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JAMIE:That’s such an inappropriate thing to say to your twelve-year-old daughter’s friend.
SHAY:The idea stuck with me. I kept imagining walking across a stage in front of a crowd. At first, it was terrifying. The opposite of being unnoticeable. But then I thought, they’re already looking. If I do this, maybe I’ll be in control.
So Mr. Matthews introduced me to his sister, and she said if I competed, I could win money for college. My mom used to say a scholarship was the only way I was getting my ass to college, and I wanted that more than anything. So I begged my mom to let me compete. She hated the idea, said I had to choose between pageants and soccer. She thought I’d choose soccer.
JAMIE:I’m going to be honest. I never understood. You were so much more than pretty. And don’t give me that bull that pageants are about talent. It was beneath you.
SHAY(laughter):Do you know what teachers used to write in my report cards? Shay is a sweet girl. So polite. Plays well with others. I know what they wrote in yours: Jamie’s gifted, he’s got so much potential, going big places. We got the exact same grades.
JAMIE:I hate that.
SHAY:I hate it because I believed them. I thought the most important thing about me was that other people liked me. It made pageants the ultimate test of my worth.
JAMIE:Well, you ended up winning a lot.
SHAY:At first, it backfired. Competing made me feel exposed, like I was only giving the world more to leer at. My body started feeling less mine than it ever had. The makeup, the way I was supposed to talk, the things I was supposed to eat: everything was a performance.
JAMIE:You were playing by their rules, Shay. Capitulating to the same patriarchal system that sexualized you so young. Even if you’dfeltin control, it would’ve been an illusion.
SHAY:Look, at some level I understood that. I knew they made the rules. I just thought if I played by them perfectly, I’d come out the other side rewarded with my own power. That’s why pageants turned into my whole life. I became so good at knowing what they wanted I was practically a doll. The doll was the one strutting under the stage lights, delivering the punch lines. And then she started winning.
JAMIE:It sounds like you were dissociating.
SHAY:The problem was, once I started placing, people wanted more from me. Especially the judges.
JAMIE:What kind of people judge beauty pageants, anyway?
SHAY:At the local level, they’re volunteers. In East Texas, a lot of men, Chamber of Commerce, civic duty types. And they all seemed to know each other. Most of them were friends with Mr. Matthews, too. After competitions, I’d see him holed up in the judges’ dressing room. When I started winning, they invited me in.
They’d ask stupid questions, like what other talents did I have, stuff that made them grin at each other. A bunch of grown men, and I had their undivided attention. Even at fourteen, fifteen, I knew that was power.
When I got older, Mr. Matthews and the judges started inviting me out. They went to Hooligans every Thursday night for dollar longnecks. It made me feel very adult, like I’d been invited as…I don’t know, a colleague. It was a little strange to hang out with Clara’s dad instead of her, but by then, she was barely talking to me.
JAMIE:Where was your mom?
SHAY:She hated the pageants, so she never came. Besides, Mr. Matthews and the judges were family men. I was allowed to spend time with them.
Junior year, the night I won Miss Dallas, I swung by Hooligans and they were already drunk. When I left, one of them followed me into the parking lot and begged me to get in his car with him. He said he’d been waiting for me, and now I was finally sixteen. He was wasted, so he couldn’t physically stop me from leaving, but I’ll never forget looking across the parking lot and seeing Mr. Matthews standing there, watching the whole thing. He didn’t try to stop it. He didn’t say a word. Not then, or ever. Maybe he felt guilty about his friend. But the way he looked at me…it was like I’d betrayed him by letting his friend get there first.
So that’s what it was like. A strange mix of having power over people and being at their mercy. Or maybe that’s just what it’s like being a teenage girl. Either way, I don’t regret it. I never would’ve gone to college if I hadn’t won Miss Texas. That scholarship saved my life.
Besides. Every time I won, when the confetti rained down, and they shoved flowers in my hands, and everyone was standing and clapping like I was the queen of the world, I would think to myself,Shay Evans, you finally figured it out. Look how lovable you are.
It really did feel like love.
(Rustling.)
JAMIE:Bullshit.
End of transcript.
***
Jamie tossed his phone on the nightstand. “Fuck Mr. Matthews. You should’ve told me.”
“What could you have done? You were a kid. And you were obnoxious about the pageants. You were the last person I would’ve told.”
He looked strangely vulnerable on the other side of the bed, soaking wet. “I’m not saying I was right to be condescending, but listen to yourself. Grateful theyallowedyou to go to college. Fuck that. You were smart. And your best shot at an education was to turn tricks in ball gowns for a bunch of lechers, hoping they’d pin their fantasies on you? Why legitimize that by participating?”
