In the first 7 parts, Kyle finds it more difficult than he expected to keep a deal he made with his mother: That if he wears girls’ clothes for a month that she will buy him a moped (a motor scooter). He’s not quite sure how it happened, but in rapid succession he lost his friends, convinced his mother that he’s gay and dating Steve, posed as a lesbian named Demi in order to charm the grandmother of his new girlfriend Joannie, who’d prefer that Kyle wore the panties in the family, and convinced his mother that he’s a transsexual. In part 7, Kyle’s first dates with Joannie and Steve had their ups and downs — notably, of his black velvet pants — but he welcomed a second date with both teens. The last chapter ended with Virginia no longer ‘charmed’ by Demi, who she now knows to be a boy.

Anything for a Moped? by: Dawn De Winter
Part 8
Chapter Ten: Who Gave Kyle the Hormones?

"Sunday morning has sucked big time," thought Joannie as she returned to the Internet. The disturbing news had begun with a phone call from Kyle around ten. For the first five minutes Joannie could not get in a single word as he excitedly told her about his first college basketball game.

He must have said at least dozen times that the game had been ‘awesome,’ and in once sentence, he used the word ‘cool’ five times to describe his experience. He said that he’d be going with Steve to another game in less than a week.

"Just think! I’ll be seeing my second college basketball game in just six days time. Wow, it took me fourteen years to get to my first one. And I only have to wait six days — just think of it, six days — before the next one. That’s so cool."

Finally he slowed down enough for Joannie to ask, "Wasn’t it creepy to know that Steve takes you to ball games because he wants to ball you? Are you going to put out in order to keep the tickets coming?"

"Of course not! You know I’m not gay. I like girls — a lot."

"Girls, plural, or girl, singular?" she challenged.

"Don’t be silly. I like you and no one else," he replied soothingly.

"Did he try to kiss you after the game? I bet he did. Tell me the truth, Demi, for I know I can learn it from Steve. He’s the kind of boy who kisses and tells."

Kyle didn’t like the question — not at all — but decided he’d better get his version of ‘the kiss’ on the record before Steve started gossiping about it: "Yeh, he tried to kiss me. He’s gay after all. He wants to kiss every boy he meets."

"Well, did he succeed, Demi? Did you two kiss?" She needed to know.

"Sort of, I guess. It wasn’t my fault. He lunged at me. He caught me unawares. I wanted to wash my lips with soap afterwards."

"Well, did you?"

"Did I what?" Kyle replied. "Why can’t she let the whole subject drop?" he wondered.

"After Steve kissed you on the lips, did you wash them afterwards? How much soap did you use?"

"None," he admitted.

"Just as I thought! You weren’t upset to have a boy kiss you, Demi. I bet you even liked it. You’re such a slut. I bet you’ll be tongue dancing next time out."

"We will not! I only do that with you!"

"You’d better behave on your next date with Steve. I warn you, Demi, that if you let a boy get into your panties, you’ll never get into mine. Understood?"

"Yeh, I understand. But you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not the kind of slut who’d sell her bod for basketball tickets."

Unnervingly, Joannie said nothing.

"Really?" she was thinking. "Basketball gives Steve an enormous advantage. It’s dangerously seductive, so far as Demi is concerned. I bet she’d be willing to have Steve’s baby if he offered her first-row tickets to an NBA game."

To Kyle she said, "I know that you’re not that kind of girl. But Steve may have illusions. He may think you can be bought. And if you disappoint him, well … Demi, just be sure that he’s not got you cornered. You do remember what the social studies teacher said could happen to us girls on a date?"

Kyle found the intimation that he couldn’t take care of himself downright insulting: "I’m not worried about Steve. I can handle him. I can handle any boy."

But could he? Despite his bluster, Kyle knew that he could not fight Steve off in a clinch. But it would never come to that, would it?

After their telephone call ended in sweet terms of endearment, Joannie had only a few minutes to reflect on her competition with Steve for Demi’s heart and body: "Steve has one big round advantage," she thought, "A basketball. I’ve got two round advantages," she chuckled, "and I am wearing them every time Demi sees me. Demi is attracted to girls, not boys. At least, I think she prefers girls to boys."

"In a fair fight, I’ll win. But it’s not a fair fight. Demi loves basketball, and I can’t get courtside tickets. I don’t have the clout — not like Steve’s dad. And sooner or later, Steve is going to ask Demi to a NBA game in New York of Chicago. You know there’ll be just one bed. It’s not fair!"

Joannie decided to fight back in two ways. First, Demi was going to be well rewarded for wearing a skirt to their date that evening: "Not only will we strip down to our underwear, as I promised, but I’m going to let her hands roam freely — so long as they don’t try to get inside my bra and panties."

True intimacy would come in time. But for the next couple of weeks Joannie wanted to train Demi to associate sexual touching with satin and silk. If all went well, Demi would develop a lingerie fetish so strong that she would herself insist on wearing a satiny soft bra and panty on the night that they first had intercourse.

While she hoped that the initiation of active petting would give her a strategic advantage over Steve, Joannie also appreciated the importance of battlefield tactics. She realized she needed something to offset the basketball games, and she found it in a newspaper advertisement for an upcoming concert — in Des Moines, of all places — featuring an all-male, glam rock, Goth band known as ‘Hell’s Vixens.’

Kyle loved their music, and she figured that he’s leap at the opportunity to go to the concert, especially if they had prime tickets in the zone immediately in front of the stage where everyone would be frenetically dancing. An added bonus to this date was the fact that teens in the dance area were expected to mimic the clothing and antics of the band — which meant that Kyle would almost be forced to wear a unisex outfit as well as black lipstick and Gothic makeup. This would be the ideal opportunity to persuade Kyle to make his public debut as a ‘girl.’

"I’ll make sure," she schemed, "that every ‘unisex’ item he wears screams out just one sex — and that will be female! I’ll tell everyone we’re girlfriends."

