Maeryn Lamonte Copyright ©️ 2024

"You know that film?”

We all looked at Caitlyn expectantly, but that seemed to be all she had to say for now. Her focus was on the varnish, and using it to paint my toenails, and that seemed to be limiting her capacity elsewhere.

“Oh, you mean the one with, erm...?” Alice tried. Sometimes all it took was a verbal nudge.

“Yeah, Jim Carrie. You know?” Caitlyn looked up from her efforts at the blank faces surrounding her.

“Ace Ventura?” I hazarded a guess.

“No, silly,” she laughed. “You know, the one where he always has to say yes?”

“Yes Man?” It’s pretty obvious now, but that’s the way you have to be with Caitlyn sometimes. She was something of a walking cliché, except her blond came out of a bottle. Still, it was an aspiration of sorts, and she rose to it magnificently.

“Is that what it’s called? You should totally do that, you know”

“What, rescue lost pets?” Janice asked. She had the least patience of us all, and liked to add to the randomness of conversation whenever Cait came up with something. The trouble was Caitlyn seemed incapable of seeing when she was being made fun of.

“No, don’t be silly. Lynn here needs to do something about her negativity.”

And suddenly it all made sense. That was the thing with Caitlyn. She followed a train of thought for several miles before letting any of us know, by which time it was all but impossible to catch up.

This whole thing this evening was my friends’ gift to me. They were planning to attend the big New Year’s party and they wanted me to come along instead of moping in my flat like usual.

I mean I don’t mope; I dress up and celebrate my way. It’s just no-one wants to see me dressed up.

Besides, it would have been weird for three girls and a bloke to turn up at a party. Doubly weird when you discovered they were just my friends. Entirely platonic.

I’d come out as sort of deep closet trans to Alice nearly a year earlier when she’d pushed me about being so down all the time. When you’re stuck with a problem you can’t fix, it weighs on you, and evidently some people notice.

Her response had been to introduce me to Caitlyn and Janice and, after an initial period of suspicion – after all, blokes and ulterior motives and all that – they’d accepted this wasn’t just some off beat attempt to get inside someone’s knickers. You know? Bloke? Anyone’s knickers?

Except, I hadn’t wanted that. I’d wanted girl friends of the sort girls have, and they were happy enough to oblige. When I was with them, I just became another one of the girls, except a little unfortunate in my appearance.

Janice is a bit that way, except she’s all girl. Just a little bit too much of her to attract any guy’s eye. The difference being that no-one would mistake me for a girl.

Which is what this night was all about. It had taken several months for them to persuade me – I had lined up so many decent reasons why to say no – but eventually they’d worn me down with a promise to make me look good, and if anyone clocked me, well it was New Years and I was doing it on a dare.

Caitlyn resumed her painting. Honestly, she’d have been better off using a bigger brush. My nails weren’t exactly small and delicate.

“Cait has a point,” Alice said with her fingers tangled in my hair. I kept it long, if a little straggly, so she’d persuaded me – eventually – to trim off the split ends and put it in a braid. Something called a crown braid, I think she’d said, which seemed unnecessarily fiddly, but I’d kind of given in and told them to do their worst.

They weren’t, of course. Doing their worst, I mean. They were doing their best, which was probably worse. Janice was working on my face, which limited my input to the conversation, but even so, I wasn’t going to be left out.

“What point?” I asked before Janice’s annoyed look pushed me back into silence and stillness.

“You are pretty negative, and you should do something about it.”

I was going to respond, but the warning glint in Janice’s eye stopped me. “You are,” she said, “and you should. I’m already jealous of how good you look, and I’m not done with you yet.”

“Well, I’m not going to say yes to everything anyone asks me for a whole year,” I said, holding up a hand so Janice would pause and let me speak my peace. “That film may have ended up alright, but it went horribly wrong first, and it was Hollywood. In real life it would just keep getting worse.”

“How about just for one night then?” Alice asked. “Make it a sort of Old Year’s resolution. We all agree not to take it too far and only to act in what we think is each others' best interests, then just for tonight until midnight, we all have to do anything that any of the rest of us say, without questioning or complaining.”

