A story about a family with two boys aged 10 and 13, in which choice is a delusion and gender, an illusion. So far we have learned that Blair likes dressing up as a girl and that Kirk doesn't like having a New Age preacher mistake him for one.

A Teacher’s Choice

“Mommy, can I change into my play clothes?”

“Of course, we don’t want you to get your dress dirty. Both you and Kirk should change into your everyday clothes. Blair, sweetie, do you want me to help you find something suitable from the clothes you bought at Penney’s?”

“No, it’s okay; I don’t need your help. I know what I want to wear,” Blair called out as he scrambled upstairs.

“Don’t forget,” she called after him, “I don’t want my daughter to wear boys’ clothes. No boy’s clothes on a Sunday!”

“No worries, mommy, you’re going to love the way I’ll look. Kirk, beat you to the upstairs bathroom!”

Kirk shouted: “No way that’ll happen. Blair, sissy girls like you put more energy into flapping your wrists than you do into moving your legs.”

And sure enough, Kirk reached the upstairs bathroom (albeit thanks to a last-second body block). Blair didn’t have to wait long, however, for Kirk literally raced into and out of the little room, leaving behind a tell-tale puddle as evidence that he was, once again, disobeying house rules. He had not sat to pee. As usual, Blair tidied up after his brother.

After a whirlwind tour through his clothes closet, Blair soon appeared at the top of the first-floor landing dressed in black from toe to head: black Mary Janes; black socks, panties and bra; black gaucho pants; a black top with a sequined neckline; black lipstick, eye shadow and mascara; and a black silk neckerchief around his forehead. Although every individual item came from the girls’ or women’s department (he had filched the neckerchief and lingerie from Maggie’s dresser), he looked more Goth than female. Indeed, though entirely dressed in women’s wear, Blair looked disconcertingly male to Maggie because of the plastic, medieval broadsword he was furiously waving around his head. After proclaiming loudly that he was “Zorro,” Blair slid down the banister in a most unladylike way, bottom first.

“So that’s why Blair insisted on buying the gaucho pants!” Maggie realized. “It was to dress up like Zorro.”

Maggie spent a miserable afternoon watching the two children play “Zorro”, the self-proclaimed “Fox” whose swordplay foiled the would-be tyrants of Old California while rescuing damsels in distress. It was bad enough to have to watch her “daughter” dashing about boisterously like a little boy on a sugar high, but worse was Blair’s adamant refusal to play any other character: He was Zorro and only Zorro. Which meant, horrors, that Kirk played all the other roles — whether the commandante, a friar, a dimwitted soldier, a damsel in distress, even the governor’s elegant wife. True, Kirk didn’t wear a dress for any of his roles, but that was small consolation for his parents.

Laird could barely contain himself: “Maggie, what the hell? If Blair is to become our daughter, then why is Kirk the one speaking in falsetto and running around the house wearing a bra around his face like an Easter bonnet?”

Maggie, lacking an answer, corralled Kirk: “What do you think you’re doing, young man? Don’t you realize that you’re upsetting your father? He doesn’t want two daughters. Why don’t you go outside to play? Maybe there are some kids at the sandlot.”

“Are you kidding? Maggie, it’s pouring rain. My friends will all be inside. Why can’t I play with my … sister?”

Kirk had hesitated before he said “sister”, but he had of course come up with the perfect word to bring a smile to Maggie’s face. “Yes, you can play with Blair,” Maggie said. “Just don’t let her get so wrapped up in her role as Zorro that she forgets she’s a girl. You haven’t changed your mind, have you? You do still want Blair to go away as soon as possible to a girls’ boarding school, don’t you?”

“More than ever. I never let Blair forget she’s a girl. I even told her that I wouldn’t let her play Zorro unless she agreed that Zorro is actually a woman in disguise.”

“And Blair agreed to that?” When Kirk nodded with a wink and a smile, Maggie said: “Okay, have fun with Senorita Zorro, but do take that bra off your head. It does not amuse your father.”

