A story about a family with two boys aged 10 and 13, in which choice is a delusion and gender, an illusion. It’s a familiar theme in the TG literature, but this time with an unfamiliar twist. With Alicia determined to turn him into a lesbian and Maggie to turn him into a ballet dancer (and Wili), Blair doesn’t know which will come first: the loss of his virginity or a broken leg.

Chapter 9 A ballet school’s choice

On the Monday after Blair’s tryout with the girls’ soccer league, Maggie had taken her daughter to The Dame Margot Pavlova Ballet School. Its studio was a fifteen-story walkup located on the top floor of the Sealand Building, a squat, postmodern cube with a façade of blue glass, white masonry, terracotta “pillars” and dark green tiles. Blair gushed that he’d never seen a lovelier building.

Huffing and puffing, and desperately gasping for breath like a five-pack-a-day smoker at the summit of Mount Hood, Blair staggered through the Corinthian- leather portals of the ballet school to find Maggie already deep in conversation with a short, slender, bearded man wearing jet-black shades and dreadlocks partly hidden by the hood of his purple, zippered sweatsuit, on which glittered his bling-bling -- three “goon” chains and four honoring dance crews.

The little man, who looked to be in his forties, still had a lean, dancer’s body. He waved to Blair to join them: “Yo, you must be Blair. I bet you is a rain woman, you be lookin’ so fly! Yo’ threads are kickin’. (Blair was sporting a wet pink umbrella; two hair ribbons, one white, one pink; a white halter top over a pink leotard; and, of course, his hopscotch sneakers, with their dangling charms. He carried his ballet slippers in a silver lamé bag.) “Blair girl, put your arms over your head, give us a twirl, and let’s see you shake yo’ booty.”

As Blair feigned several ballet turns, the little man declared, “That’s the real shit! Girl, yo’ booty is quite the ba-donka-donk. You is also a natural dancer built tight and muscular. In a year’s time I predict you be our prima ballerina. Girl, you put yo’ junk in that change room over there, where you can hang with the other girls in yo’ class while I talk to yo’ mama about the bread.”

Blair, more than a little confused, looked to Maggie for confirmation. She nodded, pointing to the girls’ change room. Blair skipped off, leaving the adults to complete their business. “Mr. Five Cent — that’s the name you gave, right?” Maggie asked. When the little man nodded, she continued: “You said Blair’s classes would cost two ‘benjamins’. I believe that’s slang for two C notes or $200 cash. Am I right? And the price includes a guaranteed role for her in a public performance? Is that right?”

Nods to all questions.

Maggie next said: “Then we have a deal. But I must be frank — I was more than a little shocked when I found out that Dame Pavlova doesn’t exist and that you, a man, own and manage this school.”

“Listen to my flow. As I related to yourself befo’, the peeps in this areous ‘spects a ballet school to be Russian. To me, that’s wack, but I can’t live with no bread. And so, I named this joint afta the skank who danced duets with Stravinsky. You aksed about my creds. They is the bestest: I was a principal of Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo, which means I done danced befo’ the queens of Europe. But don’t you worry none ‘bout a man learnin’ yo’ girl, cuz I leave the newbs to Madame Monica Rafferty to ‘struct. And that bee-itch is bad! She been dancing with the St. Petersburg Ballet. You should seen her be dancin’ the roles of both Odette and Odille in “Swan Lake” in New York City! She had the peeps’ eyes a-poppin’ out of their sockets.”

“The St. Petersburg Ballet? That must be the world-renowned Kirov,” decided Maggie, who didn’t know about the little-known Florida ensemble whose costume malfunctions had brought infamy in New York and criminal charges in West Palm Beach. (Google Anything for a Moped for further information about Monica’s dance company.)

Mr. Five-Cent mumbled something that sounded to Maggie like agreement. She then grilled him about his name. Yes, he hadn’t been born Lucky Five-Cent; it was a street name. Pressed, he admitted that he’d been named Lars Swenson at birth, but to survive life in the ghetto he’d changed his name — along with the way he talked and acted — so that he would fit in, despite being a scrawny-ass white boy who couldn’t jump.

Maggie was horrified to think that Lars, er … Lucky Five-Cent, had grown up always having to keep his head down for fear of stray bullets. She regarded the little man with new respect.

Before she could discover the name of the horrific slum that had deprived Lucky of an education in Standard English, he, seeing his assistant Monica arrive, said to Maggie, “Sku me, but I’m gonna bail. Gotta see my banker. You can chill with Monica until class.” And he hustled off without making any introductions.

“Well, I never …” Maggie was not amused! However, Monica soon put a smile on her face; not only was the young woman unassuming, pleasant and physically attractive, she also spoke Standard English. She must have been the woman who had taken her phone call and arranged Blair’s registration. After the niceties, Maggie couldn’t contain her curiosity about the curious proprietor of Dame Pavlova: “I don’t envy Mr. Five-Cent his upbringing. It must have been terrifying for a small, vulnerable white boy to grow up in a place like Bedford-Stuyvesant, Watts, Highland Park-Detroit or the Chicago South Side.” She was fishing for information. For some reason she needed to know more about Five-Cent’s ghetto childhood.