“I’m game.” Caitlyn had finished my left foot and had moved onto my right.

Janice gave the question a little more consideration then nodded her head. “Me too.”

Which left me, and this was feeling like something of an ambush.

“What do you say, Lynn,” Alice asked. “It’s no fun unless we all agree.”

I sighed. Definitely an ambush. Except in nearly a year, none of my three friends had done anything unkind, and even if this evening’s stepping out in faith was hauling me kicking and screaming – okay, maybe not literally – out of my comfort zone, it was still being done with the best of intentions.

Besides, in agreeing to this, I’d already said yes to the biggest challenge they could come up with. How much worse could it get?

“Alright,” I said resignedly.

“Pinkie swear,” three voices sounded in unison and three little fingers appeared in front of my face. It was something these three did on occasions, this speaking together. Usually followed by a bout of delighted giggling. I really wanted to join in, but my menstrual cycle obviously hadn’t aligned with theirs.

Sorry. Is that a bit gross? I wasn’t on their wavelength then. Let’s leave it at that. I lifted my own pinkie – appropriately pink in places, since Caitlyn had already done my fingernails – and added it to the sacred bonding ritual.

“Great, because I was thinking you should wear this,” Alice, apparently having finished with my hair, made a beeline for her closet and pulled from it the frilliest, pinkest mini dress I’d ever seen. It came with white footless tights and a pair of open toed shoes. All the better for displaying my painted nails, but I was going to freeze.

Alice grinned at me defiantly, challenging me to break a pinkie-promise, especially one so recently sworn.

I looked the dress over and decided it wasn’t as bad as all that. I had pinker things in my own wardrobe and the skirt was long enough and full enough I wouldn’t be in risk of exposing anything I wanted to keep hidden. I’d have probably agreed to wear it even without the promise.

“Okay,” I said. “But if I’m going to be showing that much skin, then I think it’s only fair all of you should too.”

Janice was the only one who didn’t much like my idea, which, given her size, I could understand. The more of you there was, the less of you you wanted to put on display. I’d had the same problem earlier in the year when the girls had badgered me into dressing up for them. To their credit, not one of them had so much as smiled, even though I looked ridiculous and I knew it. The experience had cemented our friendship in a way few things had, and it had convinced me to do something about my weight. I was agreeably a lot slimmer now though, except I still had unfortunately heavy, masculine features.

That being said, Janice had done wonders with the makeup, and I actually looked passably feminine. Not only that, but the pink skirt turned me into a hot girl.

By contrast, Janice looked like a TV picture spread out onto a cinema screen. It wasn’t a bad look on her even so. She had some quite exceptional curves on her and the mini dress she squeezed into showed them to great effect. She looked horribly self-conscious though, and I found myself regretting making my stipulation.

I’d have to make it up to her, and I had an idea how.

I was the last one out of the room, in part because I was captivated by my own reflection. Not my type, not that I’d figured out what my type actually was. I mean, if I’d been born a girl, it would have been easy, but I wasn’t gay, and most girls were more friend material than anything else. Still, I could see that I would be somebody’s type. I’d have to ask Janice about how she’d managed such an amazing job of my makeup, but not until after I’d made things right with her.

“Taxi’s ordered for half past,” Alice said, “which is ten minutes time, so be downstairs in five, Cinderella, and you shall go to the ball.”

“Yes fairy-godmother,” I said distractedly.

She closed the door and I shook myself out of my reverie. My phone was in a borrowed handbag. I fished it out and hunted for a name in the contacts list.

“Mike? Hi, it’s Landon.” Yeah, my name’s not really Lynn, but I’d have hoped that was obvious. “Listen, what are your plans for tonight?”

“Same as usual. Stay in, watch the fireworks have a beer or two, go to bed.”

“Sounds like my usual. Fancy trying something different for once?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, if you come to the party at the town hall, you might just find out.”

“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that, you know?”

“Okay. You know my friends Janice?”

“The one with the big, er...”

