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. Thanks to Kirk, everyone at school now knows that Blair is a crossdressing, Na'vi turncoat. Does Blair have any future at Lewis A. Clark? Is s/he now trapped in skirts forever? Does it matter that Cody gets turned on by the sight of Blair in a dress?

Choices, Chapter 14 A Shakespearean choice

It took less than twenty-four hours for Blair’s crossdressing and bluing to become universally known at Lewis A. Clark Charter School. It took even less time for Blair to be expelled. Miss Lucretia Umbridge made certain of that. As soon as the rumor began circulating, she barged unbidden into the office of Principal Nea Von Aft to announce dramatically that a crossdressing Smurf was bringing their school into disrepute and should, consequently, be expelled.

Von Aft, looking up from her crossword puzzle, asked, “Does the Smurfette have a name?”

“Who else but Blair Finlayson? Surely Felix consulted you about the brat? Didn’t Felix tell you that Blair has been dressing like a girl for months?”

“Why no. Felix never mentioned it to me. Are you saying that the younger Finlayson boy has been openly crossdressing for months, and none of the parents have objected? Oh my, how society’s values have changed!”

“You misunderstand — I was the only one, outside of his immediate family I guess, who knew that Blair Finlayson was wearing girls’ clothes to school because the boy strove to keep his vice hidden by choosing unisex designs that either sex could wear.”

Principal Von Aft, now pretending to read her mail, replied:

I don’t see the problem if the boy favors a unisex look. Are you saying that he’s an emo or a goth? My dear Miss Umbridge, if we were to expel every boy who wears ear studs or makeup, even black lipstick, as well as a pink tee shirt and tight-fitting jeans, we wouldn’t have enough pupils to qualify for State funding. I fear that we all must accommodate ourselves to modernity, Miss Umbridge, tawdry and dispiriting as it may be. The unisex look is here to stay, for boys as well as girls. Anyway, didn’t you just tell me that no one is complaining? I can advise you from my long experience in school administration that inaction is usually the best course of action. Now, is there anything else you want to talk about?

“Well, I’m complaining for one, and there will be many others before the week is out, my dear Principal, because Blair isn’t an emo or a goth; he’s a blue-skinned transsexual, a true freak of nature. As such, he-she will draw the media to this school like flies to sh … er, to excrement, and parents will, in consequence, withdraw their little darlings en masse to shield them from the great hullabaloo. You’ll lose your school.”

The teacher had finally grabbed the principal’s attention. Von Aft put down her mail, her letter-opener making circles in the air, to say:

A transsexual, you say? And blue-skinned, like a Smurf? But surely the color’s not permanent? I’ve heard of blue bloods, but never of blue-skinned people outside of the movies and children’s cartoons. The child Blair must have deliberately dyed its skin in some way. I do hope it wasn’t trying to look African-American, for that would be serious indeed. We could be accused of harboring a racist student. I am sure that the child’s skin color will soon revert to normal. Or do you fear that Blair is for some reason trying to keep its skin as blue as possible?

“Damn the blue skin,” ejaculated Miss Umbridge:

The color of Blair’s skin isn’t the real issue. It’s his gender: Now that the entire school knows that Blair is a transgender, he won’t be coming to school in unisex clothes anymore. Where would be the fun in that? Blair will have nothing to lose, and something to gain, by making himself look as feminine as possible. He’ll be wearing a halter top and a skirt or hot pants to school and insisting on using the girls’ toilets and showers. Is that alright with you? Because it won’t be alright with most of our parents.

Principal von Aft virtually leapt out of her seat so that her twitching feet could have room to roam. Back and forth she paced across her office, with each pass forcing Miss Umbridge ever closer to the back wall, until the teacher was pressed against it. As she paced, the principal kept muttering to herself about her “pension,” her “political prospects” and the “union election”. Finally she resolved to show some resolve: “I have decided that Blair can neither stay at this school nor can he be formally asked to leave.”

“Huh? What sort of decision is that?” Miss Umbridge asked.

Nea von Aft replied:

A devious one, as you’d expect by now of someone qualified to manage a charter school. As we cannot abide the unfavorable publicity of making the decision for Blair, we must let the child — or more properly, its parents — make the decision and I am sure that they will, with suitable guidance, opt to remove it from Lewis A. Clark forthwith. Will you be available to meet with the blue child, its parents and the school psychologist an hour after classes have ended today? There is no reason to let this matter fester another day.