Kirk, dispensing with the brassiere, thereafter wore a skirt over his jeans whenever he played a female role in the game of Zorro, which seemed to Laird to be most of the time. Senorita Zorro seemed so be so intent on rescuing damsels in distress that a neutral observer might have suspected her of lesbianism. The skirt bothered Laird even more than the bra because he recognized it as one of Kirk’s “punishment purchases”. Why had the boy dug it out? It was supposed to be lost in the back of his closet.

For dinner, Blair put on a dress — enthusiastically, and at his own suggestion, much to Maggie’s relief. He looked so pretty in it that even Laird showered his “daughter” with compliments. After dinner, Blair sat through a manicure and one hundred brush strokes; as Maggie toiled, Blair not only quizzed her (like a method actor doing research) about how to think, act, dress, and move like a girl, but he also requested a subscription to Discovery Girls Magazine.

By the time that she tucked Blair in for the night, Maggie was in Seventh Heaven — not only had Blair asked to wear a nightie, but “she” also had also asked to wear Kirk’s most satiny “punishment panties” underneath. “I love the way they feel on my skin,” Blair purred after modestly asking mommy to turn her back until Blair had veiled the “undies” with the nightie. It was only day two of the experiment, but already Blair had sleepily said, “It’s fun being a girl. Mommy, is it all right if we keep playing this game?”

“Sweetie, there is no reason why we can’t play the game for the rest of your life.”

Blair was smiling as “she” fell asleep.

The next morning, a school day, Blair, still dressed in his girl’s nightie, warmed Maggie’s heart by declaring, without prompting, that he wanted to go to school that day in “girls’ clothes”. When Maggie started to say that he’d have to wear the most unisex and nondescript items in his new wardrobe, Blair interrupted:

Mommy, what do you think I am? Stupid? I’d rather die than have the kids at school realize that I’m dressing like a girl. There’s no way that I’m going to wear anything that makes me look like a girl; but we bought lots of clothes at Penney’s that a boy can wear without looking like a sissy; most of my cotton panties, for instance, don’t look much different from boys’ undies. Boys can wear pale blue and yellow.

Maggie wasn’t convinced that Blair, of all kids, could pass as a boy while dressed entirely in girls’ clothes. However, after thoroughly messing up his hair, she sent him upstairs to get dressed for school. He came back dressed entirely in his Saturday purchases, and while Maggie inspected his “new look,” he deliberately scratched the crotch of his jeans, while slouching like a slob. Afraid that Blair might start spitting on the floor if she delayed his departure much longer, Maggie quickly noted that Blair was wearing his hopscotch sneakers (minus their charms and half their straps undone); low-cut, white socks (with blue trim); Levi straight-leg jeans (with five-pocket styling and reinforcing studs); a blue Nike tee shirt with a “I ♥ my team” graphic; and a gray hoodie with smocked cuffs and hem. For the first time in his life, Blair had tucked only part of the tee shirt into his jeans. By his normal, fastidious standards, Blair looked sloppy enough to be a boy. He’d even dabbed some dirt behind his ears to divert attention from his amethyst ear studs.

Maggie gulped: “Blair isn’t wearing a stitch of male clothing; yet the kid has never looked more masculine.” Even so, she wanted confirmation that Blair could “pass as a boy” in his new duds before she’d allow “her” to set off for school. So she asked, “Kirk, does your sister look enough like a boy to risk going to school.”

“Huh, huh. I guess so. At least, Blair doesn’t look as much like a sissy like ‘she’ usually does.”

Blair’s face beamed, as he declared: “I’ve done it! I’ve got the perfect costume to fool the entire school. One day I’ll tell them I psyched them out by acting like a boy while dressing like a girl. Won’t that be fun? I’m going to be a famous actor. Don’t you think I’m already quite a Tootsie?”