"Joannie, I want to talk with you!"

"What?" Virginia’s voice awoke Joannie from her reverie.

"How many times do I have to call you? Come to the kitchen, now! We have a lot to talk about."

The peremptory tone announced that Joannie’s morning was not going to improve. Indeed, for a while, it sucked worse than homework on the first day of class, for Virginia had finally decided that she could no longer defer talking to her granddaughter about Demi. Virginia was going to use shock tactics to stun Joannie into honesty about Demi’s true sex and identity.

No sooner was Joannie seated in a kitchen chair than Virginia launched her attack: "Joannie, I know that Demi is a boy. I saw him, after all, with his pants down. Who is he? And why are you both pretending that he’s a girl? I want some answers and I want them now!"

The shock treatment worked, all too well. Most unusually, words failed Joannie. After all, what could she say to mitigate the damage she had done? Would her grandmother ever forgive the deception?

What would become of Demi? If she ceased to exist, what would be left of Joannie’s friendship with Kyle? And would the two teens ever be allowed to see each other again? Star-crossed lovers, would they be kept apart like Romeo and Juliet?

"I don’t want to lose my Juliet!" Joannie’s inwardly wailed. "I love Demi! Oh, my god, I’m about to lose her."

Virginia couldn’t abide any more silence: "Speak up, Joannie! Tell me right now why you lied to me about Demi. Why is he pretending to be a girl? Let’s start with his real name. I feel stupid calling a boy by a girl’s name. His name, young lady!"

"It’s Kyle," whimpered Joannie.

"Kyle?" Virginia thought. "So this is the boy she was telling me about? My granddaughter has been sneaking her boyfriend into the house! She may not be a lesbian after all!"

This was good news to Virginia, and it took much of the bite out of her bark. Her tone became less harsh: "Good. I’m glad we’re no longer pretending that Kyle is a girl. Now, I want to know his true identity. Is Kyle the son of Barb James or is that also a lie?"

"It’s not a lie. Kyle is Mrs. James’s son. That’s why it was so important that you and she not talk about our dating."

"And why not?" Virginia queried. "You told me that Barb James was opposed to her daughter’s dating a lesbian. It profoundly upset me to think that Barb was being intolerant for the first time in her life. Why did you let me believe that? How could she possibly oppose your dating her son? You’re not trying to tell me that Barb has a problem with heterosexuality, are you?"

"Of course not. But she does have …" And then came to mind and tongue the big lie that Joannie felt was necessary to ensure her continued access to Demi: "But Mrs. James does have a problem, a big one, with transsexuality."

"What are you saying, Joannie?" Virginia could scarcely believe her ears. "Transsexuality?" That was something you read about in the National Enquirer. It didn’t sneak into you own home. And it wasn’t something that happened to a friend’s son.

"I’m simply saying that Kyle is a transsexual. He’s really Demi and he has been almost all his life. He told me that he’s always known that he’s really a girl. His boy’s body is just a colossal mistake, some sort of bad joke by God. I call Kyle ‘Demi’ because that’s who he is really is — a girl named Demi. We both pray that Barb will accept that reality. But she won’t!"

"Are you saying that Barb James won’t permit Kyle to dress as Demi?"

"That’s right. Mrs. James is absolutely opposed to it because she believes that boys who cross-dress are making fun of women. She told Demi that cross-dressers are a travesty of womanhood. She absolutely refuses to let Demi wear anything feminine — not even panties and stockings that no one will see."

Virginia pondered: "Is it possible that Barb considers cross-dressing to be politically incorrect? It’s plausible. A gay son she’d have no trouble accepting. She’d go on television to announce how proud she was of her son Kyle and his fiancé Dennis, and she’d call anyone who opposed their church wedding to be a bigot. ‘Worse than a John Ashcroft,’ she’d say."

"But Kyle’s wanting to dress up like a girl? That might be difficult for Barb to accept. Some of her lesbian friends might be offended. Others might deem her son a freak. I confess that I do. Yes, Barb would consider a gay son a ‘cool’ thing to have. But a transsexual child? She’d fear being mocked and pitied."

Even so, there were some gaping holes in Joannie’s story, starting with, "If Kyle’s mother won’t let him dress as Demi, then how did he get here wearing velvet pants, lipstick, fake breasts, and a girl’s hairstyle? And didn’t he wear a skirt home?"

"Duh, Demi is obviously not wearing her skirt and breast forms at home," replied Joannie sarcastically. "I told you that Demi doesn’t wear any girl’s clothes — none at all — when she’s at home. She has to be Kyle there or Mrs. James will beat her mercilessly."

"You’re not trying to tell me that Barb James hits her child? I can’t believe that! It’s inconceivable!"

"It’s true," said Joannie defiantly. "Tonight when Demi comes over, get her to remove her makeup. I know you can think up some excuse. You’ll see that she has a black eye. It’s fading, but it’s still obscene. Who do you think gave Demi her shiner? It was her mother. Demi got clobbered when her mother found out she was shaving her body."

"A black eye? Can it really be possible? I thought I knew that woman. She seems the soul of tolerance, and now I find out that she’s been beating her son to keep him out of dresses. Can you fathom that?"

But wait a second. Just where did Demi change into her clothes?

Virginia persisted with her question, and Joannie, having had an opportunity to search for a plausible lie, seized on, "Kyle changes into Demi at the Lancers. You know that Mrs. Lancer makes no effort to hide the fact that her son Steve is gay. But I bet you didn’t know that Steve feels sorry for Demi — they’re both outcasts at school, you know — and that he persuaded his mother to let Demi keep her girls’ clothes at their house. He’s got a big closet."

"You’re saying that Demi will be changing clothes at Elvira Lancer’s before she comes here for dinner?"

