Doll Parts

by Amanda Lepore

  My sexual awakening happened when I was twelve. A man picked me up while I was hitchhiking on my way home from Stephanie and Sandy’s. I was dressed as a boy, but I was regularly clocked as female.

  This man, let’s call him Clint, was very attractive. A businessman. I was young but I could tell his suit was Italian, and his stylish leather briefcase was a thing of beauty. I love a man in a suit; he’s always the best accessory.

  Clint didn’t ask me my name, my age, or why I was hitchhiking. The first thing he said as we drove away was, “You’re very pretty.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, and tried to break the tension by focusing on buckling my seat belt. It was the first time I’d ever been called pretty by a man, and I felt my face redden. Clint apparently knew that speaking to my vanity was the key to my heart (it still is).

  We came to a stoplight and he reached down by my legs and picked up the briefcase, putting it on the seat between us. “Let me show you something,” he spoke under his breath, like Clint Eastwood or one of those wheezing people in a COPD commercial. In my head I was pretending to be Sondra Locke, before she went nuts.

  He opened up the case and it was filled with porno magazines. I’d never been interested when Joseph showed me porn, but this time the pictures fascinated me. “This is called a blow job,” he said, pointing to a woman sucking a big dick. “And this is doggy style, when a woman bends over in front of a man, and gets fucked from behind. You can do all these things, you know.”

  Not all of them, I thought. I picked up one of the magazines and leafed through it. He pointed to a picture of a woman getting nailed spread-eagled. “What do you think of that? Do you want to do that?”

  As he was driving he started grabbing my chest. There was nothing to grab but he said, “You’re going to develop in a few years; you’ll have nice big tits.” He started trying to touch me between my legs, saying he wanted to feel if I had hair on my pussy, but I clamped my thighs together to keep him out. “Let’s go to a motel,” he said. “We can do all these things in the magazine.”

  Even though I was only twelve, I wanted to give myself to him. But I couldn’t. I wanted to do it like the women in his pornos, with their pink pussies and big tits. As much as I wanted to be with this man, I couldn’t do it the way I was thinking about. He treated me like a girl and it seemed very natural. But when he started reaching for my nonexistent puss-puss, I got scared. Not about him being angry, but about the embarrassment that would come when he found out I had a dick. The party’s over, I thought, I gotta get outta this car, and we’re not going to a motel.

  Clint dropped me off at the mall, gave me ten dollars, and told me to buy some sexy underwear.

  I don’t know what might have happened if I had been born a girl. Maybe Clint and I would have gone to a motel, fallen in love, and moved to one of those states where the age of consent is nine. Then we would’ve gotten hitched and had tons of kids. I could be fat and miserable right now. I could have my own TV series on TLC. How disturbing. I could have had a horrible life if I wasn’t born exactly the way I was.

  MY FAVORITE

  MARILYN

  MOMENTS

  7.

  Let’s Make Love: She played Amanda, a rising-star nightclub singer. Sound familiar?

  6.

  The Seven Year Itch white dress: The most expensive dress ever sold at auction.

  5.

  Chanel No. 5: Marie Claire asked what she wore to bed. Marilyn’s response: “Chanel No. 5.” I love Chanel, but I prefer to sleep in the exclusive Amanda Lepore fragrance; the notes are amber, violet, champagne, and orange blossom.

  4.

  Entertaining the troops in Korea: Is ever a woman more in her element than when she’s front and center, surrounded by throngs of warm-blooded, able-bodied, DTF men?

  3.

  Cameo appearance in All About Eve: “Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?” Marilyn smiled and all of Hollywood quaked in its heels. The star had already been born, but here, she became a supernova.

  2.

  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Her greatest performance IMNHO. Marilyn as the diamond-studded-tiara-wearing white fox in the henhouse. The dumb-blonde stereotype was to be believed at your—and your marriage’s—peril.

  1.

  “Happy Birthday, Mr. President”: She never looked better than in that flesh-colored, rhinestone-covered, barely-there dress, breathlessly singing to President Kennedy. My inspiration.

