how to make the perfect boy?
a campy ride with the killer cliques and their creation
It’s a glittery midnight, and everyone is in my basement. The walls are cracked, skins of century-long paint peeling off to reveal a weathered plasterboard. It’s very neo-gothic, with the velvet curtains draped carelessly on one corner. The vintage mannequins are piled like contortionist bodies beneath the only existence of a cubic window. The moon pilfers through the darkness and does a fabulous job of retouching the daunting spookiness. Some broken jars crunch under our feet and the wrapper of neon candies glow in radioactive chic.
A whiff of YSL Eau de Parfum blooms from the fidgety wrist of Heather. She is harrumphing in absolute disgust at my house's very dark and decrepit status. The sound of her pointed heels stomping through ribbons, pins, and discarded sewing machines is diva-proof.
She furrows her entire brows and feigns a gagging reaction as she plops herself into a rickety chair. “Gosh, this house screams haunted, but I doubt even the supernatural beaus would want to live here. Way to not take advice from Architectural Digest, Courtney.” She pointedly glares at me, and I roll my eyes. I don’t have time for her rotten display of attitude tonight. There are more important matters, as I scan my Barbie Pink press-on nails for scratch.
Regina, with her condescending smile and icepick glare, faces us with utter revolt. Her blond hair swishes like a Keratin commercial, its golden glow acting as a lamplight against the eerie darkness. “Heather, you have been nothing but ghastly insufferable throughout the night. It would be nice if you could mute yourself.” She brushes a cobweb from her pink fur coat and screeches into the cavernous space like a banshee. “Where are you, Frankie?!”
I strut confidently into the shadowed space and kick a styrofoam wig stand with my blood-red lacquer stiletto heels. Squinting, I see the hunched figure of Frankie behind the dilapidated organ. I push the flimsy glam machine with my bare hands, careful to not snap away my claws. Frankie grunts and tries to lift the corner of his lips into a smile. “If we want him fashun for tonight, we better get him foxified. Otherwise, people would scream for 911 if they saw him in this freak fashion scandal.”
Heather tiptoes in her satin slingback heels. She crouches carefully to avoid dust on her Chanel red blazer. She fans herself and fawns over our creature. “Omg, Frankie. We have been looking for you for a while now! You can’t escape from your creators looking like thisssss!” She gasps as she scans the ratty shirt, skinny jeans, and patchwork ears sewn on the left side of his humongous head.
Regina rummages through her glossy bag and whispers in trepidation over Heather’s coos, “Okay, girls. Hear me out.” She claps her hand in that ENTJ-personality sans she’s in her Satan-in-leadership-heels mode. “I got him outfits for the party, but what’s the vibe? Is it gonna be a brat-sweat-XCX dirty aesthetic? Sexy leathers with a hint of effortlessness? Do we want to nail the rodent-looking white male baguette core with pants that could squeak his buttocks? What is the mood, girls?”
I flip my bottle-neck raven hair over my shoulder and angrily cross my arms, “Relax, Regina. No one wants your fashion lookbook if you’re basing Frankie’s aesthetic on your boring white male archetypes. Seriously, did you take a second look at our monster? He’s ripped. He’s not a twink.”
Heather snaps her fingers over the concussed argument, “No, we need him dragged up to perfection. Think about drag kings! He needs an overglamorous makeover because look at him!” She extends her hand to our creature who is looking at us with starstruck syndrome, and seriously, she is overdramatizing Frankie’s oddities with her high-pitched operatic voice. I mean, he’s not that bad-looking. The different set of eye colors gives him that indie-boy allure. Heterochormia realness. Well, except for the rough-hewn patches on his face. Clearly, the thread we used was low-quality. It wasn’t designed for human flesh stitching, and can you fault us for prioritizing the safety of our nail extensions over the surgical precision of our creature’s facial structure?
“This is not the RuPaul’s Drag Race fandom, Heather. We are not making him into a Lady Gaga backup dancer. He needs a certain bling, a je ne sais quoi status. The It Boy of the Century. Think of Edgar Allan Hoe, but a ripped himbo if he consumed his remaining time ‘not writing’ in the gym.” I tap my heels impatiently into the floor and flinch as bugs scurry into the walls.