“Huh, huh. Children, be sure to grab an umbrella; it’s raining outside. Oh Kirk, it’s vital that you help Blair come across as a boy today. So spend more time with her than you usually do.”

“Ah, Maggie, do I have to?” Kirk whined.

“Yes, you heard me. If you want Blair to feel comfortable as a girl, comfortable enough to attend a girls’ school in September, then you will, young man, need to cooperate now. With our help and Blair’s clothes sense there is no reason why Blair need ever dress in male attire again. So do help the family, Kirk, by running interference for your sister as she starts her touchdown run.”

“Gotcha,” Kirk shouted, as he and Blair scampered out into the heavy rain, their hoodies up, their umbrellas left behind. Normally, Blair carried a royal blue umbrella to school, but it did not fit into hi “tomboy look”. Real boys got wet.

The school day went tolerably well by the kids’ usual standards. The rain let up sufficiently for them to eat outside with hoodies up and for Kirk to kick around a soccer ball. For the first time in memory, Blair actually asked to join their impromptu, pick-up game after lunch. Kirk used some choice expletives to evaluate Blair’s performance: “!!@#%@$!&%!!, Blair, you’re an utter spazz! I’ve never seen anyone as hopeless at frigging soccer as you. You play worse than a frigging girl. Give it up — go back to your frigging books before you frigging humiliate your entire frigging family.”

Thus, while word spread about Blair’s extraordinary ineptness at sports, no one thought he played “like a girl”. That’s because he played much worse than a girl, so much worse that Blair remained what he’d always been — a sissy to some, a “spazz” to the rest. While his amethyst studs and hopscotch sneakers drew some sniggers, only two kids called him a queer or fag, which made it a fairly normal day for a “boy” as precious and pretty as Blair.

Thus, Blair might have counted the day a success had it not been for his teacher, Miss Lucretia Umbridge, a terror in starched pink. It was common knowledge amongst the schoolchildren that the only fun that Miss Umbridge (heaven help anyone, who called her Ms.) had in life came from making life miserable for them. It wasn’t just that she was overly strict, but she also deliberately humiliated the fat kids, the skinny kids, the slow-witted kids, the awkward kids, the shy kids, the tall girls and the short boys in front of the entire class. She seemed to have a special animus towards boys who exhibited any animal spirits, and any boy who failed to do his homework risked being hit with her ruler in defiance of Board regulations and school policy.

She also openly played favorites, a vice which had been a mixed blessing for Blair. True, she had rescued him from bullying on several occasions, but he would have been bullied less had he not been widely regarded as “her special pet.” While there may have been one or two girls that Ms. Umbridge liked better, Blair deserved his dubious reputation as “the boy who makes Umbridge cream her panties” because the teacher frequently lauded him as a student to emulate. Her standard rap went something like this:

Rufus [or Jack or Bill — all the boys had heard it], if you’re going to get ahead in life, if you’re ever going to find a girlfriend, you should dress more like Blair. Look at how neat and natty he looks. He’s immaculate. He didn’t throw on the first clothes that he found lying on his closet floor; he’s actually colored-coordinated. And he has combed, straightened and sprayed his hair. Despite its length, there’s not a hair out of place. Would it kill you, Peter [or Rufus, Bill etc.] to use a hairbrush?

Most of all, Miss Umbridge openly lauded Blair’s gentle manner, obedience and bookishness. It’s a wonder, then, that he survived the year at all. With a teacher like her in his corner it didn’t much matter what he wore — matter to his “fellow” students that is. However, what he wore seemed to matter a lot to Miss Umbridge. She was not at all pleased that Monday morning to see her pet poodle looking like a scruffy cur.

Blair’s unkempt hair, dirty ears and untucked tee shirt drew her immediate wrath. Even before the first bell rang, she ordered him to the boys’ washroom to make himself “presentable”. She was, therefore, downright splenetic when he returned with his hair still snarled like a bramble thicket. For the rest of the day Miss Umbridge figuratively bit off his head every time he raised his hand or looked her way. She even got downright abusive after he returned from lunchtime with grass stains on his knees and hands. She definitely did not approve of her favorite boy looking like an urchin.