"Yep. Sad, isn’t it? Prejudice is so evil. You’re not prejudiced against Demi are you, Gran? You’ll let her date me, right? And you won’t rat on her to her mother, right?"

"Hold on one second. If Kyle is Demi, a transsexual, why does he want to date you? Shouldn’t Demi be going out with boys? Doesn’t a girl, even a make-believe one, want to date boys?"

"Grandmother, don’t be so last millennium! Demi is not a make-believe girl. She’s a real one — in her own mind, at least. And not every girl dates boys. I don’t, for one."

Virginia’s head spun. "But you are dating a boy," she feebly rebutted. Then, seeing Joannie scowl, she asked, "Are you trying to tell me that you and Demi are both lesbians even though Demi is, technically speaking, a boy?"

"Right! That’s it exactly. Demi is my girlfriend, and I want her to be my lesbian lover. You’re not going to forbid me to sleep with her, are you? That would be bogus, and you know it."

"You’ll take precautions?"

"Of course, I don’t want to get any germs or surprises from Demi. Trust me. Anyway, I imagine we’ll stick to cunnilingus, like most lesbians."

"Joannie! Don’t talk like a tramp! My, but you do have a gutter mouth at times. I don’t want to know what you two do in bed. But I must know that you’ll be fully protected if you have any sort of sex. That means Demi has to wear a condom on her …"

"Clitoris?" offered Joannie.

"On her clitoris," sighed Virginia. And you must start taking those pills we got you. I don’t want to hear another word of complaint about the estrogen in the pills ‘feminizing’ you too much. If you’re going to be sexually active, it’s a pill once a day for you. Agreed? Otherwise, you can no longer date Demi."

Joannie wanted to clinch the deal: "So, it’s agreed: If I take the pills, and if Demi practices ‘hygiene,’ then we can continue dating? And you’ll let Demi visit me in my room, as before? And you’ll let Demi stay overnight?"

After catching her breath, Joannie added three more terms to the proposed deal: "And you’ll keep Demi’s secret from her mother? And you’ll help Demi to become the girl of her dreams? And finally, you won’t let Demi know that you’ve guessed her secret, will you? It would crush her spirits to realize that it’s so easy to ‘read’ her as a boy."

"Well, Joannie, a lot of people are going to figure out that Demi is really a boy if she doesn’t wear a gaff to conceal her genitals."

"A gaffe? What’s that?" asked Joannie eagerly.

"Demi probably knows. As for you, I’m sure that you can find out by looking up the word in a dictionary. I’d rather we talked about your future relationship with this … girl."

"Frankly," Virginia continued, "I do have reservations about keeping this affair a secret from Barb. You’re asking me to assume a heavy responsibility. I can make no promises about secrecy. If I have to talk to Barb about her son — or her daughter — I will. You can’t bind me not to. However, if you’re right about the black eye, then I will approach her very warily. As for allowing Demi into your bedroom, we’ll see."

"Oh, Gran! You’re super. You must be the coolest grandmother in the whole world. I love you so much. I’m so lucky to have you for a parent." Then, thinking of her mother, Joannie collapsed into Virginia’s arms. The teenager’s body shook with her sobs.

"There, there, Joannie. You know I love you more than life itself. I’ll never hurt you and I’ll never hurt the friends you cherish. We’ll do our best to make this a home for Demi, a place where he, or she, can develop into a confident, loving teenage girl. You know, sweetheart, Demi isn’t the most feminine of girls. We’re going to have to work on her if she is always going to pass for female."

"I know." Joannie sniffled. "Demi picked up some unfortunate mannerisms when Mrs, James forced her to attend a boy’s military academy for three years. She was trying to ‘make a man’ out of Demi. But Demi is only a boy on the surface. Deep down no one is more feminine than Demi. You’ll see. Do you promise to help me to turn Demi into the world’s most perfect girlfriend? Will you, huh?"

Still holding Joannie tightly, Virginia agreed: "Yes, together we’ll transform Demi into Cinderella. We can start by giving her some closet space here."

Then, out of curiosity, Virginia asked, "If Demi is a transsexual, I suppose she’s taking hormones to soften her beard and to flesh out her breasts and hips."

"No, how could she? How could Demi get hormones if her mother won’t cooperate?" Joannie replied with a touch of sarcasm.

Briefly, an errant thought flashed through Virginia’s mind that she might perhaps help Demi to acquire the hormones she probably craved. "What if I gave them to the boy?" she asked herself.

The answer came rapidly enough: "Sooner or later you’d be facing lawsuits, prison, and disgrace for abusing a minor." Virginia might be indulgent when it came to her beloved Joannie, but she wasn’t foolhardy. No, if Barb wouldn’t help the boy to feminize, then he would have to wait until he was old enough to become mistress of his own destiny. Virginia would not be giving hormones to Kyle.

To Joannie, Virginia said, "We both feel sorry for Demi, but there’s nothing we can do about the hormones. Only her doctor can prescribe those, and only with the consent of Demi’s mother. We have no legal or moral right to interfere between a mother and her daughter, or son, or whatever. Do you understand me, Joannie?"

Joannie gave a demi-nod of agreement, then made her pitch: "It’s true that there’s not much we can do for Demi, considering the attitude of her mother, but we could try to make her a little bit happier. It must be so sad being a girl trapped in a boy’s body. We owe her some fun in life. And I know just how to give it to her."

"How is that, dear?"

"A rock band we both love is coming to Des Moines in two weeks time. They’re giving a teen dance concert. Could we get tickets? Could we?"

By the time Virginia gave her answer, morning had turned into afternoon and Joannie had got her way. Not only did Virginia buy her two prime tickets, but, upon finding that the concert was sold out, actually went onto the Internet to buy them from a scalper.

Joannie congratulated herself on her cleverness. She had transformed a potentially disastrous revelation into two tickets for Hell’s Vixens. Instead of being grounded for life, she was primed for a super date with Demi.

