...That's what makes you beautiful
Aphroditus
by Present Perfect
Do women know how beautiful they are?
Big Macintosh does.
He knows in great detail just how beautiful every woman in his life is. Applejack's strength, the tip of the iceberg that makes up her beauty. Each of her friends, beautiful in her own way, from fashion to competition to the meek shyness of the pink-haired one whose name he's never learned.
His youngest sister, too, is beautiful. Her childish enthusiasm, the vivacious zest with which she approaches life. Her drive to learn, her ability to get back up when she's fallen out of a tree. All of that is real beauty. And her own friends are quite the same.
Even his grandmother, her outer beauty from years long past locked up and obscured behind wrinkles and love handles, still radiates beauty whenever she dispenses her fathomless wisdom and sayings. Or a scoop of mashed potatoes at the high school cafeteria. Providing for a family, that is beauty.
And that is only counting his family.
The women in the town nearby the orchard walk and talk and shop and work and run to catch the bus, and in every single instance, they are beautiful. Anywhere he goes, there are women, together or separate, alone or with friends, all of them beautiful in every way imaginable. He doesn't spend much time watching, nor does he keep tabs on them. He does not want to be caught staring.
But since he met Sugar Belle, the woman so beautiful he couldn't not ask her to marry him, he's been feeling more satisfied with life. He could write a book of sonnets about her, had he the gumption to try capturing her in words. But in thoughts, or feelings? Her hair, a cloud of purple beauty. Her laughter, melodic, beautiful, especially when punctuated by a cute, reflexive snort. Her skin, pink and beautiful and so radiant, it makes his own skin better when she presses against him.
Then there was how, as he had heard from his sister once upon a time, Sugar Belle and a few of her friends led his sister's friends in destroying a cult from the inside. Strength is beauty, and mounting a revolution like that was an action of ultimate beauty. There are so many different ways to be strong.
Unfortunately, Big Macintosh excels at but one type of strength. It is the type of strength that makes him tall, broad-shouldered, and always sought after for help lifting heavy things. It is the type of strength that leads women -- all those beautiful, gorgeous women of the world -- to keep their distance from him when they pass on the street.
His strength is far more curse than boon. He has learned that silence is its only panacea. Sometimes, even that isn't enough.
Once upon a time, when he would see a woman -- a beautiful, marvelous woman -- trip and fall or drop something she'd been carrying, his first instinct would be to rush to her side and help her back on her feet. And he did exactly that, once or twice, before he realized that the looks these women gave him were all the same.
Fear.
The moment they saw him, noticed his huge, hulking frame, his broad shoulders and muscular forearms, and his all-too-male face, those women reacted with sudden fear. It was even sometimes true of the women he knew well, at least just for that first moment. In that moment, they would see him as a threat, a monster sprung from the shadows. Some would shake the fear off after a long, tense moment, and accept his offer of assistance. Others would claim to be all right, in the hope that he would just go away and leave them alone.
Sometimes that fear was beautiful, but it only ever made him feel ugly.
So leave them alone he does. He helps the women in his family when they need it and leaves the rest to their own devices. When the streets are nearly deserted and he spots a woman walking down the sidewalk toward him, he crosses the street so she needn't feel threatened by his strength. He keeps his head down, paying attention only to his large feet, never others. And when women get together to talk or have fun -- sometimes his sisters' friends, sometimes his grandmother's, sometimes perfect strangers -- he stays well out of sight and tries to forget about those rare, magical childhood times when boys and girls were allowed to play together.
Girls always had some of the best toys.
Which isn't to say he makes no overture to masculinity. For instance, he does truly love football. He played it in high school, where his frame made him a natural linebacker and his natural clumsiness, born as though unaccustomed to living in his own body, made him a horrible quarterback. He was a studious apprentice of his father's and learned how to fix tractors, gutters, squeaky hinges, leaky roofs and anything else around the farm that could, and often would, break down given time. He can drink his sister under the table. Most of the time. Less frequently as time goes on. But he does like a good beer and has never had difficulty holding his liquor.
Nor has he any dislike for other men. One of his sister's friends has a brother whom he's befriended, and said friend has gotten him interested in roleplaying games at the table top. He has a good time once a week with a handful of other guys, playing make believe and slaying mythical monsters. His characters are always beautiful women.
Now, he stands alone in his bedroom. The hour is so late that it is early. The women of his family are all asleep in their own rooms, his fiancee at her own house a town over. No one else is nearby.
This is good, as he stands before a long oval mirror, completely naked.
He has been saving money recently. Money that he has spent surreptitiously at an online retailer known to use discreet packaging.
He reaches a numb hand to the dresser on his left and takes up the first item of clothing laying there in a heap. It is a pair of frilly pink panties. Women's panties.
He pulls the underwear up his legs. He must do so slowly, as the lace tickles the hairs covering his legs and the elastic strains against his muscles. Either he has not measured himself correctly, or the website's size chart was misleading.
Next comes the brassiere. He owns a few; this one, with its satin finish, he finds he likes the most. He has learned tricks to make fastening the hooks and eyes easier. He twists the fabric around his chest until the whole thing is aligned properly. He hikes up the straps over his shoulders. They strain. The cups sag over his strong chest, empty.
Following that is the dress, white with blue apples, the one he wore in the guise of "Orchard Blossom." It helped get his younger sister into the social, yes, but at what cost? He felt horrible afterward. She yelled at him, and though they'd made up later and even bonded over the experience, her words had cut him to his core. The moment he'd heard his sister needed help, he'd donned the disguise without a second thought. Perhaps he had even relished the opportunity.
No one believed he was a woman. No one saw him as beautiful.
He does not attempt to make his face up. Back when his youngest sister was little and learning how to be beautiful, he often let her put makeup on him, painting her face and his in her simple, childish way. Tonight, there is not enough light to ensure foundation, blush or eyeshadow will accentuate his features properly. But that's okay. He wasn't planning to tonight.
The ensemble is topped with a wig of long hair, orange like his own, and far less ostentatious than Orchard Blossom's. He takes a few moments to sweep the long locks from his face, then adjusts them this way and that, making sure to hide his natural hair.
Big Macintosh stands before himself, naked beneath his woman's outfit, fully exposed in the mirror's reflection. Try as he might, he cannot see what he has so desperately wished to.
He is not beautiful.
He is just a man.
He is ugly.
Ugly.
Ugly.
Ugly.
Just a man.
An errant tug, and the wig pools in his hand.
He sinks to his knees, unstruck by the irony that men are not supposed to cry.
The End
