The Saga of Girly Lee Brown A novelette by Theresa Black

Chapter 2
One day Lucille sat me down for a talk.
“My sisters agree with what I’m going to say, but we thought you might find it easier just coming from one of us. For a start, would you like to live your whole life as a woman?”

“Oh yes!” I cried. “It’s all I’ve known my whole life and I can’t imagine living it as a man.”

Lucille laughed. “I’m with you there, sister. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being a man, but as a woman, there are things you need to know. You’ve got to be aware of your surrounds at all times and stay safe. When you’re dressed up you are real pretty, and men will say nice things to you, but you gotta realise that some of them just want to get in your panties. (I think I might have blushed at that point.) Now of course there are some men you might want to do that, I know I do, but you are special and if they get that far you must not let what they find to be a surprise because they might get really angry, just like Mark did. I know this means that a budding romance gets cut off right there, but it might not be in every case. Some men might be even more interested in you.”

“But where can it go from there?” I asked. “I know that girls and boys are built different.”

Lucille laughed. “Just because you ain’t built like me don’t mean you have to be celibate. I know you’ve had a bad experience, but I have a couple of friends who are queer, and they assure me that with the right guy, experienced and gentle, it can be very pleasant to take him up your backside because men are a bit different inside from women. He could even make you come.”

This was news to me and put a whole new light on things. “I guess I would like to meet a guy like that,” I said.

“I’m sure it will happen,” she said and of course it did, but not for some years; after all I was still underage.

I had always got on well with my sisters, but after my announcement of my future intentions, that made a difference. Now they treated me as ‘one of the girls’ - we were four sisters together and Mom and Grandma were quite happy that it be so.
However, for the rest of the time I was at school, I had to live a dual life. At school I was a boy, a girly boy I guess, but none the less, a boy. Once I got home, then I was a girl, and happy to be one.

My sisters took me out shopping sometimes, which was so much more fun than shopping as a boy had been – after all, girls’ clothes ae so much nicer. Since I was still at school and had no money, I asked for clothes for my birthdays and every Christmas. I also benefited from having three older sisters as they passed down to me all the clothes they had outgrown, and as a result I had some very pretty dresses to wear.

Time passed and I was now fifteen and in my last year at school. I was no great scholar – I guess school just didn’t interest me much. It wasn’t like I was stupid. Like any other girl I would like to be dating guys, but there was a problem besides the obvious one. In a small town like the one we lived in, all the boys and girls went to the same school, and even though my sisters assured me that when I was dressed up I was ‘real pretty', I knew that if I dated anyone from school, it wouldn’t be long before the news was out, and that could lead to trouble again.

Luckily for me, something happened to change all that. We had only one gas station in our town, and it had been run by an old couple for many years, but now they had decided to retire, and it came up for lease.

It was a sunny Saturday morning when Luella and I drove to the gas station to fill up the old convertible. Because I hated dressing as a boy during the week, most weekends I really dressed up. Today I was wearing a really pretty summer dress with the big skirt spread out over my legs, bobby sox and Mary Janes, my hair in a ponytail and pink lipstick and powder as befitted a teenage girl.

As we drew up to the pumps, a young man appeared wearing a sort of uniform with the gas company name emblazoned on the back. Those were the days when driveway service existed, self-service was still years in the future. Well this young man was gorgeous. In those days he would have been called a ‘dreamboat’ He walked up to the car and addressed us. Since it was a convertible he got a good view of me in my pretty dress.

“Good morning ladies, I’m Leroy, son of the new owner of this here establishment. What may I get for you?”

I know I was giving him a thousand-watt smile and blushing furiously, but Luella was older and more self-possessed. “Please fill her up, young man,” she said coolly. When he disappeared from view, she looked at me and raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

After Dreamboat had been paid cash (no cards in those days), we drove off slowly.

“I think you made a conquest there,” said Luella and I blushed again.

“I don’t know Lu; he’s gorgeous, the girls will be queueing up to get dates with him.”

“Maybe, but I think he was rather taken with you,” she said. “I tell you what, I’ll bet you a dollar he asks you for a date before the week is out.”

“I’ve got no money, Lu,” I said.

She smiled. “Then I’ll bet you a dollar he doesn't ask you for a date, so if he does, you will get a dollar from me.”

Luella knew far more about boys than I did. The following evening, Mom opened the door to a handsome young man in the gas station’s uniform. He was extremely polite, said his name was Leroy Mackiewicz and asked if he might speak to 'the young lady passenger in the convertible this morning'

Mom knew that must be me since I didn't drive yet, and called up the stairs to me, “Lee darling, there’s a young gentleman here wishes to speak with you.”

I appeared after a few minutes frantically putting on some makeup, Thank goodness I was still wearing the pretty dress. Yes it was the young man from the gas station.

“Please excuse me calling on you unannounced Miss….? (‘Brown’ I said helpfully). Miss Brown, but I didn’t get an opportunity to talk with you this morning. I’m new in this town and I was wondering if you would do me the honor of going to the picture show with me on Saturday night?”

“Sure. Thank you,” I said trying to sound nonchalant.

His face broke out into a smile so big I couldn’t help smiling back.

“Thank you so much. May I pick you up at seven?”

Yes, he could, and with that he left. Lucille who had been listening behind the door appeared whooping and saying ‘Our little sister’s got herself a date”

“Only with the handsomest boy in town,” I retorted and we all laughed.

Mom sounded a note of warning. “He’ll probably want to kiss you, but just don’t let him go too far, Lee. You don’t want him to think you’re ‘easy’.”

“Of course not Mom. Anyway, I think he’s a gentleman – he sure acts like one.”