Possibly, her victory that morning had been too easy. Possibly it was arrogance that caused Joannie to return to the Internet to shop after her grandmother had returned to the kitchen to bake a chocolate cake for their dinner party. Or possibly it was simply sexual excitement. In any case, Joannie started using her grandmother’s credit card — without her knowledge or permission — to outfit Demi for their upcoming dates.

She began with a search for ‘gaffes,’ and after reading far too much about television outtakes, she finally got the spelling right. Even then, there weren’t many hits, which meant that she quickly found herself at the site of a store in Los Angeles that outfitted the TG community. Its offerings were an eye opener for an Iowan teenager, even for one as self-confidently worldly as Joannie Smith.

The v-string gaff, which hid a boy’s sexual apparatus inside a fake vagina, she quickly rejected as too expensive. Yet she bookmarked the page, just in case she ever changed her mind about the price. As she tucked it away in "Joannie’s Folder", she made a mental note of one of the v-string’s promised features: That a boy wouldn’t have to remove it to urinate, provided he sat down to pee.

"Gosh," she thought to herself, ‘I’ve got to convince Demi to sit down to pee or else one day she’ll give herself away as only a pretend-girl."

Two cotton gaffs she found more reasonably priced, and they immediately went into her electronic shopping cart. Next she added a body shaper to help Demi to put ‘flesh’ on her hips and buttocks while narrowing her waist.

A pink satin bra next struck her fancy because it resembled the one that she and Demi already owned. Yet it was different in two vital respects from any lingerie that either teen possessed: first, it was designed to massage the breasts and to arouse the nipples of anyone wearing it; and second, it created the illusion of ample cleavage without the need for breast attachments. Fearful of making Demi look too busty, Joannie selected a ‘B’ cup. Into the shopping cart it also went.

Her search next uncovered an offer of femininizing hormones — pills and creams promised to change a man into a woman in record time. One even half-promised he’d have breast milk. At the thought of milking Demi’s breasts as they made love, Joannie got so sexually excited that she ignored her grandmother’s advice: Into the cart went several jars of feminizing and emasculating pills and ointments. Buying female hormones for Demi was a wet dream.

With the cost of her expedition rapidly rising, Joannie reluctantly decided to finalize her order and to pay with the pilfered Visa card.

"This is so exciting," she thought. "All I have to do is to click my mouse and the order will be sent. The hormones will be here in a week, and I just know I can find a way to get Demi to take them. I could talk her into taking one-a-day ‘vitamins,’ or I could persuade her that it’s the new birth control pill for guys. Or maybe she’ll take the pills, even knowing that they’ll give her a girl’s body, just to please me! Soon she’ll have the perfect figure to love!"

The order was all set to go. It required one last click. Her finger several times touched the entry key, and yet she could not force it downward. In the end, she ordered only the gaffs, body shaper and bra, as she recognized, after much agonizing, that she had no right to coerce, seduce, or trick Kyle into permanently altering his body.

"He’s so young and naíve," she thought. "I need to protect him, even from himself."

She recognized that Kyle would do almost anything to please her. He’d even transform himself into a girl: "He loves me that much!" she sighed. His passion for her gave her power: She held not only his heart, but also his body and soul in her hands. She was convinced that Kyle would ingest anything she gave him, so great were his love and trust.

Yet did she have the right to play goddess? Just because she could remold Adam into Eve, did she have any right to do it? As her finger wavered uncertainly on the key that would lead to Kyle’s physical feminization, Joannie finally concluded that Kyle alone could decide whether Demi would ever be more than cloth deep.

Joannie decided: "I’ll tell Demi about this site. I’ll let her know that she can buy hormones from it any time she wants. I’ll even offer to pay for them with Gran’s Visa card. But Demi will have to order them."

Would she ever? Joannie certainly hoped so. Joannie knew what she wanted for Kyle: "A boy’s mind in a girl’s body."

One day she wanted to ride behind Demi on a motorcycle. Demi would be as adventuresome and risk-taking as any teenage boy. She’d always be as crazy as the boy who’d tried to skateboard blind down Suicide Hill. And Demi would have perfect, pearl-shaped breasts for Joannie to hold onto as they both leaned into a curve as they raced through an exciting life together.

On the afternoon of her second date with Demi, Joannie certainly contemplated giving hormones to Kyle. Yet she was not the one to give him hormones. Indeed, they had started to course through his body long before Joannie had worked up the courage even to broach the subject with him.

After all, it is one thing to tell yourself that you should have a heart-to-heart with your boyfriend about his getting breasts, it is quite another to actually do it. No, it wouldn’t be Joannie who’d give hormones to Kyle. She’d never get around to it.

If not Joannie, then who? It certainly wasn’t Melanie, the busybody at Macy’s. Yet she spent most of that day thinking about Kyle’s taking female hormones, as though she and Joannie had a mind meld. In fact, a nightmare had awakened Melanie that self-same morning — a nightmare in which Kyle had started eating estrogen pills like jujubes in order to sabotage her plans to make him a star of the Vera Smuttee show.

Vera had — in the dream — demanded $1000 from Melanie because Kyle’s breasts had become so enormous that he was no longer useful to her show. "He’s supposed to look like a boy when he first comes on the show." Vera ranted. "He’s not supposed to have breasts like Pamela Anderson! Where’s the fun for the audience in making his 40-inch breasts one-inch bigger?"

Melanie woke up in a cold sweat just as Vera suggested in the dream that the salesgirl work off the money she owed the show by undergoing a sex change herself, the entire process to be shown in pornographic detail on the Smuttee show.

"I’ve got to do everything I can to stop that fool kid from taking hormones before I can sign him up for breast implants," Melanie kept telling herself as she prowled Macy’s looking for some sign of ‘Kirkdirk.’

When she wasn’t scouting for Kyle, she kept running through a list of possible villains, of people who might ruin her plans by feeding the boy hormones, with or without his knowledge.