Monica smiled: “He does give the wrong impression, doesn’t he? My boss grew up in Fargo, North Dakota where he lived until his folks paid for him to study dance in Paris, France. Fargo has always been whiter than Snow White, with less than a thousand black folk even now. His best friend from his childhood, Sven Larsson, told me that Mr. Five-Cent used to talk with as strong a Swedish accent as that pregnant, Brainerd cop in the movie named after his home town.”

“So why now does he talk so black?” Maggie asked.

Maggie couldn’t help but laugh: “You think he talks like an African American? He doesn’t talk like any of the ones I know. He’s developed a lingo that’s uniquely his own. I don’t think anyone else on the planet talks like Mr. Five-Cent. I don’t see how he could have been much influenced by African-American English because he’s not exactly surrounded himself with blacks. Sure, he once had an African-American lover, but that dude, an older man, spoke like Darth Vader or, if you will, like Morgan Player playing God. The only other black male that I know he ever got intimate with was a Belgian. Mr. Five-Cent said that Guy spoke French with a cute Flemish accent.”

“Mr. Five-Cent can understand French?”

“Not only that, but he also speaks French as well as German, Spanish, Estonian and Romansh. He doesn’t even need subtitles to understand British movies about slum kids.”

Maggie was now thoroughly flummoxed. “Then why is his English so poor?”

“Because he watched too many Hollywood movies? Or maybe because he wants it to be? He believes the ghetto shtick helps the school to get donations — and they are much needed, let me tell you — from prosperous whites, who’ll be extra generous if they decide that he grew up as disadvantaged as any ghetto black. He also hopes to attract his first African-American pupil to Dame Pavlova. But I think his efforts to ‘talk black’ are backfiring, as I have seen more than one African-American parent angrily stomp out of here after the initial interview.”

Maggie nodded. She could see that any black parent interested in ballet lessons for their progeny might view his “Hollywood” hip-hop language and style as a contrived insult, as though he were condescending to their supposed level.

Two doors were flung open. The soft sound of tiptoes running bare or in slippers entered the room. Monica headed for its center after a few last words to Maggie: “I fear I’m the one who must rush off now because I see my young charges are now ready and eager to dance. You might want to sit in one of those folding chairs by the windows because it will give you the best view of Blair’s work at the barre. As a novice, she’ll be spending a lot of time there. And don’t you fret: Your daughter will have loads of fun at Dame Pavlova.”

Ten girls and one boy quickly encircled their dance instructor. Blair, the twelfth member of their class, was a late arrival, off to a late start in the change room, and a late stop in the dance studio. (Indeed, Blair might have sailed into a wall had he not veered into two of the girls, almost flooring them.)

“Well, well,” chuckled Madame Rafferty, “for a newcomer you do like to make a grand entrance. And those darling leotards do make you stand out from the crowd.” (Poor Blair was the only one dressed in pink; everyone else, including the lone boy, was dressed in a uniform black, although a handful of girls had personalized their look with colored ankle warmers, while the boy wore a lavender-and-blue silk scarf.)

“I assume, girls and boy [Monica smiled at the solitary, undisguised male in the room], that you’ve all met Blair. I am sure you will be good to her, because, thanks to her, we’ll have an even dozen dancers for the performance later this spring by you, the school’s novices, of Giselle, the 1841 ballet classic by Adolphe Adam. You will be dancing to choreography by the immortal Marius Petipa as modified for this class by Dame Margot Pavlova herself. This ballet is, as eleven of you already know, is designed to give people the willies.”

Blair noticed that the rest of the class laughed politely, as though they once thought this a good joke. But what did it mean?

“The Wilis,” the instructor continued, “were supernatural beings who lured young men to ‘death by dancing’. I’m sure,” she chuckled, “that there have been many urchins, who dragged kicking and screaming to a ballet, thought that they were about to die from sheer boredom at having to watch girls ‘flit about’. Well, we mustn’t let any of those tykes die during our performance; so we want our Wilis to be as scary to them as a midnight monster movie. By scary, I don’t mean we’re going to frighten your family with dangerously inept lifts and jumps; instead we’re going to give everyone the willies by having ten of you girls dressed as Willis dance menacingly around Giselle and Count Albrecht in gossamer dresses so fluffy, white and flimsy that you’ll look like demons from hell.”

Blair shuddered. He had the willies. Somehow it was scarier to dance in public in a flimsy white dress than to practice soccer in pink sneakers and shorts. He wouldn’t be able to hide in a dance production or wander around the perimeter— he’d have to take center stage and let it all hang out. However, knowing that “it” couldn’t ever be allowed to “hang out” he was wearing two pairs of super firm, cotton-spandex panties under his leotard to keep well-hidden any excitement he might feel at seeing athletic young bodies — the lone boy’s especially — in tight, form-fitting garb. Gosh, their leotards closely followed the contours of their buttocks! Blair knew that he had to be careful: One of the girls was already tittering because she had caught “the new girl” staring at the bulge in Taylor’s dance belt. Blair was amazed that a twelve-year-old boy could be that big.

