Do I Pass?

I gave a little spin as I had seen my mother and sisters do and said "Do I pass inspection?"

"Not quite. This is the part I hate about being a woman - makeup. Fortunately I don't need it to be a pharmacist - who ever heard of someone trying to put the moves on the woman who is providing his Viagra prescription?"

"One would think that if he needed Viagra he had someone to use it with."

"Shows how much you know. I've known a couple of snakes that treat it like having a condom in their wallet - you never know when you may need it."

"If I were a woman I'd…"

"And so you shall soon be, my dear fiancé. In my parent's milieu a woman without makeup might as well be naked."

"Now that would certainly get the party going."

"Have you ever tried it for yourself?"

"No. I never got that far."

"So tonight I will give you a basic bit of makeup, not so much to create a beautiful woman but to teach you how to make it through an evening with your face itching but being unable to scratch for fear of damaging your makeup."

"That doesn't sound like it will be as much fun as it's been so far."

"It won't be. That's why I don't use makeup unless I'm coerced."

"If you don't use makeup then how do you know how to use makeup?"

"Darlings," she said in a fruity, pseudo-English voice, "No proper woman would appear in public without her face in proper condition. You shall not be like these working girls who eschew the proprieties."

"Seriously?"

"I may have flunked out of every finishing school I got dumped in, but I did learn how to use makeup. Also basic hair care and styling, dancing, proper topics for small talk and, above all, how to snare a rich husband."

"So getting engaged to a working-class woman is your form of protest?"

"Bingo! Sit your ass in the chair and let me go to work."

"I don't think a proper woman would say the word ass in public."

"One - I am not a proper woman. Two - we are not in public. Three - your ass is still not in the chair."

I sat. I watched. I was surprised. The woman I had seen in the mirror was, well, just another woman who I would pass on the street without remark. Ten minutes later I think I would have given her a second look if I could do so without being rude.

"Amazing!" chortled Aida. "If I weren't already engaged to you I'd be down on my knees before you got away."

"Rings! We're going to need engagement rings, aren't we?" I realized.

"I didn't think of that."

"I suppose we can get something cheap since we aren't really engaged."

"Not on your life! My mother will be examining both our hands with her jeweler's loupe before we've been there ten minutes. She's spot a phony in a flash."

"So what do we do?"

"We go ring shopping Monday night."

"Monday?

"I have to move some money out of my trust fund. Daddy would notice two decent engagement rings on his credit card."

"But… That's crazy!"

"Sure is."

"I don't know if I'm believable enough to go out in public so soon."

"Hah! A little more makeup, some high heels and keep your mouth shut and that should be enough."

"Voice needs work?"

"Sorry."

"No, I want to do this right. I suppose there are You-tube videos that can help me sound more feminine."

"Gad! There are You-tube videos for anything! You seen the one where the guy dances around the stage farting to the music?

"I haven't had the pleasure. Actually, the one with all the women playing Mozart's Turkish March on bamboo marimbas or xylophones or whatever they call them is more my speed. Now if I could just look like the women in that one…"

"Hey! No comparisons allowed. Getting that shit from my mother almost had me believing I was a failure as a woman because I didn't weigh ninety pounds and have AA boobs like a fashion model."

"She didn't!"

"She surely did."

"Let me guess, your mother would be perfectly at home in a brass bra with horns on her helmet belting out Wagner in the great opera houses of Europe."

"She can't sing worth shit."

"And the rest?"

"I get my height from my father and my build from my mother. I'm guessing she's somewhere around 250 these days. Put those damned horns on her head and she might be mistaken for a bull. I will not follow her example in that or anything else!"

"Honey, you're built like the proverbial brick shithouse and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Say it loud and say it proud!"

"And say it while Mother's listening on the phone!"
 

How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall?

Do I have to say it?

OK, I will.

Practice, practice, practice!

That's how the rest of the weekend went. You've heard of negative reinforcement? Some guy with the improbably name of Burrhus Frederic Skinner (is it any wonder why he preferred to be known as BF Skinner?) figured out back in the 1940s that if you catch someone doing something wrong and stop whatever he's doing cold, eventually he will learn not to do whatever he shouldn't. That applies to women, too, but back then women didn't count for squat in scientific research.

Which is the long way around to explain why I had my hand slapped about forty times in the first hour after my face was made up. Aida was a big advocate of operant conditioning by very direct methods. The only saving grace was that Aida had to stay close to me in order to slap my hand.

I did dramatic readings of news articles from The Washington Post. Then - the god I don't believe in help me - dramatic readings from Fox News, in preparation to discuss politics with the crowd at the party. It wasn't all that hard to work up a head of steam with Fox, but keeping my voice under control was quite a challenge. I did not want to keep shifting to falsetto!

