The Scam Of The Century - A Faux Non-Binary Serbian Shepherd Wins Eurovision

The contestants for Eurovision knew they had no chance when a fellow entrant, all gussied up, long fake eyelashes, blue eyeshadow, schoolgirl skirt and billowing, sleeveless top prepared to take the stage. Europe had gone around the bend at the event in 2024 and now the gayest, most transformed, most outrageously neither-this-nor-that performer was again the Eurovision highlight.  

All eyes were on him/her, as 'they' sashayed onto the stage, took the microphone and began to belt out La Vie en Rose. He - we'll use that pronoun for convenience - channeled Piaf, Garland, and Callas in a swirl of  color, sparkle, and pizazz.  Unfortunately he couldn't sing a lick and compensated for his tin ear with bombast and Can-Can choreography, showing off his black net stockings, garter, and just a hint or what lay beyond.  The crowd loved it, and he won handily. 

The back story of Milos Dobek is a simple one. Born in one of the breakaway Yugoslavian republics, son of farmers, Milos looked to Dubrovnik and Belgrade for culture, wealth, and promise.  He had no intention to live a life of cow shit and pig sties forever, and like every other farm boy in the world, was drawn to the bright lights of the city and saw his future there. 

He said goodbye to his mother, father, and girlfriend Sonya who, wet with tears, saw him off at the train station.  'I love you', she said, 'and I will take care of little Johann'.  Their passionate affair in the fields, cow sheds, and stables had produced a child, yet unborn, but sure to be as blonde, blue-eyed, and handsome as his father. 

Life in Belgrade was not exactly what he expected.  He should have known that cities are always filled with promise but rarely pay off; but he was undeterred.  However, without any urban-valued skills or higher education, he was overlooked - simply another backcountry rube trying his luck in the big city.

 

The one and only thing he had was his Hollywood looks, an insatiable sexual desire, and an irresistible allure.  Women saw him and wanted him, and he, despite his limited fortunes, was the prize of Milosevic Square. His father had taught him the value of opportunity, to take it when it came along, and never to question it; and so it was that he began to accept small gifts from his paramours, gifts which became more and more generous as he became more experienced and more eclectic.  There were few young men like him, so endowed, so confident, and so free.  He satisfied young women, matrons, and young grandmothers with ease. 

One woman from Dedinje, the tony, high-rent district of Belgrade was his best customer.  Mme. X had once been a burlesque queen and had performed for the glitterati of the city until she married a longtime admirer, an international trader and offshore investor who found her irresistible.  Both were of modest social lineage, up-and-comers, members of the bourgeois elite - a new class in the new Serbia - and were a perfect match.

Years passed and as things would have it, she began to look elsewhere for comfort and satisfaction, and so through well-connected friends, engaged Milos as her companion.  Their trysts were magnificent, sexual bacchanals and elaborate costume extravaganzas.  She felt completely, utterly free with him and he, of course, with her, contracted as he was for a generous dollar emolument. 

She dressed him in her husband's old army uniform, and her grandmother's Victorian lace gowns; Russian medals and pearl brooches; jackboots and fine silk slippers.  She coiffed him, did his eyes, painted his lips, changed it for swagger stick and leather, then shed it all and pulled him into bed. 

 

Now, Mme. X fancied herself a latter day Marquise de Merteuil the character in Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a woman who with her lover, Valmont, conspires in the seduction of young, pretty virgins of the court.  It was a marvelous tour de force, that of the Casanova Valmont, and the calculating, duplicitous Marquise, and Mme. X thought to do the same.  

Milos readily agreed and went happily to his assignations of Mme. X's wealthy friends, and one by one a queue of forlorn, disappointed women followed the young lover. 

This was only the beginning, for she, in her complete distaste for the showy, outrageous gay community in the city, wanted to tease them, entice them, leave them breathless and broke.  Again Milos agreed, and knew the gay pas de deux well enough to keep them at arms length, promising, welcoming, and taking more and more generous gifts.  He became a master of sexual disguise, a canny manipulator, and a brilliant performer.  

 

'We must not stop here, my love', said Mme. X. 'All Europe must know you and your charms'. 

Of course Milos thought she was just being her marvelously outrageous self.  Despite everything he was still just a farm boy from _____.  Yet, she was persuasive, and had a plan.  'Eurovision', she said with a salute to the wall-sized portrait of Milosevic in her parlor.

It was an improbable, seemingly impossible challenge, but the marvelously inventive and unstoppable Mme. X with her inexhaustible treasury, her contacts in and out of government, and her Machiavellian mind, managed to weave a story of fancy, ambition, and human interest.  With the support of the gay community (here she swallowed her distaste in the interests of success) and the burgeoning Serbian music industry, she created 'Kendall', her stud dressed up in Parisian finery, a shoo-in thanks to Eurovision's insanely woke turn to Nemo in 2024. 

Milos loved it.  He could not have been the gigolo he had become if he had qualms about who he was servicing, or his sexual complaisance at the hands of Mme. X, so if there was money in this escapade he was all for it.  These were the bright lights of the big city. 

And so it was that this beautiful, tone-deaf young man made his way up through the ranks, prancing and shaking his booty by night and rooting on Crvena Zvezda and drinking beer with the lads on Sunday afternoons.  The sexual culture had become so ingrown, self-conscious, and politically sensitive that no one bothered to look any farther than Milos' long lashes and sky-blue eyes.  He was one of them, pure and simple. 

 

Mme. X got him a voice coach, a young tenor from Vienna who demanded outrageous prices because of the impossibility of the task ahead. 'I cannot tich dis peasant', he said, and so he was paid royally, and by the time the Serbian finals rolled around Milos had practiced his stage act to such perfection that singing in tune hardly mattered.  Everyone was delighted that a non-binary Serbian had a real chance at victory. 

The rest is history.  Eurovision 20-- was won by Milos aka 'Kendall'.  It was the greatest scam of the century, the most outrageous, impossibly canny and devious ploy ever seen on the continent.  Out of respect for the other contestants and the event itself, Milos ditched his costume and his persona in a dumpster in private, and with his prize money and the thousands contributed by Mme. X, he emigrated to New Zealand, married a traditional Māori woman and returned to the sheep herding of his youth.