There was quite a lot of discussion amongst my sisters and I on what I should wear to the ‘date’. It was my first real date and I wanted to look my best. Even Grandma got involved. The final decision was that I should wear a rather lovely peach-color satin dress which had belonged to Laverne but which she had sadly (for her) outgrown. I would be wearing a petticoat under it to give body to the skirt. The next discussion was bobby sox or stockings? Mom felt stockings might make me look too ‘grown up’ but in the end she was outvoted by my sisters.

“But Lee is growing up, Mom; she can’t look like a little girl forever.”

Those were the days when women wore a garter belt to attach their nylons and that too was a ‘grown-up’ thing to wear.

On the subject of hair styles – that was easy as this was the era of the ‘ponytail’, and every teenage girl wore her hair that way. Finally, makeup. Mom insisted we didn’t go overboard so the agreement was some powder, soft pink lipstick and just a little mascara.

The afternoon of the date was spent putting it all together, and after all my preparations were complete, Mom surprised me by having a tear in her eye as she admitted that her little girl was ‘all grown up’. The camera appeared once more, and a celebratory picture was taken which I insisted included one of me with my sisters, but Mom also wanted one of me on my own. I still have those little black and white ‘snaps’ to this day and I treasure them.

Right on the stroke of seven there was a knock on the door. Leroy had dressed for the occasion in his father’s tuxedo and was bearing a small bunch of flowers – my first ever bouquet! Mom greeted him graciously. I had been told to make a ‘grand entrance’, slowly descending the staircase, which I guess gave him a great view of my stocking-clad legs!

After profuse thanks for the flowers, which Mom bore away to put in water, there were the final instructions that I must be home no later than eleven. Leroy assured Mom that he would take great care of me, and then I was escorted to the automobile, which since his family ran the garage and gas station was quite a beauty. I have no idea of the make, but in those days cars were cheap and so was gasoline, so they were built excessively large and heavy. Just have a look at some of the advertisements in old copies of ‘National Geographic’ to see what I mean.
As a gentleman does, he opened the door for me and following instructions, I sat first and swung round, holding on to my skirt, my legs together, so that I did not expose too much flesh.

I have absolutely no recollection of the picture we saw, but then the picture was really just an excuse to go out together. As we sat in the dark, in the back row (how clichéd is that?), after a few minutes Leroy took my hand which I had thoughtfully left available on my lap. It felt real good to have my hand held by a boy, and of course there was more to come. I won’t say that Leroy was ‘fast’ but he was a young man, handsome and well aware of it, so by the second reel we were kissing, there in the back row. They were gentle closed mouth kisses, not at all like Mark’s, and I guess I am grateful to Leroy for wiping out the memory of that awful previous encounter.

When the show was over, we made our way out of the picture palace hand in hand and crossed the road to where there was a diner, and he bought us both milk shakes. I was back home in good time, with a final short kiss in the car, and a chance to touch up my lipstick and offer my handkerchief for Leroy to wipe it off his lips before I was escorted up the path to my front door.

Mom opened it at the first knock – she must have been waiting for me

“Here she is, Mrs Brown, safe and sound,” Leroy said, and Mom smiled her thanks.

“Did you have a good time?” said Mom, and we answered together “Oh yes’.

Laverne and Luella were out on dates, but their curfew was later than mine and Lucille happened to be home so as soon as Leroy had gone, I was immediately subjected to an interrogation.

“What was Leroy like?” she asked.

“He was a perfect gentleman,” I replied.

She looked disappointed. “Does that mean he didn’t kiss you after all our hard work?”

I paused for effect. “We held hands … and of course we kissed, but nothing more!”

“Well, I should hope not,” said Lucille with a laugh. “First dates are about getting to know each other. Did he tell you much about himself?”

In fact, Leroy had told me quite a lot about himself and his family, but I wondered how much of it I should reveal. First, I had asked him how he came by such an unusual surname, and he said he thought it was Polish, but the family had been in the U.S, for three generations. I had also asked him how he and his family had come to Hicksville, and the answer was quite revealing. It seemed his father had been a motor mechanic all his life and he eventually ended up with a lease on a gas station and garage in a larger town some fifty miles to the west. One day something happened which changed the course of their lives.

“Pa was behind the counter in the shop when this young guy came in brandishing a revolver, almost as big as he was," said Leroy. " He was nervous as hell and shaking. He demanded that Pa give him the money in the till and just as Pa was obliging, for as he said to me, his life was worth more than a few dollars, the gun went off and the bullet flew past Pa’s ear and shattered the mirror behind him. Well, somebody heard it and called the cops, and when they heard the sirens approaching, the kid turned around and Pa bolted out the back door.

“The cops used a loudhailer and told him to put the gun down and come out with his hands in the air. If he’d have done it he’d be alive today even if he was doing time, but the silly kid had some wild idea that he could shoot his way out and make a break for it, so he ran out holding the money and the gun, blazing away on all directions. It was one scared kid against ten hardened cops. I don’t have to spell out what happened. Later, Pa saw him lying there in the street and that was the moment he decided that he was finished with city life. It had been his second holdup, although the other one had just resulted in him losing the till money. It was then that they heard of the gas station here, they checked out the place and it seemed nice and peaceful, so here we are.”

Leroy worked hard at the gas station but he had Saturday nights free and so it became a regular thing for us to go to the movies. He didn’t seem interested in any other girls, and I was glad of that. As we got to know each other better, so the kisses became a little more intense, with tongues a regular feature, but he never tried to put his hand up my skirt, nor asked me to touch his groin. He knew I was underage and the consequences of any mishap would be dire for him as well as me. It was an old-fashioned romance I guess, and I was in love for the first time.

To be continued