Who would have ever thought that this former high school fatso would ever be competing in a male beauty contest?  Certainly not me!   But there I was in San Diego, vying for the title of "Mr. Romance Novel Cover Model" at a romance novelist convention.   

The pageant was to be the "entertainment" of the weekend.  I still have a hard time with with the fact that I participated in a male "beauty contest."  My fragile male ego won't allow it, I guess, but there I was, twenty-five hundred miles away from home, competing for the chance to be on the cover of a romance novel: the prize for winning the contest and a shot at fame, fortune, and a stepping stone to greater things.

Male bonding started almost immediately when I hitched a ride to the hotel where we were to rehearse the first morning with "Cyclone," a former American Gladiator.  His career on the show was sidelined after ripping his bicep muscle off the bone in an event.  He seemed proud of the scar on his arm and was a great looking guy with big green eyes and an incredible physique, and a surprisingly down to earth.   The male bonding ritual was to continue throughout the weekend.

Upon arriving at the hotel, I could already see my competition milling about.  It was stiff, to put it mildly.  Nearly forty perfect male specimens, models, actors, musicians, body builders, strippers, an ex-pro baseball player, a centerfold, a poster boy, and other assorted Fabio wannabes.  Adonis's all - and not a "dog" in the bunch.   Only two blondes, me being one of them, it looked like my chances were good.   However, I still had my work cut out for me.

More male bonding took place at the hotel's "get acquainted" continental breakfast.  Coffee and a mountain of doughnuts and lard-laden pastries were served to the health conscious hunks.  Upon my second helping, Cyclone said to me, "Do you know how many grams of fat are in those things?" as he calmly sipped ice water.  Guilt set in and I quickly looked for a potted plant  in which to purge my pastry "sins."

We eventually found ourselves sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hotel's ballroom.  No easy feat in the tight jeans I was wearing.  The guys had already started to break off into cliques.   Each group was louder and more boisterous than the next.  I had never seen so much hair in one place before, either.  And all that hair being tossed with expert precision.  Some of the guys had it down to an art form.  I could have taken lessons from some of them, and I'd thought with my waist length hair, I'd already written the book on it!  For the first time I felt very at home with my long hair.  I was no longer the social oddity, and was welcomed by my hirsute peers.

As I sat and mused in that sea of Samsons, all appearing to be in some testosterone induced fog, my first impression was that I had definitely not stumbled into a MENSA meeting by accident, and was not in the presence of Einsteins and rocket scientists.  I was to later realize that I had judged these future romance heroes by their covers; painting them all with the same brush I'd been painted with for so long.   "Hair longer than his attention span," "chest measurement bigger than his I.Q."...and I've heard every blonde joke ever written, so you'd think I'd know better.  Sorry guys.

I was amazed that many of these men had traveled as far as I had to compete in this first time ever event.   Some came from Texas, New York, Florida, and Indiana, all of us sharing the same dream, the same fears.  All worried about the size of our...biceps and the length of our...hair.  These guys were all serious contenders with great heads on their broad shoulders, even if these heads were covered with a lot of hair.  Many of the men owned their own businesses and were accompanied by very supportive wives and girlfriends.

We were put into alphabetical order and handed our scripts.  Each of us had a few lines of dialogue, which some of the guys still had a problem with, even with someone holding cue cards.   Nobody said show business was easy, and this crew of rank amateurs had just two days to pull off a professional show.

They drilled us on walking, blocking, and turning on cue like muscular toy soldiers.  Amazingly enough, nobody seemed to have a problem walking and chewing gum at the same time, either.

During our first break in rehearsal, I met a ruggedly handsome guy with thick curly hair and a black mustache.  His honest sincerity seemed so genuine, that I thought 'If I don't win the contest, this guy should.'  He had all the qualities the pageant as looking for.  He and I talked as we choked down the provided sack lunches.

The pageant garnered more media attention that anyone expected.  CNN and MTV both showed up to cover this first ever male beauty pageant.  We made every local news broadcast in the country. "Entertainment Tonight" sent a camera crew with soap star Kimerlin Brown doing color commentary. "Have you ever been in a beauty contest before?" she asked during our interview.  That's when it finally dawned on me:  This was a beauty contest!  The fact that each and every contestant was drop dead gorgeous just seemed like a coincidence until that moment.

By the second day of rehearsal, many of the men were developing fan clubs and attracting "groupies."  Some of the authors attending the convention gravitated like magnets to the men who most resembled the hero from their latest novel.  One stood almost speechless in front of me. She stared as if mesmerized and finally said, "You...are the man I wrote my book about!"

As we milled about, waiting for rehearsal to begin, the room suddenly got very quiet.  That's when I got my first glimpse of Fabio, the King of Romance Novels, the man we were all trying to dethrone.  He stood there, like a tall Italian sequoia.   He was a flawless man with the biggest chest I've ever seen.  I even sneaked up behind him to compare our heights in an adjacent wall mirror.  I ended up standing next to him was we posed for publicity stills.  He turned out to be a congenial guy, even if he was a little hard to understand with that thick Arnold Swartzeneggar-like accent.

Another part of the pageant on which we were to be judged was "historical costume," or in my case, "hysterical costume."  With my blonde Nordic looks, I was told I was to wear a Viking outfit.  Imagine my surprise when I pulled an aviators flight suit out of the garment bag.  It was a shapeless tent that was supposed to make me look like Tom Cruise in "Top Gun." Instead, I looked like an auto mechanic. 

The rest of the contestants were dressed as Tarzans, bare-chested sheiks, and half-naked pirates.  There I was, covered head to toe in a khaki garbage bag with a scarf.  I did manage to have the suit pinned to me like a second skin, and I unzipped it as far as I could for optimum flesh exposure.

About an hour before the show was to begin, they herded us all into a hotel suite for hair and makeup.   Shoulder to shoulder we waited our turns, dizzied by the smell of hairspray.   One hairdresser commented to her colleague as she worked furiously over the unruly mane of one of the less threatening contestants, "Poor guy, he hasn't got a prayer."

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