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. Blair is feeling blue after his first public appearance as a female Na’vi. Kirk’s best friend Cody, however, believes he has found his Cinderella in the strange girl from Rose Villa.

Choices, Chapter 13 Kirk’s choice

Laird, Maggie and the two children had a family conference to discuss whether Blair should stay home from school “sick” until his skin and hair had lost their doleful color. Kirk was adamant: There was no way Blair could go to school in blue face, as there was far too much risk of someone’s making the connection between the Na’vi girl from Rose Villa and the blond sissy from Bybee Lake.

Brother of a crossdressing sissy and goalie-tripping renegade was not a title that Kirk would wish on anyone, least of all himself. Kirk held that someone should shave off Blair’s hair (which Maggie refused to permit) and insist on Blair’s spending eight hours a day in the family bathroom with a scrub brush and sandpaper until he had sloughed off his outer layer of blue skin.

While Maggie dithered, unable for the first time in memory to cast a vote, Laird came down heavily on Kirk’s side: Blair should stay home from school until the tell-tale blue had faded away. As for Blair, his vote in favor of skipping school was a foregone conclusion, especially after Kirk promised (after an outburst of petulance) to contact his sister’s teachers to learn if there were any undone tests or assignments that might affect Blair’s promotion to the sixth grade.

Miss Umbridge refused to cooperate — to no one’s surprise.

The first Monday after the bluing of Blair, Cody talked obsessively about the winsome Na’vi from Rose Villa at every opportunity — not only to Kirk, but also to their best female friend since kindergarten, Nicole Petrović. At the time, a thirteen-year-old tomboy who preferred “hanging out with the guys” to dating them, by the time of her seventeenth birthday she had transformed herself into the easiest lay at Lewis A. Clark.

During a frank session with Felix La Rond, Nicole attributed her promiscuity to her erstwhile friendships with Kirk and Cody: “I learned from my first ‘boyfriends’ the bitter truth about nice boys, and ever since then I’ve been damn quick to verify the heterosexuality of dudes in the best way that I know — by having them bust a nut inside my pussy.”

However, her disillusionment with “nice boys” still lay in the future as she listened to Cody talk like a love-sick fool about a girl from out-of-state whom he was likely never to meet. “I guess,” she whispered to Kirk, “this crush goes to show how young Cody still is — he’s like those twelve-year-olds who post on the blogs that they know and love Zac Ephron or David Archuletta better than anyone else on the planet. Like those girls, Cody prefers to love from afar.”

“Well, it’s time he grew up,” Kirk replied. “It’s revolting the way Cody gushes over that blueberry tart. He knows nothing, absolutely nada, about her; she could be Washington State’s most notorious dyke for all Cody knows. If our friend doesn’t shape up soon — and quick — it may be necessary to learn him the facts of life.”

It wasn’t only Cody’s unfathomable crush on Blair that was pushing Kirk’s buttons. It was also the gossip at school about Blair’s sudden illness. One nosey parker had used a pilfered copy of the Breakers’ team roster to identify the blue devil on the Breakers as “Blair Fines”, a name suspiciously similar to that of the malingering boy. The kid raised the possibility that Blair might be sufficiently sissy, strange and spiteful to play in drag in a girls’ league in order to avenge himself on Smith Lake, either the community or its team, for some imagined slight.

Stephanie Willett wondered if the blue dye used by the Breakers’ avatar was more colorfast than anticipated. “Maybe,” she hazarded, “Blair is hiding out at home until his blue badge of cowardice has faded sufficiently for him to show his face around this school again.”

Others speculated whether Blair might actually be a girl, who had been masquerading as a boy at Lewis A. Clark in order to escape her “juvie” criminal record in the neighboring State. The most frequently-expressed opinion, however, was that Blair, a hopeless sissy as a boy, had finally crossed over the gender gap to be reborn as a girl. The expected him soon to appear in their midst, scrubbed pink and wearing pink.