One person kept coming to mind: "His mother. It’s going to be his mother. She’s the one who’s going to sprinkle powdered estrogen on his breakfast cereal. I just know her type. She’s a ball-breaker. She wants a daughter and she’ll do anything to get one!"

Was it true? Was Barb James about to sneak female hormones into her son’s Quaker Oats? Was he going to be put on a regimen of ‘twice-a-day’ vitamins from an unlabelled bottle? Such thoughts did occur to Kyle’s mother. Indeed, hormones were raging through her mind, even as the thought of them tantalized Joannie and appalled Melanie.

Barb was convinced that her son was a transsexual, and that he’d be calling himself Demi and floating around in a dress before the middle of October if she gave him the opportunity to spread his fairy wings. After all, Kyle had run with the knitting ball each time she’d had tossed it to him.

The attachable breast forms were especially evocative. To Barb they said, "I want to be as much like a woman as possible. I wish I had breasts of my own."

Barb recognized that she was responsible for each halting step Kyle had yet taken toward womanhood, whether it was the Moped deal that gave him an excuse to wear girls’ clothes, the packet of pink panties that had allowed him to break free of black-and-white gender roles, or the burgundy shoes and black velvet pants he had worn to his first date with Steve. For his next date, Kyle would be wearing a short skirt that Barb had bought for him. Each time she had opened the door to femininity her son had sidled through it.

Was it her maternal duty to recognize that the logical next step was the feminization of his body? She realized that male puberty might soon make it impossible for Kyle ever to pass successfully as a woman. If he was determined to become Demi, shouldn’t Barb give him the hormones he needed?

Could a mother really wait until her child messed up his life? Didn’t she have an obligation to intercede on his behalf, whether it was to get him to wear girls’ clothes for a month to quell his boyish bravado or to feed him estrogen and progesterone to ensure that he’d always look right in the girls’ clothes that he appeared destined to wear for the rest of his life?

Barb answered yes: "I’m the adult. I can’t let a child make such an important decision. I have to be the one who decides whether Kyle takes feminine hormones."

But then she thought some more, and she realized that she had no right to make such a life-transforming decision by herself. She’d have to consult a doctor and psychiatrist. And they’d have to interview Kyle.

To feminize or not to feminize? There could be no immediate answer. Barb decided that the experts would know best. And so, she fought her mother’s instinct to administer hormones to her child the way she would cough medicine to an ailing child, and elected instead to ask the advice of their family physician, Dr. Olds.

As she was far from eager to discuss Kyle’s sexuality with the good doctor, Barb put off phoning him — for several weeks. In the meantime, she watched Kyle closely, hoping to find in his words and actions the evidence she needed to judge whether her son should begin hormone treatment in his early teens.

That afternoon, as Kyle readied himself for his second date with Joannie, he noticed her surveillance. He thought: "Mom is looking at me very oddly. It’s like she’s studying every move I make. What gives?"

It wasn’t as though she was hostile, or anything like that. Indeed, she seemed pleased when he not only agreed to wear his short black skirt around the house for almost three hours before his date, but also without prompting proposed that he use a hair-remover on his legs. Afterwards, Barb admitted that he had attractive legs — or at least, they would have been had they not looked sunburned. Poor Kyle, he had a chemical burn from the depilatory.

The depilatory and skirt were two important steps towards girlhood. Barb urged him to take several others. Mother and son must have spent a solid hour before his second date with Joannie — or as Barb saw it, his ‘third date with Steve’ — discussing shoes. Barb wanted him to wear the Mary Janes, but Kyle considered them too ‘sissy-looking’.

Yet he did agree to wear his black shoes with the flower appliqués. He had come to believe that they were boys’ wear.

Pierced ears and earrings also came up for discussion. At first, Kyle was adamantly opposed to both. But then she reminded him that many boys wore earrings, and he had to agree that some of the more interesting ‘dudes’ at school wore several of them on one or both ears. It was clear to both mother and ‘daughter’ that Kyle’s ears would soon be sporting some gold. However, he rejected a quick trip to the mall to get his ears pierced.

"It can wait," he growled.

Fingernails were her biggest victory that Sunday. Kyle, a nail-biter, had to admit that his were a mess.

"No girl has nails like those," Barb told him. "Anyone who looks at your nails will know you’re a boy. Some day those stubby, ragged ends could get you into a heap of trouble, Demi."

"Mom, I told you already. I don’t like it when you call me Demi. It’s a gross-out. Kyle’s my name!"

"Even when you’re sitting there in makeup, lipstick and a short skirt, plus a tight-fitting top that you apparently put on to show off your breasts to maximum advantage? Demi, I just find it too weird to discuss earrings and nail polish with a boy named Kyle. If we’re going to engage in girl talk, then you must let me call you Demi. Not all the time, son. You’ll be Demi only half the time — when you’re most dressed up like a girl. So what should I call you while we talk about making your fingernails look more feminine?"

"Demi, I guess. But I have no need to make my nails look more like a girl’s. You know, mom, that I have no intention of ever going out in public looking like Demi. I only look like a girl when I’m in … Steve’s house or … his mother’s car. They’ll be the only other people who’ll ever see my nails. They won’t notice or care whether they’re chewed or broken."

"You never know, Kyle, when you might suddenly find yourself being Demi in public. What if the Lancers’ house caught on fire? Then you’d be standing on the sidewalk looking like a girl — except to those who looked at your gnawed fingernails. And what if someone came to our door right now, someone we had to admit? You know — someone like the guy who reads the gas meter? Would you want him to figure out, just by looking at your nails, that you’re a boy in girl’s clothing?"

This argument Kyle found disturbing enough for him to agree that they had to find a way to stop him from chewing his nails. Barb suggested that he use a clear nail polish. "Demi, we’ll find one so foul-tasting," she promised, "that you’ll never want to bite your nails again."