“And that, Blair,” Monica droned, “is our class objective for the spring term: to mount a production of Giselle for your parents and the invited public. Since you are a true beginner, you will dance as part of the corps de ballet, as a Wili. As for the rest, as we have only one male dancer — I don’t know what we do without you, Taylor — Mr. Five-Cent has eliminated the male roles of Hilarion, Wilfrid and Giselle’s father. As all but Blair already know, Linda Hernandez will dance the role of Giselle. The rest of the featured roles for girls are still up for grabs: namely, those of Giselle’s mother Berthe, of Myrtha, the Queen of the Wilis and of Bathilde, the fiancée betrayed by our sole male and villain, Duke Albrecht of Silesia. For obvious reasons, the role of the Duke will be danced by Taylor. All of you girls also get to be a Wili. Well, that’s enough information to bring the newbie up to speed. Now off you all go, including Blair, to the barre, to begin your exercises.

Her class in place, their hands lightly grasping the wooden barre along the right-side wall, she asked them to perform a sequence of half and full knee bends (demi and grands pliés) designed to stretch their leg muscles as they went through the five basic positions of ballet. As Blair strove to emulate their moves, taking Taylor as his exemplar, Madame Monica evaluated the newcomer’s flexibility, suppleness, lines and balance.

It didn’t much concern her that Blair couldn’t distinguish one position from the next — that much she expected — but she’d never seen a girl before who was unable to keep her balance even with the aid of the barre. Moreover, she had seen sixty-year-old Swedes in better condition than Blair: “The girl might be able to float across a room as though she has wings instead of feet, but she’s already out of breath after a few simple exercises. And she’s using the bar to pull herself up from a half-plié! Has that girl ever used her abdominal and thigh muscles?”

Blair didn’t do any better at éleves and réleves (also performed at the barre) where he was supposed to rise onto the balls of the feet, from a both a standing and plié position. In theory Blair was supposed to practice each of them for each of the five ballet positions, but a fundamental lack of balance made it impossible to rise to the occasion. Monica advised Blair to work on her pliés while the rest of the class completed their battements tendus (stretching their legs along the floor to a point) and ronds de jambe (a circular motion of their working foot on the floor).

Away from the barre, the class worked on arm placement, pirouettes, arabesques, lifts and spotting for turns. Through all, Blair stumbled about like a one-legged drunk. Never had a girl at Dame Pavlova shown less coordination or balance. That, however, wasn’t the assessment of Blair’s instructor, who was kind enough to say that she remembered a girl so overweight that she kept tripping over the feet she could not see, but of Maggie, who refused to believe during an after-class chat with Madame Rafferty that there couldn’t be another child of Blair’s age, of whatever sex, who had so little natural talent for dance. “The only thing that Blair can do,” Maggie decided, “is spot for turns. She’s also got the muscles to lift the other girls high off the floor, except when she drops them.”

Madame Rafferty agreed: “Ms. Maguire, you’ve got a point. Considering Blair’s progress in lifting, spotting and leaping, I’d say that she had an adequate first outing for a boy. But I fear she has a long way to go to catch up to the other girls her age.”

Over the next seven weeks, little changed for Blair at Dame Pavlova, even after Madame Rafferty had, in desperation to ready “that clumsy girl” for the public performance of Giselle, begun giving him free tutorial classes. With Mr. Five-Cent’s enthusiastic accord, Blair was told to move as slowly as possible two yards behind the closest Wili: “Blair honey, think of yourself as the army reserve, poised to rush to the front lines if one of Wilis already there falters or falls because of audience pressure.”

Blair, no fool, realized that he “sucked” as much at dance as he did at “soccer.” It might have seriously damaged his self-esteem if he had taken any of it seriously. Sure, Blair had hoped to play the female lead in both sports and dance, but, after failing the two auditions, he was happy to have a bit part in “both companies” that enabled him to study girls at close quarters — so that he could perfect the way he acted as one — and, in the case of dance, to hang out with a boy, Taylor, whose flowing blond locks and lithe athleticism were beginning to push Justin Bieber to the back and side periphery of Blair’s impossible dreams.

Blair was gradually coming to realize that it was tougher being a girl than he had anticipated when Maggie had first asked him to assume the role. It turned out that a boy with little ability or joy in movement wasn’t magically turned into a star player or dancer when he tried out for girls’ soccer or dance. And while Blair had inevitably made a host of new friends (actually acquaintances) by joining two, close-knit groups of girls (and one handsome boy), only one of them so far — the inimitable Big Al — seemed to like Blair as a girl enough to travel from a downtown studio or an out-of-state soccer pitch to visit “her” at home.

That was especially true of “dreamy” Taylor. Thanks to Miss Umbridge’s lesson on gaydar, Blair understood that his feminine gender was an insurmountable obstacle to a “special friendship” with the peacock of the Pavlova flock. Indeed, Taylor had even suggested that Blair was unfortunate in not having been born a boy: “You’re a good-looking gal, but if a boy had your looks, he would be as cute and sexy as they come.”

Not surprisingly, Blair had difficulty getting that compliment and verb choice out of his mind, especially at night, as his wet dreams, his very first, betrayed. Blair spent a lot of his waking time mulling over whether Taylor’s mom could be persuaded to authorize a sleepover for her inexperienced son with a girl who might, just might be old enough to bear his child.

“Gosh, maybe she doesn’t even know he’s gay,” Blair fretted. He decided that telling Taylor’s mom, “Don’t worry, he won’t even try to touch me because he doesn’t like girls” might not be the best strategy for getting an overnight with the dreamy male dancer.