At day’s end, Miss Umbridge required him to stay behind. She then tossed a barrage of questions his way:

Blair, why the sudden interest in sports? Don’t you know they’re not for boys like you? Look at your knees. It’s a wonder that you’ve not torn your jeans. And why are you dressed so queerly? Those clothes don’t suit you; they make you look like tomboy wearing hand-me-downs from her brother. Worst of all is your haircut! It’s truly tragic. You used to be my little Samson, with the most beautiful hair of anyone in the fifth grade. And now look at you — your hair looks like … like … tangled weeds. What do you have to say for yourself? Come now, speak up!

At a loss for words, Blair merely stammered. So Miss Umbridge cut him off:

I appreciate that there may be problems at home, but [she quickly said to avoid a response] I don’t want you bring them into my class. Now, now, don’t say another word. I want us to remain on a strictly professional, teacher-pupil relationship, which means I shouldn’t know your secrets or anything else that might bias my evaluation of your academic progress. If you need someone to talk to about, for example, a physically abusive father, a drunken mother or a lecherous uncle, then you should make an appointment with Mr. La Ronde, the school psychologist. He may be able to help you. However, no matter what the problem is, I promise you major grief if you don’t come to school tomorrow looking like the good little boy I’ve come to know and actually [it was hard for her to say] ... like. Blair, may I count on your strict obedience?

Blair stood glumly mute. So his teacher said:

Excellent. I knew that you would see the wisdom of dressing appropriately for school. You’re dismissed. I do hope that you will refrain from playing soccer before you go home. Grass stains do not become a boy like you. I simply don’t know what’s got into you; until now you’ve always been more fastidious in your appearance than all but one or two of the girls.”

When Blair reached home, sopping wet after a second attempt at soccer, the grass- stained knees at first alarmed Maggie, who feared that “some rough boys” had roughed up her daughter. But Maggie noticeably relaxed, indeed laughed, when Blair explained that he’d “tried to act like one of the boys” in order to divert attention from his “girls’ clothes”. (Later, after hearing from Kirk about Blair’s embarrassing inability to kick a soccer ball without falling down, Maggie decided to enroll Blair in a girls’ soccer league. It would, after all, be a way for her daughter to find her first girlfriends.)

“Off you go, then,” Maggie said to Blair; “Get out of those wet clothes immediately, then warm yourself up with a bath. Be sure to use bath oil. We girls do love it so.”

Afterwards, Blair, freshly bathed and smelling of strawberry, with his bob-and-bangs restored by Maggie, made a dramatic entrance at the top of the stairs now dressed as a “pirate”. Once again he slid down the banister in “girls’ clothes” from Penney’s: a white, belted ruffle shirt with a poplin top and empire waist; a wide, black patent-leather belt with a large buckle; red pantyhose; and shiny black, Mary Jane shoes. A red bandana, “Pirate” makeup (including a bold mascara moustache), hoop earrings (taped to the studs) and Zorro’s plastic sword completed Blair’s costume. With time out for dinner, Blair spent the evening — to Laird’s distress and Maggie’s dismay — playing pirate to a bevy of Kirk’s supporting characters, half of them ladies or whores, and one of them, the most disconcerting of all to the adults, a nelly cabin boy (a role that reduced both children to helpless giggles).

Even though Blair was attired in girls’ wear from the skin out, the game was not playing out as Maggie intended. “My daughter is acting like a tomboy,” she eventually decided,

"because I didn’t think to buy her any girls’ toys to play with. After all, she’s still a child, scarcely ten-years-old, who must give vent to her active imagination. Laird wouldn’t let me buy a G.I. Joe doll for Blair last Christmas, despite the child’s pleading, but the house rules have changed. Dolls, plural, my daughter shall now have. What sort of mother doesn’t give her daughter a Barbie doll? Its ample bosom should get Blair dreaming about growing her own."