It was a deal: Kyle agreed to wear a clear nail polish until he had kicked his bad habit. As he learned to paint his nails, they both recognized that another milestone had been reached: Kyle wouldn’t be allowed to give up using nail polish just because he’d won his moped. He’d have to keep wearing it until his nails could pass for a female’s.

As Demi headed off on her date, Barb reflected on how rapidly her son had feminized in just one week. Indeed, his transformation was coming too fast for comfort. Admittedly, she’d kept opening wardrobe doors for Kyle. She had facilitated his metamorphosis into Demi. Even so, she wished everything wasn’t happening so quickly.

"It’s so typical of the boy," she mused. "He rushes into everything, even — it appears — into girlhood. Why can’t he just for once check out the depth of the pool before he dives headfirst into the shallow end?"

Joannie, by contrast, had no reservations about Kyle’s plunge into femininity. Demi never ceased to delight her. As she opened the door to Demi, she remarked to herself: "He’s really beginning to look like a girl." He was doing a better job, she proudly noted, with his makeup and hair, and his pink-and-red striped top and red skirt were nicely color-coordinated.

Yet it was his red legs that excited her most: "You did it!" she exulted. "Your legs are baby smooth" — a fact her right hand deftly verified. "You have legs to die for!" And it was true: when judged as a girl, Demi’s legs were her best feature. She was developing into a leggy woman.

"I agree, Demi, you have stunning legs," pronounced Virginia. She too had come to the door — to Kyle’s dismay. If her grandmother hadn’t showed up, he figured that Joannie would have rewarded him for his skirt and hairless legs with her most erotic kiss yet. Instead, they had to buss like sisters.

Kyle suggested to Joannie that there must be a new teen magazine for them to read before dinner. "Right!" she replied. "I’ve got one upstairs in my room. I’ve definitely got something I want to show you." She then turned to Virginia and announced, "Gran, we’re going upstairs for a while before dinner, if it’s okay with you?"

Both teens were eager to play. If they could make it to Joannie’s room, it would take them only a couple of minutes to strip to their bras and panties, and then they’d be — if all went well — discovering what another person’s body felt like to fingers touching and probing soft satin. They both expected to make some significant discoveries.

Yet not all went well. Far from it, for Virginia insisted that Demi join her at the kitchen table before dinner: "It is time we had a heart-to-heart, young lady, for it’s important for me to know something about Joannie’s best friends."

As soon as the two teens were sitting dolefully around the kitchen table, Virginia asked the question that had been preying on her mind since the morning’s revelations: "Demi, do tell me something about your mother. Do you and she get along well? I suppose you and she go everywhere together."

Confused, Kyle looked over at Joannie for some sort of signal. What should he say? Joannie was frowning. The more intensely Kyle looked at her, the more the frown intensified.

"She wants me to badmouth my mother," Kyle thought, "but why?"

Kyle started hesitantly: "Well, we don’t spend much time together." He paused to gauge Joannie’s reaction. She was nodding vigorously. "I guess you could say that we don’t get along very well."

He looked over again at Joannie. She nodded approval. So he added, "I guess you might say we get along badly." Joannie positively beamed.

"Demi, I’m so sorry to hear that." The next question was a ticklish one to word inoffensively: "Does she scold you a lot?"

Kyle looked over at Joannie for instruction. He was shocked to see herself pretending to slap herself in the face. It took several slaps and punches to various parts of her body before he realized what she wanted him to say.

"But why that?" he wondered. "I can’t tell Joannie’s grandmother that my mother beats me. What if she tells the police or a social worker?"

He shook his head: "No, I won’t say it! Joannie’s mouth pursed. She stared him down: "Yes, you will say it!"

Kyle folded: "Mrs. Smith, my mother scolds me a lot and she … sometimes hits me when I’ve been bad."

He looked toward Joannie and she was blowing kisses at him!

Virginia would have been deeply shocked had she not been forewarned. She decided she must know whether Joannie had been telling the truth about the black eye, and so she leant over to, she said, "pick a speck of lint" from Demi’s cheek.

Unfortunately, she smudged Demi’s makeup, and before Demi could offer to head upstairs with Joannie to repair it, Virginia was herself rubbing his cheek with a handkerchief.

As the shiner appeared, Virginia whispered, "Oh you poor dear." And then more loudly, she declared, "Demi, you’ll always have a home here. Doesn’t she, Joannie?"

Kyle began to clue in: "Joannie must have told her Gran that my mother beats me. I bet she said that to keep my mom and her grandmother apart."

And so, he said to Virginia, "My mom doesn’t like me being with other girls. She gets real angry. You won’t tell her that I come over here, will you?"

"There, there, Demi," Virginia replied as she patted Kyle’s hand, "your secrets are safe with me. You have a friend in me."

A week ago Kyle would have probably found the conversation ‘hokey.’ He might have pretended to gag on the sentimentality. At the very least, the old Kyle would have cracked a bad joke to show his unease.

But some part of him had become Demi, or had finally surfaced as Demi, and tears welled up in his eyes. Demi was crying softly as she hugged Joannie’s grandmother. It was a moment of intense bonding: Virginia was not going to betray Demi: There would be no phone call to Barb James.

Yet Virginia was not comfortable with the idea of a boy in her daughter’s bedroom, no matter how femininely that boy behaved. When Joannie brazenly had asked whether she could have sex with Demi, Virginia had been non-committal.

But now that an actual boy was asking to go upstairs with her granddaughter, Virginia balked: "Joannie is only fourteen. She should wait until she’s more mature and can cope with the intense emotions that come with intercourse."

To the teens’ deep frustration, Virginia refused to allow them a moment alone together until the date had ended and they had reached the outer doorstep. Kyle was visibly upset as they said goodnight: "You didn’t keep your promise," he hissed. "You promised that you’d pose for me in your bra and panties if I wore a skirt and shaved my legs. I kept my end of the bargain. Why didn’t you?"

