Can-Can, I   By Melissa Tawn  Mirror, mirror on the wall, who -- really -- is the fairest can-can dancer of them all?

CHAPTER 1. JEAN

The date is the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the place is Paris, France. More specifically, it is in the 18th arrondissement, at 82 Boulevard de Clichy, in that part of Paris known as Montmartre, notorious for its bohemian lifestyle and abutting on the brothel district of Pigalle. To many of the more cosmopolitan young men in the city, and in all of Europe, this is the center of the world. The name above the big doors is synonymous with their ideal of heaven: MOULIN ROUGE, the most famous music hall of them all! On the roof was the famous facsimile red windmill, and on both sides of the front door are gigantic posters advertising the reigning archangel of that heaven: Marie Lachaud, the can-can dancer extraordinaire, the wet dream of every red-blooded male in France. The posters show her with her gorgeous legs flung high into the air, her skirts swirling about her, her face beaming with a sexually-enticing smile.

But the hour is 4:30 am. The music hall is dark. Jean Daumer, stagehand aged 18 and a half, has turned off the last of the gas lights and has exited by the small green side door, bolting and locking it from the outside. “She is long gone,” he shouts at the dozen or so men in tuxedos, clutching Champagne bottles and mostly quite drunk, who are hoping for a chance to talk to, or even just touch, the fabled Marie Lachaud. They shuffle off reluctantly, as Jean walks down the street and turns to a small café on Rue Cadet, where, in the back room, a group of a dozen or so women are sitting and drinking tea. These are whores who work at the Moulin Rouge and, their work for the night done, gather together in their "parliament" to gossip and compare notes before drifting home to get some sleep.

(Author’s note: I am not being insensitive here. While all languages have many euphemisms for working ladies of the night, among themselves they tend to prefer being brutally simple and open about who and what they are, and always refer to themselves as “whores”. Also, they preferred to drink tea -- or hot chocolate in the winter -- than to touch any alcoholic beverage. Even the madly expensive “special Champagne” which they insisted that their marks order for them from the bar at the Moulin Rouge was, in reality, just colored carbonated cold tea, which the barmen keep in specially-marked bottles. A working girl cannot afford to have her senses dulled by alcohol. Now, after hours, most of them have removed their makeup — which was smudged anyhow after a hard night’s work — and look more like a group of shop women relaxing after long hours behind the counter. Two have even taken out their knitting, which keeps their hands busy during the conversation.)

Jean had been “adopted” by this parliament many years ago, when he was a street urchin of 12 years old, and they became surrogates for his biological mother, who threw him out of her home so that she could have privacy with her everchanging lovers. From the first — and in return for irregular meals — he ran errands and did other small tasks for them. One night, one of the whores, in a moment of distraction and tiredness, talked to him using the feminine gender and he, without a thought, answered her in the feminine gender. That drew a round of laughs and became the group in-joke. From then on, they always talked to Jean as though he was a girl, and he always answered them in the same vein. They called him “Mimi”, and he became like a little sister to them (or daughter, to the older ones).

Jean was particularly attached to Brigitte Leblanc, the youngest of the group. She had run away from her parents’ home in Brest at the age of 15 and a year later, when Jean first joined the group, she seemed to him to be the ultimate in grown-up sophistication. From the start, at 11:00 each morning, he would knock on her door and wake her up. (Where Jean slept nobody knew, and he refused to divulge.) While Brigitte prepared breakfast for both of them, he would wash her delicates in a wash basin in the corner of the room, and hang them on a clothesline to dry. Meanwhile, Brigitte would tell him about her night and clients. Sometimes she would be excited about a new position or other trick she had learned from one of her clients, and insist on demonstrating it on Jean (he would take the girl’s part, and she would act the client’s part). Sometimes she would show him some new jewelry she had managed to get as a present from a client or shoplift at the new and ultra-chic Galeries Lafayette.

For the most part, Brigitte sewed her own clothes and often used Jean as a model to see how they looked and make minor adjustments. Jean liked wearing them in her room, but was reluctant to go out of doors wearing them, saying that he did not feel right in them. One day, Brigitte surprised him by showing him a frock which she had sewn -- one just right for a preteen girl. Jean tried it on and loved it, especially when Brigitte also produced a pair of matching shoes, which she had "procured" at the Galeries Lafayette. They were so beautiful! Reluctantly, he agreed to go out with Brigitte for a walk in the park, wearing his new clothes. Brigitte did his longish hair in a nice bun and applied some makeup to his face (not to much, for he was only a kid) and they both went out together for a stroll. After that, this became part of their routine. After they ate and Jean did the dishes while Brigitte dressed (she slept in the nude and normally walked around her apartment that way; she had no qualms of being nude in front of “her little sister” Mimi), Jean would help her with her makeup and then she would help him dress and do his hair and makeup. They would go out for a stroll in one of the parks or along one of boulevards. Brigitte liked to point out the nice-looking men to “her sister”, and go into extravagant detail about how she imagined they were equipped between the legs, all the while maintaining the poise and expression of a very innocent teenager. Then she would give a very professional assessment of what she could expect from them in bed. Needless to say, it was quite an education for Jean. As Jean grew older, the clothes which Brigitte made for him became more and more adult in style. There were times that he even wore some of Brigitte's old dresses, which need only small alterations since both "sisters" were very close to the same size. Still, Jean was shy and never went out wearing a dress except in Brigitte's company (indeed, he stored all of his dresses in her room). He certainly never wore them to work at the Moulin Rouge, a job which the whores managed to obtain for him after he reached the age of 15.

