Honorary Woman

[Alana]

“Very pretty,” said Mary. Mrs. Lettinger just sniffed.

“Norman, mind if I ask you a few questions?” ventured Mrs. Lettinger.

“Norma, please. Go ahead.”

He hopped up on the table and crossed his legs.

“Are you a transsexual? Are you planning on having the operation?”

“No.”

“Are you a transvestite?”

“Well, that’s an interesting question. I love wearing dresses. But as I understand the traditional definition of the word, I would have to say that, no, I’m not a transvestite.”

“Then why the hell are you doing this?”

“Well, I’ll tell you a little secret.” He leaned forward and whispered, in a conspiratorial manner, “It’s fun being a woman!”
   

[Alana]

“Oh yeah,” said Mrs. Lettinger, “it’s nothing but fun. I wish I could personally introduce you to the fun four days we women have to go through every month, Norman.”

“Norma.”

“I am not calling you Norma! Are you seriously going to dress like a woman for the rest of the year?”

“I am a woman.”

“Honorary woman. And I would personally like to wish upon you a broken heel, a busted brastrap, a run in your nylons and a bee flying right up your skirt, all in the same two minutes.”

“Mrs. Lettinger, might I ask what the big deal is? Why should you even care if I wear dresses?’

“Look, I know it’s all in fun and it’s all for charity and all the rest of it, but I’ve always thought this whole ‘womanless beauty pageant’ was rather condescending and even a little hateful. A bunch of grown men dressed as women mincing and swishing around with limp wrists, acting like no woman ever would. It’s sickening! It’s bad enough once a year, but now I’ve got to look at you in pantyhose every day!”

“I’ve never complained about seeing you in pantyhose every day.”

“Oh, that is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! What are you trying to prove with this?”

“Nothing. I’m a woman and I wear dresses. It’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s fun wearing a dress. And let me tell you something---“

He hopped down off the table and did a twirl in his pretty lavender dress.
   

[Alana]

“Twirling in pants results in ninety-eight percent less happiness.”

Mrs. Lettinger stood up and said, “I can’t fire you for this, but I am going to make things very tough on you at work if you persist.”

“Once again, I refer you to my plaque. I’m a woman.”

She left. Mary followed her to the front door and said, in a low voice, “Jane, take my advice. Ignore him. He’ll get bored and quit doing it when he stops getting attention.”

“He won’t get away with this,” she said, and exited dramatically.

That evening, Norman was hanging up all his new dresses in his closet. There was hardly room for them with all his suits, shirts, and pants hanging up.

“Why don’t we get rid of these useless clothes?” he asked. “Give them to Goodwill.”

“Honey, you’re only going to be a woman for a year.”

“Unless I win again at the next pageant. And let’s be honest. Who else are they going to give it to? I’m the prettiest one there.”

“You are so naïve,” she said. “You don’t actually think they’re going to give you the title again after a year of making everyone uncomfortable like this?’

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not, that’s why. Norman---Norma, if you don’t win, you are going back to wearing men’s clothes, aren’t you?”

“I will abide by the decision of the town. The town declared me a woman, and if they decide I’m no longer worthy of being a woman, I guess I’ll have to go back to wearing these old clothes, much as I hate it.” He picked up one of his ties and said, “Oh, how I hated wearing a tie! I’m so glad I’ll never have to wear one again. Hopefully forever.”

“But wearing high heels and a girdle isn’t a problem?”

“That’s totally different. If you want, I guess we can put these into storage. But I’d much rather get rid of them.”

“Fine, we can put them into storage tomorrow, I guess. Norma, now that you’re a girl, are you going to do your share of the housework around here?”

“Of course I am,” said Norman, although he didn’t think that was fair, considering the fact that Mary didn’t have a job outside the home. But being a woman wasn’t often fair. He knew that.

When Saturday came along Mary got a kick out of seeing her husband helping with the housework, struggling to do the cleaning on his knees in high heels and a dress with a full skirt that kept getting in the way. Mary herself wore jeans and a plaid shirt. She kept saying to her husband, over and over again, that she just wasn’t as feminine as he was.