  If it wasn’t for the twins, I would have had no friends.

  Kids I went to school with weren’t sure what to make of me. I was clearly a girl, but I had to stay with the boys during gym class. Once I started high school and everyone hit puberty, I couldn’t hide behind asexuality any longer. Kids started to realize I was different.

  I’d show up to school with polish on my nails and my eyebrows tweezed. The twins helped me take in the boy clothes Dad bought me so they were more flattering. I thought I looked good, but kids would give me a hard time.

  It didn’t help that I always seemed to say the wrong thing. Walking to school one day, a group of girls in my class passed me. “You girls look so nice,” I said. “I love your lip color.” They looked at me and laughed.

  “Get away from us,” one of them said, “Armand LEPER LEPORE!”

  The name stuck. When I was in the halls, classmates would run away from me, yelling out, “Leper Lepore! Leper Lepore! Don’t let him touch you or your nose will fall off!”

  MY SEXUAL AWAKENING HAPPENED WHEN I WAS TWELVE.

  Guys didn’t mess with me too much, either because they thought of me as a girl, or because they thought their appendages really would fall off if they touched me. Sometimes they’d smack my books out of my hand and kick them away as I tried to pick them up. One time I was drinking from a water fountain and a boy yanked my pants down and laughed loudly, yelling, “Hey everyone, look at Armand’s baby penis!” I never used the water fountain again.

  “Try to figure out how their minds work,” Stephanie told me when I complained about school.

  “Yeah,” said Sandy. “Think of yourself as a psychologist. Just let them talk so you can figure out what it is they want. That will keep them from worrying about what you’re doing.”

  It didn’t work. No one wanted to talk to me.

  Freshman year of high school, I signed up for an acting class. I figured the most logical career goal was to become the next Marilyn Monroe. I walked into the theater the first day and the entire class started booing loudly.

  The teacher stood up and said, “You can’t be in here. You’re too distracting, you’ll disturb the rest of the class.”

  “What’s distracting about me? Besides, aren’t you supposed to want attention when you’re an actress?”

  “Ac-TOR,” she said. “Girls are actresses, boys are ac-tors. Now go to the guidance counselor.”

  The other students cheered as I walked out. “Miss Lepore,” one of them yelled, “can I have your autograph?”

  The guidance counselor, Mrs. Penny, was a stout, matronly woman, always in a floral-print dress, a short perm, and wire-rimmed frames that sat on top of her flat chest when they weren’t on her face. I walked into her office that day and said, “I was kicked out of acting class.”

  “Oh dear, what happened?”

  I told her the whole story—how I loved the great Hollywood actresses and thought acting would be a perfect career for me. It seemed so sensible and logical, I was sure she’d march me right down and tell that teacher to make a star out of me.

  Instead, she assigned me a study hall for that class period. “Acting isn’t a real career,” she said. “And if the teacher doesn’t want you in there, I can’t do anything about it. What else do you want to do with your life?”

  This wasn’t how I had expected things to go. I was sure she would defend me, not take the teacher’s side.

  “Come on, Armand, speak up,” she said.

  “Well, I love to listen to people�
�s problems. Maybe I could be a psychologist?” I could see myself doing that.

  “No, you’ll never get into college,” Mrs. Penny said. “Your teacher is right, you’re too distracting. You need to figure out what you want to do. You could become a hairdresser, maybe.”

  I told her I’d think about it and left her office, hoping I’d never have to go back.

  That night I thought about what she’d asked. I loved playing makeup with the twins, so maybe I could do that for a living. And of course there was always the allure of becoming a famous fashion designer. I’d been making clothes for my Barbies ever since Nanny Nice taught me how to sew.

  I asked Mom what she thought and she loved the idea of me being a designer. She told me all about Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld, and how lavish their lives were. “It’s hard work, though,” she said. “You’ll have to go to school and really study. You think you can do that?”