Kirk heard all the gossip and innuendo, even though it seemed like most of his schoolmates were falling silent, shuffling their feet in embarrassment, whenever he passed by. He felt it was only a matter of time before a delegation of students or teachers showed up at his home to confirm or squelch the rumors raging ‘round the school. Desperate, feeling trapped, he felt like he was drowning and that his best friend Cody was helping to pull him under.

“It can’t continue like this,” Kirk told Nicole; “there is no place in this school for both me and Blair.” One of us has to go.”

“Then it should be Blair,” Nicole said. “The little wuss has no right to humiliate you in front of your friends. Even I’m beginning to wonder if Blair is crazy enough to join a girls’ soccer team. But why would he? From what I have seen he’d rather hang out in a boys’ locker room as team manager, smelling their jockstraps and picking up soap dropped in the showers.”

“Nicole, that’s no way to talk to me about my own brother. Blair may be strange but I can prove to you that he’s not hot for other boys, not like they say. Jeez, he even has an older girlfriend he regularly forks.” There was no need, Kirk felt, to tell Nicole that Blair and his girlfriend had a lesbian relationship. That would definitely be too much information.

Nicole was flabbergasted: “Blair a precocious Bluebeard? Will wonders never cease? Then all the rumors about Blair are wrong! But what can you do to stifle them? They’re ruining your reputation as much as his.”

Kirk thought a long while. He then said:

Everyone is guessing whether Blair is actually sick or just hiding out. I want you and Cody to come to my house today after school to investigate and report back to the staff and students of our school on Blair’s true condition. I really, truly believe that my future at Lewis A. Clark depends on you being an honest reporter, and Cody being one too. If you see Cody first, be sure to tell him we’re meeting at my place after school, and be sure to spread the word that the two of you are going to Blair’s house to settle once and for all whether or not my brother has been a “blue meanie” in need of some ‘transformation magic”, as The Beatles put it. Oh, one last thing — tell Prince Charming to bring the lost sneaker ‘cause while we’re checking out Blair, I’ll tell Cody where to find the girl whom the shoe fits.

Nicole, delighted at the prospect of having exclusive information, if even for a short time, that her classmates were desperate to have, agreed to the plan with alacrity. She went looking for Cody to ensure that he’d be her back-up witness on the morning after.

As for Kirk, he had no illusions about what he was doing — a visit by Cody and Nicole would make it impossible for Blair to return to Lewis A. Clark. “I’m finally calling Blair’s bluff,” Kirk said to himself —

He’s been play-acting at being a girl from the start and has no intention of becoming one for good. If I’m right, once his girly avatar becomes common knowledge, he’ll call off this crossdressing charade and agree to be sent away to military school to shape up as a male. He’ll never be able to come back to Lewis A. Clark. If I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am, then Blair will be begging for an immediate sex operation so that she’ll be able to hang out in the showers of the Punani Academy where, being a muff eater, she’ll want to watch the action. She may even be able to show her face around Bybee Lake if her looks change enough. Heck, once that slut Blair has a snatch, even Cody may decide to give her a sympathy fuck, which won’t be his reaction this afternoon when he learns that his mysterious piece of Blue Velvet is my brother. I can’t wait to see Cody’s face!

Later that day when Kirk arrived at their usual rendezvous, he found Cody, sneaker in hand, Nicole, and Emma, a girl whose name he knew but had never met. Sheepishly, Nicole explained that her Spanish class, believing that she was too close to Blair’s family to be an entirely trustworthy witness, had deputed Emma to find out what the “weirdo was up to.”

“How did your Spanish class know you were going to see Blair?” Kirk asked incredulously.

“Well, I guess I sort of was bragging.”

“How typical of a girl!” Cody snorted. “Want to spread a rumor at lightning speed? Tell a girl it’s a secret for her to keep.”

