Charity Auction
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

It was a charity event. I was wholly committed to raising money for research into the treatment of myeloma, a disease that killed my dear mother.

I suppose that myeloma is not a disease that people think demands immediate attention. Some people live with it, and some, like my mother, die – there is no known cure.

But the tickets could not be expensive and all hopes were on raising big money from the charity auction at the end of the night. There would be providers offering free products, some expensive items pulled from the attics of wealthy people, and “experiences” for those who could offer that.

What could I offer? I sweated to do everything I could in the organization of the event, but I had no money and no talent. What could I put up at the auction to raise the money? I only had myself, and every moment of time as I was out of work and living off what my mother had left behind.

I suggested to my girlfriend that I could offer my services for a week, or even a month.

“What kind of services would they be?” she asked. “What can you do? If you were a girl you could offer a week as a live-in maid, but nobody wants a male maid.”

But then she looked me up and down and added – “Or maybe we can put that long hair and short frame to some use? Maybe you could be a maid – a transvestite maid?”

I said that was just plain weird. Who would want to have a transvestite walking around their house?

“It is all a question of presentation,” she said. “I think that we could really make you a very valuable item, for the right kind of bidder that is. We have less than a week before the event so let me turn you into something marketable.”

I had no other ideas. I mentioned it to the man who would act as auctioneer and he seemed strangely keen on the idea.

“I have had a look at the guest list and there are a couple of guys who are coming who might be interested,” he said. “All you need is two to get a good price. If you get a bidding war going then we could get a lot in, but you will need to be better than a guy in drag. Tell your girlfriend that she will need to make you look very good, and have all the right moves.”

I used those exact words when I told her.

“That was my thinking,” she said. “I have booked you in at a beauty spa tomorrow, so get yourself ready for a crash course in being female.”

For me, it felt like this was the least that I could do for my mother’s memory. I had returned home and I was surrounded by all her things. I had moved to sleeping in her room surrounded by all of her clothes and the items on her dressing table. She had always taken pride in her appearance, right up until that blood cancer sucked the life out of her.

In a way, the woman that I would pretend to be would be a homage to her.

But that came at a cost. I turned up at the spa and immediately I was stripped naked and subjected to a full body waxing. The pain was greater than I expected, but then there was a soothing moisturizer applied that improved things. My face had special attention to remove what passed for a beard – I have never been particularly hirsute.

I had been asked to bring a bag filled with a few of my mother’s items. I had mentioned that I was no larger than my mother, and the idea was that my body could be shaped to fit her sizing. That would be achieved through corseting and padding, and I was stuffed into this outfit, including underpants that made my genitals disappear inside me.

My hair was washed and colored, and styled in a feminine way, and I sat down for my first facial and makeover. It was to be “a daytime look” to be worn with a dress of my mother’s that I had judged to be “youthful”. The idea was that I would look the part for my instruction in feminine behavior.

I suppose that I never really thought that I could pull it off, and that my appearance would be comical and ridiculous, which is why my first look at myself in the mirror came as such a shock. I saw myself standing there in a full length mirror, in that dress with the shapely legs, and with my face made up and the soft curls at my shoulders. I was a beautiful woman. More than that, I looked like my mother as I remembered her as a small child, and in photos of her on the day that she married my late father. It was more than a homage, it was a reproduction.

I found myself moving my hands as she would, adjusting her hair, smoothing her dress. It was as if I hardly needed instructions – all I needed to do was to channel her as I could remember.

But I did take instruction, and, despite misgivings, that included going out to lunch with the ladies from the spa to prove that I could present in public as a woman.

“You’re not getting changed out of that feminine shape until after the auction,” my girlfriend insisted. “For the next few days you will live and breathe as a woman and be my girlfriend rather than my boyfriend. We will do girly things together. It will be great!”

The strange thing was that it was. I really enjoyed the time we spent together. And over this time we were both excited about the coming event, including going shopping for the right outfit for her to wear. My outfit was already decided. I would be dressed as a sexy maid.

So, I wore the costume, including the mesh stocking and high heels, and I followed her direction on how to walk and use my feather duster. The maid outfit was not a fetish costume – it was a tasteful French maid look, if there is such a thing. I had a role to play, including learning how to curtsey, as perhaps a French maid should. I learned little rote phrases to be delivered in a high simmering voice: “Oui, oui Monsieur”, “comme vous le souhaitez” – “as you wish”. We rehearsed all the way to the party, so that when we arrived, I was being a maid as if I was born to be one.

My name was to be “Yvette”. The idea was that I was to mingle with the guests, and let people know that I was to be up for auction later on in the evening. Initially, my girlfriend kept a close eye on me, and then suddenly she was gone. To be honest, I hardly noticed. I was getting a lot of attention, by both sexes. One woman even assured me that she would be bidding for me.

She knew that I was really a man, but I am fairly sure that others didn’t, or weren’t sure. To make it more interesting I took to speaking in a higher register, which came surprisingly easy. Somehow it seems that a woman speaking in a French accent, even if a pretended one, must have a husky tone, perhaps from those harsh cigarettes. Plenty of men were left wondering.

I was wondering who the two men that the auctioneer mentioned, might be. There was one who came over to talk to me, and one who just spent the evening staring at me.

I sat down to the meal between the auctioneer and my girlfriend. He was very happy with how I looked and behaved, and he assured me that he would get a good price for my services when my time came.