She resolved to take both children shopping for toys after school tomorrow. Why include Kirk? So that he could, if necessary, talk his sister into loading up on female dolls. Moreover, if a doll as macho as G. I. Joe did have to come home to placate Blair, then it would be carried by Kirk for it would be Kirk’s doll, not Blair’s. Ironically, to feminize Blair Maggie was going to impose a doll, his first, on Kirk. Maggie did not want her daughter to have any male dolls of her own, so that she would, when playing dolls with Kirk, have to adopt a female role, as her dolls were rescued or ravished by Kirk’s soldier doll.

The dolls could not be bought until the morrow. In the meantime, Blair once again played the ideal daughter at bedtime, eager to lose herself in perfumed scents, satin underclothes, and a borrowed Baby Doll nightie.

The following morning, without saying a word to Kirk or his parents about Ms. Umbridge’s decree, Blair set off for school in the rain, his hair a riot of knots, his outfit once again composed of girls’ clothes selected for their dowdy, unisex look. At the last moment, he artfully smeared some dirt on his jeans to give the appearance of having been engaged in boyish pursuits.

Miss Lucretia Umbridge was not pleased. That day the entire class felt her wrath, but Blair naturally fared the worst, as repeatedly she informed the room that her erstwhile favorite now looked as “retarded” as his answers.

At lunchtime, Blair escaped the incessant pounding from his teacher and the rain by sitting under a bus shelter (its forty-minute service schedule guaranteeing him plenty of solitude), with a pulp biography of actress Julie Andrews. It was slow going for a ten-year-old but Blair was keen for the author’s insights into his “all-time, most favorite, most awesome musical”, The Sound of Music. The interlude soon ended, and Blair took a circuitous route back to class and to his inevitable, after-school detention.

The detention passed in silence. At its end, Miss Umbridge was still too angry for more than a few words. She passed a sealed letter to Blair, saying, “Take this home to your parents — unopened. Now be off with you.”

Naturally, Blair tore open the letter as soon as he had left the school ground; and equally naturally, he shredded it into small pieces, which he then tossed into a storm drain. There was no way, no how, that Blair was going to bring home a summons to his parents to meet with his teacher to discuss “his disobedience and self-neglect.” Blair figured that his teacher would stop worrying about the way he dressed, or the way his hair looked, if he defied her for a third time. After realizing that he could be stubborn too, Miss Umbridge would learn to mind her own business.

Blair was, therefore, in reasonably good spirits when Maggie took the two kids out for a quick meal at McDonald’s (is there any other type of meal there?) and then to Toys “R” Us to buy their first dolls. Laird stayed home, saying there was no way he was going to help buy Kirk a doll, even one armed to the teeth and wearing a military uniform: “Remember, Maggie, you’ve now got your ‘daughter’; can I be left with at least one normal, heterosexual son to raise? Is that too much to ask?”

When Kirk balked at buying even a so-called “action figure,”, Maggie sought to reassure him by pointing out that “lots of regular boys” played with G.I. Joe. Symbolically, he was no more than an oversized toy soldier. And didn’t future generals and ex-corporals who thought they were generals play with toy soldiers as young boys? “Kirk,” she said, “one day, as you’re receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield you’ll publicly thank me for once having bought you a G. I. Joe.”

Even so, Kirk had to be bribed with a hot fudge sundae (with an extra scoop) before he, a regular guy, would consent to be the official owner of a doll named G.I. Joe “Heavy Duty”. The doll came with considerable plastic firepower, but it was a doll nonetheless. Heavy Duty appeared to be an African-American doll, which Maggie considered a plus: Not only would the doll display her family’s liberal sentiments, but she also hoped that its race might make it more difficult for daughter Blair to regard the male doll as her avatar. As for Kirk, she thought there was little or no risk of his, at age thirteen, of bonding with any doll unless it was a life-sized female, big-mouthed and inflatable.