Neither girl looked pleased. Cody was such a sexist! As for Kirk, while he would have preferred to limit the expedition to his two friends, he considered Emma’s involvement a “good omen” since it meant that “someone up there” wanted to expose Blair’s gender games to a maximum of publicity, thereby forcing kid “brother” either to admit that he’d been hiding his true gender orientation — his homosexuality — behind a girl’s skirts or else to live openly as a girl full-time by going away to a boarding school.

Kirk couldn’t explain why it was so important to him that this choice be imposed on Blair. Possibly it was simply a case of his being envious of the attention and affection that Maggie was lavishing on her newfound “daughter”. Yet Kirk didn’t think he was seeing red because his blue-skinned sibling was making him green with envy. Although it was hard to express, what most infuriated Kirk were Blair’s facile assumptions, first, that it was easy for a male to fake being a female; and second, that he, Blair, a snot-nosed kid living in a one-woman household had the slightest notion of the interior life of a girl his age or any age. Blair was all histrionics, a poor player that struts and frets his hour as a female upon the stage, and then, after being outed, is heard no more. The story of his feminization is a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Kirk believed that he knew a million times better than Blair what it was to think like a real woman, rather than to make dumb show of being one.

(Okay, okay, I admit that there’s no way that Kirk, a poor scholar at best, came up with that “sound and fury” line on his own. Yes, I plagiarized it from somewhere else — it’s probably from a flick about Newt Rockne entitled “Where’s the Rest of Me?” in which President Reagan was gippered out of all of his legs — but dear reader, it’s important to remind you through my film-script references that you are reading, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, a work of art. And I also need to distract you from Kirk’s last thoughts, as will surely be the case if the words “work of art” get you LOLling about. I don’t want too many of you, having decoded my signals, to stop fouling off my curve balls and knock one out of the park. Do you like the baseball simile? I’m proud of it myself, since it binds together a paragraph that started with a reference to Newt “The Babe” Rockne, the sexually-ambiguous dude — just look at his nickname, for land’s sakes! — who once predicted where his homerun would land by using a hot dog to point to a target painted on a bald head in the grandstand. At least, that’s the way I remember it.)

To get back to Kirk and the three-person commission of inquiry, it was with more anticipation than foreboding that they approached Blair’s lair. As it turned out, Kirk wouldn’t have to penetrate Blair’s inner sanctum (aka his bedroom) because Blair had finally emerged to eat. He had been too depressed to eat more than a dry piece of toast at breakfast and had foregone lunch entirely. However, Maggie had finally convinced Blair to put down his scrubbing brush and sandpaper long enough to put on some makeup, do his hair, and put on a Sunday dress to remind himself that blue could be beautiful.

Maggie, of course, expected her daughter to use her fashion sense to offset or compliment her basic blue. Instead, Blair endeavored to make himself as blue as possible — with dark blue eye shade, mascara and face powder, with a blue velvet hair band, blue “sapphire” earrings, pendant and bracelet, blue ballet slippers and a blue dress. Blair thought the ensemble vividly expressed his current emotions.

Although Maggie mildly chided her daughter for “wallowing like a sow in her own misery”, she felt sorry for a child so depressed that she ate only the blue M&M candies from the bowl that she had put on the kitchen table to boost Blair’s morale with a sugar high. However, exhausted by her efforts to cleanse Blair in spirit and in body, Maggie soon headed up to her bedroom for a “brief nap”. She fell into a deep sleep, dreaming of Blair’s wedding day and gown. When both turned blue, she woke with a start.

Meanwhile, Kirk and the detectives discovered Blair, still in the kitchen, still playing with his bonbons, still wearing a blue dress, and still looking as glum as the bluebird of happiness after she’d discovered a cuckoo in her nest. Cody was first to react: “It’s incredible. My Na’vi Cinderella is right here in Kirk’s house! Kirk, how did you know where to find her? How did you persuade her to hang out here?”