“The big everything, yes. She’s going to be there. I’d be happy to introduce you, but you have to promise not to be a dick, or at the very least not to think with it.”

“I’m a guy, Landon. It’s what we do?”

“Yeah, and that’s pretty much the main reason you never have a girlfriend. Try being a human being first, eh?”

“What would you know about it? I haven’t seen you with a girlfriend lately either, and no, your three friends don’t count. They’re like mates, only with skirts.”

“Yeah, and you don’t think I could learn a thing or two about how a girl’s mind works by hanging out with a group of girls? Maybe this isn’t such a great idea...”

“No no no no no! It’s all good. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

“Yeah, well make a bit of an effort, eh? Take a shower, put on something smart.”

“What? You’re my mum now?”

“Just very aware right now that when a girl makes an effort to look good, she’s much more likely to be interested in a guy who does the same. Call it good advice, and conditional on my helping you tonight. Turn up in your Iron Maiden t-shirt and I’ll pretend I don’t know you.”

“What’s wrong with my Iron Maiden tee-shirt?”

“Nothing in the right context, which isn’t a New Year’s Eve party. Look, I have to go. Taxi’s here. I’ll look out for you.”

“Right, I’ll see you later.”

I rather hoped he wouldn’t, actually. He wasn’t on the very short list of people who knew my secret, but I still believed I’d be able to get him and Janice together without his seeing me. As long as he wasn’t too much of an arsehole, I had hopes they’d be good for each other. Mike’s taste in women veered towards the Rubenesque, and Janice definitely qualified.

A horn sounded and Alice called up the stairs. I dropped my phone in the bag and rushed down to join my friends. Caitlyn had a woollen coat ready for me. One of Janice’s if the generous fit was anything to go by.

“You are going to go out and get into that cab as if you were just one of us girls. No self-consciousness, not scared of being found out, just another girl out on the town with her friends. Say, ‘Yes Alice.’”

“Yes Alice.” It actually helped. I wasn’t allowed to object or to worry, so I just went along with it, joining in the chatter as we climbed in the back of the taxi and headed off into town.

It was definitely more fun than I remember. Not that that counts for much. The few parties I’d attended in the past, I’d arrived on my own, drunk a bit on my own, danced a bit on my own, left on my own. The ultimate waste of time.

This time I’d arrived, laughing and chatting, with a group of friends. A lot of eyes turned our way, but I was under instructions to act like one of the girls, so I couldn’t allow myself to worry over being found out, which meant all I saw were speculative eyes checking out the new me. I even found myself checking out some of the guys in return. Some of them were quite cute, and when they looked at me in that way... Well, suffice to say I would have struggled to say no.

We found an empty piece of dance floor and camped out around our handbags. Dancing was more exhilarating too.
As a younger man, I’d pioneered a dance that could only be described as The Frog, which consisted of little more than a sort of rhythmic squatting. In the guise of a girl, I felt free to do things with my arms, legs and body I’d never have dreamed of doing, and it felt wonderful.

We were offered drinks by guys we didn’t know, and there I had to bow to the greater experience of my friends in knowing which might be safe and which might put us at risk. It made a scary kind of common sense as they spoke about roofies and other date rape drugs.

Maybe there were some downsides to being a girl in the modern world I hadn’t considered. Mind you, they didn’t get in the way of my wanting to be one.

About an hour into the evening, I spotted Mike’s arrival. He stood inside the entrance looking around him, evidently not finding who he was looking for.

Evidently because he was looking for me, and I was... well, I was currently someone else

I touched Janice on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper in her ear.

“You know my friend Michael?” I asked. I knew she did because I’d bumped into her while in his company. I’d noticed her interest in him, and I could see the panic in her eyes as she followed my gaze towards the entrance. “I want you to go up to him and ask if he’d like to dance, and I want you to stay with him as long as he wants to stay with you. I want you to try hard not to be sarcastic with him. He’s as nervous as you are and he could do with a little gentle handling. Say yes, Janice.”

“I...”

“I came out with you all wearing a frilly little mini dress. I think the least you can do is give this a try.”

She looked at me with panicky eyes. “I want you to come with me, Lynn.”