As it happened, everyone was available for the fateful meeting in the school’s office. All but Felix La Rond (who was closely examining the organic apple that he had brought for wormholes) were staring at Blair, the “Smurfette,” who had, as Miss Umbridge had predicted, decided to abandon all pretense of dressing like a boy. Blair, deciding that pink best complimented his blue skin, had opted for pink jewelry, headband, sweater, bobby socks, Mary Jane shoes and a pink ruffle miniskirt (under which occasionally flashed his pink cotton panties).

Looking at him, Miss von Aft decided that she couldn’t, and Miss Umbridge, that she wouldn’t, permit Blair to attend school looking like a, like a … cherry tart.

At the principal’s request, Miss Umbridge started the meeting by expressing her “concern” for Blair’s safety, given the tone of the remarks she had heard in the classroom and schoolyard. “It’s abundantly clear,” she ‘reported’, that it will be unsafe for Blair to use either the boys’ or the girls’ washrooms. I can’t honestly say in which he would be less likely to have his head pushed down a toilet.” She turned to Blair, “Do you understand, dear child? They may drown you alive!”

Laird asked whether it would be possible, in that case, to allow Blair to use a washroom normally off-limits to the students — “the toilet adjoining the teacher’s lounge, for example. I’m sure the teachers would be adult about sharing it.”

“I fear not,” Principal von Aft quickly replied. “Some of the teachers are quite prickly about preserving their privileges — one of which is having a temporary respite from constant contact with their students — and I am sure there will be a union grievance if we were to impose Blair on their private space. No, from a labor-management and riot-control perspective, it’s simply impossible to find a washroom for Blair to use at the school. But surely the child could wait until it got home from school?”

Laird didn’t think that sounded like “reasonable accommodation”. He also questioned whether the school was willing to protect Blair if push came to shove.

“This school has a zero tolerance policy with respect to violence,” replied Principal von Aft with considerable edge to her voice. “I can assure you that when Blair is seriously hurt by another student, that the latter will be severely punished.”

“Yes, I’d insist on a week of after-school detentions,” interjected Miss Umbridge.

“A week’s detention for gaining a reputation as the macho male who beat up the sissy? That’s hardly a credible deterrent, now is it?” Laird spluttered.

“We think it is,” replied the principal huffily. “At this time of year it’s still quite a punishment to lose an hour of sunshine. In any case, I would be loath to impose an excessive punishment on a child who will, as you say, become the school’s paladin for slaying the blue-skinned monster for them.”

“Monster? How dare you call my child a monster?” replied Laird, his voice nearing a shout.

“Please keep your voice down, Mr. Finlayson. You don’t want to air your dirty laundry in public,” said Principal von Aft, who continued:

I’m not suggesting that Blair actually is a monster; all I’m saying is that many of the students, probably a majority, see him as one. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. In short, while I and the teaching staff will do our utmost to protect Blair from physical harm, we will be constrained by the necessity of not making martyrs out of the inevitable army of would-be bullies, for if that happens, we may lose control of the school. Then education would cease as teachers barricaded themselves in their lunchroom. The forces of chaos and disorder would claim another victory. Blair would surely suffer the most if the bullies replaced the teachers at the front of his classes. You’ve seen The Lord of the Flies — think of poor Piggy’s fate, and he didn’t even crossdress!”

Blair spoke up: “Dad, mom, I’m no longer safe here! I’ve gotta change schools!”

“Blair, your principal is deliberately serving up an apocalyptic scenario,” replied Laird, taking his daughter’s hand, “I’m surprised that she hasn’t added a meteor and tidal wave to her lurid tale. Maggie, you’ve been awful silent, what do you think of all this malarkey? Don’t you agree that Lewis A. Clark can protect Blair without having to give up its educational mission? All it needs is the will to do it.”

“Laird, I fear I must concur with Blair and Principal von Aft. Realistically, there is no way that Blair can attend this school as a girl. At least not openly. We’ve always known that our daughter would have to change schools in the fall. That’s why we’ve enrolled her in the Yoni Punani Academy. So all we’re really talking about is the last month of this school year. Of that there are probably only two weeks that really matter.”

“Madam, I do admire your perspective and perceptiveness,” cooed Principal von Aft:

As you say, the last week or so of school is primarily given to class trips and special speakers; we might even ask you to speak to his class about tolerance toward the disabled, including transgendered children like Blair. If Blair were definitely gone from the school, I am sure that the other children would give his mother a fair hearing, if only out of sympathy and guilt. As for the last two weeks of book-learning and testing, why couldn’t you home school Blair? You teachers could provide Ms. Maguire with the books and teaching tools that she’d need, isn’t that so, Miss Umbridge?