When informed that Heavy Duty was to be Kirk’s doll, Blair begged for dolls of his own. Naturally, Maggie insisted on Barbie, the long-legged, voluptuous blonde. Blair’s resistance to owning a Barbie, feeble from the start, collapsed entirely when Maggie proved willing to spend a small fortune on clothing, accessories, home settings, and friends for Barbie. In addition to the doll itself in a white wedding gown, Maggie sprang for a second Barbie (dressed as a fashionista in halter top and miniskirt) to be a twin sister (and spare in case of breakage) as well as a wide range of clothing (in style, but certainly not in color): a floor-length gown; a ballerina’s outfit; hot pants; “award show” dresses and glamour designs; gymnast outfit; special birthday clothes and strawberry-print leggings. Whether clothes or accessories (including a three-story dollhouse, a glam pool, Vespa moped, and Beach Party jeep), two colors — pink and hot pink — predominated.

Kirk, grossed out by the sea of pink, started to wander away. To keep him involved (since she wanted Kirk to “play dolls” with Blair until the latter acquired a “little friend” with whom to play), she told Kirk: “Why don’t you help me choose some dolls for Blair. Barbie Blair will need some girlfriends, don’t you think? Do you approve of these?” she asked, pointing to a Barbie “fairytopia” doll with pink hair, a brunette ballerina (refreshingly dressed in purple) and Sharpay from the High School Musical Club.

“I guess so,” moaned Kirk. “Blair looks pleased enough. But Maggie,” he whispered in her ear, “Don’t ya think you should buy some male dolls for Blair? You don’t want her to become a lesbian, do you? That’s what will happen if her dolls live in a world with no guys.”

“You may be right. We can’t have Wedding Barbie marrying Sharpay, can we? Let us find Barbie a suitable groom,” and soon enough they had added a Ken doll, dressed in a pink tuxedo, to Blair’s stock of toys. Still working on this theme, Maggie next said, “Hmm, we can’t have Ken permanently dressed for his wedding with Blair, oops Barbie” — a deliberate blooper that caused Blair’s entire body to flush. (“Did she read my thoughts?” Blair wondered; “how did she know that I find Ken dreamy?”)

“Here are a couple of outfits for Ken to change into after the wedding,” said Maggie as she first picked out a sleeveless tank top in Teal with a stylized mermaid and purple trim at the neck and waistline to compliment his purple board shorts; and for a second outfit, squeaky-clean white sneakers, black fedora, skin-tight jeans, and a turquoise tee with a Rorschach test on his right shoulder in lavender and dark blue.

Kirk vented his disgust: “I’m surprised Ken’s outfits don’t all come with pink satin undies. Do you think it’s possible for Ken to look gayer?”

“Honey,” Maggie replied, “it’s impossible for Ken not to look gay. He always does. Young girls like Blair find him less threatening that way.”

“Well, I think Blair should have at least one male doll of his … er, her own that might, just might be interested in the opposite sex.”

“If you insist, Kirk, you pick him out. But be quick about it. Your sister is evidently satisfied with her existing haul because she’s lost interest in shopping. Hold on, sweetie,” she said to Blair, now distracted by the squeal of children in another aisle, “we’ll go for ice cream as soon as Kirk selects a special doll for you. Then, every time you play with it, you’ll be reminded of your brother’s commitment to your transformation into the most beautiful girl in the entire world.”

“Beautiful?” This was a word that Kirk despised. It really “pissed him off” that “beauty” was so cavalierly and unfairly distributed by Nature, or God, or whatever. In a fair world,” Kirk believed, a sissy male like Blair” wouldn’t be more beautiful than most girls. While girls had to be beautiful to have a full life, Kirk would argue that good looks were wasted on a boy.