Regina juts in confidently to our bicker, suddenly materializing a fur pen and a notepad with both hands. Add the shimmer soundtrack on this magician girl because she’s got the Mary Poppins bag. “I know what aesthetic we can don on Frankie!” She purses her glossed lips and continues, “What about something ethereal? Think of flowy skirts and gender-bender men defying hetero fashion. It would soften his edges. A pre-Raphaelite painting. Divine, not monstrous!” She points the fur ball of her pen to Frankie, and the creature tries to smile again but fails to in a grimace, almost as if he disapproves of the idea. “Look at his jawline! It would be a marble sculptural perfection.”
“God, are you insane? Living your Harry Styles fantasy much?” Heather stands up and rolls her eyes to Regina.
Regina bumps her shoulders in a calculated bludgeon to Heather as a response and studies our beautiful monster with her scalpel gaze.
Frankie is looking at us with his chrome-colored eyes. The silver thread we used, my suggestion to give the stitching an extravagant flair, glows like capillaries in his disjointed flesh and muscles. His left eyebrow is raised and the amount of muscle effort to lower it down twitches his right eyelid into dysfunction. He stands up carefully, a wobbling baby finding his footsteps in the world. An undead thrust into the light of our bubblegum conception.
His calves are just a chef’s kiss (sourced out from this athletic hottie in Barcelona with unquestionable consent).
A manic giggle erupts from me as they are bolted together into Regina’s ex’s thighs (cobbled after a motorcycle accident). His torso is a magnificent gladiator body, perfectly laminated from the five-starred gym and beautifully fashioned from extreme green diets (gathered unknowingly, I don’t know which guy). It is pumped like the metallic armor of knights, ready to smash the faces of enemies between the pecs and the undulating beefiness.
And haphazardly glued into his shoulder joints are the biceps of an artist, an icon, and a boy-next-door rockstar. Snaked around the hill-shaped brawniness are punk tattoos of anarchy and a large snake with its head cut off from the ‘reconstruction alignment’ to the torso.
Frankie grunts as his freakish weight fails to carry him in a modelesque grace. I hold his callous fingers as he leans to the wall. The jawline is a calibrated knife ready to chisel girlhood into damnation. With his face card and a slight pixiefication of cosmetics, he would become the dazzling creature we envisioned him to be. The mystical ruination and heartbreaker of every girl, guy, and confused closet case.
I smugly smile at the two, and they twist their smiles into a jealous snarl at my interaction with our creation. “Now, girls. It’s gonna be a long, brutal night. We have a makeover to channel, don’t we?” I pop my cherry-red lips and clap my hands. “Let’s unfurl the claws and show Frankie the real transformative magic of fashion and beauty. Chop, chop!”
Frankie coos, but it is manifested through a deformed guttural sound. Regina and Heather take it as their cue to push back all the dirt and mess into the side. I saddle up the ring light into the center of the room and power it on, transforming the underbelly basement into a makeshift green room.
Regina coughs as she filters away dust. Heather groans deliberately after pulling in the glittered jacquard duffel containing all the makeup, wigs, and accessories. I begin to unroll the ball of outfits Regina had bought earlier from the thrift shop and pair them appropriately in their timely and niche aesthetic.
“God, Regina. These are all so…,”
“Gay. And I don’t mean that as a derogatory term. These are all just so sparkly for a monster like him.” Heather finishes the statement for me as she clucks at the sequined outfit, the frilly tops, the fringe leather jackets, graphic tees, distress shirts, glossy pants, oversized jorts, straight-cut pants, blingy chunky belts, flannel shirts, and platform boots.
Frankie grunts at Heather’s use of the term ‘monster’ and slits his eyes into diamond glints. “Omg, I am so sorry, Frankie. I didn’t mean that. It’s sort of a recontextualized adjective. Monstrously handsome! That’s all.”
“Quit yapping, Heather. And stop babying him. He may be acquiring the language yet, but he knows what you meant by that word. Shame on you for being so unmotherly to our creation.” Regina laughs menacingly. She pats Frankie and ruffles his hair. The latter seems to like it as he whines at Regina’s palm like a dog. She dabs the concealer over his moon-curled eyebags and bakes it with the Pat Mcgrath loose powder.
I throw the frilly skirt, the pink crop top, and pastel accessories into Heather’s face, “Oh, god. This is a fashion crisis! He is supposed to look like a James Dean caricature. An intellectual poet, a dark limbo of a bad guy, a mysterious drool-worthy psychopath. Not someone whose female gaze is personified with bubblegum chunks of pastel and gender-bender style. He is broody, seductive, and dangerous. Not a golden retriever, Regina!”