Then, before Kirk could reply, Cody went down on one knee to proffer the lost sneaker to Blair: “My fairytale princess, may I be thy knight and servant? Wouldst thou permit me to place this, thine slipper, upon thine foot?”

“I’m not a fairy!” Blair objected. “Have you ever seen a blue fairy?”

While everyone scratched their head in contemplation of the great unknown — What color was Tinker Belle, for example? — Cody, with some fumbling with the laces, replaced one of Blair’s ballet slippers with the lost soccer sneaker. “Let there be a blaring of heralds’ trumpets,” Cody said with a dramatic flourish, “for I, Prince Charming, have found the most beautiful girl in all Christendom even if she be but a lowly guest in Kirk’s humble abode!”

“What a doofus you are, Cody,” said Nicole. “You must be joshing us. Surely you recognize that your mystery girl is Kirk’s little brother? Come on, Blair; introduce yourself to us before Cody makes a perfect ass of himself by trying to kiss you.”

While Blair would have welcomed a big wet kiss from Cody, a handsome dude to whom he now owed a favor, Kirk’s presence made pretense pointless. As he didn’t want to get off on the wrong footing with a boy who obviously liked the way he looked, blue hue and all, Blair concluded that his name must come before the kiss. “Of course, I’m Blair. Who else would be living here?”

Emma threw some hardball questions, for which she figured she already knew the answers: “If you’re Blair, then you’re a boy. So why are you dressed up that way? And were you the one who played at soccer for the Breakers, a girls’ soccer team?”

Trapped at home with no place to run, Blair had no alternative to the Big Lie. He had to put a reverse spin on his crossdressing and double-crossing that would make him more hero than heel in the eyes of his fellow students after his treacherous brother and his three spies had spread their version of the truth:

Yes, I played for the Breakers, but only so I could sabotage them. I was always looking out for the interests of us Oregonians. If you saw the game, then you know I wasn’t playing like I wanted the Breakers to win. The red card incident wasn’t my fault. Some big ox deliberately pushed me into the goalkeeper in order to get both of us out of the game. She succeeded: that’s why my game plan failed; but I should be given a medal for dressing up like a girl (which I find very distasteful) in an attempt to help a local team conquer the Valley.

Nicole, smiling despite herself at the sheer audacity of the lie, challenged: “Oh yeah, and why are you wearing that blue dress right now? I don’t see a soccer game anywhere.”

Blair hastily replied:

That’s where you’re wrong, though I can see where you might jump to the wrong conclusion. Didn’t you know that the Breakers are celebrating their victory with a banquet tonight? So I had to dress one last time like a girl so they’d never suspect that I was always trying to trip them up. If they knew the truth, they might retaliate against my family. Their coach has mob connections, don’t you know? He’s coming for me …

“Cut the crap, Blair,” Kirk butted in. “You’ve got to stop lying to people — and to yourself. Listen, everyone, Blair has told his family that he is a genuine transsexual who’s wanted to be a girl since he became old enough to play with dollies. Admit it, Blair, you’ve not worn a stitch of boys’ clothing in several months; you’re taking hormones to give yourself female curves and breasts; and you’re scheduled to have your willy chopped off, ‘cause it’s the only thing male about you.”

Well, the teens became even more slack-jawed than usual. They had never met a genuine transsexual before. Nervously, they wondered whether the disease might be contagious. Emma spoke first:

You’ve got our sympathy, Blair. You’re pretty for a boy. So maybe you can pull it off. But you’ll never be able to have a baby, and that’s tragic. And obviously you won’t be able to return to Lewis A. Clark because now that we know there’s no way we can permit you to embarrass the guys who aren’t in the know, or confuse girls into thinking they’re lesbians. No, we can’t have that.

“Emma, you’re right,” said Nicole. “Look at how Blair tricked Cody into thinking that she was his Cinderella. Thanks to Blair, Cody has made a fool of himself at school. We can’t let that happen to any other guys. Blair, you’ve got to stay away from Lewis A. Clark. Does everyone agree? Do you, Kirk?”