When they were done, Norman undressed and took a shower. His dress was all dirty and his pantyhose were a dead loss. Luckily, he had bought several pair. He put on new lingerie and pantyhose and changed into his brand new pretty pink dress, and redid his make-up. Mary said he looked very pretty, and he thanked her.

“Don’t wait up,” he said as he grabbed his purse and went out the door.

On Saturday evenings Norman would usually go play poker, smoke cigars and drink beer and whiskey with his friends, Jim, Don, and Phil. Jim worked with Norman at City Hall, and originally brought him into the game. Jim was single, so he’d never had an opportunity to compete in the womanless beauty pageant, but Don and Phil were married, and had competed.

The game was at Don’s house. Don’s wife was out of town, so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Jim had told them Norman’d been wearing dresses to work all week, yet somehow they just assumed Norman would be dressed in men’s clothes for the poker game. So they were speechless when Don answered the door, and Norman entered in his girly pink dress.

Norman smiled. “Hi there, boys,” he said.

They stared at him, dumbfounded. Finally, Don said, “You’re wearing a dress.”

He stared down at his pretty pink dress.
   

[Alana]

“You’re right!” he said. “How did this happen? I guess I must be a woman.”

Norman had fallen in love with his girly pink dress from the moment he’d tried it on, and he’d been saving it for the poker game, not even wearing it to work. He loved the idea of wearing a pink dress and being girly in the middle of this male enclave that stank of cigar smoke and stale beer, a place where guys talked sports and complained about their wives and spat and swore.

“We didn’t really think you’d---“

“Wear a dress? Why not? You were there when I was named an honorary woman, weren’t you?”

“Look,” said Don, “you don’t understand. That’s just a joke. That doesn’t mean you have to dress like a woman all the time.”

“But it means I can,” said Norman.

“Look, Norman---“

“Norma.”

“All right, Norma, then! I got the title one year, and I didn’t make use of it once.”

“You should’ve. It’s fun to wear pretty dresses.”

There was nothing anyone could say to that, so they went over to the table to play some poker. Jim was even kind enough to hold the chair for Norman. “Thank you,” he said, smiling sweetly as he sat down, smoothing his skirt beneath him.

Phil said, “I got the title too, once, and my wife kept wanting me to use it. That’s a hell of a thing, your wife nagging you to come to a party in a dress. I guess she should’ve married you, Norm. Norma.”

“Still smoking cigars?” asked Don, offering him one.

“No. I don’t want to get any ashes on my new dress. I love this dress.”

Norman kind of hoped one of them would compliment his pretty dress, but they didn’t seem to be in the mood.

They played for hours, and it would be fair to say that they felt a little inhibited having Norman around. Whenever one of them made some little stupid misogynistic comment they glanced at Norman to see how he would react, as though he were a real woman and not just an honorary one.

It galled them that Norman kept winning. He usually did, but that night it particularly annoyed and humiliated them to lose to someone in a pink dress.

Jim seemed less annoyed than the others, maybe because he was used to Norman. Norman asked Jim if he’d noticed the green silk dress one of the girls at work was wearing, and Jim said Norman would look very cute in that dress. Norman said that you really needed to have the figure for a dress like that. Then he said he was thinking of going with a different lipstick color and wanted to know what Jim thought. He greatly enjoyed Don and Phil’s discomfiture.

“Is this a poker game or a fashion show?” muttered Phil, who was losing worse than any of them.

After a lot of whiskey, Norman stood up and headed off to the bathroom.

“Deal me out,” he said. “Don’t wait on me. It’s going to take me forever to get out of this girdle.”
   

[Alana]

As he left, he turned and said, “Now, don’t you boys talk about me while I’m gone!”
   

[Alana]

But they did talk about him, and when the game broke up after midnight, Don said to him matter-of-factly, “Norma, we’ve been talking it over. We really don’t want you at the game if you’re going to wear a dress.”

Norman was hurt. He was reapplying his lipstick at the time, and he almost smeared it. He looked at Don with a wounded expression.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Look, it’s fine with us if you want to be a woman, but this game is just for the guys. Our wives understand that. If you’re willing to dress like a man, then fine. Otherwise, we’d rather you not show up.”