"I would have, Demi. I swear I would have if Gran had left us alone even for five minutes. And I was going to let you do more than look. I swear it’s true."

"You always get your way with your grandmother," Kyle barked. "Why not this time? How come she wouldn’t leave us alone? Does she know," he whispered very softly, "that I’m … a boy?"

"Of course not, Demi. How could she know that? You make a perfect girl. No one, but no one, would ever guess the truth. Gran thinks we’re lesbians, and maybe that was the problem tonight. Usually, she’s cool about two girls dating. I told you that she’d rather see me date a girl than a boy until I get a lot older. But sometimes she has second thoughts even about girls. After all, Demi, there were no lesbians when she was a girl. She’s bound to be mixed-up."

"It’s true," thought Kyle. "Lesbians only started showing up after they started broadcasting ‘Ellen’ on TV. Until then, girls were just friends like Mary and Rhoda."

"How long will it take," Kyle asked Joannie, "for your grandmother to forget that I’m a … lesbian? You owe me big time for the skirt! And look at my legs! I look like a lobster."

He was becoming more quarrelsome. Joannie thought it best to stop talking and to start kissing. His complaints dissolved in a kiss as erotic as it was prolonged. Taking advantage of his skirt, Joannie’s hands roamed high up his bare thighs. As he shivered and quaked, Joannie came up for air long enough to whisper, "Are you sorry now, Demi, that you wore a skirt?"

"No," he sighed at the time. But, in the alley on the way home, he amended his answer to, "No way that the goodnight kiss was enough." Intensely frustrated by their date, he kept muttering, "She promised me a lot more."

As he suspected that Joannie had encouraged Virginia to chaperone them, the further he got away from their kiss the angrier he got. By the time he had stormed past Barb to lock himself in his room, Kyle had concluded that he’d been played for a sucker, and that Joannie had never intended to keep her side of the bargain.

"Demi is going on vacation," he decided. "Joannie won’t get to see Demi again until Joannie keeps her word. She’s found lots of ways to tease me, but there won’t be any more Demi until she’s found a way to please me."

That week Joannie saw a lot of Kyle, but nothing of Demi. Kyle said it was too much of a hassle to transform himself into Joannie’s ‘girlfriend’ s for a brief, chaperoned visit after school. Joannie tried to invite him for dinner — even before she had cleared the idea with her grandmother — but Barb refused to allow him to accept. He had homework to do, she said.

Besides, she thought he was imposing too much on the Lancers: "You can’t expect them to feed you every second day," she admonished. "It’s our turn to feed Steve, don’t you think?" His mumbled answer was non-committal.

And so, Demi stayed in her closet. After a week of frantic feminization, Kyle relapsed into the boy who hoped that no one would notice that he was wearing girls’ clothes to school. Yet he did not return to the starting point of his journey to femininity, for he continued to wear makeup — to cover up the blemishes, he said — even after the shiner faded. And, as he promised Barb, he kept his fingernails lacquered so that he wouldn’t gnaw at them.

Moreover, his definition of passable girls’ clothes had expanded to include jeans with a plaid hem, black velvet pants, snakeskin sneakers, a couple of the striped tops, and underwired bras.

Halfway through the second week, the bets on whether Kyle and Joannie were wearing boys’ or girls’ clothes were paid off. After several confirmed sightings of his bra, Hoover’s student body had concluded that Kyle was the cross-dresser.

There was surprisingly little negative fallout. His newfound friends stuck by him, and the rest of the student body limited themselves to muttered slurs or a shoulder block in the school corridor. Kyle was surprised that his bad reputation was not bringing him more grief: "It will be easy," he thought, "to keep wearing these clothes for another three weeks."

Possibly it would — provided that Kyle’s guardian angel stood by him. Neither Kyle nor Joannie had any idea that one of his classmates was protecting him from the wrath of the ninth grade. Threats had been uttered; deals had been made. Kyle didn’t worry about the revenge of the fourteen-year-olds.

But what about the senior grades? And what about the Jets and the Sharks, the two gangs whose members sporadically attended Hoover High? They were, they told Kyle’s ‘protector,’ willing to "protect the girly boy" from his fellow students — for a price. Originally they had settled for the protector’s lunch money, but their expectations were about to soar beyond his ability to pay. They would be soon confronting Kyle and his friends with the choice between feeding their greed and feeling their fists.

In the meantime, Kyle would have to deal with officialdom: By Thursday, the gossip had reached the attention of Mr. Cudmore, Hoover’s vice principal, and Kyle was hauled out of class to stand on the carpet.

Mr. Cudmore began: "Let’s not beat around the bush, Mr. James, everyone in this school — the students, the teachers, hall monitors, the caterers, the janitors — knows that you’re pretending to be a transvestite. What’s your game? What are you up to? Well, answer me boy!"

Kyle realized that he couldn’t admit that he was breaking the school’s dress code merely to win a bet with his mother. They’d both get into trouble. But if he couldn’t mention the moped, then he didn’t have a lot of options.

He could perhaps declare that he was wearing girls’ clothes as a declaration of war on sexism and stereotyping. He could say, "These aren’t girls’ clothes. Clothes have no gender. You’re wrong for insisting they have. In the twenty-first century, we should be able to wear whatever we want to school. Why not boys in dresses and girls in jock straps?"

But he knew from past confrontations with Mr. Cudmore that the vice-principal would consider such posturing to be a direct challenge to his own authority. Mr. Cudmore had in fact told the student assembly on several different occasions that he was unimpressed by "juvie crusaders." If Kyle claimed he was prepared to suffer for his principles, the vice principal would joyfully find ways to make him suffer.

Consequently, Kyle believed his only safe move was to say, "I don’t have any choice. Something compels me to wear girls’ clothes. I’m only truly happy when I’m dressed like a girl."