“If you insist, I guess I’ll have to. He doesn’t know about this side of me though, so if you make me go with you, my life will change forever.”

“I can’t do it without you, Lynn. Say yes, please?”

I sighed and nodded and took her by the hand. I’d kind of dug the hole, so I owed it to her to jump in with her. We made our way over to where Mike was standing. He recognised Janice first, which meant he might not even notice me.

If only I should be so lucky.

“Hi Mike,” I said in my best girl voice. “I think you already know Janice. Landon asked me to keep an eye out for you and introduce the two of you if I saw you, so here we are.”

He tore his eyes away from the voluptuous vision beside me and looked at me. My disguise might fool a passing stranger, but it evaporated before the eyes of my friend. I could see the questions forming, lining up behind each other in his eyes.

I shook my head just a fraction. Not now, but a promise of more tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that. The questions receded. On hold for now, but not forgotten.

It would be alright, I hoped. Mike was a good friend, I hoped.

Sometimes, hope is a choice. Something you take on faith.

“You guys have a good time, and Janice, remember what I said.”

She smiled at me nervously, then turned up the megawatts before turning it on Mike. They’d be alright. At least Janice would. I wasn’t sure if any mere mortal man could keep from melting under that gaze.

Caitlyn and Alice smiled at me as I returned to our smaller group. There was the megawattage, but not in the same way. Friendship smiles apparently had no kryptonite in them.

“I told you there was a girl in there,” Alice said to Cait.

I looked confused.

“What you did just then was all girl,” Caitlyn confirmed. “Now I just wish you could do the same for me.”

“Maybe I can.” Something I’d noticed in our time together. Something buried, something suppressed, but something both of them felt. “I want you two to explore how you feel for each other. I don’t want you to feel any judgement from family, or religious dogma, or culture or anything. Find out how you feel about each other and see where it leads. Alice, Caitlyn, say yes.”

Two pairs of shining, tear sparkled eyes looked at me. “Will you be okay?”

I shrugged and nodded. I’d been on my own at this sort of gig before. I could handle one more.

“Excuse me ladies.”

I turned to see a man in dress uniform. A corporal or sergeant at a guess, though I wouldn’t know one rank insignia from another. He had a couple of bars of fruit salad, I think the vernacular is. He was tall and good looking, and I definitely had a thing for men in uniform.

“I’m new in town, billeted in the barracks to the north. I’ve a twenty-four-hour pass and I was wondering if any of you would care to dance.”

Alice and Caitlyn exchanged grins.

“We have a thing,” Caitlyn said indicating Alice and herself, “but Lynn doesn’t.”

“Yeah, Lynn,” Alice took over. “We’d really like you to show some appreciation for our armed forces. You should stay with the corporal here, and show him a good time. No secrets until after midnight though. Say yes, Lynn.”

Caitlyn joined in on the last few words turning it from a command into a chorus.

They drifted off leaving me with tall dark and handsome.

“So what was that about no secrets?”

I shrugged. “I can’t say till after midnight, and there’s possibility you won’t like it much. So your choice now. Walk away and no harm done, or...”

“They did say something about a good time.”

“And I’ll be happy to show it to you, as long as you remember this choice when the time comes.”

“I think I can do that, Ma’am.”

“Then let’s dance.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

We filled the three hours to midnight dancing, resting, chatting, drinking – on the corporal’s tab with the barman handing my drinks directly to me.

The last half hour came and the music slowed. He pulled me back onto the dance floor and I leaned my head on his broad chest as we drifted about the place. At various times we passed Mike and Janice, Caitlyn and Alice, both couples looking very content.

The last song faded to a close just as my companion guided us under a sprig of mistletoe.

“I haven’t told you my secret yet,” I murmured in the expectant hush.

“No Ma’am.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“I’ve been wondering about what it might be. I’ve a few ideas, and I figure none of them matter really.”

The countdown started. I turned to look up at his contentedly smiling face. I pointed at the greenery above us, with its white berries and its implied promise.

“So, I take it you mean to...”

“Yes Ma’am.”