“Stop criticizing my fashion taste! This is not the Vogue Olympics, Courtney. If you want him like your battered fantasies of a fucked-up nicotine-stained boy, you could have volunteered to choose his outfits earlier!” The rogue on Frankie’s cheeks suits the cool tone of his almost-dead skin. Regina applies a dark eyeliner on his waterline, and I sniff the air in anger.
Heather slaps away the outfits I have flung over her and huffs in ceremonious annoyance. “As you two bicker like children over your cereal-minded businesses, why don’t you two shovel the work because time is ticking out, and we need him to the party looking fierce and hot since flame-retardant leather pants.”
“Oh, shut up, Heather!” Regina and I exclaim in scathing unison. The monster gawks at us and shifts uncomfortably in his position. Regina finishes his punk makeup with graphic eyeliner and is now applying a bit of color to the bluish corpse texture of his lips.
I wailed in exasperation as I couldn’t find any outfit to fit him. Every ensemble screams of a fashion scandal. A mirrorball flamboyance. It’s not like he’s going to a circus; he’s not a freak show! “We’re failing him!” I cry and wipe invisible tears with the sleeves of my mink coat.
“No, we’re not. You’re just being histrionic.” Heather tosses the leather pants onto the table. Frankie stares at the fashion piece and clasps his hands in eager excitement. “Do you think a monster just wakes up one day with a definite style, much more like a concrete brand? No, it takes time to slay. It takes decades to perfect a look, especially a misunderstood goth himbo vibe.” She waves her pointy finger at me and juts her hips.
At the mention of the word monster again, Frankie blinks curiously at Heather. This time, his different-colored eyes are wondering, not brimming with coal-hot hate.
I stand up and crumple all the sequined shirts in my hand. Regina chirps at him in assurance, “Don’t listen to her, Frankie. You’re the perfect man. In fact, you need a billboard after this revamp. Besides, you grunt better than when men talk. Your linguistic limitation says more than the codified bullshit of the male race.”
Heather giggles behind me and spins around to brandish a sequined jacket. I could almost faint from this fashion attack. It’s a regression. “Really? Have you lost your brain somewhere from the planet factory of glitter? Did you sniff too much shimmer and lose your ability to think innovatively?”
“Ungggh?” Frankie says with a raised intonation.
“Stop being so allergic to anything shiny, Courtney. It’s giving fashion snob, and besides, what do you have against sequins? It’s power, it’s confidence. Step up from your solid color block style. Have variety, queen!” She rolls the endearment ‘queen’ in sarcasm, and I flip my hair as a retort.
Regina excitedly murmurs, “Omg, FRANKIE! You look fantastic. A work of art! Such a modern bad boy rendition.” I look at our creation, and I agree with Regina for once. He does look stylish with the look. There’s a smoldering sexiness hinted at by his smudgy eyeliner. A fuckability factor seeping through the defining contour. The blush on his cheeks makes him glow divinely. Mary Shelley would proudly roll on her grave and gasp at our manual facelift. Frankenstein 2.0.
Heather hands the sequined jacket to Frankie, and there’s a tugging smile on his painted lips. He looks at the three of us standing like an unholy trinity around him and asks, “Wear?”
Regina fans herself with satisfaction, “Omigod, he is now in his first stage of language acquisition!”
I pull the distress band shirt over his patchworked torso, the fabric stretching over his chest in diabolical sexiness. Regina guides his strong arms into the sleeves of the sequined jacket, the tinkles of disco dots a music to Frankie’s ears. He giggles as the texture of the fabric tickles him. Next, we slide the leather pants to his gigantic legs, careful to not rip apart the seams as we fit them around his limbs. We tie the platform boots on his feet, tightening the shoelaces to mold it snugly.
Our sororal dissonance melted into solidarity in that tender moment of dressing up our creation. Despite our stylish bickering, we were united in the conception and nurturing of our own Frankie.
Regina rummages through her beauty bag and unrolls the highlighter stick to make Frankie more glittery.
Heather smirks at him, “Finally, the man formulated candy nightmares and sour dreams. He is ready to unleash the ironic heavens.”
I clap demurely as he walks towards us, a recognition burning in his heterochromatic eyes. A submission, a relegation, and a revered respect to his creators. “Ready to party and rock the night, Frankie?”
Our creation perfects his roguish smirk this time and says in his velvety voice, “Yes, ma Cherie.”
Regina screeches glamorously, “When did he learn French?!”