Miss Umbridge sullenly grunted a yes. Blair piped in that he thought home schooling a good idea. “At least that way I wouldn’t be beat up; and Cody and Alicia could still come by to see me.”

Everything seemed to be settled until Felix La Rond unexpectedly spoke up. Either he had run out of food or, more likely, he felt that Blair was being railroaded by the three women, none of whom seemed to question whether a change of gender was in the boy’s best interest: “While I take it, ladies, that the three of you believe that Blair both wants to be a girl and would be better off becoming one, have you given any thought to the psychological implications of what you are doing today? They are weighty, weighty indeed.”

Laird took the bait: “What do you mean by ‘weighty’? Are you suggesting that we’re about to damage Blair in some way?”

Felix shrugged. While he thought it imperative to remind the women who were playing with fire that there was a danger that someone, probably Blair, could get scorched, it was much too close to dinnertime for him to launch into a disquisition on the subject of gender dysphoria.

Besides, he wasn’t entirely sure of what he should say, given that he hadn’t concluded one way or another, despite weekly sessions with both Blair and Kirk, whether Blair was actually a transsexual. Until this farce of a meeting he was leaning towards the affirmative. It was Blair’s unisex approach to dressing for school that he’d found most persuasive: that is, it indicated a strong desire to live quietly as a female, rather than noisily and dramatically as a drag queen. For transsexuals, sexual identity was about bringing unity to soul and body, not about bringing disunity to a school classroom. And so, La Rond’s professional opinion had been coming down on the side of recognizing Blair as a genuine transsexual, whose life would be easier at another school, one lacking the ghosts of boyhood past. But the clownish pink outfit, on top of the blue skin and hair, made the psychologist reassess his diagnosis. Was it possible, after all, that Blair was no more than a ham actor?

Suddenly seized by doubts, all that Felix La Rond could do was to evade: “What do I mean by weighty? I mean exactly what the word says. Our decision today is a weighty one, not to be made lightly. And that is my professional opinion.”

His hands rummaging through his pockets all the while, he finished his enigmatic remarks by popping two breath mints from his left jacket pocket into his cavernous mouth. They’d have to suffice until everyone has stopped nattering about Blair. Felix thought, “The kid can take care of himself and will be come out on top, despite the villainy and folly all around her.” Felix made a mental note to salute Blair with a pint of draft beer.

As the psychologist’s mind turned to his favorite brews, the meeting gradually ran down, as Maggie promised to home school Blair for a month, a pledge she kept, and the principal and teacher pledged to provide the necessary school supplies, a promise they had no intention of keeping. “There is no point to spending the money,” Principal von Aft explained to Miss Umbridge when they were alone, “because there is no way that Blair is going to fail any of his final tests, right?”

Miss Umbridge understood: The last thing the school wanted was for Blair to have to repeat his year, for that would give “it” or its parents, an excuse for its return to Lewis A. Clark. For the first time in her life, Miss Umbridge would be an easy “A” — or A+, whatever it’d take to get the transvestite Smurf out of her life. Blair’s other teachers would fall into line — of that Umbridge was sure. Besides, she knew that Principal von Aft would leave nothing to chance. Von Aft would even find a way to have Blair “appear” to attend the last four weeks of school so as to get reimbursed by the government.

And so it was that Blair left Lewis A. Clark Charter School for the last time, wiser and bluer — and definitely more feminine — than when he entered its hollowed [sic] precincts.

Blair had but one regret — that Miss Umbridge had outlasted him at Lewis A. Clark. He had wanted to dance wildly — like a young savage, she’d say — at her “early retirement” party. As it turned out, she left the school one week after Blair, without a party, without a formal retirement. In fact, she left the school in even greater disgrace than Blair. He at least stayed out of jail.

Ironically, it was her lifetime practice of cultivating “teacher’s pets” that proved her undoing. After Blair fell out of her favor, Miss Umbridge had switched her attention to Alex Shirazi, the thirteen-year-old student with the tight-fitting pants whose crotch she had once accused Blair of coveting. Actually, she had been the one doing the leering; and, as Blair’s continued presence in her classroom challenged her need for control, she increasingly fantasized about having her way with Alex. Maddened by Blair, she became mad for Alex.

And so, on the pretense of helping him with homework, she invited Alex to her house, got him blind drunk, and tried to have sex with him. He awoke from his stupor to find his teacher, stark naked, writhing about drunkenly on top of him, trying evidently to get his insensate body “to perform” for her.