Mr. Cudmore abruptly demanded, "Are you a transsexist? Speak up, boy! I insist on an answer."

Kyle admitted, "Maybe I am. All I know is that I don’t have free will when it comes to wearing girls’ clothes. It’s not my choice, and I intend no disrespect to you or the school in wearing them."

"So that’s how it is? Well, Kyle — or is it Kyla? — you’ll find that Hoover High is a progressive institution. We’re not going to suspend or expel you. Schools that have expelled transvestites have garnered terrible publicity. If we did it here in Des Moines, the snobs in the Eastern media would have a field day with us ‘small town hicks.’ They’ll put you on television in a dress, and I’ll suddenly have to deal with a school full of boys wearing skirts to show solidarity with you."

"You can continue to wear those clothes to school until the school psychologist has talked to you. The first available appointment is, I’m afraid, a week Friday. I fervently wish it could be sooner, but there are, incredible as it may seem, kids at this school even more screwed up than you, and Dr. Loupi has to see them first. It’s a question of priorities: Bullies, bullets, and bombs beat out bras."

"While you’re waiting for your appointment with Dr. Loupi, I insist that you show restraint. There will be no garish makeup or lipstick, do you hear, Kyla? No skirts or dresses, and no padding of your bra. Do you understand?"

Kyle eagerly nodded assent. He couldn’t believe he was getting off so lightly. He wasn’t being asked to give up a single thing. Indeed, implicit in the vice principal’s admonitions was permission to wear the halter top, Capri pants and Mary Jane shoes that his mother bought him — not that Kyle ever would.

Mr. Cudmore continued: "If Dr. Loupi affirms that you are a genuine transsexist and not just dressing like a girl to get attention, then you’ll be able to continue dressing as you are. Indeed, since he is a medical doctor as well as a psychologist, he should be able to put you on a hormone treatment to feminize you as quickly as possible."

Mr. Cudmore was laying a trap, which he now sprang: "You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Kyla? You’d like Dr. Loupi to give you big breasts, wouldn’t you?"

The vice principal waited for the panicky denial that would prove that Kyle was no ‘transsexist’. Once the boy admitted he was terrified of being physically feminized, he could be ordered out of his girls’ togs and into several months of after-school detention.

Kyle understood: "I’ve got to want," he realized, "to be a girl — a real girl with monster tits — or else he’ll order me to stop wearing these clothes. Yikes, what a choice! Either I say I want big boobs or I lose the moped bet and make Joannie furious at me."

Kyle gulped several times before he replied, "I do want to be a girl. If Dr. Loupi could give me breasts, I’d be forever thankful."

Mr. Cudmore didn’t like the reply. He tried one more time to smoke the boy out from under his girl’s cover: "Dr. Loupi could also arrange for you to get a vagina. Is that what you want, Kyla, do you want to have your dick cut off? Because it could be done as early as next week — if that’s what you truly want."

Kyle couldn’t see an escape route. The tales he had already told were proving taller than he was. What difference did it make if he added another five inches to his funeral pyre?

And so, he mumbled, "Yeh, I want to be a girl, even here" — and then he pointed to his groin. "But I know that operations are really expensive. I guess my sex change will have to wait for quite a few years while my mother saves enough money from taking in washing."

"Oh I don’t know about that, Miss James. The families and students of this school are very generous and I think we may be able to raise the money for your gelding through a public appeal or bake sale."

Kyle winced. Yet he knew the vice principal had to be bluffing. He reassured himself: "I’m a minor. They can’t cut anything off me or stuff anything into me without my mother’s consent. She’d never give it."

He hoped he was right, but it did make him nervous to know that his mother believed that he enjoyed being Demi. And of course, that wasn’t true — not in the slightest. How could it be true? He was, after all, an All-American, corn-fed, Iowa boy.

Kyle schemed: "I’ll make it clear to Dr. Loopy that my cross-dressing is a temporary sickness — like a cold or the flu. I bet I can talk him into prescribing vigorous exercise on a moped as a cure for what ails me. I’ll be riding along so fast on my moped that the wind will blow the girls’ clothes right off me, leaving me …."

Well, ‘naked’ would have been the next word. Perhaps it was just as well that Mr. Cudmore interrupted Kyle’s plotting by ordering "Kyla" back to class.

Kyle flared at being mocked once again as ‘Kyla’: "That’s not my name," he told the vice principal. "I’m either Kyle or …." He hesitated, after realizing that this was a sentence he should never have launched.

"Well?" demanded Mr. Cudmore. "What’s your drag name? Let’s have it for the records."

"D..d…demi," Kyle stuttered before fleeing from the room.

Kyle would have been fortunate had Mr. Cudmore done no more than add the name ‘Demi’ as an alias to Kyle’s student file. But Mr. Cudmore was indiscreet, malicious and unprincipled.

That very day he confided in every teacher he met that Kyle was a ‘transsexist’ named Demi, and during the following week the ‘official diagnosis’ and nickname spread through the school.

Kyle didn’t yet know that he’d be notorious by the third week of his bet with his mother. Nor did he know that it might suit Dr. Loupi’s career plans for him to believe that a genuine transsexual was attending Hoover High. Had he been able to see even one week into the future, Kyle would have had a miserable weekend.

He might even have gotten into such a blue funk that he cancelled his second basketball date with Steve. But he kept the fateful date. During it, Kyle started taking the hormones that would feminize his body.

As Kyle had no desire to grow breasts, it’s difficult to fathom how anyone could have talked him into taking the hormones. True, Kyle was often heedless and reckless, but would he have agreed to pop pills from an unmarked bottle given to him by a stranger? Not very likely!

If it wasn’t a stranger, then who was rash enough to give hormones to Kyle? If not Joannie, Virginia, Melanie or his mother, then who? To whom would Kyle owe his B cup?

To be continued in Chapter 11, "How Could He Have Been So Stupid?"