Kirk replied hastily and brutally:

You’re bloody right, I do agree. Blair is already scheduled to attend a girls’ school in September; he should start tomorrow instead, so that you three can immediately spread the word that I am not Blair, am nothing like Blair, that in fact Blair’s only my half-sister, and that I would never mock the female sex by flitting around like Peter Pan in a skirt. How about you, Cody? We can help restore your reputation at school by spreading the word that it was you, outraged at being tricked by a tranny, who told Blair never to disgrace the halls of Lewis A. Clark again.

All eyes, including Blair’s (now drenched in blue tears), turned to Cody. Until now, the other teens had been so intent on making self-serving speeches that they hadn’t noticed that Cody not only hadn’t said a word since he’d declared Blair “the most beautiful girl in Christendom”, but that he’d never once taken his own eyes off Blair’s baby blues. So intently had Cody been staring that Blair had twice looked away in embarrassment. Blair didn’t have enough experience to know whether it was hate or love that burned intensely in Cody’s eyes.

Cody spoke slowly, his eyes never wavering from gazing at Blair:

Why are you all being so cruel? As soon as Blair’s skin and hair return to their normal color, what’s wrong with Blair’s returning to school dressed whatever way he wants? Nobody need ever know that he helped the Breakers win. What’s so important about a soccer game, anyhow? If there is a dress code, nobody knows it. So why can’t a boy wear a dress? I’ll wear a kilt if it makes life easier for Blair at school. And I don’t see why he should have to go away to school even if he is, as Kirk says, a transsexual. As good Christians or — he doffed a figurative hat to Nicole — or true humanists, we should help Blair through what’s bound to be a painful and emotional transition. Blair, you have an obligation to attend Lewis A. Clark as a female so that you can help us all to become more loving, more tolerant human beings.

“Well, if that isn’t the biggest, smelliest load of horse dung that I’ve ever come across,” replied Emma. “If Blair tries to attend our school as a female, someone will cut off his testicles for him before the day is over. Cody, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but I for one believe that the Christian thing to do is to write postcards to Blair at her new school far from here where she can make a new beginning.”

Kirk, Nicole and Blair concurred: It was inconceivable that Blair could attend Lewis A. Clark, as either boy or girl, now that his crossdressing was becoming a public knowledge. Kirk, who had finally noticed how much Cody was still staring at Blair, now said to his friend:

Hey dude, I think you’re still having trouble seeing Blair for what he is — a mixed-up boy. He’s not Cinderella and that was a boy’s sneaker and not a glass slipper that you put on his foot. You’re still looking at Blair as though he’s a real girl. What will it take for you to snap out of the trance you fell into at the game? Do you have to see his nuts before you stop thinking, no matter what anyone says, that Blair is actually a beautiful girl? If that’s what it takes, I’ll put down his panties here and now.

Blair ran in panic from the room, with Cody close behind him. Cody was calling out — “Blair, come back. You don’t have to run away. I’d never let Kirk do that to you.” Cody soon came back alone, saying that Blair had barricaded himself in the upstairs bathroom.

“You won’t see Blair for several hours,” Kirk told them. “He’ll be frantically trying to scrape off the tell-tale blue that proves that he’s a double-crossing crossdresser. Hey, I’ve got to get some fresh air. How about we go to Burger Queen for shakes?”

The girls agreed, but Cody said he had to split because he’d promised his folks to mow the lawn on the first day it didn’t rain. Kirk didn’t quite buy Cody’s excuse (for one thing, it had rained heavily all morning); but he figured that Cody was sulking over their treatment of Blair. At least that’s what Kirk suspected when Cody said, as they parted company, “You shouldn’t treat a stray dog that way, never mind your own brother.”

Kirk’s flip reply didn’t help mend the tear in their friendship: “One would think you still had the hots for Blair, the little prick, ball sack and all, but I promise you that once he’s out of sight, she’ll be out of your mind. Or vicey-versa.”

