I run a hand over the dresses still in the suitcase, getting more creased by the second. I haven’t had a chance to go through the contents of the case properly yet. Natalie just handed it to me, and I hurriedly tossed in a few of my own things before we made a mad dash for the airport.
I sift through the contents and pull out a precise black bobbed wig. There’s also the white low-backed, vomit-spattered dress from last night, shoved in a gap. I pull it out and toss it into the bin. Too many bad memories.
I pull out a swathe of red fabric and give it a shake. It’s an imitation of Rihanna’s red Grammy dress from 2013. There’s also a white tulle skirt and crop top. I lay each outfit on the bed, then tug something bright purple out of the case. It’s a pretty good replica of the jumpsuit RiRi wore on her We Ride album cover. Nat’s really done her homework.
Below that, I spot an assortment of underwear. I pull out a couple of pieces – the knickers are so tiny, I’m not sure why Nat even bothers with them. The bras are all beautiful, mostly lace in black, purple, white and green.
I pull my t-shirt off over my head and unsnap my bra, then try on one of Nat’s bras. It’s the simplest one she has. A deep bottle-green, made of silk. It’s so soft to the touch I hold it to my cheek for a moment before I put it on, and I’m sure I can smell Nat underneath the Omo, which makes me feel homesick. But the joke’s on me: my breasts barely fill half the cup; they look like a pair of empty socks. I tug at the two straps, hold my breath and try to pull them towards each other behind my back. They only just close, but I can’t breathe – my rib cage is being crushed while my breasts swim in space. I give up and toss the bra back into the case, sweeping the other bras in after it.
Next I pull off my jeans and my own knickers and hold up a pair of Nat’s panties, hoping I have more luck in the downstairs area. It’s a nude G-string and I’ve never worn one before. I turn around as I try to figure out which is the front and which is the back. It doesn’t have a label – well, it’s not big enough, I don’t know where they’d put it. I take a flying guess and step into both leg holes, but there’s no way this teeny thing is making it past my thighs. As I’d feared, I like chocolate far too much to fit into Nat’s underwear. Exasperated, I pull the useless scrap of fabric off and catapult it across the room with a twang, aiming for the bin but missing, so the G-string joins the rest of Marilyn’s clothes scattered on the floor.
It’s hopeless: my arse is much bigger than hers, and my boobs are smaller. How is this ever going to work? What am I going to wear? I slip my own knickers and T-shirt bra back on, then fish around in the case for the rest of my own underwear that I had brought with me, laying each piece out on the bed to see how bad my situation really is. It’s bad. All I have is a motley collection of T-shirt bras in varying shades of over-washed grey, and matching panties, most of them with elastic on their last legs. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t own any sexy underwear. I once got something lacy to wear for Lucas’s birthday, but I felt stupid prancing around in it, so that was that. I’ve always been more of the sensible-cotton-pants-and-sports-bra type. There’s one pair of plain black cotton knickers and a matching black T-shirt bra that might work. They’re slightly less stretched and not as faded as the other underwear, and they’re black – that’s sexy, isn’t it?
I step experimentally into the jumpsuit. It’s lined with the oddest Velcro panels along the seams, which I finally click must be for easy removal. I shake my head again at my sister’s deception and my own naïvety.
Even though the jumpsuit is half a size too small, the Velcro gives me a tiny bit of extra space so I can get it on, although I have to suck my breath in to get the zip up, and it still doesn’t go all the way, stopping a few centimetres short of the top, lodged against a roll of back fat. But it’s on and that’s what counts. If I eat anything or even try to sit down while wearing this thing, God help us all. I had shoved a pair of Spanx into the suitcase back home, thinking I was smart. They’re magic at sucking in fat and that would have been the perfect solution for me to fit into Nat’s clothes, but now the rules have changed: I can hardly strip down to a full latex body suit. Nobody would pay to see that. Well, maybe some people would, but that would be at a different kind of club. Yuck.
I check myself in the full-length mirror hanging inside the cupboard door and pray for an earthquake, something big on the Richter scale. There’s no doubt I’m definitely Rihanna-ish, sort of, on her most hung-over day. But the few extra kilos in the jumpsuit give me a terrible camel toe, and while Rihanna has plenty of side boob, she doesn’t have any of the side fat that’s bulging out the edges of the strappy jumpsuit. I suck in my stomach and fiddle with the fabric, adjusting it the way men do, to make more room in the crotch. It helps, marginally.
Wait, does this mean I’m actually going to do this thing tonight? I don’t know. But if I am, this get-up is going to have to do until I can pick up something more appropriate. Although I may not have to. I’m almost positive that if I put a foot on stage in my tatty old underwear and the too-small purple jumpsuit, Dania will shove me on the first plane home. Hopefully they’ll let me change out of the jumpsuit before I fly: more than two hours in this thing and I’d die of asphyxiation.
I wonder what Lucas would think of me in this? It’s so tight, sexy and low cut, he’d probably say it’s too slutty on me; he doesn’t even like it if I wear a V-neck top to college. I suck in my tummy again and strike a Rihanna-like pose in the mirror. I grab Marilyn’s hairbrush from her bed and hold it up to my mouth like a microphone, then strike that pose again and quietly hum the tune to ‘Umbrella’ as I sway my hips. It’s not great, but it’s not entirely vomit-inducing either. Some people with less than twenty-twenty vision might even consider it sexy with all that skin showing at my sides. Plus, like David said, the right hair and make-up will help, and maybe I can get a Boob Tape 101 lesson from one of the other girls. What they call ‘mood lighting’ (i.e. near darkness) will help too. So, as long as someone loans me some tape, everyone in the club is blind and they have a power failure, I could just about pull this off, almost, if I really wanted to.
What if I did it? Just once. Shouldn’t you try everything at least once? Isn’t that what they say? Who knows, it may not even be that bad – I could chalk it up to life experience. It’s not like I know anybody here, or would ever see any of them again. Maybe I can do this. I may not be as thin as Nat or the other girls, I think, looking at myself critically in the mirror, but I look more like my celebrity naturally than most of the women in the house, and that’s got to count for something.
The whole boobs thing is definitely a spanner in the works, though. I put down the brush and cup my breasts with my hands. I don’t hate my boobs. They’re perky-ish, but small in comparison to the other girls’. And would I really be able to flash them to a crowd? Although it will be dark, surely? So maybe I can hold out and then flash them super fast, so that the crowd barely has a chance to get a good look, right at the end of my routine. Shoot … what about my routine?
I try out some of the Rihanna moves Natalie and I used to pull out back in the day. It’s the routine I was planning on doing last night before the vom-fest. Everyone always used to think we were twins, the cute little Rihanna girls. While I’m working through a couple of our old moves, I wonder what it feels like taking your clothes off in front of a bunch of strangers. When you’re with the same person for a long time, your guy doesn’t look at you in that kind of way any more, maybe because you’re not looking at him like that either. It can’t be all bad to feel sexy and wild once in a while, can it? Swinging my hips again, I pull at the zip, trying to get it down elegantly, but it gets stuck on another fat roll. So I give one of the secret seams a tug instead. Nothing happens, so I grab another seam and pull. Eventually when I tug hard enough, and in the right places, the Velcro pulls apart. Seconds later the jumpsuit is off, without me ever having to as much as come close to a zip or a button. Standing in the middle of the room in my saggy old grey knickers and bra, I piece the suit back together, then fold and put it on top of the open suitcase.