Alex, full of rum and dread, yet void of lust and passion, responded to the outrage by vomiting in his teacher’s face. As she recoiled in horror, Alex rolled off the living room sofa, retrieved his jeans and briefs from the rug, and then, leaving his sneakers and socks behind, ran half-naked from the house. Barefoot and disheveled, his cheeks marred with cheap lipstick, Alex held nothing back (other than his homosexuality) from his parents when they chanced upon him as he was sneaking home via the garage door.

As she watched his bare posterior fade into the twilight, the truth dawned on Miss Umbridge: Not only was Alex gay, he was downright gynophobic. In a secret deposition (secret, that is, from his parents), Alex later testified that he found female nudity nauseating as a result of several unfortunate experiences: first, there had been the Swedish au pair, who after molesting him in kindergarten had betrayed his puppy love by running off with Travis, his underage cousin; second, he had been publicly humiliated in the third grade when it became general knowledge that he was still breast-feeding; third, his grandmother imposed petticoat punishment on him for even the most trivial offense (like not putting down the toilet seat); fourth, his favorite aunt paid him to dress up like a girl whenever he visited her; fifth, his father, anxious to ensure that his son’s first sexual experience was with a female (he didn’t know about the au pair) engaged for Alex a cut-rate hooker, who turned out to be a dominatrix; sixth, his two older sisters regularly “pantsed him” in order to see, measure and mock his weenie; seventh, his mother made him wear his younger sister’s castoff clothes; and eighth, and perhaps the best explanation for his condition, he had at an impressionable age seen a video of Britney Spears in which she wasn’t, gasp, wearing any panties. The sight of her hairy vagina (he swore it had teeth) so traumatized Alex that he swore off females for life. And yet, like Miss Umbridge, they often found him sexy cute and they would not leave him alone.

It’s also possible that Alex didn’t like girls because he was born gay. Maybe there’s no need for Britney Spears to feel guilty about her effect on lads like Alex; they were predestined to play for the other team.

Whether or not one blames Britney, one must fault Miss Umbridge for letting her stereotyping and biases interfere with her own “gaydar”. Normally she would have regarded Alex’s tight jeans, satin shirts and lavender sneakers as damning evidence of “queerness”, but she convinced herself that his clothes choices were normal for his “ethnic” group (like kimonos for the Japanese, sarongs for Tahitians or saggers for urban Swedes).

Alex was a Persian or Iranian (okay, okay, a Farsi-speaking American of Iranian descent), and most of the teacher’s knowledge about Persians she had absorbed from the movie 300, a film ostensibly about suicidal bodybuilders from Sparta, but which also conveyed thousands of memorable images of their Persian foes. The movie taught Miss Umbridge that Persian males have always looked effeminate, even when they were whomping Greek “macho, macho men”.

Yet none of the perfumed Persian males in earrings and makeup were gay in the fifth century BCE, and there still seemed to be a Persian immunity to homosexuality, at least in the mind of Miss Lucretia Umbridge, who had been profoundly impressed by the speech of Iran’s tiny president to a group of American college students, in which he had denied that there were any live homosexuals in his country. Now how many countries could claim that?

Accordingly, Lucretia Umbridge never gave a second thought to the possibility that Alex might be a gay Persian. Ignorantly she groped her way to disaster. Maybe, just maybe, Alex would have refrained from telling his parents about her “indiscretion”, and they in turn the police, had it been impossible to keep his sexual orientation a secret, but no one thought it “queer” that he had spurned the unsought advances of a middle-aged, drunken teacher. Alex’s father, a devout Muslim, was determined to have her punished for introducing his son to alcohol. He wanted to make certain that Miss Umbridge would never have a chance to serve hard drink to children again.

It was Kirk who had the pleasure of informing his family that the dreaded Witch of the Pacific Northwest had been led away in handcuffs from her classroom, her broomstick left behind. Months later, however, it was learned that Miss Umbridge eventually copped a plea about copping a feel, one that will keep her far away from children for the rest of her life, but will not prevent her subsequent appointment as the Education Czar in Washington.

Meanwhile, Blair had a new home room teacher in Maggie. Kirk envied his ‘sister’s’ life as a home schooler. With every lesson effectively a tutorial, Blair raced through his assigned course of studies, giving him ample time to hang with Big Al as well as with Jasmine and Megan, two girls whom Blair had met at a home school “social”.

