"

"Not if you were part of that pageant!"

"What??"

"Well, he wouldn't suspect a girl until he saw your face up close and you tagged him!"

I blurted. "You crazy?? I ain't dressing like no girl!!"

"Well, you did that playing Halloween tag once, swapping my witch costume to sneak up on Frankie and winning his grab bag."

I grinned at that literally sweet sneaky victory. "Yea, that was neat! But that's not the same! That was some stupid costume, not no real -- sissy girl shit!"

Colleen shrugged. "Just trying to help. Didn't know you liked doing extra-credit homework that much."

"Like shit!" I gushed, then pondered a diluted notion. "Then, maybe I could dress a little like a girl, like they do in school along with one of your play wigs. That's not too embarrassing."

She smirked. "Right! If you show up there just in jeans and sneakers you'll still look boy enough for him to take a second look and nail you. You got gotta go deep incognito, lil' bro'! Look so different that he'd never suspect you till it's too late. Like I'm talking serious makeover, not Halloween -- and you ought make it work easy!"

I didn't like her implication, even though it was long a bitter knowledge I gritted through half my life. "Hey! I don't look like any girl -- in guy OR girl shit!!"

"Like, you're no Sylvester Stallione, bro'! Hey, you'll grow out of those -- kiddie looks after you get past puberty, guy, but since you already look like an overgrown third grader, why don't you take advantage of it to get out of your jam? Or how late do you'll be up doing homework?"

I smirked at her damned ego-bruising logic. "I ain't -- shit! It -- wouldn't work! He'd spot me looking super-fairy in a red second!"

"Knowing Jake, he's gonna be too busy drooling at all the girls on that pageant line like the bogus jock he is, so his attention will be split eighty-twenty looking out for you. With the perfect guise, you ought be able to sneak up on him easy! Of course, if it's not perfect you'll be his slave all year."

I muttered. "I ain't doing goin' up no pageant stage, no way!"

"You don't have to! Just look like one of the contestants milling around, and you slowly kinda drift up behind his back with your face turned away and 'gotcha'!"

"I..I don't --"

"Besides he'd never suspect it's you, since he knows that you're as macho as he is, so he'd assume this would be the last thing you'd ever think of!"

I grudgingly nodded and groaned. "Still...I couldn't let him see me all decked out like some pageant girl! Shit, I'd be a fag, not a stud!"

"Hey, if he's all the stalker hunter you say he is, all he'll see is a sly stealth-disguise beat him, not whether you're any sissy doing it. I mean even macho detectives disquise themselves as lady decoys sometimes, right? Besides, afterwards you won't have to sit in back all your friends' motorbikes -- like a girl, right??"

Wincing abashed, I had to bitterly nod at that humiliating fact of my gang life, then smirked. "How come you're suddenly so gung-ho at helping me out?"

Colleen curved a Cheshire Cat smile. "Well, maybe because for the first time I'll get to chance to groom a lil' sister!"

"Mean the last!! And I ain't no 'sister'!!" I snorted, shaking my head between a rock and a hard place.

Man, like is anything worth this?

* * *

Come Saturday morning, Colleen raided the back of her closet and dusted off her old fluffy-lacy Easter outfit which was roughly my size and went to work on me, attacking me with an arsenal brushes and creams and do-dads.

Like any normal red-blooded American guy I would've balked at getting made over into a girl, especially by his own sister, but my male ego wasn't all that ruffled since it was all for a one hour spy mission for a juicy new motorbike, and I was sure I hadn't any homo kinks in my male self-esteem that'd be seduced into fagdom by girl drag. Besides, we used to help each other dress up as clowns and monsters and pirates and other outrageous things for Halloween and parties from birthday one, so she took my grudging nod at her suggestion in stride -- along with a little incentive of "sharing" my spoils like 'sharing' the bike.

Mom had drafted Colleen into the kiddie pageant circuit as soon as she learned to walk with all the usual stage mom reasons of fame and fortune and early retirement, so Colleen knew cosmetics and makeovers and fashion like second nature. Though she managed to break out of that scene during high school, her pageant skills helped made her the high school belle and cheerleader captain. I also suspected that she'd been waiting for this chance for a long time!

Having me peel down to male ego-sparing underpants, Colleen had me raise both legs to carefully roll vanilla-frosted tights down my legs without a run, which somehow felt different from Robin Hood play tights. Looked it too, like that made my once scrawny legs seem magically more sleek and cutely alien. Felt different too.

Like the silky-slick way my nylon-filmed thighs rubbed over another...

"It's to help fill out the dress's top right!" she explained to my balk when she whipped out a padded beginner bra with a stupid tiny bow between the cups.

Damn!

At least I wasn't wearing any panties under my tights!