By the second hour I only got slapped maybe twenty times. I was learning. I was also itching. Bigtime! Why do women put up with this?

Oh yeah, Aida doesn't. She's a smart woman.

I walked back and forth, trying to imitate Aida's gate. We decided I needed some high heels to help me look more feminine. We danced, with Aida taking the lead. Because of that exclusive girl's school had got her cultured, she knew how to dance. Since she was usually the tallest and largest in her class she got picked to take the man's part. Ironic, that, with me learning to be the woman.

So we walked, talked, cooked, ate, cuddled, slept, made love, (screw the maeup!) found ourselves to be very much in sync. I felt comfortable telling her about the frat-house fiasco, she unburdened herself of some childhood hurts. I was starting to get it, to get how a woman might feel - at least as well as anyone born with a penis can.

Sunday evening at nine I was sitting at Aida's vanity squirting this foul-smelling liquid at the seams in my falsies, slowly removing the one on the left side. It finally came free just as my cell phone rang.

Aida, I apologize for my comments about women who answer the phone when doing something important. I was sitting there nekkid as a jaybird with only one glued-on falsie on my right side and I answered the phone. I am everlastingly grateful that videophones are not as common as those old SF writers predicted in the pulps when my grandfather was reading them. And yes, he saved them all and I read many of them - interesting to see which predictions came true and which flopped.

"Hi Dad."

"Hi Lauren. I have some news for you."

"Please tell me it isn't from Fox News. I'm up to here with those idiots."

"Whatever are you doing listening to something like that?"

"Training my vocal control. If I can keep my voice in a feminine range while reading their crap out loud I figure I can make it through the weekend without giving myself away."

"Are you sure that the fairies didn't make off with my son and leave a changeling in his place?"

"Dad, have you looked at your messages lately?"

"Hell no. I ignore the phone on the weekends."

"I sent you and Mom some pictures about an hour ago. If you can do it without dropping the call, take a look and ask that question again."

"I'm not that much of a Luddite. Let's see… there… and there… and Good God!"

"Found it, eh?"

"That's you?! MAYA! You've got to see this!"

"Hold your horses, Andre." (faintly)

(Pause)

"Hi Mom. Dad has some pictures to show you."

"So what's the excitement? Nice girls, is one of them your supposed fiancée?"

"Sure is. The other one is me."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph protect us and all the Saints preserve us!"

"What's with the Irish, Mom? You're Greek, fer cryin' out loud."

"And Polish and Lithuanian and probably Genghis Kahn impregnated one of my great-great-great grandmothers while raping and pillaging his way across the continents. Sometimes Τι στο καλό κάνεις just doesn't cut it. The Irish are even more poetic than the Greeks."

(That means roughly 'what the heck are you doing?' in Greek.)

"Not bad for only a couple of days practice, eh?"

"You look like… like… like a normal girl!"

"That's the whole idea."

"Wait a minute," said Dad. "I'm forwarding these to your sisters."

"Can I disown you?"

"They won't be too surprised, after all you used to try on their stuff."

"You're worse than Mom! I thought I could hide stuff from you, at least."

"I'll let you in on a secret, Lauren. She tells me everything, and your sisters tell her everything. You haven't got a chance."

"Really, Lauren," said Mom, "you never shut a cupboard door or closed a drawer or turned off a light in your life. When your sister found the clothes she wore three days before on the top of the hamper, what do you think she thought?"

"Busted!" cried Aida.

"Ouch!" I moaned.

"That's OK, kid," Dad said. "I did the same thing myself at that age, only it didn't last long. My sister was younger and too small and Mom was too big. Once Zoe Moreshead let me explore what was under her bra I kind of lost interest."

"And it's a good thing you found what's under my bra more interesting than Zoe. Besides, she told me you were pretty clumsy."

"I was all of fifteen years old, what would you expect?"

"About what Zoe did."

"A man has no secrets when the women gang up on him."

"Listen to him, Lauren," cut in Aida. "When we're married it will be the same with us."

I would have said something cutting, but I was drowned out by my parents' gleeful cackling.

"Damn!" I complained. "I should have kept it up. Look at all those years of fun I missed because I stopped playing with lady's underwear."

"You stopped?" asked Mom.

"Of course I did. I developed other interests."

"Yeah, like ladies," Dad taunted, "only her name wasn't Zoe."

"There were scads and scads of them. So many ladies, so little time."

"So much bullshit in so little time."

"So… so… Dammit! Child? We have managed to get rather far away from the reason I called."

"I vaguely remember the phone ringing."

"You said this bash is two weekends from now?"

"That's right, Mr Cooke," confirmed Aida.

"So my friend tells me that your best option is for him to outfit you on the Monday before. That would give you time to accustom yourself to being a buxom lass, then he would remove and re-install them on the following Friday so they would last the weekend. Actually he said they could last as long as two weeks if you treat them gently and maintain the makeup properly. He did warn me that if you go braless too long the silly things might fall off."