Angela had also attended the social, and though she and Blair still didn’t click enough for Blair not to lose her phone number, Kirk, who had attended the event as a lark, struck up an immediate friendship with her. Blair suspected that Kirk was only pretending to like Angela, whom he considered a dweeb, in order to retaliate against Blair for moving in on Big Al and Cody. In any case, it was hard for Blair to take seriously Kirk’s claim “that no one has ever understood me like Angela”. And yet Kirk and Angela could talk for hours about nothing.

The best thing about home schooling is that Blair had lots of time for Cody. Sometimes the two of them hid out in Blair’s bedroom, but increasingly they worked together in the rec room on their lines. Cody had enrolled in the Wil Shakspear Actors’ Studio to spend more time with Blair, and the two of them were looking forward to appearing together in their first Shakespearean play, As You Like It.

Normally the school’s head, Wil Shakspear, would have deemed Blair much too young to attempt Shakespeare, but she judged Blair to be a born actress with a superior ability at memorizing a script. Besides, Wil liked the sexual tension that Blair and Cody unexpectedly (given Blair’s tender age) brought to their roles opposite each other as Rosalind and Orlando, the romantic leads.

This time Maggie left nothing to chance. Before permitting Blair to join the Actors’ Studio, she interrogated Wil Shakspear about the ratio of male-to-female students and likely roles for a girl as young and pretty as Blair. Their meeting began awkwardly as Maggie, noticing the abundance of masks, disks, totems and wooden chests decorating Ms. Shakspear’s office, asked whether they were “Indian in origin.” They must be, she thought, inasmuch as the studio head was an Umpqua Indian.

“Yes, they’re Indian,” was the laconic reply.

It was then that Maggie made the mistake of asking whether the “artifacts” all came from “the same Indian tribe”. Miss Shakspear, her face simultaneously showing amazement, disgust and wry amusement, explained that she had spent five years in Mumbai, India as artistic director of a small, English-speaking theatrical troupe, and had consequently fallen in love with “Indian art,” several examples of which she had brought home when her own “Passage to India” had ended. For example, the painted mask from Kerala on the wall behind her desk had been worn by Kathakkali dancers; and the elephant totem, or tiki, came from Bengal.

Poor Maggie, she had assumed that Native Americans were, like New Yorkers, only interested in their “own culture”. Wrong-footed from the start, Maggie never completely regained her balance. As a result, she didn’t dare grill the Studio director as thoroughly as she had planned. Thus, she never asked for a written guarantee that Blair would never be asked to pretend even for a single moment to be a male. She settled instead for the assurance that Blair would be playing Rosalind, the principal female role in the (junior) students’ production of As You Like It. Maggie thought it the perfect part for her daughter after Wil Shakspear told her that Harold Bloom, a highbrow critic, considered “Rosalind” to be one of Shakespeare’s “greatest and most fully realized female characters.” It would be a feminizing experience indeed for Blair to meld her essence with Rosalind’s.

Later, at the first and last public performance of the play, both Blair and Maggie wished that Maggie had found time to read a plot synopsis. That night Maggie expressed such a profound dislike for Shakespearean comedy that Blair, who had come to revere the Bard, never again felt that he owed his stepmother either unquestioning obedience or respect. In short, Maggie’s “philistine” outburst at the performance of As You Like It was the moment that Blair, already sexually active and increasingly cynical of outside authority, completed his coming of age. Afterwards, he had the temperament of a very short adult.

Naturally, Maggie had arranged for a large audience of Blair’s friends to bear witness to her folly: In addition to Laird and Kirk, the first two rows also contained Cody’s sister Shelby, Big Al, Angela, Jasmine, Megan, Linda and Taylor (the latter two from the Pavlova school) and, somewhat surprisingly, Alex Shirazi (who admired Blair for standing up to Miss Umbridge), as well as a driver or two for each kid. In the last row of the theater, a large tub of popcorn partially hiding his face, sat Felix La Rond, ever curious about the life and loves of Blair Finlayson.

The play, a pastoral romance, started badly: Blair (Rosalind) didn’t even appear until the second scene and Celia (played by a red-headed girl not half as beautiful as Blair) had the lion’s share of the girls’ lines in scene two. In scene three, the focus finally shifted to where it belonged — to Blair (Rosalind), who has been told by villainous Duke Frederick, her uncle, to “get out of Dodge” for the capital crime of being her “father’s daughter”: “Within these ten days if that thou be'st found so near our public court as twenty miles, thou diest for it.”