“You guys are just upset about losing to a girl.”

“Yeah,” said Don. “Whatever.”

He was upset. “Excuse me,” he said, with a little quaver in his voice, and left.

“Well, what did you expect was going to happen?” asked Mary when he told her. “This is a small town. They want people to fit in. Break the rules and you get ostracized.”

“But the town told me I’m a woman!”

“OK, fine, you’re a woman, and they don’t want women at their game. I don’t remember you getting upset about it back when you were a man.”

“That’s sexist.”

“Oh, boo hoo! Welcome to womanhood.”

On Sunday afternoon there was supposed to be a meeting of the garden club at Mary’s home, and she got a call from the President of the club saying that the meeting had been canceled at the last minute.

“But I’ve made sandwiches!” she said.

“Sorry, dear.”

On Monday Mary ran into a woman who asked her why she hadn’t been at the meeting of the club. She asked where it had been. It seemed that it had been moved to the President’s home at the last minute. So she went to the President’s house to confront her about it.

“Look, I’m sorry dear, but we just didn’t want to have the meeting with Norman coming down in a dress and acting all girly, wanting to be one of the girls. It would be disruptive. In fact, we’ve been talking it over, and we’d like you to remove yourself from the club for the duration of your husband’s little crossdressing adventures.”

“But that’s not fair! You can’t blame me for something my husband is doing! Why did this town ever start the whole ‘honorary woman’ nonsense if they weren’t prepared to follow through with it?”

“No man has ever carried it this far before, dear. We’re all a little bit concerned about him. Is he having some sort of a breakdown?”

“No, he’s not having a breakdown! He has a plaque that says he can wear dresses wherever he wants to. He’s just taking full advantage of it, that’s all.”

“He really needs to behave.”

Behave. She fumed, and stormed out of the house. She decided not to tell her husband ( or was it wife, now? ) about this. It would just be an argument, and it wouldn’t change his mind. When he made up his mind to do something, nothing could change it, and he was determined to be a woman for an entire year.

She came home and saw him looking through his dresses.

“Hi, honey. I’m trying to pick a dress for the camping trip.”

“Camping trip?”

“With Don, Jim, and Phil.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot about that. Honey, you’re not going camping in a dress, are you?”

“I’m a woman.”

“That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it? Well, it doesn’t work this time. I’m a woman too, and I know better than to wear a dress and high heels on a camping trip. That’s just not practical.”

“Why not? We women can do anything in our dresses that men can do in pants, and just as well. Why shouldn’t I wear a dress?”

“Setting up camp, walking through the woods in high heels? Having to get on your knees in the dirt? You’ll ruin your pantyhose.”

“I always carry an extra pair.”

“I know what this is about. You just want to piss off those guys and embarrass them. I’ll bet you’re even looking forward to taking off your dress in front of them.”

“I can’t wait to see their faces when they see me in my slip!”

“You know they’re not going to take you, don’t you?”

“We’ll see.”

As the date for the trip loomed, he got a call from Don.

“Hello?”

“Norma, I know we invited you on the camping and fishing trip, but that was before. You can come, but not in a dress. Be waiting at the sidewalk with all your gear, and if we see you in a dress, we’re just going to keep right on driving.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said, and hung up.

He knew what he had to do. Don’s wife Melissa was back in town. He’d never met her, but he heard about who was in charge in that house, and it wasn’t Don. Norman changed into the pretty floral dress he was planning on wearing during the camping trip, and drove straight to Don’s house.

Don was out doing errands. Melissa let him in. As soon as he saw Melissa, he knew that this was a woman who was his equal when it came to girliness. There weren’t many women in town as girly and feminine as him, but Melissa was definitely one of them. She was cooking dinner in a beautiful white chiffon dress and a lacy white apron, and there was not the tiniest stain on either.

“Come in! Sit down! I’ve heard all about you, Norman---sorry, Norma. I hoped I would get to meet you some day. Everybody’s talking about you.”