While Blair was pondering how to procure his first sleepover with a boy, Maggie announced that she had already arranged for his first with a girl on Saturday night. Blair went ballistic. He said the sorts of things that a child only says to its mother (because anyone else would storm out of its life forever). Was she a complete dummy? Otherwise, didn’t she know that It was a no-brainer that inviting another girl to a sleepover risked blowing his cover once the two of them got down under the covers. Blair felt he had no choice but to explain the “facts of life” to his retarded mother: “Mommy, you don’t understand what girls are like these days. They’re not as ignorant as they were when you were young before the war. Big Al already knows that she likes girls, and only girls.”

Maggie took everything Blair said without blinking an eye, as though Blair were reading the telephone book to her. Maybe, Blair decided, his Mom was too Victorian, too much a product of the Puritans, even to realize that lesbianism actually existed. Maybe she thought lesbians were poets?

Blair felt he had to explain slowly and carefully, like a teacher to a grade-five sex education class, that lesbians like Big Al craved sex — the real thing — with girls:

Mommy, Alicia wants to do dirty things with other girls, things so dirty that a lady your age you can’t possibly imagine. Because she’s much stronger than me, she’ll definitely get into my panties if you let her share my bed. If you are stupid enough to let her do that, she’ll hate me for not being a genuine girl. If that happens and my only best friend rejects me, I’ll hate you forever.

Blair then started sobbing. He didn’t need an onion to fake the tears; they were the genuine thing. Why couldn’t his mother realize that she was about to ruin his life with her dumb sleepover?

Taking Blair into her arms, Maggie did her best to soothe “her daughter”:

There, there, my dear, sweet Blair. I know you could never hate me. Don’t worry your sweet little head. Everything’s under control. It was Alicia who asked for the sleepover. I know she’s a lesbian and that part of her friendship for you has its origin in sexual attraction, but there’s much, much more to your relationship than lust. Alicia is an only child. She loves you like the sister she’s never had; she could also love you as a brother. You think us old folks don’t know anything about the lives of teens. But sometimes we’re on top of things. Blair, I’ve already had a heart-to-heart with Big Al and she’s promised to leave you alone and untouched if you make it clear that your answer to sex is No. But, as I also said to her, it won’t bother me in the slightest if your answer is Yes. Every girl, I said, should experiment with lesbianism in her tweens and teens. I did.

“What? You told her all that?”

“Yes, sweetie. What I didn’t tell Alicia is that I want you to seduce her.”

The two of them laughed about a possible turnabout — Maggie heartily, Blair nervously.

Maggie then said:

Blair, it’s time for you to get down and naked with another female. Enjoy the intimacy. Take a few hours to explore Alicia’s body. See and feel what you’ve been missing and what you soon can have. You’ll be simply amazed at how much pleasure a girl experiences from having any one of her many, many erogenous zones touched. I promise you, sweetie, that after a single night experiencing the body of another girl, that you will be begging me the following morning for a bosom, clitoris and vagina of your own. Trust me.

By this point Blair was doing most of his thinking with his little red head. So he accepted his mother’s rather vague assurances that somehow she “knew” that Big Al would still love him after she had viewed his “superficial masculinity.”

“I’m positive,” Maggie said soothingly,

that Alicia won’t let a tiny thing like your penis stop her from loving the real you. I bet she calls it your clitoris because that’s what a girl has, and you, sweetie, are nearly the ideal girl for her. Sure, she’ll want you to improve your body, just as she would if you had a cleft lip, a wart or cellulite, but I am positive that a night spent naked together will prove to both of you that you are no more than a year, a few pills and a minor operation away from being the best-looking teen girl who ever lived in the Columbia Valley. Will Alicia reject you? No way, sweetie, no way. I promise.

It was with considerable nervous and sexual excitement that Blair awaited the sleepover with Big Al. Neither of them had slept a wink during the last thirty-six hours and both were running purely on caffeine and nerves by the time they’d downed a couple of cans of Red Bull and stared at their untouched dinners.

After dinner, they briefly played soccer with their dolls, with Blair warning off Kirk by announcing in no uncertain terms that dolls were “only for us girls”. Not only did Blair want to be alone with Big Al, but he also realized that Al appeared to be too distracted to stop Skipper, Blair’s avatar, from scoring at will.

Both “girls” gave up on doll soccer after a few minutes. It now seemed too immature a game for them to play, compared to the adult game they both had in mind. Maggie smiled as they mumbled an excuse to head up to bed at 8 pm on a Saturday night. She noticed that both girls were already holding hands, with Blair taking the lead on the stairs, as she had hoped.

What happened that night in Blair’s bedroom has remained a secret that both girls have kept even from their mothers. Yet their flushed cheeks, heavy eyelids, sudden maturity, constant sighs and smiles, conspiratorial looks, affectionate language and physical closeness convinced Maggie that both girls had lost their virginity — as least much as one girl can lose it to another.

Both of the lovers came up Maggie to talk, as much as they ever would, about their first night together. First Big Al assured her that, “Your daughter now knows that I love the real Blair, three warts and all. We agreed that she’s definitely a lesbian and a transsexual, a girl in a boy’s body, and that I’m going to help her become the girl of all of our dreams. I think if Blair can grow some breasts real fast, that she’ll never want to live as a boy again.”

