In bed that night, my bed feels unusually slinky.
It’s quite nice being hairless.
I wake early and have a long lie in before dressing and heading downstairs.
The party isn’t until 3.00pm so there’s plenty of time.
I wear joggers and a T shirt. Sally wears a plain dress over a little T shirt and it’s our birthday!
(woo hoo, and all that).
I get the usual bits and bobs, a new T shirt, a video game and a music CD.
Sally gets similar gifts, but our main gift is a digital camera… not one between us but one each!
Sally’s is metallic pink and mine is silver.
We spend all morning taking photos and videos of anything and everything,
even the birthday cards we’ve received.
We even took photos of our breakfast!
We did put our new cameras down to help Mum prepare for the party.
Mum asked why I wasn’t practising wearing my new shoes.
“Well… I wore them for about three hours on Tuesday,
another two or three hours on Wednesday,
the same on Thursday and about five hours last night…
if I can’t walk in them now I never will.” I replied.
“Fair enough… and for the record, you walk as well as any girl in heels.” she complimented.
Sally agreed, but that was enough idle chatter.
Cake mix needed mixing for the cup cakes, icing needed to be mixed also.
I helped Mum stuff volovants whilst Sally made a stack of sandwiches
. Then, using a heart-shaped biscuit cutter cut each and everyone into the shape of a love heart and arranged them on a pink platter.
It was effective yet wasteful but Mum said we’d be having the off cuts for dinner, so not that wasteful.
With the cakes, sausage rolls, volovants and pizza slices in the oven, I all of a sudden found myself at a loose end.
“What should I do now?” I asked.
Mum checked the time.
“Well they’ll be in the oven for twenty minutes,
which gives me just enough time to do something with your hair.”
I bit my lip. “Like what?” I asked.
Whilst my hair isn’t long like Sally’s, it’s not short back and sides either.
t’s those shoulder-length moppish locks with the fringe hanging slightly over the eyes;
a style that many boys wear these days.
“Something nice.” Mum replied.
“Sally… will you keep an eye on the cupcakes? …and please don’t let them burn!” she said before leading me out of the kitchen.
I had one request; whatever she’s going to do, please make sure it’ll either brush or wash out once the party’s over.
Mum assured me that it would but wouldn’t tell me precisely what she has in mind.
She takes me into her room.
I loiter shyly as she retrieves one of the big boutique carrier bags that I’d last seen on Tuesday;
the day I realised that this year my sister and I would be having a girl’s birthday party.
Before digging into the bag, she put a white silky dressing gown on the bed and told me I could use her en-suite and wear the gown.
“Oh er…” I hesitated before picking it up.
“Just a tick…” she said as I headed for her en-suite bathroom.
“…you need these too.”
She help up a pair of very pale pink knickers, then a matching bra-like top.
I figured I’d be wearing my own undies beneath the dress and couldn’t help but protest at the knickers and bra she’d revealed.
“They’re not knickers Peter… they’re just really nice underpants.” she claimed.
Similar justification was used for the bra, which is apparently just a little cropped vest.
I wasn’t convinced.
“Have you ever seen knickers like this before?” she asked as she demonstrated how baggy they’d fit.
“They’re clearly for boys.” she said.
“Clearly.” I dryly said as I took them to the en-suite.
I removed my joggers and underpants,
pulled them on and looked at myself.
“Yeah… clearly for boys!” I grumbled before removing my T shirt and pulling on the bra… I mean ‘little cropped vest’.
The satin knickers and bra-top have loads of lacy trim.
They’re so very girlie I have to stop myself from giggling at my reflection.
But it’s not just my underwear… it’s me too. With not a single hair covering my legs or arms they look slim and slender and, dare I say it, altogether girlie.
I don the silky dressing gown and return to my mother’s room.
Thankfully she doesn’t ask to see how nice my new underwear looks.
Instead, she sits me at her dressing table and begins to run a damp comb through my hair.
Then, after separating front from back, she begins to section off the back half and takes to it, bit by bit, with a pair of electric curling tongs.
After five or ten minutes, she popped downstairs to check on the cakes.
I spent a few moments grimacing at the handful of curls she’d put in.
“I knew she was going to do something like this.” I said to myself as I cast my eyes over the items on her dressing table.
For a woman who doesn’t seem to wear make-up very often, she seems to have an awful lot of it.
“Oh that’s gonna be next isn’t it!”
I say to myself as I realise that there’s much more to wearing a dress than just wearing a dress.
I arrange my silky robe over my lap and enjoy how it feels against my hairless skin.
I sneak a quick peak of my curious little knickers, or ‘really nice underpants’ as Mum claims them to be.
They’re kinda cute I guess, I think as Mum returns.
She continues curling my hair and as a mass of tight ringlets cover the back and sides of my head, Mum asks me what I think.
“Sally’ll like it.” I gulp.
“Sally will love it!” she assured.
“Now I’m going to trim your fringe… just a tiny bit.” she said.
In for a penny, I figured.
My fringe needs the occasional trim anyway, but what I wasn’t prepared for was just how wide my fringe would become.
She cut it arrow-straight from almost ear to ear and combined with the short bouncy ringlets,
I already looked more like a girl than a boy.
“Now I’m not sure whether to put a simple pink ribbon in it or a big Lolita bow.. what do you think?”
“Errr…. I dunno. I’ll let you decide.”
I hesitantly replied. “Maybe just a ribbon?”
“I think so.” she said before putting a plastic head band on me and using it to hold my fringe off my face. “This is just whilst I do your make up.” she said.
“How are those cakes getting on?” I asked.
“Sally’s got it under control.” Mum confidently replied, before trotting to the landing and hollering,
“Sally… are those cakes OK?”
Mum returned and began applying moisturizer, powder, and all sorts of other stuff to my face.
It was fascinating watching my natural skin tone be replaced with an even sheen, then seeing shadows and highlights added to my face.
Mum reminisced over days gone by as she applied all the layers.
“It’s hard to imagine that women had to do this every morning before going to work… even going to the shop they were expected to paint themselves and do their hair.” she said.
“Life’s a lot easier these days when we only do it for special occasions,” she added.
“Sally would have liked it.” I knowingly replied.
“Sally would have loved it.” Mum grinned.
“How about you? Enjoying yourself?”
“Well…” I chuffed. “…I’m not really doing anything.
You’re doing all the work.” I said. “It’s kind of nice being pampered I suppose.”
“Good.” Mum smiled. “It’s nice doing some pampering for a change.”
After short while, Mum said “Right, that’ll do for now.”
“But… I haven’t got any lipstick on yet.” I said.
“You may as well leave that until after lunch… it’d only need reapplying.” she said.
“Now you’ve got to be very careful.. no rubbing your eyes, in fact, no touching your face, or you’ll ruin it.”
“OK.” I gulped. “Can I put my dress on yet?”
“If you want.” Mum replied. “But you’ll need your stockings on first.”
“I thought I was wearing tights?”
“Same thing really.” she claimed as she dug her hand into the big boutique carrier bag and retrieved the little pack of lacy stockings.
I pulled them on and pulled them all the way up to my thighs.
Mum said they look lovely. “Will they stay up on their own?” I asked.
“Not for long.” Mum replied. “Which is why you need this.”
“What’s that?” I asked. The curious garment matched my underwear perfectly and it’s straps suggested a bra-like garment…
but I’m already wearing one of those.
“It’s a suspender belt.” she replied.
“It goes around your waist and these…” she showed me the little clips, “…clip onto your stocking tops.” She also explained that it needs to go beneath my undies.