New Year's Eve is supposed to be a time of new beginnings and doors opening and all that, but I don't know anyone over the age of sixteen who believes it. More often it seems like a time of regret and sadness, another year of missed opportunities and lost hopes gone. The sight of so many people in costume was encouraging though. It made me think that maybe there were some surprises waiting to happen. Maybe it wasn't all the same old faces.
There were men dancing with women and women dancing with women--no men dancing with men--the usual theater crowd. I tried not to stare at anyone as I looked around for someone I knew. I didn't recognize anyone. I saw a number of people I might like to meet, though.
There was a girl on the far side of the room who immediately caught my eye. It wasn't just that she was wearing a man's suit and hat; it was that she was flirting, quite ostentatiously in life-of-the-party mode, and with both women and men. She was standing with a group of about five people, obviously the center of attention, making the others laugh. It struck me that she was dressed in the same clothes as I was, almost identical.
There was no doubt she was a woman, though. She was about my height, but very slim, even willowy--a model's body. She had blonde hair pinned up under one of those floppy poet hats that no real man ever wears, and a white shirt and a tight black suit and skinny tie. She wore a glittery black mask, and it was hard to tell with the lights shooting over her face, but it looked like she had a moustache penciled on as well, a thin one, the kind that Frank wore.
And though her clothes were male, she obviously wasn't trying to pass as a man. There was no mistaking that neck, those hands, and the exaggeratedly female way she moved: from the hips rather than from the shoulders. She was just what she appeared to be, a girl dressed up as a boy. She was enjoying herself immensely.
That moustache bothered me. You don't see little moustaches like that anymore, and Frank had one and he'd been with the theater. Was someone pimping me? Trying to remind me of him and the way he'd run away with Monica?
She left that group and either felt my eyes on her or knew other people were looking because she moved through the crowd, obviously aware of being watched. She found a couple of girls standing against the wall, leaned towards them in a predatory, seductive manner, and whispered something to them. From their laughs I knew it was something dirty. She glanced up at me as if to include me in the joke and I found myself staring right into her eyes. I might have been more self-conscious had I not been so captivated.
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