Cody shook his head, walked away, and then, after Kirk and the girls had vanished from view, he doubled back to Blair’s house where he rang the doorbell. Because Blair didn’t budge from the bathroom, Cody prowled the exterior of the house to see if he could catch a glimpse of the boy in the blue dress. Instead, he found that the sliding door between the kitchen and an outdoor patio had been left open. The two-inch gap was hard to miss. Without even weighing his options, Cody pushed open the door to enter the Finlayson home. He endeavored to make as much noise as possible, even calling out to Blair and Kirk, so that no one would think him a sneak thief, and little boy blue would not take fright.

He found Blair, not in the bathroom furiously scrubbing as Kirk had predicted, but in his bedroom lying on his bed, face in the pillow, sobbing. Cody called out quietly, “Blair, it’s Cody. I’m here as a friend.”

Blair gave a start, raised his head, looked deep into Cody’s eyes, and said, “I know you’re my friend. I see it in your eyes.”

“Blair, why is your brother so awful to you? I had no idea that Kirk intended to expose and mock you as a crossdresser. Gosh, I like the way you’re dressed. You make a really cute girl. I promise I’m not going to tell anyone about your turning blue.”

“Are you sure? You don’t think I look stupid?”

“Heck no! You look really sexy in blue. I know you’re a boy but I still think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. But I need to know: Why did Kirk nark on you today? Does he hate you that much?”

“Kirk’s my brother. I love him and he loves me. But he’s real conflicted about my dressing like a girl. Sometimes he says it’s better to be a crossdresser than a homo, but other times he seems to take it as a personal affront that Maggie picked me to be her daughter.”

“Do you really want to be Maggie’s daughter?”

“Sure, why not? It’s a good deal. But I do wish Kirk would lighten up. Cody — do you know how sexy a name you’ve got? — I could make real trouble for Kirk if I told our parents everything I know about him. But he’s got a lot of pain. I don’t want to hurt him; so I bite my tongue whenever I get angry.”

“Blair, you really are a sweet kid. Can I come over and sit beside you on the bed?”

Blair’s face brightened.

“Before I come over there, Blair, I’ve got to be honest about my intentions. I intend to kiss you because I’ve been in love with you since I saw you play soccer for the Breakers. You’re my Cinderella. I even brought back your shoe.”

“I know. It felt good when you put it on me. But you understand now that you fell in love with someone you thought was a girl. And I’m not really a girl — not down where it counts. Now you know the truth. You wouldn’t want to kiss me if you saw me naked.”

“If I saw you naked, Blair, I’d kiss every inch of you. You being a boy makes me love you even more. I love the way you look right now. Well, maybe you could look a little less blue. You look really cute whether you’re wearing a dress or soccer shorts. You’re perfect. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever met, but I also really dig the fact that you’re a boy. It’s a real turn-on that you’re both a girl and a boy, two for the price of one.”

Blair, now sitting up on the bed, held out his arms: “If you still want to, you can kiss me. I’ve always wanted to be kissed by a boy.”

“Me too.”

That day, with Maggie tossing and turning in the next bedroom, Blair and Cody didn’t go beyond French kissing, at which Cody, despite his three-year age advantage, was as callow and inept as Blair was proficient. It didn’t take long for both kids to know that one of them was still a virgin. Blair shyly confirmed that he’d “done it” with a girl, but reassured Cody that he had never been with a boy. So Cody could still be the first.

Eight days later they had the Finlayson house to themselves, and by the end of a long afternoon of wild passion there was only one thing that Blair hadn’t yet done to either a boy or girl. He was a natural, lifelong bottom. So Cody was always on top of their relationship.

Blair found Cody an easygoing lover and best male friend. Outside the bedroom it didn’t seem to matter to Cody what gender Blair chose to be (although Cody advised Blair to stick to a single one at school). Inside the bedroom, Cody wanted Blair to be as convincing a female as possible, without however, any surgical or hormonal enhancement. Cody wanted “his girl” to remain a boy physically.