Did Kirk therefore regard homeliness to be a virtue in boys? Unfortunately not, for his own looks filled him with self-loathing. Understandably, Kirk resented Blair for hogging the family’s allotment of good looks. However, if Blair changed sex or were exposed as a freak, Kirk reckoned that he’d no longer have to hear people loudly whispering, “It’s extraordinary, truly extraordinary, that both boys have the same parents. One is so handsome as to be downright pretty; the other, well ….”

“I may be pig ugly,” Kirk thought to himself far more times than was healthy, “but at least I don’t flit around like a fairy.”

Since Kirk had promised to “play dolls” with Blair (a promise he intended to honor mainly in the breach), big brother picked two dolls from the “Barbie Collection” that he hoped might add some “bite” to their games: Twilight Edward and Twilight Bella, the sexy teen vampire and his sexy belle, both adorned in denim and gray.

Kirk chuckled to himself as the sale went down: “I can’t wait to see Blair’s reaction when Twilight Edward turns Wedding Barbie into a bloodsucking creature of the night.” Kirk had a broad smile all the way home.

So too did Blair. Although he considered himself a trifle old to play with Barbie dolls, he was grateful for all the attention and money being showered on him. At the store’s cash register, he impulsively hugged Maggie: “Mommy, you spent so much money. You must really love me. I ... [Blair choked up] … love you too. You know I’d give my life for you.”

“Isn’t your daughter sweet,” remarked the clerk, a plump teen girl. “Honey, you’re a very lucky girl. You obviously love pink” (the color of Blair’s entire outfit —sneakers, socks, underwear, skirt, halter top and hair ribbon) “and your mother has bought you a big chunk of Barbie’s world of pink. Has anyone told you, cutie pie, that you look just like Barbie? Are you ever lucky to have naturally blonde hair.”

Blair blushed (while secretly pleased that he’d fooled a teenager about his real gender), Maggie beamed, and Kirk scowled.

That evening after dinner Blair and Kirk (after a brief scolding to “get with the program”) played dolls for the first time ever, or at least since they were toddlers. Kirk immediately disappointed her expectations (while bolstering Laird’s) by refusing at first to play with any doll other than G. I. Joe. Blair, on the other hand, warmed Maggie’s heart by systematically trying out every dressing combination on the female dolls. Ken and Twilight Edward ended up, however, hanging out together in the nude as Blair, having stripped them of their clothes, made no attempt to find replacements.

Finally Kirk, bored with exploring Joe’s weaponry, suggested after prudishly covering Twilight Edward’s nakedness that they pretend that the dolls were trapped in a vampire’s castle. “It will be cool,” Kirk explained, “for Edward to bite their necks.”

“The necks of Ken and G. I. Joe too?” Blair asked a bit breathlessly.

“No way! That’s far too gay. Edward is way straight — he only bites the necks of babes.”

“What if Edward didn’t know Ken and G.I. Joe were boys? If they were dressed like girls, then he’d bite them too, isn’t that so?”

“Blair, you’re effing amazing. Even dressed as mommy’s darling daughter, you still think like a sissy queer. Okay, put a skirt on Ken if you gotta; I’d rather you dressed him like a sissy than leave him naked. It’s not proper to have a dude doll be starkers in front of girl dolls.”

Twilight Edward spent the last forty minutes before bedtime noisily chomping on the necks of the other dolls. Some resisted, kicking and screaming, while others merely feigned resistance. At Blair’s insistence, transvestite Ken was the most supine of all the dolls in his response; he clearly welcomed Edward’s bite.

As their play became ever more mired in Hollywood violence (the last straw was Twilight Bella’s judo kick to Edward’s groin that sent him halfway across the room), Maggie, who had been watching their play in mounting confusion and concern, finally couldn’t take any more mayhem. So she found some chores to do in the kitchen. When she returned, all the dolls were asleep in makeshift coffins, which the two kids had fashioned from sheets of stationery.

