Fall arrives and so does my fall ensemble. I ordered a pair of heels. Red. What else. I'm in a distinctly red mode these days.
As the big weekend approaches I'm feeling depressed about whether I'll be able to bring it off once more. My face seems like it's aged about four years in the last four months. Soft focus can do just so much. When your eyes and nose get lost in the fog it begins to lose its point.
I begin to think about those early days in my teens with my
sister's strapless bra that had more wire in it than fabric. You
could stuff it with sweat socks and it wouldn't be lumpy. In those
days the bras were designed for transvestites. Two bullets with
concentric circles. If only I had been precocious enough to shed
my guilt and get into full drag when I was young.
My fantasy in those days was to be a young Spanish senorita,
very lusty, very lewd. I had a turtleneck shirt that I wore over
that strapless bra and I would do a thousand turns in the mirror
to see my breasts from every possible angle. Consuelo. My femme
self.
Of course I never had a wig until much later. Fifteen years. But I would put furry ski hats on or wrap a towel up and pretend. sometimes a t shirt would stand in for hair. I must have been better at imagining in those days.
And no make up of course. I was afraid that if I put some lipstick on Friday night, Monday morning it would still be there for all my friends to see at school.
One day when my parents had left for the entire weekend I took a big chance and tried some lipstick. It seemed ancient in its worn brass cylinder and it was red, very red. Oh, how erotic it was to see my lips painted red.
That same weekend I remember lying naked on a bare hardwood floor and praying to God to make me a girl just for a few hours. The lines must have been busy. Now that would have been a great miracle. A National Enquirer headline: "Boy Becomes Prom Queen, Claims Divine Intervention."
What I wouldn't give to dress that 15 year old boy up now. Or to come upon performing his crude rituals with sister's bra, mother's pearl buttoned sweater and great Aunt's satin slip, watch him silently for a few moments, his young body without beard or paunch, turning coquettishly in front of the bathroom mirror then striding down a darkened hallway to the living room where he observes a shadowy reflection in the plate glass window. So dim is the reflection, a chiaroscuro illumined from behind by a distant hall light, that his body, wearing the cast iron strapless bra underneath the turtleneck, appears to be the embodiment of young womanhood, supple and full of grace.
Dancing slowly in the dark, his eyes can watch this nubile beauty without her knowing just as I am watching him now from my safe distance in the future.
To intervene in this scene now seems unnecessary. The wondrous magic performed by that dark reflection is much more real than all the changes wrought by wigs and make up. Still I harbor a desire to emerge from the shadows with my bags packed from the future and help this boy into something more comfortable from my Frederick's collection. A fanny padder, for instance, would do wonders for his slender hips.
And I might also lend him one of my wigs, something long and straight. The softness of his youthful face doesn't need the furious perm of Superdisco or Gypsy to hide the hard male lines. And long and straight would be more historically correct for that period in the mid sixties. This boy could be a swaying hippie girl, a free spirit sans makeup who turns heads nonetheless with her homegrown beauty and her braless bosom.
Then having created this sweet thing, her brunette hair draped unceremoniously over her shoulders, I might embrace her like a daughter and withdraw into the shadows, stealing off with that strapless bra which meant so much to me.
Lola, I hope this long journey into my past has been entertaining. It's a trip I take now and again but I've never taken anyone along for the ride. The magic of those first few years are more powerful than my most successful photographs. The breathless walk into my sister's room, the agonizingly slow opening of her dresser drawers, the delight when my fingers found that soft angora sweater with the pearl buttons were the potent expressions of my gloriously warped youth.
Well, I promise to answer some of your questions I ignored here in my next letter.
Charlotte
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