It's just a jump to the left...

“Oh c’mon Alice”, said Mags, “it’ll be a right laugh”. I rarely need persuading to go on a night out, especially one that is on impulse. This was slightly different though. It meant that far from going out in my glad rags, I would in fact be going out with very little on at all. I wasn’t sure if I could quite carry that off.
“Just the two of us?”, I asked warily.
“No, I managed to get hold of four tickets, so, husbands included.”
“I don’t think Hubby will be up for it Mags. He’s a naval officer for heaven’s sake. Sober and dignified. He’s got a sword and a silver topped cane. People salute him. He’ll never agree”.
Not only did Hubby agree, but with alarming, enthusiastic gusto. We only had a few hours to get our outfits together and as I was working, I no time to run into Ann Summers.
“There must be somewhere in Torpoint where you can buy fishnet stockings for me”, is not a phrase I would ever have thought I’d have heard my husband utter, but utter it he did and with genuine concern.
“Get the holdup ones”, he added, “I’m too tall for a suspender belt”. Perish the thought. So as if I had little else to do after finishing work other than walk the dog, get our son’s hair cut, pick the girls up from school, prepare their dinner and going out, I now had scout around the few shops of Torpoint in the vague hope that I’d find what I was looking for. I wasn’t optimistic. We are very well served in this town for pasties, estate agents, hardware, pets, holidays, pharmaceuticals and a handful of toher services that keep a small town ticking over but I genuinely didn’t think that Fore St had much to offer in the way of exotic undergarments.
How wrong I was. Two shops sold the requested stockings and the optional belt and of those two, one also sold a rather saucy line in basques. Another shop, wholly independent of the other two sold a dazzlingly blue, feather boa. Who’d have thought it? The only thing Hubby needed now was a pair of men’s tight briefs. I wasn’t able to find a pair of those in any shop. There’s a hole in the market there.
I rang my brother, “Yo, bro, got any tight knicks?”
“Ladies ones you mean?” he sounded bewildered.
“No of course not. I have plenty of those myself, I mean as in briefs. For a bloke”.
“Nope, sorry sis. I wear boxers. Dad favours the brief style though, try him”.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to explain to dad why Hubby would need to borrow a pair of his underpants and so, whilst he was out at bowls, I went next door and raided his drawers. Literally. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
By the time Hubby came home from work I had his outfit ready for him to wear. An old basque of mine which I’d worn on some amorous weekend when rather more comely, the all important hosiery, a feather boa and dad’s pants. Size 12 high heels would have meant buying at a ‘specialist’ shop and I wasn’t quite up to that, his steaming bats would have to suffice. At least they were shiny.
The children squealed with excitement.
“Daddy, is a gu-url, daddy is a gu-url”. Hubby picked up the lacy girdle.
“Oh my God Alice”, he said, as though the reality of his transvestite challenge had suddenly dawned on him.
“You can’t back out now. Mags has got the tickets and is waiting for us in her office. C’mon”.
“You mean we don’t have to walk on the Torpoint ferry dressed like this?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you! No we’ll get changed at Mags’s and she’ll drive to the car park and bring us home.” We threw our outfits into a kitbag and kissed the children goodbye.
“Oh dad”, said the eight year old, “I’m really disappointed; I wanted to see you look like Beyonce”.
Forty minutes later and I saw Hubby in a new light. It was something akin to what Simon Cowell undoubtedly feels when he spots new talent and sees dollar signs in front of his eyes. The cash register sound of ‘kerching’ went off in my mind too. Hubby took to his new image very much in the fashion of that duck to water and I suddenly thought that when, it not so many years Hubby retires from the Royal Navy, I could be his agent, we could buy a little swish pad in Brighton and he could have a drag act.
Being 6’ 7” gave him a certain something but combined with stockings, basque and an artistic application with Revlon, he was a knockout. I wasn’t the only one to find his alter ego attractive; once at the theatre Hubby was surrounded by hundreds of other ‘queens’ many of whom came up to him asking to be photographed with him. Mags’s husband also threw himself into the role, although the multi coloured spectacles he’d bought to hide behind made him look more Timmy than Tranny Mallett. It was though as Mag’s had promised, a ‘right laugh’. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a hoot; we got into the spirit of things, the only incident being as we walked back to the car when a Petty Officer Hubby knows saluted him with a rather wry, “Evening sir”.
As we stood, weirdly, side by side in the bathroom later, removing our makeup, Hubby reminded me of our next social engagement.
“Don’t forget we’re having dinner with the Padre tomorrow night”. The juxtaposition did not escape me. Tarts and Vicars are us.