She directed him to a chair, and sat opposite.

“What are they saying about me?”

“They’re saying you wear the prettiest dresses! And I agree! That dress is just darling!”
   

[Alana]

“Thank you. I love your dress. It must feel wonderful to wear.”

“Oh, it does! I love to go dancing in it.”

“This is the dress I plan to wear on the camping and fishing trip I’m going on with your husband.”

“You’re going camping in a dress?”

“Everyone says that! Why not go camping in a dress? If you can cook and clean and do housework in that dress, why shouldn’t I be able to go camping in my dress? Are we supposed to be ashamed of being women or something? Are we pretending we’re men?”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Wear that dress with pride, girlfriend!”

“Well, see, that’s the problem. Your husband Don won’t let me go on the camping trip in this dress. Or any dress.”

“Oh he won’t, won’t he? We’ll see about that. Don’t you worry about a thing, Norma. He’ll be there to pick you up bright and early on Saturday morning, and you make sure to have your lipstick on and your bra fastened. Don’t you dare wear pants! I never do.”

“Thank you so much Melissa.”

“Think nothing of it.” She put one hand over his and said, “We girly girls have to stick together. But if I help you, I have one condition.”

“What?”

“You have to let me borrow that dress.”

“Only if I can borrow yours.”

“Well, why don’t we try them on right now? I think we’re about the same size, aren’t we?”

“I’m a size six.”

“Me, too. Let’s go.”

She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom. He was a little surprised she was willing to undress in front of him. It was refreshing to come across someone who was so accepting of him as a woman.

As they helped each other out of their dresses, his eye was caught by the open closet full of dazzling dresses in bright colors. Chiffons, silks, satins. He wanted to try them all on, but he thought he didn’t really know her well enough to ask. Funny, before he became an honorary woman he’d never even thought about dresses, and now it seemed he could think of little else.

“You know,” she said, “they’ve been doing this whole ‘honorary woman’ thing for decades now, and you’re the first who’s ever taken full advantage of it. It’s about time someone showed the world how wonderful it is to be a woman. Someone besides me, I mean. I hope you win next year, too. I’ve been looking for a friend in this town as girly as I am.”

“Thank you, Melissa. Could I call you Missy?”

“I love it when girls call me Missy! No one ever does. I can tell we’re going to be really good friends.”

They tried on each other’s dresses, and Norman said, “You look so cute in my dress!”

“Thanks. You look beautiful in mine. Do a twirl for me, Norma!”

He twirled, and they both laughed.

“I would lend you my dress right now,” he said, “but I had my heart set on wearing it on the camping trip.”

So they undressed and put back on their own dresses. They talked for a while longer, and parted reluctantly.

So it was that Norman was wearing his girly floral dress and carrying his fishing rod and tacklebox, with his sleeping bag under one arm and his purse under the other, standing by the side of the road waiting to be picked up by Don.

Don pulled up, and Jim gallantly jumped out of the car and held the door open for Norman.

“Hello, Norma,” Don said wearily.

When they pulled up to the campsite and started unloading tents and equipment, Norman did his part, and didn’t have any problem traipsing through the forest in high heels or setting up the tent while wearing his pretty dress. In the afternoon they did some fishing. Norman kept putting out a hand, hoping that someone would be a gentleman and help him into the boat, but no one did. He shared a boat with Don, and tried to get Don to bait his hook for him. Don refused, and looked at Norman with contempt.

For the most part, the day proceeded without incident, except that Norman got a fishhook caught on his skirt, leaving a small hole. Other than that he was able to do everything they were doing just as well as they did, and do it in a dress and high heels. He didn’t trip on his heels, he didn’t get his skirt caught on any bushes or brambles, he didn’t get a run in his nylons.

He did just fine. He even caught the most fish.

They cleaned the fish and got a campfire started. They didn’t bring any campstools to sit on, so they all had to sit around the fire on blankets they’d spread on the ground, which was easy for the men in their jeans and hiking boots, but Norman found it more difficult to get comfortable in his dress.

Finally, Don noticed Norman and said, “Oh will you cover yourself up!”