Under Brigitte's direction, Jean learned how to care for his skin by rubbing it with various creams. He carefully plucked out his facial hair by the roots, when it started growing, and shaved the hair on his arms and legs, after first doing the same to Brigitte. Little by little, he unconsciously began adopting the mannerisms and body language of a teenage girl, much to the delight of the members of the parliament. By the time he was 15, he was so at home behaving and thinking like a girl that, when he went to work as a boy, he had to keep on reminding himself to behave and talk appropriately.

CHAPTER 2. THE DWARF

When Jean came in, the parliament was in the midst of an animated discussion concerning one of its favorite topics of conversation —The Dwarf. The Dwarf was, of course, the painter Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa, a chronic habitué of the Moulin Rouge and of all of the brothels in the Montmartre area. His posters of Louise Weber, who created the can-can, made the dance, and the music hall, famous; his current posters of Marie Lachaud exceeded them in their vibrant beauty and life. The Dwarf visited the Montmartre brothels so frequently that he often literally moved into one for days on end, not only enjoying the professional services of the whores but also painting and drawing them during their leisure moments. He was one of the most endearing characters of Montmartre, and on good terms with everyone.

And now The Dwarf was upset, and creating a minor ruckus. It seems that he had taken it into his head that he must paint Marie Lachaud not only as a dancer but also in her moments of relaxation. He had asked her to model in his studio, and she refused. Not only that, she refused to tell him where she lived, or even meet with him anywhere outside of the Moulin Rouge. Now The Dwarf was a bohemian at heart and in lifestyle, but he was also an aristocrat, descended from the Counts of Toulouse. He was not used to being spurned, and was very upset. In fact, this evening he had gone to the office of Josep Oller, the manager of the Moulin Rouge, and demanded that his famous posters be removed. It was only with great difficulty that he was reminded that he had been paid a handsome commission for the posters, that they were now the property of the music hall, and would be removed only when the manager saw fit to remove them. He was also mollified with some free bottles of absinthe.

Of course, The Dwarf was not the only male in Paris who tried, without any success, to snare Marie Lachaud outside the music hall. In fact, nobody knew where she lived or what she did when she was not dancing. This gave rise to rumors that she was really the daughter of a high-ranking family, perhaps even of one of the cabinet members (several candidates were mentioned) or, even, that she was of royal Bourbon blood. Others said that she was the wife of a major banker or industrialist (several names were bandied about) or even the mistress of a cardinal. One story linked her to the American ambassador, either as daughter or mistress. Another story asserted that she was really a nun, who escaped nightly from one of the many convents in Paris. Where Marie Lachaud spent her days was one of the biggest mysteries of the city.

The whores were concerned not with that but with pacifying The Dwarf. If Marie Lachaud preferred her privacy that was her affair, but if Toulouse-Lautrec was in a foul mood, a pall of depression covered the whole of Montmartre. Several proposals were put forth, but the whores could agree on nothing and finally decided that they would have a talk with Rosa la Rouge, a notorious fellow whore who was The Dwarf’s favorite model, to try to figure out a way to overcome his current fixation.

Around 6, the meeting finally broke up and Jean went to the secret hovel where he had his bed. The next morning, as usual, he went to Brigitte’s room, but she was feeling poorly and clearly had a high fever. For several hours, he held compresses to her head and tried to cheer her up with various funny stories he heard or made up. It didn’t work all that well. Finally, he had to head to the Moulin Rouge to begin work. He wasn’t feeling all that well himself, but was sure he would be able to function, at least for that evening.

Jean was, as usual, the first to get to the music hall. He unlocked the side door and entered. After lighting the gas lights in the main corridor, he entered the largest of the dressing rooms and, from the inside, locked the door. Then he began the long and arduous process of transforming himself into Marie Lachaud, to be ready in time for the first performance of the evening. After all, it was part of Marie Lachaud's mystique that nobody ever saw her arrive, just as nobody ever saw her leave.