As Maggie talked next with Blair, her sense of triumph soared:

Mom, while Alicia and I agreed that we shouldn’t talk about things that should remain private, I want you to know that I’m really ashamed of telling you that I hated you for inviting Alicia to a sleepover. I should have realized that you were right about the sleepover. You’re always know what’s best for me. Now me and Alicia are tighter than ever, best girlfriends for life. She says that a girl my age should show some breast development or people will soon start wondering about my femininity.”

“Blair, do you think she’s right?”

Blair replied:

Yeah, she’s right. Even in my training bra, I’ve got the flattest chest in my two classes. It’d be downright embarrassing to have breasts like these [Blair pointed to his chest] if anyone at school actually knew that I was a girl. I couldn’t get a date as a girl with this chest even if I offered to pay for both popcorn and the movie. Alicia also says that growing real breasts, even big ones, won’t make it impossible for me to return to being a boy ‘cause she read somewhere that teenaged boys often get titty at puberty ‘cause of a ho-mone imbalance. But they lose their breasts when they get older. Alicia says that my boobs will pop like a balloon as soon as I no longer want ‘em. So I don’t have to worry about growing them, do I, mommy?

Maggie, slyly nodding, asked: “So what are you saying, Blair? What should I tell your father?”

“If you want him to approve, then you should tell him I definitely want to be a girl and that I want you to start giving me whatever medicine it takes for me to get the sort of breasts that Alicia says a girl my age should have.”

“Don’t worry, Blair, with your help your father will have no choice but to agree to your becoming a real girl as rapidly as possible.”

But did Maggie intend to follow through? Even after Blair told an appalled Laird and a bemused Kirk that he was a lesbian who needed to grow real breasts to please his girlfriend, Maggie dithered over whether to grant the request. There was still the law to consider, and she hadn’t liked how much drinking Laird had done in the first hours after his youngest son declared himself a lesbian.

In the end it was Blair’s performance in Giselle that cast the deciding lot in favor of rapid feminization. After seeing her child stumble about the stage of the small theater rented by the Dame Pavlova School for its student productions, Maggie couldn’t wait a moment longer to wring the boy out of Blair.

Had she continued to attend Blair’s dance lessons, it would have been easy for Maggie to have averted the disaster. A simple “No” would have sufficed. But, distressed at seeing Blair stumble about the studio with all the artfulness of Hulk Hogan, the hirsute pro wrestler and “actor”, trying to stand on point in a tutu, Maggie soon got into the habit of doing her shopping during her child’s lessons and rehearsals. Maggie should also have been more suspicious than credulous when Blair, fighting for breath from excitement and exertion from running down fifteen flights of stairs, gasped, “You’ll never believe what happened at rehearsal today. Madame Rafferty and Mr. Five-Cent like the way I dance! I’ve now got one of the lead parts! Isn’t that cool!!”

Maggie, knowing that she and Blair lived in an era and country where every kid got a gold star, figured that the dance instructors had promoted her daughter to the fictitious rank of “duodecima ballerina,” still leaving her worst in the class and eleven steps below prima. Maggie might have lingered long enough outside the Sealand Building to confirm this hypothesis had it not been pelting rain. She and Blair ran for the car without further discussion about the “lead part” freshly bestowed on Maggie’s daughter. The entire topic soon passed from Maggie’s mind, probably because she didn’t want to pick at the scab that was her daughter’s dancing career.

Maggie, expecting a dance rerun of the soccer games she had attended, had little expectation of actually seeing her daughter anywhere near the center of downstage during the single public performance of Giselle by the novice class of Dame Margot Pavlova Dance Academy. Maybe, however, there would be a glimpse of Blair as “she did her thing” well upstage near the exits. And of course, there was sure to be at least one opportunity to give “her” a standing ovation during her first and only bow.

Maggie, having left Blair at the stage entrance, had arrayed her family, which now included Big Al as well as Laird and Kirk, in the first row center, left empty as usual by a general-admission audience unwilling to assume the responsibility of staying sufficiently alert and smiling to convince a group of beginners that they could dance like the Bolshoi Ballet.

Several rows behind them there sat by special invitation from Maggie, who paid for their tickets, an angry Lucretia Umbridge, homeroom teacher extraordinaire, and, beside her, Felix La Rond, Master of Psychology. Both had agreed to attend Blair’s first outing as a petite danseuse de 10 ans, in order to confirm their prejudgments that Blair was either a sick little puppy who needed to be quarantined like a rabid dog or, conversely, a twenty-first century Dorothy from Kansas leading a small band of like-spirited souls on a trek through an American Land of Oz to battle, possibly to overcome, the forces of sexual and gender repression that had transformed a toddler named Lucretia, a little girl full of hope and charity, into Miss Umbridge, a sexually-frustrated, hate-filled “Wicked Witch” of the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. La Rond looked pleased with himself. Miss Umbridge looked alternately expectant and irritated — “expectant” because she expected Blair (“the little pervert can’t help himself”) to commit an indecency that would strengthen her case for his expulsion on “compassionate” grounds; and “irritated” because the psychologist’s “love handle” was filling half of her seat.

Then there came a hush, broken only by a few dozen people coughing and Mr. La Rond burping, as the theatre’s lights dimmed and the string orchestra from a local high school began a semblance of the overture to Giselle.

