A Step Off the Path

A Joke Too Far

Chapter 1: setting it up

"Sure, I'll be in. Sounds like a great joke. Should be lots of fun."

That was what I'd said when Zola had asked me to take part in a skit she wanted to put on at her sister's eighteenth birthday party.

Zola was sixteen, a couple of months younger than me, and she had a large extended family who liked to enjoy themselves whenever they got an excuse. She wanted to entertain them with an act that supposably involved five girls doing a chorus line dance, but one of the 'girls' wouldn't be a girl, 'she' would be a boy. Then Zola was going to ask the guests to pick the one who wasn't actually a girl. Naturally, I assumed that the non-girl would be pretty obvious, so I was going to be that non-girl.

Zola's idea was much more elaborate than I'd anticipated. We were all going to wear identical outfits, shoes and so on.

We had six weeks to get the act ready: practice three times a week - with a dance instructor, would you believe! - and dress fittings . . . hey, hang on!

"Oh, Kyle, don't let me down, please. You'll be terrific."

"Er, okay . . . okay."

Then during the last two weeks, dress rehearsals with dresses, shoes, make-up, hairdo's (a wig for me) the whole shebang - including shaved legs - shit!

Bloody hell, I was having serious doubts. I really didn't want to do this anymore, but I was trapped. I would feel a total prick to pull out at this late stage and blow the whole thing.

Some of the other girls were having doubts as well.

"Zola, Kylie looks too good. Nobody's going to be able to tell." - Yeah, that's right, 'Kylie'. They had all started calling me that. Pretty obvious, I guess.

Zola laughed, "If they can't tell, too bad. It will be an even bigger joke."

Chapter 2: the party

The party was held out the back of Zola's parent's grand house in this large entertainment area. Zola's parents were very well off, as were most of her extended family.

There must have been over a hundred people there, all sorts of ages and shapes and sizes.

Lashings of food, plenty of booze, a string quartet - they knew how to enjoy themselves, this lot.

We 'skit girls' watched proceedings from an upstairs window waiting for the call.

It came.

We performed on a temporary stage and we were good. I'm not bragging when I say that there wasn't a misstep; we wowed them.

When we finished, Zola leapt up onto the stage to share the applause; she introduced each of us by name (me as Kylie) and then announced that one of us was actually a boy dressed up and made to look like a girl: "Can you tell which one?"

The crowd didn't have a hope, they were certain that we were all girls (oh, come on, you can't be serious!). Zola was having great fun taunting and teasing them while we 'girls' stood there with silly grins on our faces.

Eventually, Zola declared, "I suppose that I will just have to tell you then, won't I?"

But a man came forward and spoke to the crowd, "We all enjoyed that, didn't we?"

There were "Yea's" and more applause.

"Why don't we ask them to perform for us again at Louise's eighteenth birthday party next month? We can keep the secret until then and have another go at guessing."