As the kids started putting the dolls away in Barbie’s three-story townhouse (at her insistence), she noticed that even G. I. Joe was now dressed in drag. Oddly, this would be the last time that Maggie would see G. I. Joe until the momentous day when Maggie insisted that Blair make an irreversible commitment to lifelong femininity. On that day the action figure reappeared, still wearing a dress.

After the disappointingly boyish exploration of vampirism, Maggie found some relief when Blair, given a choice of dolls, took Wedding Barbie to bed. Did Blair do it merely to please “her” mother or because, as Maggie hoped, that Blair was genuinely eager to embrace femininity? Or was it a combination of both motives? Maggie wasn’t sure, but it was definitely better to have Blair acting like a girl than acting like a vampire.

The next day saw Blair set out for school this time umbrella in hand (because Maggie insisted) and dressed for the third straight day in unisex clothes from the girls’ department of Penney’s. Maggie marveled at her daughter’s ingenuity, yet wondered how long it would take for someone at school to wise up to Blair’s change of gender.

It actually didn’t take more than half an hour. Miss Lucretia Umbridge, peeved that Blair’s parents hadn’t responded to her summons, and furious that her one-time pet had again flaunted an unkempt mane, grabbed hold of Blair in the schoolyard and hauled him into the empty teachers’ lunchroom. Blair tried to run away from her hairbrush, but Miss Umbridge was too strong for the ten-year-old, and slowly, but ineluctably she wielded it to restore a semblance of order to his hair and to her life. Gradually, the bob and bangs reappeared.

Miss Umbridge spluttered: “What the …. You’ve got a girl’s haircut! No,” she brusquely cut him off, don’t even pretend it’s not. Hold still! I insist on looking at the label on your tee shirt. ‘Junior Miss’ — I can’t believe it! How could you do this to me?”

Then shoving Blair away, she said in a fevered pitch: “Show me your underwear! No, don’t start unbuckling your jeans. I don’t want a striptease. Just grab hold of your underpants and pull the waist band above your belt for me to see.”

And so, Blair gave himself a wedgie — for the first time at a teacher’s insistence. Unfortunately, he had chosen that morning to wear lace-trimmed, pastel blue panties to school.

The teacher gasped for breath. Briefly she contemplated fainting. Then, pulling herself together, Miss Umbridge announced in the most menacing voice she could manage:

"So that’s it — you’re a disgusting pervert! I don’t know whether you’re pretending to be a girl or are sick enough to believe you actually are one. It doesn’t matter which, ‘cause I don’t buy into that ‘born in the wrong body’ crap. You’re a virus, a sickness, a potentially fatal disease. You represent everything that’s wrong with modern society. I want you to leave this school before it becomes impossible for me to safeguard the health of the student body. Freaks like you are as dangerous to society as AIDS. Wait right here, missy. Do your parents know that you’re a sexual deviate?"

Blair, eyes downcast, said in a voice little louder than a whisper: “My mommy knows I’m dressing like a girl; she wants me to become one.”

“You’re lying. But if you’re telling the truth, then she’s an even bigger deviate than you. I’ll have her arrested for turning you into a pervert.”

Blair, solicitous for Maggie’s safety, immediately confessed to lying. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blamed my mother. I’m the only one who wants me to be a girl. And why can’t I be one if that’s what I want? It’s a free society, isn’t it? Who elected you God?”

“Watch your mouth, little miss. Just because you’re wearing panties doesn’t mean you can lip off to a teacher. You wait right here! Don’t move an inch. Not one inch! I’m going to call your mother to have her remove you from this school immediately! If I have my way — and I almost always do — you’ll never have an opportunity to pollute this school again.”

Rushing off, she left Blair sobbing and close to retching from anguish. He frantically looked around to see if there were bullies to flee. But mercifully the room was empty. While Blair found temporary consolation from the absence of witnesses to his humiliation and exposure, he was old enough, and perceptive enough, to realize that his world was about to change decidedly for the worse now that he was definitely no longer his teacher’s pet.