Maggie’s eyes wandered to take in the rest of the audience; she was already having difficulty focusing on the stage, even staying awake, because Blair, a Wili, wouldn’t appear until the second act. “I wonder how wispy her costume will be? It’s been frustrating not to see any of the costumes in advance. It would have been fun to have sewn a fairy’s dress, gossamer wings and all, for Blair, but the dance school insisted on providing their own. I do hope the costume doesn’t look threadbare.”

She looked down the first row: as expected, Laird and Kirk were slumped in their seats. Was that a video game in Kirk’s lap? Alicia, in contrast, was perched on the front third of her seat. Maggie sighed: “Ah to be young and in love again. Look at Alicia; she’s visibly tingling with anticipation. Doesn’t she know that there’s an entire act to get through before her beloved makes her first appearance?”

It soon became apparent that Blair had confided more in “her” girlfriend than in “her” mother. Either that or Big Al had been a better listener. Because Blair’s first appearance came in the second scene of the first act, and far from being lost in the scenery, he — and this pronoun definitely fitted the occasion — was playing the lead male role (actually the only male role) in the Five-Cent version of Giselle — that of Duke Albrecht!

Maggie at first couldn’t believe her eyes: Her daughter Blair was dancing “in drag”, wearing a white shirt, a leather doublet, and beige tights with a dance belt with so much padding that Maggie’s sweet little filly looked like a well-endowed stallion.

Stunned, Maggie sagged in her chair, her mouth catching flies. Laird looked even more surprised. Big Al, however, was already giving Blair a standing ovation, yelling “bravo” over and over until the hostile glares from everyone around her (including those of five girls on stage) forced her to sit down.

Kirk had a look of supreme satisfaction on his face — like Sylvester, the “putty tat,” would have if he were able to catch and eat Tweety Bird with “good old dwanny” helplessly having to watch. Maggie, seeing the feline smirk, decided that Kirk had deliberately kept her from discovering that Blair’s “promotion” would entail the girl’s running about publicly, and embarrassingly, in male drag. That was far from the dance debut that Maggie had in mind for a daughter whose fragile sense of gender identity could be shattered all too easily by a fool’s miscasting. Kirk would have to pay some sort of price, she decided, for his complicity in this outrage.
Laird watched in amazement as his “daughter,” playing a nobleman disguised as Loys, a male peasant, flirted with, then seduced, then danced a love duet with Giselle (Linda Hernandez, actually), until the pas de deux was interrupted by Giselle’s mother. (“The hag probably thinks a girl as pretty as Giselle can do better than marry a peasant,” Laird thought.)

Next, Bathilde, the Duke’s erstwhile girlfriend, wrathfully stole a horn and sword from Blair’s, er … Loys’ pretend cottage, thereby proving to the rest of the dancers that the Duke was a cad bent on betraying both Bathilde and Giselle. At this news, Giselle fluttered wildly around the stage, finally dying from a weak heart, although onlookers understandably thought that the sword (Duke Albrecht’s) she was thrusting into her belly might be more at fault.

The curtain came down on the first act. With Big Al’s help, Laird was able to restrain Maggie from rushing backstage to “rescue” Blair from the “indignity” of playing a masculine role in the school’s production.

The second act opened with Blair (Albrecht), dressed in a “ducal” outfit of a pink ruffled shirt, a burgundy velvet doublet and pink tights, praying at Giselle’s grave, which unaccountably — given the forest’s infestation with Wilis -- has been put in a moonlit glade. It was just like Blair, Laird thought, to be such a hopeless romantic that he risked a fairy’s death by going into the bushes alone.

Inevitably, given the plot summary in the program guide, the Wilis, female fairies who have been jilted (like Giselle) before their wedding day, rose out of their graves like bloodthirsty zombies, thereby frightening the bejeezus out of Blair (Duke Albrecht) who ran like a frightened rabbit to safety in the theater’s wings. (It was at this point that Kirk decided that sissy Blair made an excellent Duke.)

For some unknown reason the Wilis obligingly left the stage and glade, leaving wily Giselle to greet Blair (Duke Albrecht) as he leapt back into the scene. (Although there was nothing balletic about Blair’s technically-deficient leap, it showed more verve and guts than Laird has ever seen from Blair before.)

A true romantic, Giselle, buying into Blair’s professions of enduring love, forgave him, at which point Blair (the Duke) had his second chance to dance a romantic pas de deux. As before, Linda Hernandez (Giselle) danced around her motionless beloved, who from time to time proffered his hand to support (like a barre) her turns or pliés.

“This is the logical moment,” Laird hoped, “to end this silly, old-fashioned ballet.”

Yet Adolphe Adam, the composer, alas, had other ideas, for the scene ended with Blair (Albrecht) chasing after Linda Hernandez (Giselle) as she ran deep into the forest offstage. (An audible moan could be heard from Kirk — was this blasted ballet ever going to end?).

Blair (Albrecht), failing to leave while he was ahead (Giselle had, after all, forgiven his dastardly behavior, and as a corpse had little more to offer him), was suddenly surrounded by the Wilis, whose mirthless queen sentenced him to “death by dancing.”

Briefly the audience was frightened out of its wits by Blair’s mistimed leaps, jumps, turns and twirls. (One mother will later tell her husband that, “I haven’t been so frightened for anyone’s safety since Jessie crawled out onto the window ledge when she was eighteen months old and we still lived in that high rise.”)

