Justin didn’t know how much more of this he could stand.
Taking in the appearance of his lover dressed as a woman wasn’t exactly a turn on; Seeing John transform into Barbarella was not a fetish for him. He still wondered what it was that fascinated his lover to do this to himself. It couldn’t possibly be comfortable.
John wore a leather girdle. It covered the masking tape that John wore to mask the bulges at his sides. “It also pushes your chest up,” he said. “Makes the chest look really real.” He had gestured with his hands, their tips covered in fake nails, trimmed and tipped and polished. “You just add in some small falsies and you’re good to go. You get yourself some titties in a big way! You know what honey? You can make yourself some tits out of pantyhose and rice, bread bags and hair gell or balloons and sand. But the sand ones are so heavy, they sag the fuck out of your dress.” She adjusted her falsies within her bra. There were two small rolls of fat where the bra dug into his husband’s body. No, he was a she right now. She was a fat cow, not his fucking husband. He sighed.
Justin often wondered if throwing up would be a polite response. His mother had raised him to stick to a commitment and for some reason, he loved this man. Lately, however, he often wondered why that was.
“What?” John said. “You look all fucking spastic.”
“I’m sorry.” Justin said.
“Why are you always so fucking sorry all the time?” John winked at him.
Though he wore Barbarella’s lashes and her pouty red lips, it was always just John. Just John-painted up like a harlot in a cheap dress from Sears. A fat man in a tight dress pretending to be a woman.
Granted, there were some drag queens that could pull it off. He had, in fact, met some drag queens that looked better as girls than as guys. He just wasn’t attracted to them-but John had sprung this on him. He hadn’t been prepared for the other person in their marriage. Barbarella had burst out of the drag closet, as it were.
Sadly, Barbarella did not look like a woman. The closest Justin could come to describing how John looked was this: what would you get if you crossed Loretta Lynn with a larger Sally Struthers? The answer was more than likely standing in front of him. The wig on his John’s head wiggled as John shook his head at him. “Sometimes I just don’t understand you, honey.”
“What did I do this time?”
“It’s not what you did; it’s what you didn’t do. Didn’t I tell you that I needed my dress picked up from the cleaners? I mentioned it to you three times yesterday and once this morning.”
The fact that John had kept count of the number of times John had times he had nagged him to pick up the dress worried him. “I’m sorry, I must have forgotten.” He said.
“That’s just like you honey.” John said. He painted on some blush and dabbed his face with translucent powder. It floated into the air like a soft cloud of velvet. “You’ve always got your damned head in a book all the time. Always reading something.” John scowled at him. “You shouldn’t read so much, honey. It’s not good for you. Watch some TV sometime, huh?”
“I’m sorry.” Justin tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but it was difficult.
“Honey, you know I have to wear it to coronation on Friday night. They can’t put the crown on my head if I don’t look pretty enough, now can they? But you didn’t think about me, you’re always lost in you’re little stories.”
“I’m not just reading them, I write them too.” The problem was, Justin thought, that John was fairly nice. It was Barbarella that was something of a bitch. It was Barbarella he couldn’t stand. When she came out to play, Justin tried his best to stay hidden. She had been sprung on him this evening, too-the ladies wanted to go out and play.
He went to coffee houses and wrote, went to see movies. His current schedule was up to three books a year and he had deadlines to deliver. At first, Shane thought he had begun writing in coffee houses instead of his office because he had wanted a change of scenery. Now Justin knew he had been writing in coffee houses. He did it to get away from Barbarella; and John, too. He would do anything to get away from him.
From both of them.
“Honey, I don’t care what you do as long as you keep me in the life style to which I’ve become accustomed, too.” John smiled as he pulled on his dress. He tried, Justin had to give him that. But he still looked like a pig in a rug.
“But a girl wouldn’t mind a little jewellery every now and a gain, okay?” Barbarella smiled at him. She had finally come to life before his eyes: a man in too much make up, a too tight dress, an awful wig and somewhere, deep inside that, was a person he used to love. That person was gone now and he just wasn’t in the fucking mood anymore.
He would be taking his laptop with him somewhere else tonight, he thought.
69B 