“How long are you offering to serve as a maid?” he asked me.

“Maybe 24 hours? What do you think?” I asked.

“Let’s start with that, but could you do longer?”

“I am not doing anything much at the moment,” I admitted. “But I don’t want anything weird happening. You will have to tell the bidders up front that I am not really a girl, because some might think I am.”

“I can believe it,” he said. “I might take you home myself if you were!”

He took to the podium and started out with a few good items – meals at sponsoring restaurants, spa treatments, a weekend at somebody’s seaside cottage. The bidding was solid, and the organizing committee, sitting at my table, seemed pleased.

The time came for me to come forward and he beckoned me up to the auction block. I did a couple of little poses and I smiled, pretending to dust the shoulders of the man with the gavel. The audience laughed.

“We have a treat for a discerning buyer,” the auctioneer began. “Before you is somebody who will be a maid for a day for anybody who is willing to pay a price fair to the charity we are here for tonight. Can I just add that no woman will be demeaned in this exercise. The lovely lady before you is not a woman, although I could easily be fooled. Our maid tonight lost a mother to myeloma quite recently, so serving the lucky buyer tonight is all they have to give. I am going to start the bidding at $100.00.”

The lady who had promised to bid offered $150 and then added $50 on to the next few bids. Before long the price was over $1,000 and she was out. From what I could see there were more than two bidders, but I was scanning the room looking for my girlfriend – where was she? Why was she not here to see this?

Then suddenly a man who had not been part of the bidding stood up straight, and called out.

“$2000 for 24 hours, or $20,000 for a week!”

Some in the audience gasped. The auctioneer looked at me, questioningly.

“I can do a week,” I said, and then I looked out to the audience and simpered a phrase - “Comme vous le souhaitez”. You could have heard a pin drop, but after a pause it was a gavel.

“She is yours, Sir, and the charity is grateful.” The audience applauded.

I turned to look at the man standing. He was not either of the two men I thought might be interested. He looked younger than them, with only the slightest fleck of grey in his good head of hair. I was expecting some kind of creep, but he looked like every woman’s fantasy of a middle-aged lover.

Not a lover. What a crazy thought. A master. Not a vicious one – he had kind eyes, if it is possible to see that across a ballroom.

The charity. It was all about the charity. I had done well – better than I expected.

Before I stepped off the auction block I finally caught a glimpse of my girlfriend. She was standing at the back beside a man who had his arm around her. She wasn’t even looking in my direction. It seemed as if things were over between us. Somehow over the past few days I had a feeling that this might happen. It was almost as if she had stopped looking at me as if I was a man, and she was no lesbian.

As my master approached I gave him a little curtsey and once he handed over his check, I said: “I am looking forward to serving you, but you should know that I am not really a maid at all. Not a woman and not a servant – in fact no idea of what a French maid actually does.”

“I am not concerned about that,” he said. “When can you come around to my place?”

“I am dressed to serve right now,” I said. All I could think of was that the sooner this started, the sooner it would be over. “Would that be convenient?”

“I would like that,” he said. “By the way, my name is Dalton Hardwick”.

The proceedings wound up and the organizers thanked me for helping to raise more money than they expected. Nobody expressed any concern for me. After all, I was not a woman. I could look after myself.

He had a chauffeur driven car pick us up. I asked whether I should sit beside the driver, but he just laughed.

“Not a woman and not a servant, remember? You sit beside me.”

His home was equally impressive. It was a penthouse apartment on two levels, full of art and modern appliances. He was a guy with everything. He could have had any woman in the world. But it seemed that for his amusement, he wanted me – an aimless guy who just happened to look good dressed as a woman.

He invited me to sit down and we had a nightcap drink. He told me about himself as if it was something that he seldom did. He was not trying to impress me – I was just a human that he had bought to be there. He had paid good money so if my job was listening, I could do that.

He said that he admired me for what I had done – to raise money by doing anything that I could, and doing such a good job of it.

“I like the maid outfit, but tomorrow I think we should find you something else to wear,” he said. “And you can lose the duster – I have a cleaner who comes in daily. You will serve by being here, and being beside me for a week. I hope you approve?”

“Comme vous le souhaitez”, I said. He smiled.

He showed me the room I would be sleeping in. It was comfortable and had its own ensuite bathroom, one of three guest suites in his apartment. I slept in that bed only a few nights.

It took less than 24 hours for me to understand my role in this place. He wanted me. It is that simple – he is a man who when he sees what he likes, he buys it and he keeps it. As he puts it, “A man of taste should never find they dislike what they once loved.”

Being wanted can be an end in itself - it is something that a person can want to live for. You only really need one person to want you, and that should be enough. I have that one person. It is enough. It just took me a while to realize it.

He said that we were a match, he and I. The only thing in the way was what was in my panties. Would I consider …?

Sometimes I feel that I am living in a sitcom – the one where the gentleman hires a quirky nanny but ends up falling for her and marrying her. We were keeping our distance from one another because we both saw ourselves as heterosexual men, but underneath there was a romance – almost a fairytale one.

That week ran into two, and then into a month and more.

I suppose that you could say he finally wore me down by his own desire, so that I came to understand that I desire him too, and probably have ever since he called out his price.

We give to charity, but we avoid auctions.

The End
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