Then came a crisp crinoline slip with tiers of crepe taffeta that went down over over my head to spread out below the waist in a lacy bell that felt like I was in a fluffy nest when sat before her vanity desk where she creamed my face over then hot toweled it off then a powder puff beating my face into submission under scented velvety pancake. She then prodded me to open my eyes wide as her tweezers parked feathery eyelashes up against my own, then she tapped my mouth to go wide as she brushed around my lips a waxy coral gloss. Her fake pearly fingernails were glued over my stubby ones next then she stood me up and dropped over my head the filmy star of my makeover and after primping it down she she draped over my scraggy locks a wealth of raven curls, finished up by clamping pearl earrings on my lobes and a necklace around my neck.

After worming my vanilla-filmed toes into a pair of snug pale emerald patent leather lo-heel pumps, Colleen stood back and nodded with a smug grin. "Good thing you're no Rambo! Check it out, Cinderella!"

I rose to her closet door's full-length mirror and blinked a gasp.

Omigosh!!

OMIGOSH!!!

Stunned, I gawked back at a knockout alien reflection, scanning it up from the cute buckled toes of lime-green skimmer pumps rooting a set of nicely turned beige-filmed ankles and awesomely slender calves and nice knees brushed by the frilly hems of a tiered accordion-pleated organdy skirt of a mint-pastel chiffon dress whose mildly mounded bodice's gauzy pouf shoulders were draped by roiling blue-sheened raven curls spilling from under a wide-brimmed straw bonnet crowning a doll-perfect with gaping coral-glossed lips and lush lashes fringing and enhancing wide gray-blue eyes.

No.

This was no Bozo!

It was my glamorous twin sister!

I often witnessed such makeover transformations during Colleen's pageants when plain Jane girls checking into pageants later appeared on stage as stunning princesses and mini Vegas showgirls looking years beyond their preteen fact. Unless you've actually seen it you'd never believe it.

Suddenly I felt a weird "thump" deep my frothy skirt that I only experienced while checking out leggy Joyce Schaefer in her gym togs at Phys Ed and a surge of chagrin rushed me hoping my sister couldn't tell or know.

"Jake's no way going to see you coming!" Colleen clucked like a used-car salesman. "Now I can ride to the mall anytime I like!"

"Yea, when MY bike's free!" I reminded, asserting a little macho to get over the mint pastel princess I'd been turned into.

"Colleen really went overboard! Better not show your father," Mom warned while giving us a lift to the mall, enchanted after her shock. "He'll likely ship you off to military school!"

I smirked, my white knit gloves kneading into my fluffy skirt while nervous second thoughts started to well to almost skittish qualms stepping out of the car and being abandoned by Mom and Colleen on their mall quest. Sure, Colleen briefly drilled me on "how not to prance like a girl" by walking with a slight rocking gait and how to move around my arms more and keep my knees and ankles welded together while sitting to better "pass," but ironically it only exacerbated my stage frights. It was one thing pranking as witches and Snow White for a kid's costume party but another turning up around thousands of shoppers not in on the joke that you hide your explanation and embarrassment behind. Jake would understand when I surprised him, but I doubted any guys from school would, especially since half of them already teased me about my "third-grade looks," which was an unsaid euphemism not for not merely looking boyishly youthful but "pretty." Being a school jester who strove to strut his masculinity threw off most bullies and cruel fairy taunts, but I don't think they'd overlook my looks all dolled-up this fine and serious as a mere joke.

There was something else unsettlingly disturbing about my delicate snug envelope. It was hard to pin on, but rather than making me feel very self-aware of myself, I felt oddly divorced my physical person, almost like the subtle weight having to constantly assert my masculinity in stride and demeanor had lifted and there was someone weaker beneath, like you took a clunky football outfit off a shrimpy dork. In a way it was kind of relaxing and breezy, and the sensation of being clad in swishy silk and clingy chiffon. My male ego sensed an indefinable danger and broke off my self-indulgence and I drifted before a storefront window and stopped to take another critical stock of the winsome stranger in my reflection.

Geezus!!

Colleen really did the job on me! It was like she finally let loose fifteen years of wanting to play dress-up with a sister all at once.

Again I found my attention drifting beyond awe as another dull thump deep my tight underpants snapped me out from my breathless incestuously narcissistic reverie. That was funny, to even for a few moments forget reality and drool over your own knockout twin sister. Most guys once or twice wonder what they'd be like as girls, and while I went out of my way shying such a wild notion, to see the proof of my wonder in stark 3-D like this was awesome. While I was no Marilyn Monroe impersonator, my general build and face was just gender neutral enough to be shoved light-years in her direction by all this makeup and gear, and seeing my gender's anchor that tenuous and fascinating was at once disturbing and awesome.