Fortunately, no one fainted, no one had a cardiac, because Linda Hernandez (Giselle) returned to protect Blair (Albrecht) from having the Wilis force him to dance until he had inevitably, given his sorry technique, broken his right leg, left arm, nose or skull. Her love saved Blair (Albrecht), as the Wilis slunk back like Vampire Edward into their diurnal graves; love also saved Giselle, who having refused to give into feelings of hatred and vengeance, ceased to be a Wili. Presumably she then went to heaven. Either that or she will rot henceforth unnoticed in her grave. (Certainly, she couldn’t count on flowers from Duke Albrecht!)

This time it was Big Al who moaned — loud enough for all to hear. It was a moan of love mixed with desire. She hadn’t believed it possible for one girl to love another as much as she did Blair, a true heroine.

For perhaps the first time in the history of a Dame Pavlova novice production the entire audience stood to applaud a performance. True, it wasn’t the first standing ovation for one of its productions because its audiences were usually quick to rise to their feet in order to put on their raincoats and so be first to the exits. But the standing ovation never involved more than two-thirds of the audience. The rest sat on their hands.

This was, therefore, the first time that the entire audience was sufficiently awake at the conclusion of a student performance to rise en masse for the exits. Usually, there were a couple dozen parents or friends who had fallen into such a deep slumber that they had to be awakened by a sharp poke from a crestfallen member of the dance company or, lacking that, much, much later by a member of the cleaning staff.

Blair’s performance had kept everyone awake. It was like watching a tightrope walker perform without a net, some said. No, it was more like watching a lion tamer without a chair or whip, said others. Nascar fans said it was like watching a rookie driver trying to squeeze his car between two old pros in the final lap; and football fans said they hadn’t seen anything so exciting since “Rudy”, the famously puny (at 165-pound, 5-foot six-inch) defensive end, had sacked the Georgia Tech quarterback in the second and last play of his playing career with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Admiring his astonishing spunk, Rudy’s teammates carried him off the field on their shoulders; and briefly, it looked like Blair might exit the stage in similar fashion. Behind the curtain, his fellow dancers crowded around to thank him for filling in for Taylor. Alone in front of the curtain, Linda Hernandez (Giselle) received considerable applause, much of it for the bravery she had shown by trusting Blair to lift her into the air.

As for Blair, the applause was interspersed with shouted compliments — or maybe they were insults, for the “praise” had a calculated ambiguity, as in “Way to go, kid, it took real guts to dance like that in public” or “Thank you, Duke Albrecht, for proving that an evening of student dance can be as suspenseful as a Hollywood thriller” or “Kid, you’re a natural performer. I haven’t seen so many pratfalls since Charlie Chaplin, Curly Howard and Chevy Chase were in their prime.”

Immediately after the dancers had made their final exit from the stage for the single dressing room, Maggie cut short her family’s chatter about Blair’s key role and remarkable performance:

That will be quite enough talk about Blair’s humiliation, thank you. This was supposed to be the climax of Blair’s first four months as a female; and what was it instead? It was a bloody farce! The last thing I expected to see tonight was my daughter prancing around the stage pretending to be a grown man! A man! And not just any man, mind you, but a man who disguises himself as another male in order to seduce a consumptive female, who isn’t half as cute as, from my count, six of the Wilis. I mean — is there some kind of plot afoot to confuse Blair as to her true gender and identity?

“Now, honey …” Laird began.

“Don’t honey me! I am determined to uncover who is at the heart of this conspiracy to put Blair in a masculine role, thereby undoing weeks of progress in getting her to accept her feminine destiny. Just the other day she was asking for something to help her develop a mature female body more quickly; and now she’s been confused by hearing a lot of men praise her “manly” courage and athleticism. Blair has been sabotaged! Are any of you responsible?”

Maggie looked fiercely at Kirk, Laird and Alicia; but they all shrugged, and she realized deep down that none of her extended family had the means, the motive, or the money to bribe Mr. Five-Cent into risking permanent damage to his school’s reputation by assigning Blair a leading role in Giselle. No, if there was a culprit, it wasn’t Big Al, Kirk or Laird. It had to be the Fargo pimp or Monica, his dimwitted assistant.

“The three of you need to wait here for Blair. If she arrives before I get back, then I’ll meet you all at the McDonald’s across the street. I’m going to tear a strip off the clowns who run this so-called school.”

And before anyone could reply Maggie strode determinedly to the stage, climbed up onto it, and continued to and through the wings in search of a backstage confrontation with the impresarios of the ballet.

She found Lucky Five-Cent in a corridor giving Monica Rafferty his version of an after-show “rap-up”. Monica was dressed in a simple white blouse and black slacks, her only affectation being a paisley silk neckerchief. Five-Cent, in seeking gangsta chic, looked quite the wangsta: He was dressed entirely in black (save for the gold around his aviator sunglasses and bling-bling), his outfit comprised of a Brooklyn-style baseball cap (on sideways), a “Panther & Cobra” zip-up hoodie and black tee, bling-bling, Unlimited Drips shorts and (sockless) Coogi mid-height footwear sneakers.

As Maggie neared, Five-Cent, bowing deeply from the waist while flourishing his Chi Sox baseball cap like a Virginia cavalier, saluted Maggie: “Here come the queen bee herself! Monica, she’s gotta be the prize bee-i-itch here cuz her whelp is da bomb; that little thing be the funkiest white girl I done see. Shiznit, considerin’ the tough situ, that little hoe was bumpin’; she was down for it! That fox was showing off her booty real fine!”

