We are in the dressing room, backstage at the Miss Texas pageant, 1987. You have changed into your sequined baton-twirler romper and go-go boots, with the fishnet stockings, and you’re shaking, trying to get yourself together before the talent competition. The other girls are all walking around in various states of undress, matter-of-factly, but they don’t care that I’m in there. I’m your stepfather. I’m actually not looking at those girls, anyway. I’m trying to calm you down.
Your pageant coach, a nasty, face-from-a-jar old hag that your mother and I never liked, dressed you down after your swimsuit walk and that has utterly destroyed your confidence. Between winning Miss Sugar Land back in September and now, your mother and I gave you a $10,000 boob job for a graduation present after you transferred from Kilgore Junior College to TCU. We took you to the best plastic surgeon in Houston.
I was with you in the doctor’s office, leafing through the waiting room copies of Hustler and Cheri when you pointed to a girl and said you wanted the triple-Ds. To my friends at the racquet club, I admit that your tits are an incredible work of art. But the change in your figure totally caught Sugar Land’s Miss Texas committee by surprise.
When you got done with your swimsuit walk, your pageant coach got back in your face in the dressing room and said you had way too much jiggle in your chest. Actually, she said worse. She said you looked like a cheap hooker more than a pageant representative. That’s when your fiercely protective mother (herself Miss Cypress Ranch 1964) slapped the pageant coach across the face and was immediately removed by security. I was called into the dressing room to be with you like it was a deathbed hospital visit.
You feel like everyone is staring at you and judging you — which, obviously, is what a goddamn beauty pageant is all about. But you feel horrible and ridiculous, not pretty.
“I can’t go back out there, Daddy,” you sniffle as I straighten the rhinestone tiara atop your cute little cowgirl hat.
“Babydoll, hush, it’s OK,” I say, trying not to stare at Miss Hidalgo County as she tucks her amazingly hairy bush inside the crotch of her dance leotard.
“My boobs are just too big,” you sniffle. “I just feel like—“
“Now honey,” I say remonstratively, reaching down to dunk the ends of your batons in a bottle of lamp oil, “you wanted that size.”
“I know, Daddy,” you say, and now the tears are coming on. You start fanning your face. It’s too late. Your mascara is going to run.
“I’m sorry. I know they cost—“ you stammer.
“Oh, babydoll,” I say, hugging you. “Oh honey don’t, it’s OK. That’s nothing you ever need to worry about.”
I made so much money suing Citgo that a $10,000 boob job is peanuts. Hell, I lost a $10,000 deposit for penis enhancement surgery after I realized the doctor was a quack.
“I can’t fucking believe I got all the way here and my tits are too big,” you sigh.
“Your tits are not too big,” I say, catching myself too late. I meant to say breasts.
“Yes, they are! Look at all the girls staring at me!” you hiss.
“Shush. Shhh baby girl,” I whisper, hugging and holding you. You are on the verge of a full, sobbing breakdown. It’s clear that there’s nothing anyone can do to save this. I wrap up your fire batons in a towel and put them in a duffel bag. We have to get out of here and go back to the hotel room. I throw a huge terrycloth bathrobe over you and we leave as discreetly as we can, though everyone in the dressing room knows what a pageant breakdown looks like. Sugar Land’s pageant committee is just gonna have to be disappointed; I’ll pay them whatever it takes to make this fiasco go away.
We get in a freight elevator outside the dressing rooms and take it up to our floor in the hotel, somehow managing to avoid anyone along the way, which is a relief. You start calming down, and when we get back to your room, your sniffles have turned into cute little giggles. You’re starting to realize how silly all of this shit is. It only matters if you think it matters, after all. In the hotel room, I take off my tuxedo jacket and loosen my bowtie. You remove the bathrobe and then toss your Miss Sugar Land sash in a wastebasket.
“I don’t know about you but I need a drink,” I say. You nod. I find an airplane bottle of Gilbeys and make a gin and tonic for you. You’re still sitting in your spangled baton-twirler costume with the white fringe on the sleeves, your fishnet legs crossed, with your cowgirl hat and tiara and go-go boots. You sip your fizzy mixed drink and let the relief wash over you. I find some Crown Royal in the mini-bar and pour myself a double over rocks, then sit down on the bed next to you.
“Where’s Mommy?” you ask suddenly. We totally forgot where she was.
“The hotel told me she was being taken to the police station actually,” I say. “She’s not going to be charged, but they needed her to cool off.”