Man! It was a good thing I was a chronic practical joker or else I wouldn't have the guts to mock myself like this!

After ten minutes hugging corners and shadows getting used to my public effect and seeing that I drew not much more notice than others strolling around in their pre-Easter finery, I followed the signs to the Easter Bonny Pageant where I saw a platform stage already busy with dolled up contestants sashaying up and down the "runway". I surveyed the cordoned off onlookers and shoppers surrounding the event and wondered whether Jake was around, but then he would have to be. He wasn't going to miss any chance of taking homework pressures off him so he could spend more time at after school gym. I long soberly suspected that he was mostly my "buddy" because I tutored him and helped him get through tests and not just because we liked video games, though in return I escaped taunts and teases and school bullies under his invisible shield of buddyhood.

Though I was literally barely recognizable to myself, I wasn't sure how well I could sneak up on him. He'd be looking around like a hawk. My only hope was to keep my bonnet's brim low and innocently drift by him.

My heart jumped!

Jake!

Right up front on the spectator line gawking his eyes out at teen lookers in rainbow lace and satins and curvaceous gowns sashaying before the applauding onlookers, and every few seconds he'd scan around like an alerted hawk.

I felt like a deer that had to jump the hunter.

Was a motorbike really worth this?

I nibbled my waxy-coated coral-glossed lower lip in apprehension and hoped that Jake only saw my looks as merely a ploy and not a fancy. Fresh anxiety gripped me as the corners of my eyes caught sight of junior high and high school dudes throwing me long sticky looks and I was seized with the dread that their X-ray vision spotted my truth easy and my reputation as a straight guy in school was doomed.

Tipping my bonnet low, I started to drift toward my clueless quarry's turned back along with meandering shoppers, my heart freezing as he twice scanned past me.

Damn! That was close!!

Twenty feet...fifteen feet...ten...five...

My glove leapt out and tapped his turned shoulder.

"Tag!!" I blurted with victory and relief.

Jake gave a small startled jump then shook his head as he started to face me, muttering in exasperation. "Shit! How'd the fuck you get so close--??" Then fully facing me, his eyes bulged and he jumped even higher.

"Huh??" he blurted in surprise then he suddenly smiled funny with that fake suave way that high school sophomore jock wanna-bees used hitting on freshmen girls, "Er, sorry! Hey, nice outfit!..." His smoothy line skidded to a stop as he blinked several times as though letting something vague in my pancaked effect sink in.

"What the--?? Holy shit!" he blurted aloud.

"What's wrong??" I instinctively blurted in alarm before his gawking eyes.

"Ke--Kee--Kevin??" he stammered as though still unsure. I smirked.

"Com'on, Jake! You can tell!"

"Shit! You ARE Kevin!" he blurted amazed, open mouthed as a landed bass. "Holy shit!!"

"Knock it off, Jake!"

"Holy shit, no, I'm not messing around! Holy shit, Kev! You're--You're awesome!"

I smirked and he shook his head.

"No, no kidding, Kev! Shit! I saw her--er, you passing around several times a while ago--"

My padded chest suddenly sunk,

"--But I never guessed it was you! I thought it was just another fox!"

I blushed. Me--a "fox"?? I let it go to dump or savor and shrugged. "So, guess I got the bike, huh?" I reaffirmed.

"Sure, you got it alright." Jake said as though passing on a pencil. still taking me in. "Jesus, I can't believe this, Kev! You're—you're—awesome!"

"Put a sock in it, huh?"

"No, I mean it! You're awesome! I always wondered what—er, forget it!"

"What were you about to say?"

"Uh, nothing. Er, just—er, that I don't know how you got the guts to guzzy up that nice, you know?"

"Because it's just a disguise, that's all. Like wearing a Bozo clown or pirate costume or something."

He chuckled. "Fuck, you ain't nobody's Bozo! In fact I bet you can even pass that pageant easy!"

"Sure!"

"I mean it, Kev! Go for it! It's open to anybody and you're sure dolled up for it!"

"I don't think so."

"Shit, it'd be so great!" Jake almost looked desperate; "Look, bet, okay?"

I sighed. "Another?"

"I'll throw in my Epson copy-printer! You always wanted something like that, right?"

"Sure...but why?"

"Because--because I wanna remember what your twin sister could've been like doing it."

"That's dumb."

"Alright, my old Macintosh too, okay?"

"You putting me on?"

"Just three minutes, Kev! Com'on! Isn't this the kinda gag you would've killed for to try when you were a kid?"

"Sure, as a kid!" I riposted then nibbled my waxy lower lip again mulling the stage and what he said. True, I might never get another dare like this, putting it over hundreds of people and gawking guys who were probably feeling more enchanted and excited by my effect than I was by my reflection.