  I thought about it. I was doubtful I’d be able to get into fashion school after what Mrs. Penny had told me. I settled on the most practical of solutions for a career: marrying into money.

  “Mommy? How come you didn’t marry someone really rich? Then we could have a big place and if you didn’t get along with your husband, you could just go to a separate wing of the house.”

  “There are women like that,” she said with a laugh, gulping down her iced coffee. “Zsa Zsa Gabor had plenty of rich husbands.” We went to the bookstore and Mom bought me Zsa Zsa’s book, How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, How to Get Rid of a Man. I pored over the pages, imagining what it would be like to be as beautiful and elegant as Miss Gabor.

  “What do you think?” Mom asked as I was reading. “You think you could be the next Miss Hollywood?”

  Yes, I thought. This I could do.

  School seemed like a real waste of time after that, so I played hooky as much as possible. I was failing most my classes, except for a couple of Cs from teachers who took pity on me. It didn’t bother me that much. Nothing I could learn in school was important; all people care about is how you look. Zsa Zsa had taught me an extremely valuable lesson: a beautiful girl can have anything she wants.

  MY FAVORITE

  BLONDES

  JEAN HARLOW

  Such a tragic life. She married a guy who was impotent. Or maybe he was gay. Or just had a small penis. Favorite film: Dinner at Eight.

  MARILYN

  Obviously. Favorite film: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

  JAYNE MANSFIELD

  I visited her pink mansion and flashed my tits!

  DIANNE BRILL

  The party girl of the ’80s and ’90s. One of the first of the voluptuous female models.

  ANGELYNE

  I thought she was a bitch when I met her because she pulled out a fan and put it in front of her face. But that’s just what she does.

  ANNA NICOLE SMITH

  Her Guess ads were spectacular. Her beauty was a blessing and a curse. Much like Marilyn, she was as dumb as a fox.

  GWEN STEFANI

  She’s been able to combine alt and glam looks better than anyone ever has. “Magic’s In the Makeup” is a beautiful song.

  Honorable Mention—DAPHNE GUINNESS

  She does a mixed blonde and brunette look. Have you seen the video for “Evening in Space”? David LaChapelle directed it. Fantastic.

  Mom and Dad separated when I was fourteen.

  Dad explained to me that when they first met, he thought Mom was just funny and silly. He didn’t realize then that she was schizophrenic. Once they were married, it was too late, and though he tried to make it work, he was not happy. You could never rationalize with Mom. She was a beautiful woman, though, which I’m sure is why he stuck around for as long as he did.

  I told him I understood, and really I did. Besides, what good would it do to call him out for bailing?

  Financially, Dad still took care of us. The burden of taking care of Mom’s mental health fell to me.

  Without Dad there to force her, Mom stopped going to Greystone, and her illness took over. The key to getting along with her was treating her like she was completely sane. I’d just let her talk, let her vent, and agree with her delusions. I was the only one she trusted. I accepted her mental illness, the same as she accepted my femininity.

  Joseph made himself scarce, sleeping at Johnny’s house most nights. It wasn’t a bad thing. If Mom was starting to cycle into paranoia, Joseph would tease her and make it worse. He’d come home and say the neighbors were outside spying on us, which would set Mom off. Joseph would laugh, get a change of clothes, and leave me to try to calm Mom down.

  I kept Mom’s situation as under wraps as I could. Stephanie and Sandy only saw Mom when she’d drop me off out front of their house. Having people over made Mom nervous and she was unpredictable. A switch would flip in her head and she’d be out of her mind before anyone knew what was going on. My home life was kept completely separate from everything else.

  Sandy started dating a boy who played in a rock-and-roll band, and she invited me to see him play at a bar. I’d never been to a bar before and was excited to see what it was like, but I was only fourteen. How was I going to get in?

  “That’s easy,” Sandy said. She gave me a fake ID that had a picture of Marilyn Monroe on it.

  “When a girl shows up looking good, they don’t care what your ID looks like,” Stephanie told me.