Five-Cent stopped the flow when he realized that Maggie, far from being pleased with the praise he was heaping on Blair, was looking like someone whose quarter of weed had been ganked.

“My bad, Ms. Maguire, I should let youse get a chance to rap. Wassup?

“Cut the crap, whitey. I don’t like being called a bitch, and I definitely don’t like my daughter being called a little whore. You know that I enrolled Blair at Dame Pavlova because I wanted her to experience the ultimate thrill for a girl her age — to dance in public in a pink tutu or a white dress with gossamer wings. I wanted her to be a Wili! Instead, you had her masquerading as a dude and parading around with an overstuffed dance belt. Are you trying to fuck with my girl’s mind? Are you trying to make her gay, or worse, a transvestite like George Sand or Gertrude Stern? Why the hell did you do it?”

Five-Cent pulled back, cowering from the verbal assault. Afraid of being whacked, he slunk partly behind Monica for protection. Once there he felt safe enough to retort: “Shi-it, woman, is you totally loco? What you bitching about? We made your hot-ass daughter into a star!” Seeing Maggie’s hands forming fists, the short little man disappeared behind Monica.

That was Monica’s cue: “Please allow me to explain, Ms. Maguire, since this was my production and I made the decision to give the role of Duke Albrecht to Blair. I felt she was the appropriate choice after Tyler broke a leg trying to stand on point atop the seat of his moving bicycle. Because of his folly, we had no choice but to ask a girl to play the male lead. Blair, I admit, was not the first girl we thought of for the role of Albrecht; indeed, given her inexperience, she was actually the last.”

“You’re not telling me that Blair got the male part because she was the only girl who wanted it?”

“Not at all. Quite the contrary. Blair actually showed less interest in the role of Albrecht than any of the other girls, save for Linda Hernandez, who was already slated for the role of Giselle. I think the idea of a leading role intimidated Blair; that, and she said that you were keen on seeing her in Wili white. But the auditions for the role of Albrecht went so poorly that I, with the concurrence of Mr. Five-Cent, came to see Blair as our best candidate.”

“How could that possibly be? My Blair is a sweet girl, but her dancing ability reminds me of Elaine’s “Dry Heave” dance with the “little kicks” on the Seinfeld Show. It’s a wonder that Linda Hernandez can still walk after their love duets.”

“True, all too true. Yet you’re overlooking the assets that Blair brought to the part. First of all, Blair is by far the best actress in her dance class. She alone could make the part of Duke Albrecht believable; she alone among the girls could make us forget that she was a girl in a boy’s part. Second, Blair has unusually strong leg and arm muscles for a girl so loath to exercise. I felt that her physical strength would make up for her lack of technique when it came to lifting her co-star. Blair staggered about a lot when doing the lifts tonight, but she didn’t once drop Linda on her derriere, and that might not have been the case had I chosen a less muscular girl. The third reason is that Blair can’t dance well enough to be a Wili, and if I asked any other girl to be Albrecht, I would have been effectively a Wili short.”

“Not good enough for the corps de ballet, but good enough for the second lead? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I thought you knew that the male roles in a ballet as antique as Giselle don’t require anywhere near as much expertise as any of the female roles. The male is little more than a porteur, his primary job being to carry or support the ballerinas as they do the real dancing and arching. So I told Blair to plant the soles of her feet firmly on the ground whenever one of the girls, usually Giselle, came near. I said they’d cue her on what to do next. As for the leaps expected of a male character, I simply told Blair that she should, given her absence of technique, simply jump as high and as far as she could. Sheer exuberance, I said, would have to compensate for her lack of form. And, you must admit, it largely did. Your daughter was a big hit with the audience. She enjoyed herself immensely.”

“Well, I didn’t enjoy the evening — not in the slightest. You had no business putting my daughter in a male role without consulting either me or her father. You didn’t consult her father, did you? I see you shake your head, so you admit that you acted in a highhanded way that has made a mockery of the ballet as a finishing school for young ladies. Madame Rafferty and Mr. Five-Cent, if that’s you still hiding behind your assistant, this is the last you will see of either Blair or me. I am withdrawing her from this mockery and sham of a ballet school.”

“I beg you to reconsider, Ms. Maguire, for you won’t find a better dance school for Blair. All the ballet academies in the region are drastically short of boys, and if you take Blair to one of our competitors, I assure you that, given Blair’s strengths and weaknesses, that they’ll assign her a male role in their productions too.”

“Well, I never! What an insult to my daughter — to suggest that she’s not feminine enough for a female role!”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Monica feebly replied.

“Well, that’s what I heard,” Maggie rejoindered. “You, Madame, are no lady; and you, Sir, are no black man.” And with those insults, Maggie stomped down the corridor, and then out of view.

Five-Cent emerged: “Don’t pay her no mind, Monica baby. I know why that poontang be buggin’ us. She is a playa hata. She don’t like to see that little hoe of hers become a player and get some juice, some respect. Lordy, that old ass bitch is a attention whore just like her sweet fuckin’ daughter.”

“Whatever you say, boss, whatever you say. I don’t envy Blair having a mother like that. I do hope that sweet girl will be all right.”