I had to giggle inside, wondering if they were straining tight underbriefs like I had! A bunch of blind jocks drooling over a guy! The ultimate sly prank! It was too juicy to pass up! Heck, it's just a minute or two! Then reap in my goodies!

Eagerly game, I turned to face Jake and just caught his eyes jerking away from my face. I wanted to smirk but seeing him so fascinated and fawning me so was so deliciously sly and smug that I just basked his homage. "All...alright. Just hope no one from school's here!"

"Don't worry, they won't know you from Kevin from snot!" Jake said in a funny sure way, gently clasping my gauzy shoulders steering me to the woman behind the pageant registration desk.

"Name please?"

"Name? Er...er...Blythe Larkingdale!" I professed, trying not to blurt into laughter in her face. She jotted my name and gestured me to the short line offstage where contestants waited on line to take a long stroll around a short runway. I was nibbling the waxy coat off my lip when it was my turn and I steeled myself and spread a copied broad silly smile and sauntered off in Colleen's smoothly rocking sashay. I kept my eyes over the crowd and down the central gallery so I wouldn't turn chicken before a thousand eyes and hazily I heard applause. Then every contestant got applause.

Only this one sounded like the hooting thunder inside a basketball game.

I instantly assumed it was some kind of commotion in the mall, maybe a security guard chasing down some purse snatcher or something and my eyes dropped to see and saw wide smiles and applause directed at me!

Me!

I made my circle back to the stage and was about to step off when the curvy sequined lady emcee grabbed my shoulders and prodded me to go out again.

Kidding!!

More applause and hooting and my former apprehension wafted into a kind of buoyant smug relief. The emcee steered me to the side of the stage with three or four other held-back girls and teens where I waited as nervousness well while other girls did their turn then my select tiny group was ushered out the runway before the crowd which hooted while the emcee announced each our names and rewards, then finally asked me to take down my bonnet off my fake fluffy raven curls for a rhinestone tiara.

Tiara!!!

"Don't take it off, it looks awesome on you!" Jake later said at our McDonalds' table in the food court as I reached for the silly thing. I simpered.

"So stupid!" I muttered, denying the regard freshly heaped me even though I felt a soft giggily high at fooling everyone there. "Anyone could win shit over there!"

"Hey, that crowd had eyes and said you're a looker! Even nice legs."

"Sock it, uh?"

"Hey, all those people can't be wrong!"

"Half the crowd at a ball game are wrong! Man, can't wait till I get out of this shit!"

"Don't--!" Jake blurted then sat back with a sheepish grin. "I mean, why pull the plug on the joke so early? Besides, where'd you dig up that name? 'Blythe Larkingdale' ."

"Colleen said to use it in case somebody asked. She said some people would get the joke. Not me!"

A businessman came up. "Hello! Are you Blythe Larkingdale from the pageant?"

"Yo! See a crown??" Jake japed.

"I'm the manager of J.C. Penney here. We co-sponsored the pageant and the rewards and contracts like this one; would you like to model a week for our Easter week promo?"

My mouth fell open. "M--M--Model??"

"She'll do it!" Jake blurted gleefully. "Er, I'm her brother and mom said if a modeling offer comes it's a go!"

The store manager beamed like headlights. "Splendid! Have you and mom turn up early tomorrow and we'll get you modeling lovely!"

"But--But--" but I was stammering into thin air. "What the fuck you tell him that for??"

"Shh! Watch your mouth, man! You're a princess!"

"Freak that!"

"Hey, it's only for a week on Easter vacation!"

"Yea--Vacation! Know what that means??"

"You got any idea how much models make? Even for a week? Maybe a thousand!"

My peeve went suspended animation. "Thousand? You're fucking!"

"Nope. That's why your mom has to sign--and she will! See, I'm doing you a big favor!"

"No favor! He thinks I'm some stupid girl!"

"Well, you are a pretty chick--kinda," he said to my smirk. "Com'on, Kev. Sure beats raking leaves and cleaning garages. Besides, think of the big joke you'll be putting over everyone!"

I mulled and muttered. He was right at that. There was no way mom was gonna pass up a thousand dollars, even at the expense of my suffering through another outrageous prank. Still, my cut would put me ahead by two summer jobs, and I had to admit, the prospect of my pretty pose putting it over throngs of shoppers and dummies and jocks and bullies was a little smugly exciting.

But I acted it wasn't. "So, how much you want out of it?"

Jake smiled funny. "Not a dime!"

"Bullshit. I never seen you so excited over me since I made you those crib notes for your final!"

"I mean it, cross my heart!"

"Yea, stick an axe in it and triple cross over it."

"Make it an arrow instead," he quipped with a sly grin.

* * *

End of Chapter One?