Their “affair” could not long be hidden from Big Al, who squeezed a confession out of Blair by sitting on his chest until he begged for breath. She appeared to take the news calmly: “What we’ve got is special, Blair honey; it’s not something that you can do with a boy. No one can make love to a girl like another one can. I know every place on your body to make you tingle.”

Big Al even agreed to hang out with Cody. So all seemed right in Blair’s romantic life. He was having his cake and sausage too. Yet there were problems brewing: Big Al had no intention of devoting “the best years” of her life to loving Blair, only to discover one day that he’d rather be a gay male. Blair’s affair with Cody was warning enough that Blair might not be a born lesbian. As all is fair in love and … sex, Big Al repeatedly badgered Maggie to accelerate Blair’s feminization. As Big Al reminded Maggie,

If you want Blair always to be your daughter, then you’ve got to get Cody out of her life. You know the sorts of disgusting things that Cody does to Blair. They’re going to pollute your daughter’s mind along with her body and convince her that she is — despite her innate femininity — a gay male. We’ve got to fight that delusion. You’ve got to make Blair’s body so fundamentally female that Cody will lose interest in it. Take it from me, Ms. Maguire, that Blair’s boobs have stopped growing. They’re nowhere near big enough to turn off a queer male like Cody. So you’ve got to find a doctor to feminize Blair’s body as quickly as medically feasible. Blair will never again be tempted by gay males once she’s got a vagina.

Blair’s tender age (as well as ethics and the law) still made Maggie hesitate until Kirk came to her one day demanding that she tell Cody and Blair to stop kissing and groping each other when he was around: “You told me that Blair would stop acting gay if we encouraged him to act and dress like a girl. But he’s acting fruitier than ever. It’s like he’s trying to gross me out. And besides, Blair has no right to try to turn my best friend into a homo by confusing Cody about the sex of the kid he’s kissing.”

“My dear, I doubt that Cody is still confused about Blair’s sex if they’re groping each other. However, Alicia has also been complaining about their public displays, and I’ll definitely have a word with Blair.”

Kirk went away upset — his usual mood these days. Maggie understood that it was undoubtedly troubling to him that both Cody, his best male friend, and Alicia, the girl he seemed most to admire, were besotted with Blair. Blair’s easy charm, apparently alluring as much to lesbians as to gay males, was difficult for a plain-looking kid like Kirk not to envy — maybe even to hate.

It would take a lot of plastic surgery to make Kirk anybody’s heartthrob. The poor kid would have to settle one day for a wife who admired “his mind”. And more’s the pity — Blair was not only more physically attractive than Kirk, he was also more intelligent. The only thing that Kirk really seemed to have going for him was his firm sense of personal identity — he knew who he was, even if “who” was a very forgettable, very average boy with, alas, less than average looks.

No, that was too harsh an assessment. There was one realm where Kirk excelled. Maggie had never met a male of any age with comparable insight into the female mind. His deep, instinctual understanding of “what women want” could one day make Kirk a millionaire if he were to design or sell women’s wear.

Thoughts of Kirk did not occupy Maggie long. She couldn’t ignore Alicia’s warnings about Cody’s dangerous influence on Blair. If she didn’t act soon, the “pedophiles” would claim another victim in Blair; her hopes for a daughter would be smashed like a climber falling off the mons veneris, the mountain of love.

A mother on a mission, Maggie marched to her bedroom where she made a secret call to arrange an appointment for Blair in four weeks time (the first open date) with Doctor Benny Sentirsi, the specialist in “gender confirmation”, whose name she had received from Joy Torres, Angela’s mother.

Maggie was no longer going to act like Hamlet, forever dithering; now she was Julius Caesar, staking all on crossing the Rubicon. She was determined not to lose her daughter to a gay boy.