"Now wouldn't that be the talk of the party?"

"I know I'm going to regret asking this, but do you want to go the whole nine yards and do hip and booty pads as well?"

I looked at Aida. She just started laughing.

"What the hell? Let's go for it."

"One more thing," Dad continued. "He did warn me that you're buying a Lamborghini and not a Toyota. The good stuff is expensive."

"Anything so I can be a racy chick. I just may have to stay a woman for a few years to justify the expense."

"Someday I'll learn not to say stupid things to my mother when I get mad at her," moaned Aida.

"Marry in haste, repent at leisure, right?"

"You can take your…"

"Oh goodie! Our first fight!"

"Lauren," cut in my mother.

"Yes, Mom."

"Wear something pretty to dinner on Saturday, will you?"
 

The Monday Blahs

I know I had to return to my own apartment on Sunday night so I could be ready for work on Monday, but my bed felt awfully empty. Another emptiness was on my chest. I had only had breasts for maybe thirty hours and I really missed them. How crazy is that?

At least I didn't have to wear a suit on Monday - no client meetings so no need to impress anyone. I'm not sure my brain could have handled wearing a dress one day and a three-piece suit the next, although I rather enjoyed the fantasy of me showing up for work in a skirted suit and a lavender blouse. Aida's mother would have plenty of company in her indignation.

I made it to work on time despite some interesting dreams, and immediately called the boss and HR to use some of my vacation days the week before the party. I got admonished about cutting things so close, but nobody else in my area had claimed those days. One more hurdle passed.

It took about forty minutes before someone noticed that I had pierced ears. It took a bit longer before anyone worked up the nerve to ask about them. I answered in a high falsetto "Aren't they just lovely! When I saw them I knew that they were just so me!"

That earned me a muttered "Jesus Christ."

"Relax, Harry. I haven't gone over to the dark side. My girlfriend talked me into getting my ears pierced."

"You're nuts," he responded.

"From your mouth to god's ears."

Off he went to spread the news. Pierced ears and a girlfriend. Juicy gossip hot off the presses. I was beginning to wonder if we needed a traffic cop to cope with everyone who needed to walk past my desk that day. Better yet, a tollbooth. This whole thing was getting expensive.

Speaking of expensive, I cut out at lunch and went to one of those Corporate Giant Shoe Warehouses to find a pair of high heels. You know, the kind of place with two people working there and if you can't find what you want then just go barefoot?

No explanations needed. I found a pair of three-inch heels and tried them on.

I found that three inches is a very relative measurement. If you're talking an X-rated film it's a joke. If you're talking a steel bank vault door it just ought to do the job. If you're talking a pair of shoes, it's Mount Everest. I'm just glad I didn't bring down the entire rack as I grabbed for something to keep me from landing flat on the tiled floor.

OK, try two inches. Wobbly, but it shouldn't take too much to get used to them… I put them back in the box and bought them. They went in the trunk of my car - no way I was going to let any of my co-workers see that I had brought high heels to work.

As the day wore on my mind drifted to our engagement ring hunt that evening. Taste in jewelry is a very personal thing. How were Aida and I to find a pair of rings that satisfied both of our tastes?
 

Another Detour

At this point I have to admit I almost wish my name wasn't Lauren. When you're writing about a crossdresser's adventures, being able to say "Jack went in" and "Jane came out" makes it abundantly obvious as to what clothes are being worn. My Dad's family comes from France, as you might guess with a name like Andre. Over in France, Lauren is a perfectly acceptable name for a male or a female.

There is some argument about where the name comes from. Some say it derives from the laurel plant, some from Roman surname Laurentius. It could also come from the French name Laurence, which is thought to also have been derived from the ancient Italian city Laurentum, which got its name from Laurus, which means “bay laurel” in Latin.

Confused yet?

Interestingly, Lauren is also a common surname in some parts of the world, like Ralph Lauren. I kind of doubt this Lauren will be wearing anything he designed, though.

Mom told me that Lauren means "wisdom." I like that one best.

But both the problem and the advantage is that I do not have to change my name when I put on a dress. Sure, there wouldn't be that awkward pause if I forgot my name when I was looking pretty, but did I want to be the same old boring Lauren after working so hard to be the new and improved version?

Lady Lauren? Nah, I'd need a castle in Europe to pull that off.

I could go back to the root of the name and try Laurel. That has possibilities.

I could do the American thing and chop off a syllable for a nickname. Lor? Too abrupt, I didn't much care for that, either.

Then it hit me. Lori! Yes, the new me could be Lori. Unmistakably feminine - something I hoped to be - and the perfect solution.

Chalk up another victory for the guy who makes his living spotting problems in a plan and offering solutions.