  Mom agreed to let me go, on one condition: she had to meet this boy in the band who would be driving us. I accepted her terms begrudgingly. I was terrified the twins would see Mom’s true colors and might never want to see me again.

  Stephanie and Sandy introduced Mom and me to Steve, a drummer who very obviously played in a hair band. We all sat in the living room, and Mom was a great host—friendly and super charming. She asked Steve to run to the diner down the street and pick her up a piece of cheesecake, so she could have a few minutes of “girl talk.” While he was gone she asked the twins a lot of questions about me, trying to embarrass me, the way normal moms do. Then she thanked them for “watching out” for me and treating me so nicely.

  “Why don’t you girls sleep over here tonight?” Mom asked. “You can have a slumber party.” Stephanie and Sandy looked at me. They had only the slightest idea of what went on in our house.

  “Sure,” I said warily. “That would be nice.”

  Steve came back with the cheesecake and we took off. I dressed plainly, but on the way there Stephanie told me to get undressed. “If you’re going to be a groupie you have to dress the part.” In the rearview mirror, Steve was staring at me as I lifted up my shirt and removed my bobos and jeans. Stephanie handed me a brown bag. I looked inside and smiled wide.

  When we walked into the bar, every man in the tiny room turned to look at us. The place was dark and smelled like cheap beer and sweat. I held on to Stephanie’s arm real tight, trying to hide myself behind her.

  “Don’t worry,” Stephanie said. “You look great.”

  “I look like a slut.” I was wearing an extra-long women’s blazer with no shirt underneath, panties, and high heels. My face was done like Jean Harlow’s. I felt really vulnerable.

  “That’s the point. No guy can resist an underage slut,” Stephanie said. Steve nodded in agreement.

  “What if I get beat up?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Sandy handed me a drink. “It’s a tequila sunrise! Drink it slow. Steve will kill me if you throw up in his car.” I didn’t like it, but after a sip I felt more relaxed. The anxious feeling slipped away. I felt sexy. The attention I was getting from all the guys felt exciting rather than threatening.

  The band wasn’t great but they were loud and cute, and the energy in the bar was visceral. I danced with Stephanie and Sandy and had a couple more drinks. We took a break to the girls’ bathroom and Stephanie reapplied my lip gloss. She said, “Every guy in the place is looking at you. No one cares if you’re a boy or a girl. Just
have fun.”

  “THERE’S NO WAY YOU’RE A BOY,” HE SAID.

  “How can I have fun,” I said, “when I’m busy trying to find a husband?”

  Flirting with guys was much easier than I ever imagined it would be. No one knew who I was, so there wasn’t a preconceived notion of the way I should act. I didn’t have to try to fool anyone. Calling myself a girl or a boy didn’t matter; guys just assumed I was a girl. Even when I introduced myself as Armand, guys didn’t believe me.

  The hot bass player in Steve’s band—a tall, skinny Italian rocker named Dylan—wasn’t buying it for a second. “If you’re a boy, then open your coat and let me see your tits.”

  I laughed and slowly undid the top two buttons, spread open the jacket, and revealed that nothing was there.

  “I still don’t believe it. There’s no way you’re a boy,” he said.

  I ended up getting really drunk and making out with Dylan. It was my first kiss. He picked me up like a baby and carried me outside when it was time to go. He tried to get me to go home with him but Stephanie and Sandy weren’t having it.

  “She’s a boy!” Sandy yelled at him.

  “I don’t care,” he said, locking eyes with me. “I want to pork her.” We made out some more. “Do you feel this?” He took my hand and put it on his cock. It felt like a traffic cone.

  My eyes widened. “It’s so big,” I said.

  “That’s right, because I’m a man, and I’m going to make a woman out of you.”

  I wanted him and his huge cock right then. The twins had to pry us apart. Sandy promised to give me his number, and Dylan put me in the back of Steve’s car.

  Everything was spinning. “You better not throw up,” Steve said. My ears were still ringing from the loud music. I laid my head on Stephanie’s lap and she stroked my hair.