As death threats went, it was unusually polite, and no mafia don would have given her ten days to get lost; nevertheless, Blair (Rosalind) is quickly convinced by red-headed Celia to flee together to the Forest of Arden. Maggie’s spirit soared as she heard Blair (Rosalind) fret that she was too beautiful to venture safely into the forest where thieves did abide. That’s how Maggie thought of her daughter: as one so beautiful that she was safe only in the company of women. But Blair’s next lines caused Maggie’s spirits to crash earthward, down to the pit of hell itself:

‘Were it not better because I am more than common tall,’ said Rosalind, ‘that I did suit me all points like a man? A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh, a boar-spear in my hand …. We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside, as many other mannish cowards have, that do outface it with their semblances.’

But a tiny voice — a small hope — yet remained in the Pandora’s box that Maggie had opened by enrolling Blair in the Shakspear Studio. As the language had been abstruse, even by Elizabethan standards, she thought that perhaps she had misunderstood Rosalind’s (that is, Blair’s) intent. Surely the girl wasn’t saying that she was going to dress up and pose as a man? Thus, Rosalind’s reply to Celia’s question — “What shall I call thee when thou art a man?” — Maggie found totally crushing: “I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page; and therefore look you call me Ganymede.”

Not only a man but the most famous catamite, or bottom, in gay history and myth! Her Blair was playing Ganymede or ”Sodom’s Minion” in the words of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (the other definitions Maggie found inconcise). Such a role mocked her efforts to transform Blair into a proper young girl. Much of the world already regarded Blair as a Ganymede, Bagoas, Antinoos or “beauty’s rose,” the young male, “my love,” to whom Shakespeare addressed his first twenty-six sonnets. The last thing Maggie wanted, therefore, was for her daughter to call herself “Ganymede” and to crossdress as a male in public.

Maggie couldn’t STAND it! Was there a conspiracy to prevent Blair’s transformation? Were first the dance school and now the actors’ studio privy to said conspiracy? Was some entity with godlike powers, maybe the Sun god Ra or Jehovah Himself, intent on playing with her hopes and dreams, and Blair’s, as though they were finger puppets on the fickle hand of fate? Maggie had been jerked around one time too many. She was no longer going to accept the whims of cruel Fortune quietly like a good little girl. There was only one thing to do: She let forth a SCREAM so loud, so prolonged, and so high-pitched that the last Shakespearean words that Blair’s family and friends heard that night were Rosalind’s about a “clownish fool”.

Alas, poor Blair, his first time to strut as a mere. comedic player upon the stage ended tragically in the First Act, as Maggie, her screams still piercing ear lobes, leapt up to stage front, grabbed Blair (Rosalind) by one arm, and then dragged the child actor, kicking and cursing, to the exit. Blair’s friends and relatives also hustled for the exits as the curtain fell prematurely on Act One.

An hour passed before the play resumed with Blair’s understudy, a timid girl, who refused to take her turn upon the stage until she had been assured, and reassured, that the “crazy woman” had been apprehended by the police several blocks from the theater, still raging, the police reported, at her daughter for being “a hopeless Ganymede,” whatever that was. The police suspected it was a new slang word for “whore”, but Laird vouched for Blair: His daughter, not yet eleven, had never accepted money for sex.

Back in the theater, Felix La Rond, who had used the hour-long interval to eat a three-course meal, regretted Blair’s forced exit because, “That kid really gets into the head of a female character. He’s much more credible as a sixteenth-century princess than that wan little creature who replaced him.” After having after-theater coffee mit schlag and Viennese cake, he intervened to prevent Maggie, still being processed by the police, from being sent to a mental hospital for evaluation.

“I can vouch for her,” Felix said, “as her daughter attends my school. I assure you that Maggie Maguire was simply suffering from stage fright, the result of seeing her child for the first time in a starring role; Maggie Maguire is as sane as her daughter Blair who in turn is as sane as Billy Bibbit.” That settled it for the police (who had never heard of Billy Bibbit, the suicidal mama’s boy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), especially after Wil Shakspear phoned the station to say that she wouldn’t press charges so long as Blair and her family never again came within shouting range of the Actors’ Studio.

While Maggie regretted her impulsiveness (Blair for one refused to talk to her for a week), she now knew that she had been foolish to trust Blair’s fate to the whims of blind fortune. Maggie would have to take more decisive steps. Not only was she going to put Blair’s feminization henceforth under a doctor’s close supervision, but she also planned to give the family an ultimatum, one that started composing itself in her own mind. The actual phrasing kept changing, but it always came down to the same choice: Either Blair became a girl for keeps or Maggie walked.